Carpenter squats on the Moral High Ground - Hey You Get off my Cloud

How does it feel, to be on your own.

The irony of double standards was not lost on the Desert Rat when Premier Alan Carpenter sneered at Catholic Archbishop Barry Hickey, lecturing him about how "it's incumbent upon people in higher office to respond quickly and appropriately" to important issues.

Carpenter has never had much liking for the Catholic Church or patience for anything involving the Christian religion, so his opportunistic grasp for the moral high ground at Hickey's expense, is not surprising.

To look at Carpenter's own performance, the Desert Rat can say he is alarmed at how few Aboriginal males have been prosecuted for sexual assaulting children in Western Australian communities. Yes, it does take costly police resources and yes, it does and would take a lot of time for Jim McGinty's underfunded DDP to prosecute the dozens if not hundreds of cases being avoided.

The Desert Rat believes the main reason there has been so few prosecutions is, the political consequences, particularly the Kimberley and Pilbara electorates, where the ALP relies heavily on the Aboriginal vote to hold seats. The Carpenter Government can't afford to put large Aboriginal communities offside and lose or split the Aboriginal vote. Carpenter has been going through the motions and occasionally making the right noises, but has essentially been sheilding the ALP and hiding on this issue.

The Desert Rat was expecting to see a number of charges laid against some Aboriginal community members - some, known to him, but nothing has eventuated except an "understanding of the difficult situation".

Contrast Alan Carpenter and the ALP's pathetic performance in Aboriginal affairs with that of the churches in the remote areas of Western Australia. Even the church apologists are starting to see the reality of the unfairly discredited churches' contributions - instead of acting as a cheer squad to those who view Indigenous affairs through pink-tinted glasses.

Aboriginal literacy was decimated by Alan Carpenter's incompetence during his term as Minister for Education. He has failed to get the Department of Aboriginal Affairs to function, his crowning achievement was to change its name. It is still starved of funds (the Minister Michelle Roberts is from the wrong faction) and ALP policy is rudderless.

Alan Carpenter sat on the Dawn Casey Report into the Department of Indigenous Affairs for 6 months, before he released it under coercion from FOI applications. Twelve months on, still no action, no change, no ideas.

Carpenter ignored Lt-General Sanderson's advice but has no plan or even a suggestion of a sense of direction himself. Carpenter was initially in denial of the generic problems in Halls Creek, Kalumburu and Oombulguri - one wonders by the administrative response, if he is still really "in denial".

He lavishly rebuilt two schools in his own electorate (Melville and Willagee) which meant dilapidated remote schools such as Fitzroy Crossing District High had to wait 7 years longer despite being the school in the worst condition in the state.

Alan Carpenter is a pretender, a squatter on the high moral ground; enveloped by an ideas vacuum, peering down his nose at mere mortals who are not up to his "moral and ethical" standards.