Gary Johns, and once more unto the breach, as we mount a descent into a bilious verbal maelstrom ...

(Above: a handy image when you're selling a magazine, and outback tourism).

The hackles rise, the desire to growl grows, and the fur bristles when language like this comes to the fore:

A statement in the preamble that recognises the original inhabitants is all that Australians will agree to.

And how was the will of all Australians divined? By poll, by referendum, by research, or by examining the entrails or the tea leaves? Or by simply parading the gut prejudices of an extremely prejudiced single man, going by the name Gary Punch, and scribbling furiously Referendum must not be used to settle old scores.

Well I can say one thing. This Australian will not agree to Gary Punch. Or what he scribbles. Indeedy, if I can put it politely, in the Australian way, he can fuck off ...

That's right, before any one has had a chance to propose or agree on any wording, the bilious Punch is in print with a dose of vile bile. How vile the bile? Well about how about this one?

The trouble is, Aboriginal culture, in any sense in which the original inhabitants practised it, is long gone. Elements of the original that remain, such as polygamy and underage sex, are illegal or, in the case of sorcery, re-emerging around places such as Yuendumu and Groote Island, is just plain evil.

What does the man think about transubstantiation, cannibalism, or the average pedophile Catholic priest, and does he understand the concept relating to the giant mote in his own eye?

It's funny - peculiar and perverse, rather than funny ha ha - this constant desire on the part of the chattering elite commentariat class to downgrade and denigrate anything indigenous.

There are of course still parts of the country where English is a second language for Aboriginal people, rapidly diminishing, but still enough of an irritant to the commentariat, intent on making everyone speak dinkum, and you can if you're lucky still talk to an aboriginal person who experienced 'first contact', the meeting of the white ghosts who turned up to haunt their remote locations.

Sure when I talked with one woman about what it was like, given her poor English, it wasn't an epic portrait of a clash of civilisations, so much as weird and passing strange, seen through the eyes of a child, and then adjusted to, more easily than the adults of the time managed ...

Clearly it was a tale she'd told often, and once the strangeness of the encounter and its implications discussed, we moved on to other matters, like her skill with painting ...

But in this context, where oral tradition has actual meaning, 'long gone' is one of those idle contemptuous phrases which seeks to diminish, when it's possible to have all kinds of emotional and actual connections to the past (in much the same way, and for reasons entirely peculiar, I still felt something standing in Tipperary, from where my ancestors had caught a ship to escape the potato blighted country a century and a half ago).

But that's because there's an almost inexplicable deep seated anger and contempt at work in Johns' scribble, suggesting that a therapist might be required at some point.

I won't go on about it too long, because inexplicably it created a deep seated anger and contempt in me in relation to Johns, as he offered up the usual clap trap about Aboriginal nihilism, and settling in the usual way for Samsonn and Delilah, instead perhaps of highlighting the massacre organised and ordained by that deeply British leader, Governor Macquarie.

These days it's all Lady Macquarie's point and the Gov's roads and vision, but in his day the Gov was a veritable William Calley, worthy of a war crimes trial. Still his splendid ways these days are carried on by Macquarie bank and the way they run Sydney Airport. Or is that more Ned Kelly ... I get so confused in my national stereotypes ... (and more on the infamous 1816 Appin massacre here).

Along with his berating of people of Aboriginal descent, and the failure of separatism, Johns offers up this kind of hopeful prejudice:

The fact is, with Aboriginal intermarriage rates at more than 70 per cent and most Aborigines living in the cities and regions and fast integrating, the question of identity is looking very thin. Much more important, Aboriginal identity and culture is a matter for those who claim its ownership, it should not be force-fed to the rest of the nation. If children are to be taught Aboriginal culture, I want for them the full unexpurgated version, not the pretty commemoration of recent invention that one can pick up on the bookshelf at the ABC shop or a university politics department.

What to say about such bilious bile? The temptation is simply to get angry and abusive, the very response that Johns seeks to promote. Force fed? By golly I'd like to take a funnel, shove it down Johns' throat, and force feed him some of his dire prejudices, until he choked on them ... it wouldn't be pretty and agreeable, of the kind you might experience in an ABC shop or a university politics department, but it would be fun (hang on, from what I saw, university politics departments conduct their political business in a way that would make a water boarder give up ... don't they?)

Anyway, let's cut to the chase. No, hang on a second, let's hang on a little longer for a loud laugh:

Perhaps section 51. xxvi, "The people of any race, for whom it is deemed necessary to make special laws", should remain, although the suggestion by Mick Gooda, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner, that this power has been used to discriminate against Aboriginal people is laughable.

Yep, roll on the intervention, and don't you worry about any discrimination, and all for an ineffectual result, while having your laughable outburst of laughing. Because you see the Federal Government is now inclined to intervention in the business of all sorts of poor people ... So it'll be class rather than skin based discrimination in the future ... Oh brave new world ...

Now to the chase. Johns' splendid minimal proposal for additional wording for the constitution to recognise aboriginal people:

The present preamble to the Australian Constitution begins: "Whereas the people have agreed to unite in one indissoluble Federal Commonwealth under the Constitution hereby established." We could add the words: "Whereas those who came to Australia after the act of settlement by the Crown of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland recognise that this land was first settled by Aboriginal people."

How generous ...

Of course the waters in this area were muddied a long time ago by John Howard's effort at the 1999 refendum, and the wretched wording he offered up then, pleasing no one:

With hope in God, the Commonwealth of Australia is constituted as a democracy with a federal system of government to serve the common good.
We the Australian people commit ourselves to this Constitution:
proud that our national unity has been forged by Australians from many ancestries;
never forgetting the sacrifices of all who defended our country and our liberty in time of war;
upholding freedom, tolerance, individual dignity and the rule of law;
honouring Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders, the nation's first people, for their deep kinship with their lands and for their ancient and continuing cultures which enrich the life of our country;
recognising the nation-building contribution of generations of immigrants;
mindful of our responsibility to protect our unique natural environment;
supportive of achievement as well as equality of opportunity for all;
and valuing independence as dearly as the national spirit which binds us together in both adversity and success. (here).

Right at the start, with his hope in the long absent god, he and Les Murray got up my nose, and it was downhill from there, but even Howard tried a more generous form of wording in relation to indigenous people.

Recently the NSW Government has been dabbling in the area, with wording that is at once both more generous and more legalistic, as a proposed amendment to the Constitution Act of 1902:

(a) The People and Parliament of New South Wales acknowledge and honour the Aboriginal people as the first people and nations of the State, and

(b) The People and Parliament of New South Wales recognise that Aboriginal people have a spiritual, social, and cultural relationship with their traditional lands and waters and have made a unique and lasting contribution to the identity of New South Wales.

(c) Nothing in this section creates in any person any legal right or gives rise to any civil cause of action, or affects the interpretation of this Act or any other law in New South Wales. (here)

Just love (c). Well done NSW lawyers ...

Of course none of this matters in the grander scheme of things - there are real issues confronting aboriginal people, more important than symbolic wording - and Johns' specious attempts to disavow the past and pin all his hopes on intermarriage and interbreeding and aboriginal culture dying out as integration takes hold and all but a few genetic throwbacks can pass for whiter than white (well we wouldn't want a chocolate or even a beige culture would we) brings back the grand old days of the nineteen thirties about aborigines being a dying, vanishing race ...

It reminded me of the shameless cavortings of whites around Gwoja Tjungarrayi, or One Pound Jimmy, who accidentally became a symbol for tourists, as well as a postage stamp star ...

Why not shove it up Gary Johns, and learn a little, by listening to The two lives of One Pound Jimmy, available for download here, on the radio station for cardigan wearers, or read Jillian E Barnes' Resisting the captured image, available here.

There's another upside of course. Johns is no longer an active politician, and so scribbles his bile from the sidelines, which surely is a good thing.

Naturally The Australian was on side with Johns, raising the spectre of New Zealand and claiming some $NZ 1 billion has been paid in compensation as a result of having a treaty. (here). Funny how generosity of spirit always gets threatened by the red back spiders lurking in the wallet ...

Funny too how the rag would, on another day, rail about the billions pissed against the wall on indigenous funding. Yep, the Kiwis managed a billion from 1840 ... and John Howard managed A$587 million rolling out from 2007, and with bugger all by way of meaningful result ... (and now that interventionist effort has its own wiki here).

Meanwhile, it's always fun to read the Treaty which raises such fear in the lizard Oz. Here's the preamble:

HER MAJESTY VICTORIA Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland regarding with Her Royal Favour the Native Chiefs and Tribes of New Zealand and anxious to protect their just Rights and Property and to secure to them the enjoyment of Peace and Good Order has deemed it necessary in consequence of the great number of Her Majesty's Subjects who have already settled in New Zealand and the rapid extension of Emigration both from Europe and Australia which is still in progress to constitute and appoint a functionary properly authorised to treat with the Aborigines of New Zealand for the recognition of Her Majesty's Sovereign authority over the whole or any part of those islands – Her Majesty therefore being desirous to establish a settled form of Civil Government with a view to avert the evil consequences which must result from the absence of the necessary Laws and Institutions alike to the native population and to Her subjects has been graciously pleased to empower and to authorise me William Hobson a Captain in Her Majesty's Royal Navy Consul and Lieutenant-Governor of such parts of New Zealand as may be or hereafter shall be ceded to her Majesty to invite the confederated and independent Chiefs of New Zealand to concur in the following Articles and Conditions.

There, that wasn't too hard. You can cop the rest here, and see how you can still end up with New York for the price of some beads and mirrors ...

Well the days of Peter Garrett singing 'treaty now' are long gone - what a wretched shadow of an idealist he's become - and the commentariat are already determined to neuter any gesture of goodwill that might arise from new wording in the constitution, and instead will make hay and use it as a black bashing exercise, once again ...

You can pin a stake through the heart of Hansonism, and the next thing you know it's risen from the dead again and taken the form of Gary Johns in the lizard Oz. And nothing will change ...

Well one thing will change. I'll be buggered if I read the bilious vile words of Gary Johns any time soon ...

(Below: and on the noble puritan principle that, having wasted time with Gary Johns, that time should be made up by more interesting insights into black white relationships in Australia's past, here's a sampling of Gwoja Tjunurrayi and related imagery - the two dollar coin is only 'inspired' by such images. The stamps are the real deal. Now if only he'd spoken to a decent movie or intellectual property rights lawyer, and done a percentage of gross for exploitation of his image).