Letter to The Editor - Treat All Australians Equal

to THE AGE
     Fred Chaney is idealistic but not realistic (‘Don’t fear the T-word’, 8/6). All advocacy of a treaty between our Aboriginals and other Australians implicitly means support for an eventual partition of the continent into two nations.  Australia has already moved too far in that direction with the Mabo judgment, plucked out of the air by judicial adventurism, and subsequent land agreements with, as Chaney notes, ‘peoples, collectives, not individual Aboriginal people’.

     Constitutionally we need to treat all Australians as equal, for reasons of equity, national unity, social stability and political security in dealing with the rather threatening world situation that is developing.  Our governments are right to seek to improve Aboriginal welfare - the benefiting of Aboriginal individuals seen as disadvantaged Australian citizens.
NJ, Belgrave