Friday, May 09, 2003

BLACK CLAIMS = TRUTH

In the early 1990s there was a plan to build a bridge from the little town of Goolwa in South Australia to Hindmarsh Island, which sits at the mouth of the Murray. At the last moment, Aboriginal women claimed the island was special to them for reasons that could not be revealed. They successfully applied to the then minister for Aboriginal affairs, Robert Tickner, for an order banning the bridge. About a year later another group of Aboriginal women came forward and said that the claim of what became known as "secret women's business" was a hoax. A royal commission was called, and found that secret women's business had been fabricated. Ever since then, the conventional wisdom has been that the affair, and the willingness of white people to believe the Aboriginal women, marked the high-water mark of politically correct soft-headedness and sentimentality.

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