‘I was at Charleville on the weekend,’ said Mr Cameron. ‘My mate Sugar Ray is a resident of Charleville. He represents the great area of Maranoa on the National Aboriginal Conference. He gets a motor car to drive. Sugar came out with a great statement and I support him 100 per cent. I think it is the only sensible thing he has said: He said that Ayers Rock ought to be handed back to all Australians.’

‘Casino’ Everingham quoted from a letter published in the Australian on March 27, 1985. ‘“I never realised that Ayers Rock meant so much to me until confronted with the news that absolute title to this natural wonder is shortly to be given to a small community of Aboriginal Australians. I felt that sudden sense of shock, then grief, that comes when you are about to lose something very precious, previously taken for granted . . . The stroke of the pen that will allow people to physically possess the spiritual heart of this nation is a knife thrust that wounds every Australian.”’

‘No longer will the Aboriginal be seen just as socially different; he can be seen universally as having taken something that belongs to all Australians,’ said the Honourable Member for O’Connor, Mr Tuckey, who conceded that he did indeed have a ‘conviction for assaulting an Aboriginal person’ but reminded the house that the Aboriginal person in question was a ‘gangster’ and that it was not in fact an iron bar but ‘something else’ that he assaulted him with. ‘This legislation,’ he went on, ‘creates a lease-back which will transfer $100,000 per annum to an Aboriginal co-operative. That might help the Aboriginals in some way, but I am somewhat interested to look at how they might have been helping themselves to date.’

He wasn’t the only one to have visions of Aborigines growing fat on rent and gate takings. As a matter of interest the number of beneficiaries was estimated to be about 350. Which meant that on a good year they could look forward to pocketing a cool $500 a piece. ‘I believe that all these handouts to Aborigines ought to be means tested,’ said Mr Cameron.

‘What is it that whites object to,’ asked Barry Cohen, ‘about Aborigines getting money?’

Sometimes the simplest questions are the most searching. We’d been pondering this one since we’d landed in Darwin. I’m glad that Hansard shows someone with the name Barry Cohen having the nerve to ask it.