In recent weeks, that indefatigable, always obliging and helpful member of the commentariat, Christopher Pearson, has been beavering away, doing what he can to sort out the federal Labor party.
Bring back Simon Crean, he thundered one week, to be followed by a clamorous demand for the return of Chairman Rudd the next, and above all the removal of that outrageous, ruinous hussy Julia Gillard, and an election if not be this week, then certainly by the next. A massacre at the polls would offer a chance for reflection and self-improvement, and perhaps a chance to govern sometime in the next century ...
But this week, in Repeal dusty sections of Racial Discrimination Act, Pearson has more important business, not sorry business or sit down business, but business business, which is to explain blackness to blacks, and anyone else who will listen.
It seems there are amazing advantages to being black in Australia, a fact seized upon by some about the time that aboriginality became "negotiable", when it's always been as clear cut as quadroon, octoroon and terceron:
It was a development that suited some people very well. For example, a poor, fair-skinned Tasmanian could claim a slight element of Aboriginal descent but, being unable to prove it beyond doubt, could affirm their identity, claim their extended family had a mixed-race connection they'd been encouraged to keep quiet about, and suddenly be eligible to apply for various grants and special entitlements.
Yes, if you ever head off to Tasmania, you'll find whites, thinly disguised as blacks, living as high as hogs off the various grants and special entitlements they managed to collar by claiming a mixed race connection.