WORTH LESS THAN SHEEP

NZ Truth, Issue 1203, 20 December 1928, Page 9

WORTH LESS THAN SHEEP

Northern Australian Natives 111-treated And Butchered

(From "N.Z. Melbourne Representative)

Australia is m a fair way to making 1 an Uncle Tom's Cabin of its own m those desolate tracts, into which the aboriginal population has been forced, to make room for sheep and cattle — which, of courseware much more important. Periodically there is a scream about the oppression of negroes m the Belgian Congo and other places, and Australian newspapers play it up, quite forgetting the odor m their 'own back yard. . . ; .. .

THOUGH Australia may .be big enough territorially, there does not appear to be enough land and water for the unfortunate aborigines if commercial animal life is to be. sustained m the. tropical belt to the north of the continent. The blackest page m Australia's history, deals with the methods by which the British race acquired the country from the aborigines. It was just plain robbery and murder, though it is fashionable to talk, about a bloodless conquest. One by one the hunting grounds of. the blacks have been stolen, from them, an d .th c y have been pushed out into the arid . desert tracts of the continent to starve and die — the quicker the better. If it comes to -a question of the life of a sheep or- an aboriginal, the sheep lives. A nigger cannot get j a drink of water f if there is a likelihood that it will run the sheep short. If it becomes necessary to deal with him, the process is simple. A' stockwhip or a rifle will soon knock the feeble spark of life out of these poor wretches; If it happens that eighty or so are wiped OUt When the squatters only wish to punish one or two, what does It matter? It will" save time later on,

I md. besides, every dead nigger Cleans a bale or so more wool at so many shillings the pound. Week after week the tribes are being forced back into Arnheim land, and the inhospitable parts of the north-west, where they are degenerating to the level of the lower animals. Their women are the playthings of allcomers — Japs., Chinese, Javanese, and the sweepings of Straits, and it is not apparently worth the "Government's time to raise a finger against the butchery, the rapine and the robbery that is going on. Landed * interests m the north have done their utmost to make the poor aY>p. an outlaw, and a dangerovis outlaw at that, since he Is illiterate. If he has to steal a sheep now and again to keep body and soul m himself and his family, is he half- as bad as some of the fat and 'lazy swindlers who ride .-* bout- the capital cities m limousines? The conditions under which Australia's native population m the north is living is a disgrace to civilization, and if the various governments concerned do not at once end this butchery, they are parties to the greatest crime of modern times.