Stan Grant has worked as a television news and political journalist since the 1990s. He is the Charles Sturt University vice-chancellor’s chair of Australian Indigenous Belonging, is an ambassador of the Australian Indigenous Education Foundation, a senior fellow at the defence industry-funded, Australian Strategic Policy Institute and, a senior fellow at the Australian Department of Defence. Much of his 40-year career has been spent reporting from deeply intolerant societies.

He has been showered with awards for journalistic excellence and, in 2016, received an Honorary Doctorate of Letters from the University of New South Wales. He is reported to be a multi-millionaire with an annual income around $2 million.

Yet, despite his successes and the wide and unstinting recognition he enjoys, Dr Grant presents himself as a Wiradjuri man, scarred by his childhood encounters with racism and with what he describes as the poverty and indigenous persecution he inherited.

He remembers at school, ‘One by one the Black kids were pulled out of class. We’d be searched for head lice, our teeth examined, our fingernails examined for signs of dirt. We were questioned about what we’d had for dinner the previous night.’ This he believes was racial discrimination rather than informed, well-intended concern.

Perhaps he is unaware that in town camps and remote communities, too many Aboriginal children are victims of, or witnesses to, the dysfunction around them. That they are being placed in child protection systems at ‘an alarming rate’. That Aboriginal women are 34 times more likely to suffer domestic violence than non-indigenous women, and almost 11 times more likely to die at the hands of their partners. That youth suicides and incarceration rates are disproportionately higher than for the broader community.

Rather than celebrate a society which has enabled him and an ever-growing number of indigenous Australians to achieve upward social mobility, self-respect, relative financial independence and improved longevity, Dr Grant seems blinded by a deep-seated sense of resentment.

Like many disaffected Aborigines, he prefers to dwell on colonial injustices – for which today’s generations bear no responsibility – and advocate new ways to do what has repeatedly failed in the past.

There is an activist mindset which condones English becoming a second or third language, tolerates school truancy and tribal laws and sees underaged girls promised to older men under pain of extreme physical punishment should they disobey.

It is perhaps no coincidence that the Lancet reports remote Aboriginal communities have ‘among the highest diagnosed rates of sexually transmissible infections in the world’.

But then weaponising racism and assuming a position of victimhood is easier and more effective than challenging the policies which perpetuate misery. Better to romanticise ancient customs and blame colonial oppression. By encouraging segregation, influential elites can become even more powerful.

Writing for the ABC following a recent trip to America, Dr Grant gushes, ‘Black people work and own shops, drive the school bus, walk to work, sip coffee and eat in restaurants.’ That is good. But he certainly won’t find that in remote Aboriginal communities where jobs, private enterprise and property ownership are shunned.

He complains that, ‘Australian cultural, political, media and economic life is still steadfastly white.’ This is hardly surprising when over 80 per cent of the population is white.

What is surprising is that Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is determined to favour indigenous Australians with a constitutionally recognised Voice to parliament ‘on matters that affect First Nations people’. Well-intentioned perhaps, but what he promises is racist and will institutionalise division and bigotry.

But even this Voice proposal is not enough to appease a vengeful political class. It has moved on with its focus now on a treaty. Aboriginal Greens Senator Lidia Thorpe proclaims, ‘This is a war. They are still killing us…. We have a voice, those bastards in Parliament haven’t been listening. What we want is justice, what we want is self determination and sovereignty.’

Despite her hyperbole, Australians inside and outside of Parliament have been listening. Welfare benefits have never been more generous. There have been significant returns of land to autonomous Aboriginal councils and Aboriginal advocacy has revealed a High Court which is sympathetically disposed. The broader community has elected a disproportionately high number of Aborigines to Australian parliaments, it observes ‘sorry days’, pays ritualistic respect to Aboriginal elders, flies indigenous flags, and removes ‘offensive’ statues. Telstra works on Australia Day.

Yet, still the suffering continues. It’s not white supremacists holding back indigenous peoples, but the sway of influential Aboriginal segregationists, apologetic whites and pedlars of victimhood.

The cashless welfare card introduced by the Abbott government against vocal objections from Aboriginal-controlled community organisations, demonstrates the divide between the ideological priorities of elites and the practical welfare of those they purportedly represent. Labelled ‘oppressive’, the card stopped 80 per cent of welfare money being spent on alcohol and gambling. Still, Aboriginal voices prevailed on Labor to scrap it.

Now, a despairing Alice Springs mayor, Matt Paterson, wants outside help to control the explosion of alcohol-fuelled violence. But Northern Territory Chief Minister, Natasha Fyles, says this is ‘race-based’ intervention. Perhaps it is, but it is the inevitable consequence of contrived segregation and subsidised idleness.

Senator Thorpe wants ‘real power’ and ‘won’t settle for anything less’. She is race-driven and wants ‘ten independent (unelected) Blak (sic) seats in the parliament today’. If they sit in the House of Representatives, seven per cent of members would be indigenous in perpetuity. A case of one country, two systems.

For Aborigines trapped in town camps and remote communities, whether Prime Minister Albanese or Senator Thorpe prevails matters little. They will remain marginalised. Nowhere in the world has subsidised apartheid of a minority succeeded. Sadly, too few are willing to accept this reality.

Even if unpalatable for power-seekers, the solution is obvious and inescapable. Emancipation is inextricably linked to education, jobs and assimilation into modern society.

How much suffering will it take?