Protest targets Commonwealth Games
AGE March 13, 2006 - 12:59PM

Aboriginal rights supporters have held a silent but highly visual protest in Melbourne coinciding with the city's popular Moomba parade.

Thirty four members of ANTar Victoria held two-metre-high letters spelling out the words "Stolenwealth Games" on a footbridge across the Yarra River.

The footbridge is 300 metres downriver from Princes Bridge where hundreds of people gathered to watch the Moomba celebrations.

The installation, which is a pun on the Commonwealth Games due to start in Melbourne on Wednesday night, remained on the bridge for an hour before being taken in a procession to the Kings Domain where an Aboriginal protest group is camped for the duration of the Games.

ANTar chairwoman Jill Webb said while the Commonwealth Games were a good opportunity for Australians to celebrate their achievements and culture, Aborigines continued to experience disadvantage.

She said the use of the term "stolenwealth" drew attention to the fact that Aborigines had had their land, culture, language, children and wages taken from them.

"By statistics indigenous people's health is worse and life experience is 20 years worse," Miss Webb said.

"The Commonwealth Games gives us a chance to look at comparable Commonwealth countries such as New Zealand and Canada where they have developed treaties between governments and indigenous people.

"As a result of that, the health of indigenous people in New Zealand and Canada is much better than in Australia.

"We see the development of a treaty as a really critical platform in any change of policy."

Miss Webb said it would be disappointing if the head of the Commonwealth, the Queen, would not acknowledge the traditional owners of Melbourne during the Games opening.

ANTar is an acronym for Native Title and Reconciliation.

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abc.net.au
Parade used to highlight living conditions of Aborigines

A reconciliation group has used Melbourne's Moomba Parade today to protest against the living conditions experienced by Aboriginal people.

Australians for Native Title and Reconciliation installed large letters on the footbridge across the Yarra saying "Stolenwealth Games".

The group's Jill Webb says the Commonwealth Games are an opportunity to highlight Aboriginal issues to the world.

She defended the timing of the protest, saying the reconciliation group does not wish to disrupt the Games.

"If you put Australia against other comparable Commonwealth countries, we're doing worse," she said.

"So if you look, say for example, at New Zealand and Canada where those governments have developed treaties with their indigenous people, the health outcomes in those countries for indigenous people are much better."

Ms Webb says protesters will not upset the running of the Games, which are an opportunity for Indigenous athletes to excel.

"I want to be clear that we're not opposing the Commonwealth Games. We're really aware that the Commonwealth Games provide an amazing opportunity for Australia to celebrate a whole range of different things," she said.

"But we do see having the eyes of the world on Melbourne as a good opportunity to highlight the ongoing issues."

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Queen faces slap on the writ at Melbourne Games
smh

March 13, 2006

WHAT better way to mark Her Majesty's 15th visit to the sunburnt country than with a genocide charge? For someone soon to answer charges of crimes against humanity, the Queen looked remarkably relaxed at the RAAF's Canberra base, smiling, waving, chatting amiably to supporters.

However, things are not so cheery in Victoria.

After changing the name of the Commonwealth's school sports day to the "Stolenwealth Games", an Aboriginal protest group, Black GST, said Her Majesty, as Australia's sovereign, is about to face genocide charges in the International Criminal Court in connection with a case being taken for the long suffering endured by indigenous Australians.

Black GST's media liaison officer, Rayna Fahey, said a sacred fire was lit at Melbourne's Kings Domain yesterday, and the Queen had been invited to "come down and have a cup of tea" when she is in town this week.

If she declined, "she's going to be summoned".

Exactly how that would be done, or in which Australian court any action would be taken, was still being sorted out by the group's legal people, she added.

How they will deal with sovereign immunity, or federal police bodyguards, should be interesting, but we should cut them some slack: there can't be that many genocide claims from which to learn.

We won't make any comment on the merits of their claim, save to say there is exactly zero chance of even the swiftest lawyer serving a summons on a person who is scheduled to step off her aeroplane at Sydney Airport at 10.50am and arrive at the Opera House 25 minutes later.

Now that's travelling.

PULP

Given the speculation that this is the last time you'll see Prince Charles's mum here before he gets the top gig, we thought we'd remind you of how the Herald's women's page described the Queen on her arrival at Farm Cove in 1954.

"Poised, youthful, feminine, perhaps slightly withdrawn into her own pools of silence from which she gains such strength, the Queen might have been any young woman on a great occasion," the page's "editress" wrote. "Yet there is about her something of splendour; behind that fragile glimmer of gold, there is the full panoply of the Throne."

BARNEY

To the real Empire Games now, where spoof websites are sprouting faster than organisers can give away tickets. The Graffiti Games Organising Committee claims Melbourne authorities are trying to sterilise the city through a crackdown on graffiti, so they've set up a competition of their own.

www.blackgst.com stolenwealthgames