Before you choose to be offended, please consider that John Singleton spoke at Charlie Perkins funeral in his capacity as a longtime friend.

  1. John Singleton with Bob Howard, Rip Van Australia (Stanmore: Cassell Australia, 1977), pp. 3-5, titled “Aborigines.” It opens quoting John Lennon saying: “Everything the government touches turns to shit.” Another excerpt: “If the whole of the budget for Aboriginal Affairs ($160 million) had been simply paid to Aborigines, they would have got $1500 each, man, woman and child. The average Aboriginal family would be above the average white family’s earnings in Australia without them having to lift a finger. The fact that Aborigines are not the richest people in Australia is a measure of the extent to which the money supposedly spent on their behalf is drawn off into administration, research and services.”
  2. John Singleton, “The real story behind WA’s ‘race riots’,”  The Bulletin, October 9, 1979, pp. 22-24. Excerpt: “I know the Aborigines are drunk most of the time when they’re in town, but as close as I can make out it’s just like if you or me win the lottery. We take the day off work and go and get plastered, don’t we? Well, it’s the same with the Aborigines except they win the welfare lottery every day, so they celebrate every day. And take the day off work every day. It is logical.”
  3. John Singleton, “A happy story about Aborigines,” The Bulletin, November 13, 1979, pp. 76-81.
  4. Bert Kelly, “The Govt’s helping hand often hurts,” The Australian Financial Review, April 21, 1972, p. 3. Excerpt: “I have never been able to put forward any worthwhile ideas about solving the Aboriginal problem so I suppose I should not be critical.”
  5. Bert Kelly, “The dilemmas of Aboriginal Affairs,” The Australian Financial Review, October 25, 1974, p. 3. Excerpt: “I admit I am glad that it is not my responsibility to decide what policies ought to be adopted. I will give an example from my own electorate which posed problems I wouldn’t be certain how to handle.” And: “[Is being] branded as ‘paternalistic’ worse than being wrong? I’m glad I’m not the Minister for Aboriginal Affairs.”
  6. Bert Kelly, “Being loved by all is not always a good thing,” The Australian Financial Review, June 23, 1978, p. 3. Excerpt: “Summing it all up, we spend large amounts of money on Aborigines, but we certainly are not making large numbers of them happy. But I am afraid that this isn’t the object of the exercise.”
  7. Bert Kelly’s 1984 two-article Aboriginal policy quote-collection — “A new look at Aboriginal policies,” The Bulletin, February 21, 1984, p. 99; and “Focus on ‘the good old ways’,” The Bulletin, February 28, 1984, p. 90.
  8. Bert Kelly, “Hitting out with a halo,” The Bulletin, July 24, 1984, p. 150. Defends Hugh Morgan saying: “Many of you will be pleased to learn that our orebodies definitely have a place in orthodox Christian doctrine. Just as Christian ceremonies such as blessing the fishing fleet or blessing the plough are well established both in Christian tradition and orthodox theology, so our orebodies — and the equipment we use to mine them — are part of the divine order.”
  9. Janine Perrett, “Outspoken mine chief dismisses ‘racist’ tag,” The Australian, May 4, 1984, p. 7. On Hugh Morgan’s heroic fight against constrained politeness.
  10. Des Keegan, “Kitchen’s no place for union thuggery,” The Australian, August 26, 1986, p. 27. Excerpt: “Another sad tale lies with Aboriginal stockmen who were put out of work by minimum wages; this was reinforced with the other blade, the dole. Now much of the interior Aboriginal population lives in town on handouts. Idle hands and the dole have left a sorry legacy.”
  11. P.P. McGuinness, “The Fringe Dwellers: an honest look at the Aboriginal culture of poverty,” The Australian Financial Review, May 22, 1986, p. 14.
  12. Thomas Sowell, McGuinness, Aborigines and other minorities — “Why ‘positive policy’ harmful,” The Australian Financial Review, September 29, 1988, pp. 92-91; and “Helping the Aborigines?,” The Australian Financial Review, October 11, 1988, pp. 96-95. Excerpt: “Section 127 was included not as an expression of contempt for the Aborigines, or of racism, but as a means of preventing the manipulation of nomadic tribes for electoral purposes. Thus it was one of the many misguided social welfare provisions of history, which began with good intentions and ended by doing the protected minority no good at all.”
  13. Can primitive black and white minds comprehend nuance? — Padraic P. McGuinness, “Picture of history too black and white,” The Australian, March 4, 1994, p. 13; “We need a closer look at the stolen children,” The Sydney Morning Herald, March 5, 1998, p. 17; “The perils of self-determination,” The Sydney Morning Herald, December 12, 1998, p. 36; “A black mark against white parasites,” The Sydney Morning Herald, November 27, 1999, p. 46; “Time to bury the stolen myth forever,” The Sydney Morning Herald, April 6, 2000, p. 15; and “Sorry, I can’t walk,” The Sydney Morning Herald, May 27, 2000, p. 44.
  14. Genocide with kindness — Padraic P. McGuinness, “Our national disgrace,” The Sydney Morning Herald, February 11, 1995, p. 32; “The true conservatives are those who deny our welfare policies have failed,” The Sydney Morning Herald, October 26, 1995, p. 14; “Truth, sentiment and genocide as a fashion statement,” The Sydney Morning Herald, September 14, 2000, p. 12; and “PM, Aborigines and the missionary position,” The Sydney Morning Herald, December 9, 2000, p. 33. Excerpt: “There has to be something much more fundamentally wrong with our whole approach. If we go on at present, and this is what a transfer of Aboriginal health from ATSIC to Dr Lawrence’s department would involve, despite the change of bureaucratic arrangements, we may well find future generations accusing our generation of genocidal policies, just as so many people these days make such accusations against the well-intentioned but hopelessly incomprehending policies of the past. Make no mistake. If the term means anything at all, the deteriorating health and life expectancy of Aborigines must be ascribed directly to the policies of the past 12 years, and of the years before that to the extent that the policies remain roughly similar — that is, the Government of Hawke and Keating deserves the charge of genocide if any government in Australia has ever done.”
  15. Padraic P. McGuinness, “One man’s ideas stir land-tax row,” The Sydney Morning Herald, December 11, 1997, p. 17. Excerpt: “Aboriginal native title holders, as well as holding title to the greater part of Australia’s land surface (potentially, at present, 79 per cent), would in the event of a general land tax along Henry George’s lines become among the main taxpayers of Australia.”
  16. Neville Kennard, “Genocide by Welfare: A Tragedy of the Aboriginal Welfare Industry,” Economics.org.au, December 2, 2010. Excerpt: “Our aboriginal fellow-citizens in their own lands have shorter life-expectancy, worse health, lower standards of living than their white, brown, yellow brothers who practice western ways, capitalism and personal responsibility. ‘Genocide by Welfare’ may seem a harsh and politically incorrect expression to some, but whenever I use it, it gets recognition and attention. Surprisingly, it gets no rejection.”