Generation One presents prime TV address
Australian TV networks tonight donated millions of dollars of airtime to promote the next stage of Generation One’s campaign to tackle indigenous disadvantage.
The ad for Generation One featured an address from 13-year-old aboriginal girl Maddy Madden. She previously acted in ABC3’s My Place.
The campaign was promoted ahead of the time as a major address to Australia from a mystery presenter.
It totally made me stop what I doing, pay attention and want to get involved. From all of the clutter & kibble that generally bubbles under the radar passing me by whilst the telly is on in the background. This was different. I hope the same ad goes out in 20 years time as a Thank You message… I hope we can make at least that happen!
It’s led by a mining executive and hammers indigenous employment. Is it part of the anti Wild Rivers campaign?
My son was recently assaulted by a feral guy who was drunk on a public bus. This guy was a white anglo saxon of a low income background who had obviously spent his entire welfare payment on alcohol. Is that a gross assumption? No, because with him was his wife who was also drunk, and they had with them 2 kids under the age of 3, and they were pushing a pram that the kids were,nt in because it was full of slabs of Scotch and coke cans.
If you are still reading this, then thanks for bearing with me as I do have a point, and that is these people will never escape this cycle. In 20 years from now, the dad will have liver disease or dead from picking on someone not half his size, the mum, well I’ll keep it clean but suffice to say probably not a pretty life, and the poor kids will have grown up with these magical role models and will continue this cycle. So who helps these people? They are also Australian, just not indiginous australians, but face the same issues and have the same problem of alcohol AND WELFARE dependence, and a lack of wanting to do anything to better their place in life.
My point is that for any person, race, gender, background, you have to WANT to do something to better yourself and more importantly support your family.
Kudos to Mandy’s (from the clip) grandfather who did that and did that in a time when racism was alive and rampant, but in this day and age when despite what the chai latte sipping ‘want-to-pretend-to-be-socialist-because-its-cool’ set will tell you, opportunites are there for people to make something of their lives if THEY want to change. We can’t force it upon them as that is infact totalitarianism.
So bring on the comments about me being elitest or racist, that’s fine as you clearly haven’t read my comments properly, but I hope this opens debate and I welcome constructive comment or critism.
P/S, the guy that assulted my son was caught by police 24 hours later, while he was assaulting his wife in a public street.
@Bucks – I don’t think you’re neccessarily racist or elitist, at least from what you posted, but you might have missed the point of what GenerationOne is trying to do. I have signed up to it and will be interested to see where it leads, hopefully to some mentoring opportunities, not because I think it will be cool, but because I think its the right thing to do.
I agree that the unfortunate people you described may well face a cycle that will be very difficult to escape, but statistically they stand a much, much better chance of doing so than our indigenous brothers and sisters. Some sobering stats I got from an email from GenerationOne
• Just 33% of Indigenous young people age 18-24 are “earning or learning” compared with 71% of non-Indigenous young people.
• EIGHT of ten jobless Indigenous people are unable to work, because of illiteracy, alcohol, or other psychological problems.
• Furthermore, in some rural areas, up to 70% of Indigenous children regularly do not attend school.
The fact is whilst many Australians, black and white face huge challenges with alcohol, violence and poverty it is a problem that is much more prevalent in indigenous communities and I do think that special effort is warranted in focusing our efforts there. Whether or not GenerationOne will achieve that remains to be seen, but I’ll certainly give it a shot and I hope other will too.