Filling the idle hours of a day ...

Crime and imprisonment must be seen for what it should be and not a place for a relaxed and well fed holiday. Prisoners need rehabilitation and concentrated learning while in “Her Majesty’s custody” so that when released they come out as role models rather than looking for a way back inside.

It (the dominant culture) has taken away the old world and now has a responsibility to the people themselves to help them frame a new world which they help to design and not what the government wants for them. It is only when this new approach to improving life choices that family violence will be overcome.

Personal conflict stems from an overdose of MDD - Motivational Deficit Disorder - and can only be remedied by smart thinking and strategic planning towards a future where the rebuilding of social capital is seen as the way ahead and in itself create employment opportunities and a move to self esteem and pride in ones own community and lifestyle.

Much of the trouble is caused by people having too much time to think about nothing but themselves as they wile away the idle hours of the day. Jealousy, money arguments, gambling, use of drugs and alcohol all consume the scarce resources and leave little energy for improving the way people live.

The lack of an ability to read and use numbers immediately shuts a person out of a host of activities and turns them in the direction of personally appealing magazines and X-rated videos that put sex on the top of the list of exciting things to do. For the younger testosterone laden youths it is fighting and mimicking a violent culture portrayed in so many modern day videos and DVDs.

In the words of Gabriel Mistral, Chilean poet and 1945 Nobel Peace Prize for Literature winner: “Many things we need can wait, the child cannot. Now is the time his bones are being formed, his blood is being made, his mind is being developed. To him we cannot say tomorrow, his name is today.”

To the Aboriginal people of Australia and especially those living in remote communities in the north we must treat the situation with the urgency of a natural disaster, tsunami or disease pandemic. To them the future starts tomorrow - not at some distant time that suits the power players of today.