Here & Now 124 No-one cares

S Sorrensen

My Place. Wednesday, 1.25am.

I couldn’t care less about who is prime minister. Like Keeping Up with the Kardashians, it’s all frothy entertainment of no importance.

Meanwhile Australian children are being tear gassed by government agencies. That’s far more important than Kim’s pregnancy or which blue tie is PM.

But no-one cares.

While the revolving door of the prime ministership spits out a rich bloke and sucks in another rich bloke for a giddy spin through the power and the privilege, children are abused in a Northern Territory juvenile detention centre. By the people who run the joint.

The Northern Territory Children’s Commissioner released a report detailing these abuses (tear gas, hoods, detention without water) and… no-one cares.

But I do believe it’s outrageous that Kim Kardashian is wearing such revealing and sexy outfits while pregnant. That is not suitable behaviour for a soon-to-be mother…

The abused children are, of course, Aboriginal. That explains the lack of caring. If it were white kids, then we’d see some caring. Oh yeah.

But no. Most kids in juvenile detention are Aboriginal.

Aboriginal kids make up 98 per cent of the kids in juvenile detention in the Northern Territory. Indigenous people make up about 30 per cent of the territory’s population. You do the math.

A prime minister (the one before this one but after the other one) is shocked by a photo of a drowned boy on a Turkish beach, even though, being in government, he already knew foreign children were suffering and dying because of wars he involved Australia in.

He gets all emotional in that insincere way that politicians think is convincing to the masses but it’s so obviously fake you shake your head and wonder why a wealthy country like Australia can’t afford to get decent actors in parliament.

Then he graciously allows some refugees into his country – the nice refugees, preferably. Of a certain religion. His religion. Compassion should be extended to Christians whose country we bomb. Poor Christians.

And poor Kayne West. He has tried and tried to get Kim to tone it down a little. I mean, she’ll soon be a mother. And that carries moral responsibilities…

Aboriginal children, from whose land privileged white Christians in government have made their millions, suffer a racism that started more than 200 years ago when Britain closed its eyes and saw Australia was empty.

Since then, all prime ministers and their band of mining men have kept their eyes tightly shut to the suffering of Indigenous people. From arsenic in the flour, to Stolen Generations, to the Intervention, Aboriginal children have suffered and still suffer at the grubby hands of bad actors using Christ’s name in vain.

Compassion is reserved for Kardashian exes, deposed pollies and the last rhino, not for the suffering of Australia’s first people.

Since the Northern Territory Intervention in 2007, Aboriginal suicides there have increased by 200 per cent. Seventy-five per cent of all child suicides in the NT are Indigenous. Child suicide… is there anything more tragic?

And no-one cares.

Kim Kardashian or whoever is prime minister of the day, will do nothing about this situation. In fact, the conniving architect of the NT Intervention, Mal Brough, is part of Whatsisname’s new ministry.

Kim would never have Mal in her entourage. He lies, causes harm to children and is a bad dresser. Kim, being a mum, and despite wearing that awful see-through two-piece when she and Kayne went to dinner (lobster) on Thursday, hates that.

No, I couldn’t care less about who the prime minister is or the colour of his tie because nothing will change.

We will continue to abuse Aboriginal children.

And no-one will care.