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Could those angry and outraged 20, 30 and even 40 something, inner city suburban dwelling aboriginals and particularly those of both mixed white and aboriginal lineage participating in their Australia Day demonstrations in Sydney and Melbourne on Friday, please explain why they see themselves as dispossessed, disadvantaged and victims? What is it exactly that those born, circa late 70’s early 80’s and later, have lost? What has been taken from them that they once had? In what way have they been disadvantaged or dispossessed? Does the cry for “burn it down” include Centrelink?

Could they park their angry bellicosity and chip on the shoulder truculence and also explain and support their talking points and rhetoric with a balance sheet of what’s been lost and what’s been gained for aboriginal Australians via various policies and programs like the annual $34 billion Closing the Gap program, designed to ameliorate that real or imagined dispossession and disadvantage? How about some gratitude.

It seems to many that there’s a culture of self indulgent navel gazing and victimhood at work in all of this while many, much more recent arrivals from a multiplicity of backgrounds and cultures, barely able to speak English in many cases, just get on with it and avail themselves of the same free health care, education and opportunity that’s equally available to aboriginal Australians.

The maladies, dysfunction and destitution in regional and remote communities not withstanding, these Australia Day attempts at a white guilt trip by the educated, city dwelling aboriginal elite are wearing thin, not cutting through and in fact turning many people off.