Bob Geldof slams Australia’s treatment of Aborigines
May 19th, 2010 - 5:16 pm ICT by ANIMelbourne, May 19 (ANI): Irish singer Sir Bob Geldof has slammed Australia for its treatment of Aborigines, saying that it was “economically stupid” and “absurd”.
Geldof, 58, was speaking at a breakfast for West Australian mining entrepreneur Andrew Forrest’s nation-touring GenerationOne movement, which aims to halt indigenous disparity.
He said Australia has “exiled” indigenous Australians from the nation.
“They were forced to be exiled from themselves and that must stop,” News.com.au quoted him as saying.
“You need to pull them back into themselves because you’ve acknowledged them as being.
“The spiritual core of yourselves will only be filled when this is done,” he stated.
He urged the “rich bastards” in attendance at the breakfast to contribute wholeheartedly to Forrest’s fight to end indigenous disparity, and likened indigenous affairs in Australia to situations he’d witnessed in third-world Africa.
“I said on the radio back in 1984 that to die of want in a world of surplus is not only intellectually absurd, it is morally repulsive. Well let’s add economically illiterate to that,” he said.
“You’ve removed from your society of ‘having a go’ 500 thousand of your own. That is absurd. It’s economically stupid.
“Just like those 44 million African children (given access to education from the Live Aid campaign) will be a massive driving force in the world economy, so your own Aboriginal people require to be allowed in. The access point is education,” he added. (ANI)
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