To what class does Walsh belong? Quick to denounce lack of rigour in the reasoning of others, he can hardly expect us to be satisfied that terms like 'new' or 'chattering' adequately define class.

In commonly understood terms then, in what pertinent ways would Walsh socio-economically distinguish himself from his adversaries? As a public discussant on policy, he otherwise appears to have quite a lot in common with them. Political or philosophical differences cannot amount to a class distinction either. Without anything more rigorous to go on, and given that Walsh is obviously routinely engaged in chattering, we must assume for the moment that he is more or less, if perhaps not 'new', at least of the same 'chattering class' as the rest of us. So then, what is the substance of his chatter?

On at least five occasions Walsh has used his column to bucket the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission's (HREOC) National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from Their Families.

His summation of the Inquiry's Report Bringing Them Home:

"If the Government wilts before the current orchestrated new class assault, and accepts the recommendations of this inquiry, three groups of people will gain: white lawyers -- as always; a few Aborigines; and Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party. Interests of the Aboriginal underclass will not be served by such shoddy reports".

Walsh likes to invert values and stresses of his foes. The Report highlights enormous scale, up to one in three removed between 1910 and 1970, whereas his language is 'some, usually part-Aboriginal kids were taken because of their Aboriginality', and 'some were taken -- as were white kids -- because they were neglected'.

The inference here is that we needed to delve no further into how and why these children were taken, because for Walsh, the above categories are apparently self-explanatory. He accounts for the policy targeting of 'part-Aboriginal kids'with the equivalent of a nudge and a wink

Similarly, where the authors of the Report emphasise trauma, anguish and disadvantage, he says there were benefits. This cursory dispensing with family values — such as keeping families together — in favour of the alleged dividends of state intervention, is noteworthy coming from one who otherwise holds that government should stay out of people's lives as much as possible.

Over numerous columns, and in his book Confessions of a Failed Finance Minister, Walsh flails contemporary Aboriginal policy, and institutions -- ATSIC, Aboriginal Legal Services, Native Title, the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation. There is in his view a governmental caving-in to a united front of indigenous militants, 'self-serving' white professionals, 'rent-seekers' and so on. These 'new class elites', we are advised, have career stakes in government-sponsored, taxpayer-funded 'social engineering' as well as the fringe benefit of being pious moral notables.

The central flaw in Walsh's scheme of things is the notion that sometime in the past, before the 1970s it seems, government had it, if not right, then less worryingly wrong. We are to understand that governments then were not guilty of the sins of social engineering

Wrong, because no matter how he judges its intentions, effects and outcomes, the systematic, wide-scale state intervention into Aboriginal families, including removal of children (which had been occurring since the previous century), was largely carried out under the policy of assimilation, as Walsh well knows. This was undoubtedly the quintessential Australian social engineering project.

Funded by the taxpayer and maintained by governments, Liberal and Labor, it involved the churches, academics, politicians, and public servants, some of whom stood out as the moral notables of the day -- 'this is for their own good'they said.

This public-funded, government social engineering program was racially based, at odds with free market values, and individual self-responsibility -- since the state made the decisions for you -- and, fundamentally, contra to family values.

What distinguishes Aboriginal policy before to after 'the fall' implicit in Walsh's reckoning is not an absence of social engineering -- assimilation was crudely and cruelly, the latter. Neither was it less racially-based than contemporary policy -- it was inherently so. Neither did it less treat Australians differently -- most Aborigines were not even citizens. Neither did it less involve politicians, bureaucracies, professionals and the intelligentsia -- it relied upon them.

So considered, assimilation and its child removal practices ought to be something Peter Walsh would have a lot to say about. But no. Official policy from around 1937, it was presumably not 'orchestrated by the new class'.

Whatever criticisms Walsh has of the Inquiry, he should also have wanted to uncouple the issue of the removal of indigenous children from his call for HREOC's budget to be slashed in half -- because the issue demands it. Because indigenous Australian citizens want a set of previous government policies and practices to be rigorously and publicly brought to account, and by such accounting, not only to seek restitution, but also to better inform the policy-making process of the present and future.

He should also want to appreciate what was achieved, for the now public knowledge that is contained in Bringing Them Home, rather than make what he sees as its shortcomings stand for its entirety -- the better to castigate the 'new class'.

As for claiming the Report will help Pauline Hanson, the former finance minister and apostle of economic rationalism might be advised not to shout too loudly.

Walsh likes to be seen as having spent his political life trying to curtail sectional biases in policy-making. However, there is at least one minority interest not sufficiently controlled in his efforts, his own tendency to substitute self-justifying diatribes against whatever phantom classes for serious policy criticism .

Such sectional agenda pursuits are insulting not least to the citizens who bared their souls to the Inquiry, and re-lived past horrors in the expectation that their government's attitudes had progressed sufficiently to enable politicians to listen and act.

Copyright Steve Mickler 1997