Homing in on private property

Professor Mick Dodson is buying a house. That well-balanced journal The Australian exposed this scandal as long ago as September last year, but still no action has been taken. As I understand it, Dodson has brazenly confirmed his guilt. Yet there is no Royal Commission, no parliamentary inquiry - not even a cringing public apology.

Clearly this is not good enough, so the National Indigenous Times has applied its considerable resources to ferreting out the truth - however unpalatable. In the public interest, our “spy in the sky” satellite has made several low passes over the Dodson bunker in recent times.

We now have disturbing footage of a bloke who looks very much like Mick Dodson - well it's only the top of a black bush hat, but we think it's him - going to the supermarket, digging in the garden, and taking the dog for a walk.

We believe that these activities also warrant close examination, and that the public is entitled to some kind of explanation.

What I propose is “Dodson-cam”, a 24-7, on-line monitoring of the man's every activity. That way anyone with a casual interest in his private affairs can simply log in and see what's going on.

If he's got nothing to hide then there's no problem, right?

Sure, the bleeding heart liberals will squeal for a little while about “invasion of privacy” and the like, but we need much greater accountability and transparency in this country. The public has a right to know. I've made a detailed search of the criminal statutes, and I can't actually find the bit that says buying a house is a crime, but I'm sure that it's in there somewhere.

Nevertheless, the “house-purchase shock, horror, outrage, scandal” demands some immediate answers. So I've been doing a bit of digging around, and it seems that things are much worse than I could have imagined. The insidious practice of house-purchase is rife.

In fact, I have unconfirmed advice that several people directly employed by a major national broadsheet are themselves buying houses.

Appalled at this development, I decided to cast the net a little wider, to try and establish just how widespread this unscrupulous behaviour has become. I regret to inform you, gentle reader, that every second person I meet seems to be buying a house. Hell, I'm buying one myself. My - admittedly feeble - defence is that I hadn't realised till now what a serious offence this was.

However, I've seen enough cop shows to know that “ignorance is no excuse”, so I'm prepared to take my lumps in the interests of preserving the fabric of our society.

But I can't help noticing that The Oz is unable to summon up the same level of indignation about all these other flagrant house-purchasers.

What's so special about Mick Dodson? Perhaps the chance to run a lurid headline like “Man buys house” was just too much for The Oz to resist. Or did they get niggly because a highly-respected Indigenous leader had the temerity to make statements at odds with The Oz editorial line?

You see, Professor Dodson had some thoughtful things to say about the problematic notion of private property ownership on communal land. Aboriginal leaders do tend to make public comment about matters of crucial importance to Indigenous Australians. This isn't illegal either.

Oxfam reports that it costs $225,000 to build the most basic of houses in a remote community, where conditions are harsh and buildings deteriorate rapidly. Meanwhile, the average monthly household income in very remote areas of the Northern Territory is less than $3,500 - between four adults.

Existing houses are invariably over-crowded, with ten or more people sometimes sharing a house designed for half that number. Put it down to a lack of housing stock - and the curious tendency of most Indigenous Australians to share whatever they have with a wide circle of family and friends.

All in all, when in comes to the question of “own-your-owns” on communal land, it's not hard to see why caution should be the order of the day.

Perhaps Dodson assumed that most Australians could distinguish between the circumstances of a skilled professional living in a major city, and a bushman with a far less marketable set of skills living a semi-traditional existence in a remote community.

I reckon he was right.