Corrupt Australia presents an alternative to the politically correct channels of debate to reveal and scrutinize the skewed structure/design of modern Australian society. We also seek to encourage autonomous Australian culture which is free from the standardizing and overly materialistic clutches of globalisation and which encourages citizens to go further than simply contributing to a quantity over quality mindset and the banal and unsustainable conditions under which we may increase our love for and attainment of material mass.

"Sorry"?


Prime Minister Kevin Rudd is reported to be planning a formal apology to Aboriginal people for the stolen generation fiasco, distancing himself from the indigenous policies of the Howard era. He possibly plans to use the opening of parliament on February 12 to achieve what he says is a necessary part of the process to achieve full reconciliation.

This sounds nice, initially: The past process of removing aboriginal children from their parents regrettably reflected an overly moralistic and paternal mind frame towards Aboriginals; that aboriginal culture would be better if it were in fact European culture. However it appears that the motive lying behind this simply symbolic apology (Rudd has firmly ruled out payment or any tangible compensation option) have not changed much from the motives previously underlying the removal of children from their own culture. Rudd has stated that he wants indigenous people to be "full participants" in our society, rather than marginalised Australians.

We simply ask whether becoming a full participant in modern globalised Australian society is the same as being an Aboriginal. We need to admit that Aboriginals require their own separate living space to enable them to live in their own communities and according to their OWN values and not ours: as in the end the later would result in the lowest common denominator remnants of both cultues. Does the government, in effect, want to control indigenous people again, but in a new form?

"We should be... proud of Aboriginal culture, which represents the oldest living continuing culture in human history" Mr Rudd said. Well then we hope that in addition to the apology and subsequent gestures, the government will give them the space and autonomy that they would logically require to continue this culture.

We should build a platform that recognises and laments the overly paternal attitudes of the past, but also ensure that the same attitudes are not carried on in a new form. What is a culture if it cannot decide on its own direction? All we ask readers is to bear this point in mind as the events unfold.


Think of it all - of the life that is! Study your friends and foes!
Study the past! And answer this: "Are these times better than those?" The life-long quarrel, the paltry spite, the sting of your poisoned pride! No matter who fell it were better to fight as they did when the world was wide.

Boast as you will of your mateship now - crippled and mean and sly - The lines of suspicion on friendship's brow were traced since the days gone by.
There was room in the long, free lines of the van to fight for it side by side -
There was beating-room for the heart of a man in the days when the world was wide.

With its dull, brown days of a-shilling-an-hour the dreary year drags round: Is this the result of Old England's power? - the bourne of the Outward Bound?
Is this the sequel of Westward Ho! - of the days of Whate'er Betide? The heart of the rebel makes answer "No! We'll fight till the world grows wide!"

The world shall yet be a wider world - for the tokens are manifest; East and North shall the wrongs be hurled that followed us South and West. The march of Freedom is North by the Dawn! Follow, whate'er betide! Sons of the Exiles, march! March on! March till the world grows wide!

- Henry Lawson

(c)2008 Corrupt AU