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What now?

Broome, Western,Australia

Dear Editor,



As a follow on from my last letter, which was a reply to Mr Haouli's earlier diatribe about the Court action that was filed by Mr Edwards.  I would like to state a common saying that is part of the lingo’ of Indigenous Australians what now? In trying to minimize the perception of how stupid the situation looks for the plaintiffs, they now seem to be pouring blame on the tardiness of the Government, for causing them to withdraw their lawsuit. Any lawyer will tell you, including Mr Edwards, hat you would only discontinue and withdraw your suit because of the fact that the chances of success are very slim. (I refer to my previous letter for a discussion of the legal issues). The prospects of not only further bad publicity as well as a higher amount of Costs that would be ordered by the Court against the plaintiffs after an unsuccessful hearing, shows that they are now in "damage control".


A point made by a Government Minister that the litigants had all collected their Parliament pay despite their civil action to keep it from sitting ...– shows that this whole incident was not very carefully thought out by them, before they proceeded. It would seem that the haste in drawing attention to a Court action was in response to the poor showing and attendance at their Black March on the same day that the Princess Royal opened Parliament.



I would suggest that these litigants can no longer speak of any ...‘illegality...’ now, as their support of the Parliament opening would now estopp them from doing so. They have now become part of the ...‘illegality...’ that they claimed to have taken place in the past weeks. Who knows what might happen when you have such desperate people, being so ...‘unpredictable...’. Is it possible that they could sue themselves? So I pose the question again ...– what now? Who knows ...– probably only God knows.



Regards,



James Tapueluelu

james [dot] tapueluelu [at] klc [dot] org [dot] au