A socialist experiment with aboriginals

Socialism has been tried a few times before. The Soviet Union & Eastern Europe gave it a go. So did China, Vietnam, Nth Korea, Cambodia and Laos. Many African, Middle-Eastern, South Asian and South American countries have pursued some sort of socialist agenda. Unfortunately for all of these people, these experiments have all failed — and resulted in poverty and the unnecessary deaths of hundreds of millions of people. Opps!

Some would say that we should abandon socialism. But other people insist that we need to give it another go and just try a little harder. In that spirit, I suggest that we try out socialism in Australia. After all, we’re blessed with an army of leftists with good intentions. Surely that is enough!

However we wouldn’t want to try it out on all Australians. Instead we could just try it in a few isolated “homelands” populated by about 90,000 aboriginals. We should set up these communities as having “communal ownership” which is managed by councils. Private land & house ownership must be banned. Private business must also be discouraged so that “community” owned businesses are able to flourish. We will obviousy need to have quite a few bureaucrats to manage the land and businesses. Literacy & attendance is optional.

The additional advantage of this experiment is that we can separate aboriginal culture from western culture so that it is protected. Sorcery and customary law (including punishment by spears and arranged marriages with 12 year olds) can therefore be maintained. Non-aboriginal Australians should not enforce their ideas — like literacy, numeracy, employment, women’s rights, English etc — on these aboriginal socialist communities. Visits by foreigners should be restricted.

Thankfully, there is already strong support for such an approach. Australian politicians have supported a socialist model for aboriginal homelands for decades, and they are supported by the government-funded “Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research” and the government-funded non-government-organisation (sic) “Oxfam” — who argue that capitalism can’t work for aboriginals. 

Supporters of the socialist model also influence the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, the Law Council of Australia, the Ausralian Law Reform Commission, the State Law Reform Commissions, the Aboriginal legal aid services and many in the Australian bureaucracy. These people care so passionately about making aboriginal socialism work that they accuse the anti-socialists (like Helen Hughes & her book “Lands of Shame”) of racism to shut down the debate.

With such strong support, and the billions of dollars donated by “capitalist Australia”, surely we can make socialism work! What do you say lefties?

Of course, if our experiment in socialism leads to welfare dependence, poverty, bad education, illiteracy, overcrowded & broken houses, violence, rape, child abuse, sickness, drug abuse and low life expectancy… then we can always just blame the capitalists. And then we can try the socialist experiment again with a new group.

                                                                               

Note: This proposal sounds silly, and it is. Unfortunately, it describes the current situation. Much to our shame, Australia has been pursuing a socialist experiment with aboriginal homelands for decades. Not suprisingly, the experiment has been a terrible failure, and the homeland aboriginals are suffering. Socialists should be sick with shame. But they aren’t. Instead, anybody who questions the socialist orthodoxy are branded racist and socialists congratulate themselves for being “progressive”.

Aboriginal homelands are in desperate need of reform to move closer to the Australian system of social democracy… and those who continue to support aboriginal socialism clearly don’t care about aboriginal welfare.