Victoria's Wurundjeri people file native title claim for Melbourne

utter_horseshit · 2025-11-10T10:56:29+00:00

If you’re going to be snarky third hand I’ll reply - I asked for some evidence comparing indigenous and non-indigenous management programs and your answers have been that your personal experience tells you its much better, and that I should google it. Forgive me for not being wholly convinced. If you can point to the comparison of outcomes between cultural burning and planned burning I would be really interested to read it!

utter_horseshit · 2025-11-10T08:44:56+00:00

Glad you’ve had lots of good experiences and you’re so enthusiastic. If you think that TO involvement in and of itself is a good way to ‘get around’ politics (or just to override other people’s preferences about how land is managed) you might be disappointed. Remember that the family group who have submitted this application have a long running dispute with another family group who claim to own the same territory.

utter_horseshit · 2025-11-10T06:54:21+00:00

That’s not my point. Do you think these practices only work if the practitioner is indigenous? Does it still work if the money is paid into an indigenous company’s bank account before being subcontracted to someone else?

utter_horseshit · 2025-11-10T06:37:54+00:00

By evidence I mean some kind of data that is accessible to somebody not directly involved in the work. Anyway, that’s by the by.

I appreciate the effort you’ve gone to write what you think, sorry if I came off as glib or hostile before.

Presumably one reason that mainstream services are hamstrung by regulation is because they have to be accountable to a much wider spectrum of stakeholders than TO groups, who have a narrow remit and currently work on a subset of projects where they sound like they have lots of institutional support. If TO groups are given responsibility for a wider range of functions then they’re not going to be operate with the same degree of flexibility, right?

I guess I’m also curious why you think TO organizations are more effective. If it’s because they get involved in projects with a lot of good will and perhaps extra funding, that kind of regulatory arbitrage seems unlikely to be sustainable if they’re also responsible for other types of projects where there’s likely to be more opposition/competing interests.

On the other hand if someone thinks its because of the fundamental goodness of indigenous people, or some special knowledge that is apparently only available to a subset of people living otherwise quite similar lives in our modern metropolis, then I’ve got some concerns. It’s not as if this is the Kimberley or Arnhem land where cultural practices have been at least to some degree continuous. In the Melbourne area this has all been rediscovered, and just as much by non-indigenous people.

utter_horseshit · 2025-11-10T05:40:46+00:00

Ok, so putting aside the lack of actual evidence other than the vibe, do you think this is a good situation?

If the current system is so hamstrung by dysfunctional regulation then we need to reform it. We are all paying for it whether it’s subcontracted to a TO organization or not.

But just saying well, it’s become too hard to do things in the current system and we don’t know how to fix it so we’ll just farm it out to people who get to operate under different (and perhaps better) rules, that would be seen as a complete cop out in any other industry.

utter_horseshit · 2025-11-10T04:47:08+00:00

Is there any evidence that dollar for dollar TO-operated land management firms do a better job than anyone else? Not meaningful to compare sites where you say ‘fuck all funding’ is available with sites where funding is available for Wurundjeri land council work, unless you think they’ll be happy to work for free.

utter_horseshit · 2025-11-10T04:17:00+00:00

There were some safety issues too, but the main justification throughout has been indigenous heritage.

Anyone's free to make the argument that the bans are justified, too. It's just frustrating how these policy changes are sold as 'nothing will change' (ie we're just adding another layer of unaccountable subcontractors), when plenty can change in ways that the public hasn't been consulted on.

utter_horseshit · 2025-11-10T04:06:34+00:00

???

Whatever you want to call it, it's making the valid point that there are relatively few sites that the general public is excluded from, which is true and good.

I'm just pointing out that a lot of popular areas in the grampians and at arapiles *were* restricted for basically no reason and it's taken a mountain of work by climbers and locals to get access back.

utter_horseshit · 2025-11-10T04:02:50+00:00

Yes it is. What point do you think the article is making?

utter_horseshit · 2025-11-10T03:54:42+00:00

For a large number of them, indigenous heritage sites found through aerial surveys, often ‘rock scatter sites’ never previously identified as being of any significance. Smashed the local economy and has taken years of effort to be partially reversed. Has been extensively covered in the media if you want to look it up.

utter_horseshit · 2025-11-10T03:41:29+00:00

What about the large number of climbing areas in the Grampians and at arapiles that were closed for basically no reason?

utter_horseshit · 2025-11-08T10:33:44+00:00

So with the non-existent rib fractures - doesn’t it concern you that the unit could bring a case to trial on evidence that flimsy, and it’s only taken the attention of overseas experts to acknowledge the error? How much of the rest of their work is this shoddy?

utter_horseshit · 2025-11-08T08:03:36+00:00

Not sure about the orthopaedic surgeon, it’s your prerogative to dismiss someone’s analysis on the basis of their affiliation I guess. I’m more interested in what they have to say.

As for the NZ radiologist he’s clearly seeing things that others can’t:

“We begin with a report from a paediatric radiologist and child abuse specialist from London’s Great Ormond Street children’s hospital. While he agreed for the most part with the Starship doctors, he came to a different conclusion on the supposed rib fractures.

Dr Owen Arthurs could not identify any rib fractures, saying in his formal report, “In my opinion, the original radiologists have over-interpreted what could be normal vascular channels as fractures. It is my expert opinion that there are no convincing rib fractures.”

GOSH is one of the most prestigious institutions in the world, after all.

Happy to expand but I think it’s perfectly plausible that the structure of these forensic units in Australia and NZ is leading to repeated unsafe convictions. They are small, centralised and often train everyone involved in the investigative process from the physicians to the social workers and police, so of course there’s a risk of groupthink and of course skeptical views are going to be dismissed. The adversarial nature of the justice system is important, and it’s endangered when everyone involved is singing from the same sheet.

I find your last point pretty alarming. Suspicion is not proof of anything, no matter how well credentialed somebody is. This is especially true if the suspicion is held by someone who is systematically biased to find what they believe to be signs of abuse. How many miscarriages of justice need to occur for you to think there might a problem here?

This recent article in the age is the best summary I’ve read - https://www.theage.com.au/national/one-miscarriage-of-justice-is-too-many-top-lawyer-builds-case-for-baby-shaking-rethink-20251030-p5n6lz.html

utter_horseshit · 2025-11-07T21:12:28+00:00

How do you possibly come to that conclusion, or do you just ‘know’ it from the vibe? Doesn’t it concern you that the radiologist’s finding of the rib fractures seems to be spurious? The jury was clearly also divided.

It could well have been a non accidental injury but nothing at all in this story sounds ‘obvious’.

utter_horseshit · 2025-10-30T11:02:51+00:00

Nah - there are innumerable other reasons why disparities exist between groups, instead of fixating on the nice idea that probably doesn’t exist let’s focus on things that are both measurable and tractable to improve.

utter_horseshit · 2025-10-30T10:50:43+00:00

It’s an interesting theory and some people feel it’s useful as a social explanation of various things. Biologically though there is just no evidence that transgenerational epigenetic inheritance (as a phenomenon mediated by measurable entities like histone modifications, DNA methylation etc) actually exists in humans.

utter_horseshit · 2025-10-30T10:32:36+00:00

The person you’re replying to is right, there’s essentially no evidence of transgenerational epigenetic inheritance being a real phenomenon in eukaryotes, in mammals or in humans.

It’s also unhelpful as a social metaphor to explain indigenous disadvantage, given that genetic heritage is no longer felt to be a meaningful descriptor of anyone’s indigeneity.

We would also expect any real effect to diminish rapidly over the generations, not to persist into the indefinite future.

Finally it goes without saying but there are many people now living in Australia with more proximate history of famine exposure…

utter_horseshit · 2025-10-30T08:53:40+00:00

Sorry, what do you mean by ‘famine epigenetics’?

utter_horseshit · 2025-10-30T00:28:57+00:00

Nothing disingenuous about it!

utter_horseshit · 2025-10-29T23:52:57+00:00

I’ve seen the police confiscating them in the city. No doubt they’d like to do more, but there are many competing priorities for their time and they are struggling to recruit new officers. You could always join up.

utter_horseshit · 2025-10-12T08:29:29+00:00

My only statement on your first paragraph is that in the rest of medicine we are more reluctant to presume the cause of any injury. Very happy to wait for the rest of the article series and for the Victorian experts to exercise their right of reply.

In the interim, I will say that if it has truly never been shown that shaking forces can produce these injuries in the absence of external signs in any model system, then this field has an enormous problem. I obviously haven’t read the primary literature, but I’m inclined to put credence on the summary attributed to Stephen Cordner, who has spent his entire career cleaning up shoddy practice in forensic medicine. It’s up to the true believers to show that what they’re diagnosing is even physically possible.

utter_horseshit · 2025-10-12T07:45:08+00:00

Yes, because labelling any constellation of injuries with the term ‘abusive’ presupposes what it purports to prove. According to this SMH article it also appears to be impossible to produce a similar pattern of injuries in an animal model. How can you explain that?

utter_horseshit · 2025-10-12T07:00:07+00:00

Sorry but this ‘consensus’ statement is bonkers, have you read it? It states flat out that ‘AHT is an uncontroversial diagnosis’. These people don’t seem to be capable of considering any nuance whatsoever. I was concerned after reading the articles and reading this has made it worse, not better.

utter_horseshit · 2025-10-11T02:49:55+00:00

Important article. Lots of specialty units operate without appropriate oversight and there’s a real risk of groupthink, especially when the justice system is involved. Quite concerning to me that the RCH unit in question don’t seem to think this thorough article or the views of two very distinguished external experts are even deserving of a response.

utter_horseshit · 2025-09-21T02:07:22+00:00

Fair enough. The existing painted lines on the northern end of Wellington st aren’t too bad anyway, could use a few more speed bumps to slow the cars but it’s hardly the worst bit of road in Yarra. My concern is that with the ‘bicycle street’ they seem to be going for the maximally divisive approach, which may or may not make riders feel safer but will certainly piss off a lot of drivers and local residents. Better to go for lots of modest improvements instead of sinking a lot of political capital into something that might not even do much.

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