Well, thank goodness for that

Apparently a side effect of the drinking bans in the NT is a mass exodus of Aboriginies to SA - so they can hang around in a creek bed and get blind drunk again.

If I was a resident of the communities that they just left, I reckon I'd be saying, "Thank Christ for that."

I have a tough enough time living in a street with a woman who is a serial shopping trolley abandoner, some kids that drop McDonalds wrappers in the street from time to time and a knucklehead down the road who slashed my neighbours tyres recently (that's another story).

Imagine living in a small town in the middle of nowhere with hundreds of drunks, some of them violent, who sit around all day and night getting smashed, being rowdy and probably pissing and crapping wherever they like. There goes the neighbourhood.

Now they've split. If those communities have any sense, they'll burn down the houses that the drunks lived in and never let them back. Never. They might be able to get on with life now that the trash have moved down the road. I was going to say "white trash", but of course they're not. They're black trash, and they make life a bloody misery for everyone in the vicinity, and unfortunately those that suffer the most are other Aboriginals. No white bastard in Balmain is ever going to be kept up all night by these buggers.

We have heard plenty about the problems in these remote communities - the lack of medical care, policing and education etc etc etc. Part of that is because not many white fellas with the skills want to go and live out in those communities. Some of that is due to isolation. A lot of it is probably due to the drunkeness and violence and hopelessness.

Well, the drunks and the violent and the useless just packed up their bongos and moved to another state. There are probably some drunk and useless characters left behind, but I reckon that those that are left are the sober and useful types, and they might now have an opportunity to make things work properly without the dead weight drag of a bunch of useless bastards hanging around their necks.

The strain on policing, medical care, education, social services etc should all be much lower because the greatest consumers of lockup time, truancy, stitches, crutches and welfare benefits have split. Many of these communities may no longer need a copper and a doctor and a nurse because those that tied up 95% of their time are not there anymore. They are now camping out in areas that are better supplied with those services, so everyone should win. If you can't get police and doctors to work in those areas, move the patients and the crims to where the doctors and police actually are. If Mohammed won't go to the mountain, move the mountain to Mohammed.

At least I hope that's what has happened. This might finally be the chance for the up-and-at-'em types in these communities to get things going, knowing that their efforts and hard work aren't going to be trashed by some drunken knucklehead.