This quote isn’t irrelevant to the contemporary political landscape.

Medicine followed trade and the flag. A direct response to colonialism, it did not merely expedite such expansion but provided a justification for it: was it not part of white man’s mission to bring medicine to the deadly tropics? All too often it was conveniently overlooked that the white man was in large measure responsible for making them so unhealthy in the first place.(Porter, 2002: 90)

If Howard is sincere about resolving the problems in remote Aboriginal communities then shouldn’t there be an acknowledgment of white man’s role in creating such situations in the first place?