I wasn't aware that Aborigines single-handedly kept the alcohol and porn industry alive in Australia. But now I am.

The UN is all set to release a damning report on Australia's new initiative knows as "the intervention".  Everyone knows that interventions are just an excuse to get all self-righteous on that one cousin who always has a little too much to drink at the annual new years party and inevitably passes out before midnight.* Then one of the aunts says "You don't see the rest of us drowning our sorrows in a gallon of vodka do you Brian?" Slowly Brian comes to see that yes, you were right, he's a total lush. And then the rest of his family has complete control over any future decisions he has to make as he is totally incompetent and practically permanently drunk.

Well this is just the Australian version of that. So substitute your family with the Australian government and Brian with Aborigines. That's right, all of them. 

The Australian government has decided that cases of child sexual abuse in remote Aboriginal communities has hit real real high and unacceptable numbers. I would give you an actual figure there in place of that ridiculously vague description, but oh wait, the Australian government hasn't actually provided any. In order to prevent said "real real high and unacceptable numbers"the Aussie government (to avoid repetition I'm going to have to utilize a lot of annoying Australian-nicknames so get ready) has decided to get to the root of the problem. Alcohol and hard-core porn. 

Everyone knows that the main causes of sexual abuse are getting soused and watching movies whose titles are poorly veiled references to various parts of the body. Everyone just knows that. So the government down under  came up with "The intervention" which bans alcohol and hard-core porn from the Aboriginal communities while restricting how they spend their welfare checks. And yes, this only applies to the Aborigines. 

But oh darn! There's that pesky 1975 Australian anti-discrimination law the "Racial Discrimination Act", which would effectively do away with "The intervention" what with it being...racially discriminatory. But don't worry! The government was able to neatly suspend it's own law to make room for the new one. 

Things I'm wondering:

-Who decides what constitutes "Hard-core porn"? Is there a check-list for this sort of thing? A committee perhaps? Do people get elected or promoted to said committee? 

-Doesn't the Australian government know that no one-NO ONE!- can keep man or woman away from his or her liquor or hard-core porn?!? As the UN special rapporteur on indigenous human rights James Anaya put it "Have the alcohol restrictions actually reduced consumption? There's no evidence for it." 

- I suspect that not all sexual abuse against children in Australia is done by Aborigines. So if these bans apply only to Aboriginals does that mean that non-Aborigine Australians are committing these crimes due to other illicit stimuli? Shouldn't the government be putting a LOT of money into figuring out what causes the white man to do bad things? Chocolate? Science fiction novels? Fakin bacon? This could probably lead to some kind of serious international prize.

I get this feeling that initiatives which require the suspension of laws that  forbid racial discrimination are in poor taste. But hey, that's just me. 

*Wow. I was just kidding.