Don't Mention the Oil

Defence Minister Brendan Nelson's admission that our presence in Iraq is about preserving our access to that country's oil reserves, serves to not only condemn his government's decision to join "The coalition of the Willing" in the first place but also sheds further light on the Prime Minister's modus operandi in the NT.

Before the Iraq War began we were told that we needed to disarm that country of Weapons of Mass Destruction, the private playthings of that monster, Saddam Hussein. But our motivation definitely had nothing to do with oil.

When the WMD story was found to be fiction, Howard, Bush and Blair attempted to justify their illegal invasion on the grounds that Saddam was an evil dictator anyway and we had done the world a service by overthrowing him. Again, the fact that we had, in the process, thwarted French and Russian oil deals with Saddam had nothing to do with our sacrifice on behalf of the Iraqi people.

Now Nelson has let the cat out of the transparent bag and, whether by slip of the tongue or outburst of honesty, admitted that we are indeed in it for the oil.

A few weeks ago, after reading the latest in a long line of reports on the matter, a suitably shocked PM told us that the Federal government must intervene in the NT to fix the rampant problem of sexual abuse of Aboriginal children.

Central to his strategy for a quick fix to the problem were mandatory intimate physical examinations of every NT Aboriginal child under sixteen years of age.

For some as yet unexplained reason, Aboriginal Lands would also be seized as part of the solution and the permit system that allows Aboriginal people to bar certain persons, including white paedophiles, from entry, will be scrapped.

Now, a week or so later, like the Iraq War, the PM’s plan is unravelling. The proposed mandatory intimate physical examinations are now replaced by voluntary health checks that will not necessarily detect any evidence of sexual abuse at all. More individuals and organisations, both black and white, are criticising the government’s strategies and motivations.

But the land grab remains. Could this have anything to do with US company Halliburton’s plans to transport uranium ore out and nuclear waste in via the Adelaide-Darwin railway it recently built, a pet project of the Prime Minister? (Halliburton is US Vice-President Dick Cheney’s company.)

How long before a government Minister ‘does a Brendan’ and admits that they are actually in it for the Land? Unfortunately, probably not before Aboriginal objections to the fate of their Lands can be ignored and expanded uranium mining and a nuclear waste dump are in place.

Shhhh! Don’t mention the Land.