The problem is generated by the contradiction between wanting to keep the aborigines as they are “on the land” — as is where is — and the consequences of policies which tend to integration. Attempts to integrate the aborigines are regarded by some as a kind of genocide because that would effectively wipe them out as a culture. This reached a culmination with the “Stolen Generations” idea, which saw the removal of aboriginal children from the community as a terrible crime.

But the as is where is policy also has its drawbacks, largely the creation of welfare-fueled reservations in which horrible rates of drunkenness, crime and degradation occur more or less regularly. They are terrible ethnographic museums sustained by the tragedies of history, white guilt and left-versus-right politics. So if you happen to be non-aboriginal then you can, as a practical matter, aspire to anything. But on the other hand, if you happen to be aboriginal, then a terrible weight of historical baggage falls on you.

On the one hand, there is the duty to keep the culture alive — but this often comes at the cost of stasis. On the other hand, you can turn your back on the whole thing and just become Bill or Frank. It’s a false choice in my view. The biggest lesson anyone can learn from it is never to let politicians and demagogues define you. Once you let the pols bin you into categories like “black”, “white”, “aboriginal”, “asian” or anything else then you are royally screwed. You’ve lost the number one attribute of freedom, which is to define yourself.

The real cost of racial politics is that it lets the demagogues make a football of skin color. They’ll play you for a fool in exchange for a few nice phrases and a fistful — and not a very big fistful — of dollars.