Whoa, this is explosive and a very complex issue.

Most definitely in the news a lot here but then we're headed to an election and most probably a total change of government in the next couple of months, plus we've had all these foreign heads of state here recently for their APEC meetings or whatever they did.

It may appear to be a sad reflection as a whole, however, apparently there were several issues in the text of the declaration which prevented our govt. here from signing it and similarly for New Zealand.

The Declaration was presented as a whole. There were issues with several points which prevented it being signed by the govt. of Australia... well that's what they're saying anyway.
I see it to mean that signing the declaration as it was finally presented as a whole would actually not have been a very good move especially for those without voices... such as children.

I don't often agree entirely with what our govt. at this present time is doing. In fact it's pretty darn rare these days. However, there were some things in the Declaration which would have been a really backward step.

2 sets of law

In my humble opinion, there are very serious reasons we shouldn't have two different sets of laws, one being customary law for indigenous people and the other for non-indigenous people. Seems a backward step to me considering what's going on in the poorer outback communities of Australia.

I'm not 100% sure why you feel that this is sad on a human rights level. What I think is sad is seeing that children are being abused because indigenous communities have not been able or willing to deal with the issue.

What I think is sad is that some of these communities are so overloaded with enormous health issues from alcohol abuse and chroming that it's actually seems to me to be criminal for services from our government not to be stepping in to address these issues!

That's been happening for years up until now and more and more children are being abused. Every single time someone stepped in to help there was enormous backlash about not interfering in indigenous affairs. Give me a break. Who wants to watch our children dying. Why is the death rate so high and why is the age of death so low for our indigenous populations. Why? Because everyone is tip-toeing around trying not to step on someone else's shoes or customs or land or whatever.

This is not new. This was going on when I was a child growing up in the sticks and going to school and basically living with the local communities and even though I was a chld... I knew what was going on and that's half a century ago. Sadly, not much has changed in some areas. Lots changed for the better in other ways for our indigenous people though.

If there is something seriously wrong, and there IS here, then giving one law for one group and one law for another is not ever, ever going to save the children and the sick and the abused and the homeless and the hungry because our indigenous people are a really quiet, beautiful, peaceful people. Always have been and ironically I see it as being very sadly unfortunate in a way because sometimes you can be just too "easy going" and peaceful and uninvolved and it works against you when there are things to actually fight for and attempt to change.

While I'm still all riled up and angry thinking about what's going on in my own country, let alone thinking about what's going on that is worse in other places in the world, let me just say that nothing will ever move forward if there is a return to separatism or segregation.

This is 2007. This is not 1788 or 1901. People need to work together not separately to fix what is not just and to fix what has been done in the past and to move forward. There is so much to do here regarding health and education issues especially.

This is a health based forum, so I'm not really wanting to talk politics here but that is what this post is all about... politics, so now I'm butting out again.