SYDNEY: The State Premier of Queensland, Australia, Peter Beattie, has hurled the brutal truth of domestic violence in Aboriginal communities into the comfort zone of ordinary Australians.

“No government can tolerate any longer the bashings, murders and sexual assaults that Aboriginals are committing against each other on such an appalling scale,” he said.

Premier Beattie, a socially progressive Labour politician, stunned his parliamentary allies and opponents alike with his candour. In the three decades since white paternalism and discrimination were replaced by full civil and legal rights, it has been political suicide for major public figures to criticize Aboriginal peoples or their cultures, or to suggest that their disadvantaged circumstances in housing, employment, income and poor life expectancy relate to anything but a legacy of European oppression.

The fact that Aboriginal cultures placed women into a position of inferiority and subjugation to men, enforced by a code of degradation and violence is rarely discussed. The recognition and resolution of that injustice has always been relegated to the ‘too hard’ basket, as a distraction to the task of restoring Aboriginal dignity, sovereignty and/or title to traditional lands.

After Fitzgerald reported to Premier Beattie last November the public document was largely ignored by the national media. That was until Beattie said that unless Aboriginals stopped the savage cycles of mutilations, murders and sexual assaults against each other, his government would ban the sale of alcohol in the worst affected communities. —Dawn/The Observer News Service.