Friday, July 04, 2003

AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINAL CORRECTNESS

A CHILDREN'S book author faces a possible $55,000 fine after the Aboriginal owners of Uluru moved to take legal action to ban his book about a teddy bear who climbs the rock. In a landmark case aimed at stopping white people disrespecting the rock, Uluru's traditional owners will ask the Federal Court this month to ban the popular children's book by Sydney author Alan Campbell. The Aboriginal owners, Anangu, say Campbell's book, Bromley Climbs Uluru, is deeply offensive to their culture because it contains photographs of a bear sitting on the summit of the rock. Anangu do not like people to climb the rock and take photographs at the summit. The commercial use of such images in illegal. But Campbell describes the row, revealed by The Weekend Australian Magazine in March, as a case of political correctness gone mad. "I'd like to fight this case for the sake of others - this is a freedom of speech issue, it is censorship on a grand scale," Campbell said yesterday.

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