Whether it is a silly stunt that ostentatiously parades reverence for the Aboriginal flag (looking at you, Adam Bandt) or a please-elect-us promise to spend millions on a referendum – when it comes to Aboriginal affairs, the Woke adore their symbolism.

They are also the ones determined to make sure that Aboriginal disadvantage persists.

Progressivism’s obsession with symbolic gestures is not only because they lack genuine achievements, it’s because – for as long as flags, special days, correct words, statues, and affluent white self-flagellation take precedence over practicality – they can ensure that there will be zero real progress on things that matter: education, jobs, health, housing…

When it comes to ‘closing the gap’, the luvvies are desperate for Aboriginal disadvantage – whether actual or perceived – to endure. If it ends, that would dramatically weaken their authority.

Other people’s adversity is the tool that the ‘caring class’ use to claw their way to relevance and power. The thought of genuinely improving ordinary people’s day-to-day lives makes them swoon with terror.

They rely on ‘the gap’ – and the attention it gains them as they rally against it – for their moral credibility. To adopt the mantle of saviours, they must ensure that Aboriginal people will always be worse off needing protection and help.

In the world of paisley-shirted posers, who tilt their heads like drunken parrots to show how compassionate they are, Aboriginal voices must be heard. But only as long as those voices compliantly agree with an inner city elite agenda that demands special treatment and a constant flow of government money with no strings, responsibilities, or expectations attached.

It is no coincidence that many of the symbolic gestures these self-appointed guardians of Aboriginal wellbeing fawn over are tied to more funding for unaccountable bureaucratic agencies, dubious services, and advisory bodies. Nor is it a coincidence that those get filled with people who perpetuate the cycle of paternalism tarted up as humanitarian concern. Favoured ideologues roll in public money without producing anything that hints of tangible, on-the-ground improvement.

The activists who cry great crocodile tears over Our National Shame expect Aboriginal Australians to conform to absurd notions about the noble savage living in a remote community. Meanwhile, they sit in comfortable homes, nodding sagely about how spending millions of dollars on a flagpole is a wonderful idea.

They have no qualms about picking the pockets of hard-working, tax-paying Aboriginal people who – funnily enough, like most Australians – are more likely to be worried about how they are going to pay the bills and put food on the table, than about whether it is a microaggression to sleep in on Australia Day, or an act of abhorrent racism to not dutifully mouth an acknowledgment of country at the start of every meeting of overpaid managers.

If Aboriginal people see themselves as part of the Australian community, rather than as special victims, they are somehow not ‘Aboriginal enough’ and called appalling names by those same activists.

Whenever a politician tries to argue that any piece of symbolism is worth the price, what they are saying is that they are too weak, cowardly, or self-interested to change anything. Signing up for empty gestures is simply going along with the status quo of keeping a certain percentage of Aboriginal people in a state of inequality and dependence for selfish political reasons.

You can practically hear the luvvies’ teeth grinding with fury as more and more admirable individuals and groups loudly call out symbolic rubbish and make it clear that they do not see themselves the way they are ‘meant’ to.

It would be much easier for those outspoken human beings to ride the cultural gravy train and score a cushy livelihood for themselves in doing so, but they have made a far more honest choice. The more they stand up, the more it shows how vapid and grasping the Woke really are.

Such efforts to reshape the narrative deserve our respect and support, because only when Aboriginal Australians take back their identities from their self-styled defenders, will they finally stop being exploited as tawdry political props.