"Riots in Sydney as police blamed for death of 17-year-old Aboriginal boy" By Richard Phillips 17 February 2004
"Over the past eight years, the Carr [state] government has been working with the Aboriginal Housing Company [AHC], a group of black business entrepreneurs that owns "The Block" and wants to relocate the remaining Aborigines out of the area. In so doing, they will reap windfall profits from a property redevelopment scheme.
While many residents opposed this plan when it was first announced in the late 1990s and refused to leave, endemic unemployment, poverty, drug infestation and ongoing police harassment have forced many to quit the area.
In 1997 the Aboriginal Housing Company demolished 70 properties and moved 43 of the 55 Aboriginal families out of the area. In fact, "The Block" has largely been destroyed, with the few remaining houses in a state of decay and disrepair, and the company refusing to provide necessary maintenance and repairs."
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2004/feb2004/redf-f17.shtml
[And to jump back to the beginning of the story: ]
"The [development] plan went before a special meeting of the AHC in November [1995] in a controversial gathering from which most of the residents of the Block were excluded. The meeting was told that money was available from ATSIC for the redevelopment but not for renovating the houses.
Under the AHC's rules, membership is limited to 100 Aboriginal people but the directors can allow a higher number of members if they so choose. Over the years the company has operated on the basis of all people on the Block participating as members.
However, when 50 residents tried to pay their $1 membership dues prior to the November meeting, they found that the directors had suddenly strictly limited membership and they were excluded. Instead people from outside the area, believed to be mostly relatives of the AHC officials, voted to accept the redevelopment proposal."
http://www.greenleft.org.au/back/1996/219/219p8.htm
Yabu Bilyana, "Speech to a 1996 election rally: 'the oppression of Aboriginal people is not a race question but a class question.'"
"The Aboriginal middle class leaders have a definite interest in covering up the truth. Their social interests are bound up with securing their position within the capitalist state, and establishing themselves in the lucrative business of marketing Aboriginal culture and art, as well as deals with the mining companies, tour operators and real estate developers whether it be in Cape York, Uluru, or in Redfern. This is the content of black nationalist politics. The Aboriginal leaders promote black nationalism which claims that the oppression of Aboriginal people arises from white society. But the continuing oppression of the Aborigines is not the result of "white society" but of capitalist society which attacks all sections of the working class--whether they be black, white or immigrant--for the profits of a few. The oppression of Aboriginal people began with the global spread of the capitalist system which led, in turn, to the colonisation of Australia. Two hundred years on, the contradictions of the profit system have reached such a point that the poverty, misery and degradation inflicted by it on the indigenous population indicates the social conditions that are being created for all sections of the working class. There can be no social justice, secure living standards or democratic rights of any section of working people within the framework of the profit system. Aboriginal people can only advance their struggle as part of the struggle of the international working class to put an end to the profit system and for the socialist transformation of society."
Yabu Bilyana, 1944-1999
Aboriginal socialist dies in Brisbane, Australia, aged 54 [7 April 1999]
World Socialist Web Site http://www.wsws.org/articles/1999/apr1999/yabu-a07.shtml
TV PROGRAM TRANSCRIPT LOCATION: abc.net.au > Four Corners > Archives Broadcast: 12/05/97
"The Block"
Reporter: Liz Jackson
"The Housing Company also runs the gym at the bottom of Eveleigh Street. [Company CEO] Mick [Mundine]'s brother Tony Mundine, [who still manages the gym] a former boxing champion was also on the Housing Company's board for several years. From 1992 to 1996, [the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission] gave the gym half a million dollars. But it's just not used by the kids who live on the Block. The community has come to resent the fact that all in all, millions of dollars have gone to the company from ATSIC, most of which has gone to buying new houses away from The Block. Meanwhile their houses are falling down."
http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/stories/s72768.htm