Our black hole

Relations between Australia’s Aborigines and the rest of us have been a disaster of varying proportions since the day we started sharing this big island.
We “Whities” didn’t care much in the early days. Those natives for which our forefathers had no use were, largely, ignored. But things are different now.
A special commission (the umpteenth or so) last week announced that our Aboriginal citizens are in a state of desperate crisis, and our Prime Minister decided “something must be done, and fast!”
Well, I don’t care if the PM’s decision was encouraged by an imminent election, or if he was really convinced that there really is a crisis and that he’s the man in the position to do something about it. I don’t care if the Opposition Leader’s support of the PM’s decisions is fair dinkum or political either - “Just get on with it”, I say!
For generations, now, we’ve tried to fill this shameful national “black hole” with good intentions and millions of dollars.
We’ve given our Aborigines land rights, “whilly nilly”, without giving them the means or the training to use them. We’ve given them Citizenship with neither real opportunity nor training to use it, and we’ve given them ambitions and expectations, without the chance to earn to achieve them.
We’ve given them, as well, access to alcohol and drugs, and far too many of these people – old and young- have taken them as a ready means to escape from a pointless and frustrating way of life.
The coming clean-up campaign isn’t big on “niceness” and on observance of the “civil rights” of those who will be directly affected, I know. But, will the bleaters and protesters tell us of a better way to rescue these people from degradation? Will they tell us a “nicer” way to get our Aborigines into a state wherein they can effectively exert their rights, and gain a noticeably better lifestyle than they have now?