Aboriginal law

Thank you for my weekly dose of sanity. I never know where to start, as it is all soul-edifying. This week I chose Megan Davis’s “Looking for aliens”. Thank you, Megan, your comments on Ken Wyatt’s efforts resonated with me. You, the women of Cherbourg and the excellent cartoon (Jon Kudelka, “Constitutionally Enshrined Voice to Parliament”, February 15-21) say it all.

– Sandy Siddle, Kelvin Grove, Qld

February 15-21) deserves expansion and repeating in response to evidence of creeping authoritarianism. Whether it’s children strip-searched to meet farcical, arbitrary targets, police and quasi-military Immigration forces being armed with assault weapons as though in search of an enemy, any number of demographic groups targeted punitively for being different from an ideologically constructed norm, asylum seekers who believed the rhetoric about Australian democratic values, or obsequiousness to anything emanating from the United States, we’re a very long way from the larrikin self-image regularly lauded as the national character. I suspect White Australia’s origins may have something to do with it. If European colonisation was achieved through land theft, cultural disapprobation, class warfare and occasional mutiny, it is possible today’s establishment might have to face the same existential threats to its privilege. Doesn’t bear thinking about, really. So we’ll tighten the screws a bit, demand some respect and awe through force if not acceptance, and keep building a more realistic inter/national character of bully.

– Andrea Shoebridge, Victoria Park, WA