MultiCultural Council squeals at funding threat

“Johnboy is a whinging bitch. 86% of the readership”

He who lives by the sword

Kingmaker, my point remains you seem to be under the misapprehension that I care if you’re offended.

I’m really not.

I’m also sure the cops on the ground would have done things differently on Sunday if not for orders from head office. Crikey’s had some interesting things this week to suggest the beancounters might have been calling the shots hoping to minimise expenditure without any thought of the potential for violence in this gathering.

The real shame is the new terror laws should be sicked onto Alan Jones, but won’t be.

Can the nsw police do anything when they have brakes put on them by the political/media spin cycle ?

See this article: http://www.quadrant.org.au/php/article_view.php?article_id=581

I think nsw is particularly bad in this area. That and teh sydney unique ethnic ghettos. even springvale and richmond in melbourne arent exclusively monocultural.

but ultimately, its the lack of will to enforce the rule of law which has caused this problem. too much focus on banning things which dont matter, and too little focus on basic policing ie nabbing crooks.

We used to have a phrase in the cops – the blokes who “never laced.”

Until one stares down the angry man, or multiples of them over the years, its easy to apportion blame.

The cops want to get on with the job, its the senior cops and pollies who don’t want an incident, then bleat and carry on as soon as the guys on the ground have to deal with the worst of it.

JB, I retain the offence – I can help you ram it somewhere if you want – you might be a little uncomfortable. Those guys are the ones who come to the aid of absolutely EVERYONE, no matter what where or the danger to themselves – even to the aid of those who don’t like them, or criticise them if thats what it takes.

Still waiting for you to contribute with any ideas VG.

Not good enough.

Still waiting to be be “caught out” with anything for that matter because you never bring any information to the table.

Your non-stop bleating about the Police and their so called foibles is all the reasoning and fact I need in this regard, backed up by your stock standard comebacks every time you are caught out.

Is it just a BA in ‘knowing it all’ you have, or did you progress to the Masters?

Mael, they want to show that they’re ddoing SOMETHING, what laws they actually pass are irrelevant.

As for you VG, there’s no point hanging around for you to back up any statement with reasoning or facts, you’re always 100% hot air.

Again I’m bemused by the kneejerk reaction, ‘new police powers’. Haven’t heard anything further about it yet, but if our laws weren’t sufficient enough, why has it taken an incident like this to adjust them ?

Kingmaker

Hang around for a while and you’ll find JB is the expert on all things policing. Never seen an angry man in his life (well maybe 1) but he knows it all about policing and what it takes to make it work

kingmaker.

Fine, so it’s senior cops fault that large groups breaking the law are not dealt with.

but you can take your offense (high or otherwise) and put it somewhere painful.

Blind freddy should have been able to see that crowd was going to be breaking the law.

And by all accounts they were already breaking an alcohol free zone.

If it was the premier himself that made the decision to leave them be then by all means let the blame lie there.

but years of tolerance for lawbreaking fuckwits (and the judiciary has a large share of the blame to bear here too) has created a situation where two tribes of wankers are going at it in the streets while every other prick in the country tries to elevate a grubby turf war to the standard of whatever cause they follow.

it’s shit, and policing policies are to blame.

Which is not a reflection on the poor bastards on the ground who I’m guessing have a dimmer view of the policies than I do.

JB, you seem to be suggesting that the Police are being slack or lazy in relation to the recent Sydney events (thats the infernece anyway.)

That is highly offensive – I know many of the cops on the ground up there, and they are doing what they can with what they have – generally little or no support to stop this stuff before it happens, senior police that want to avoid any “incidents” or “publicity” on their shifts, and a too little, too late response to what the bosses and the pollies have been told would happen by the beat cops for the last 5 years or more.

Get off the guys who protect us, and highlight the lazy senior officers instead.

Well, yes, I can see that wouldn’t be so flash Maelinar 🙂 and certainly true for a number of people in Canberra – generally I was talking more in terms of beneficiaries of services provided.

And DT, this is where the collective knowledge of the board starts to pay off, I think I assumed it was all interconnected (don’t ask me why, it’s not like I don’t know what the community sector is like).

Shame that the nature of modern news (well, I guess this was web news) doesn’t fill in the gaps so much sometimes. (And then other times – looking at you TT and Tele – it gives too much).

Heard about a cool sticker the other day – Is that the truth or is your News Limited?

Col, I agree entirely. Problem is, everything you mention (eg. job skills for refugees, advocacy) are managed by the Migrant Resource Centre. I have no idea what the Multicultural Council does, apart from put out an occasional newsletter and find the odd opportunity for its president to make a goose of himself in public.

Col, I would lose my job.

I think that would be a significant impact on me.

I still maintain that complete transparency should be the first words mentioned when talking about public money however.

I get the theory behind the weaning off the public teat and acknowledge that there always going to be times when organisations can become institutionalised and lose their focus because of a guaranteed source of income – and when this happens I can totally understand people questioning the value of such organisations and wanting solutions to be found.

I think it would help to be clearer about what these organisations do in our society – I have to confess I’m not entirely sure myself but I know that at least part of it involves support for community members, education programmes, advocacy and communication. At least some of this stuff isn’t necessarily that sexy to sponsors and the users themselves are often not in a position to work in a user pays scenario. In these cases, maybe there will always have to be a proportion of government support – which is a whole other dog and pony show to secure funding from on a regular basis anyways (in my v. limited experience)

I’ll also admit that would have to be a number of lazy/self-justifying/ineffectual people running any community organisations – but would like to make the point that (again, in my relatively limited experience) there are far more people who really care about the work they do and choose to work for much less than they could be making in the corporate sector because they care about the work.

It is hard to say what would change if these organisations suddenly stopped – perhaps it wouldn’t affect anyone on these boards (little comparatively white-bread enclave that I suspect we are – not dissing it or anyone, just my impression ) but I think the impact on a lot of people would be surprising.

Col, if paying these guys money would make a lick of difference that’d all be well and good.

But if anything these community bureacrats just mask problems because they have to justify they’re funding year on year with “results” that don’t get tested till dumb white yahoo’s get liquored up and angry, with neo-nazi’s goading them on, and the police are too complacent to disperse the damn crowd.

Colism, I agree with you wholeheartedly.

The problem however, is the subject of weaning off the public teat, which is what these organisations seem to be reluctant to do, just like a nursing baby.

Of course, when you’re receiving the government gold, it’s absolutely natural that you would want to make your organisation seem like the most indispensable assett the government is involved with.

Heck, I even work for a program that’s pimping off the feds…

Eventually however, organisations need to stand on their own feet, find their own funding, justify their existence.

Given the current situation in Australia, it might be more wise to give multicultural training funding to white people for example, and of course, jumping on the nearest appropriate bandwagon.

But do you really think that will happen ?

Imagine the voter backlash at being told we’re all a bunch of racist white assholes. (remember I’m using a specific incident as a steriotype – please don’t flame me).

IMHO all government actions should have a specified shelf life, including Iraq. Out here in the real world, we call that market testing, and research.

I believe the military would have some captain running through a worst case scenario somewhere, perhaps it’s time to make the government accountable for how long they intend to run projects for ?

With respect guys, the detail in this story is a little thin – who knows who’s doing what to who and why.

If the disgusting events of the weekend are anything to go by (and I still cling to my fervent hope that they probably aren’t), then I’d say we probably still do need strong support networks for multiculturalism in this country, run by those communities who have a pretty good idea of what they actually need and what works. Sometimes the services provided by these bodies don’t fit neatly into the measurables column but are still vital.

(In fairness, if there are problems with these organisations, they must be addressed but without knowing much more than the par or so provided by the ABC, it’s a little hard to say)

I get that it’d be nice for your cricket club to be funded Thumper and perhaps if this country was being run with different priorities that might be feasible but wouldn’t it maybe be better for money to be spent on a computer used by a Somali refugee to develop job and language skills than a swag of Grey Nichs. (That probably dates me a bit huh? 🙂

Just my 2 cents anyways.

What Thumper, you mean provide a service that people actually CHOOSE to pay money for?

Traditionally they provide a touchy feely multicultural smokescreen which politicians have chosen to spend our money on.

really it should be coming out of party funds not consolidated revenue.

not that most of our leaders can tell the difference.