Imagine there is a Colonial Heritage Council funded by the Victorian state government which has been awarded powers to enter anyone’s home or farm – against their permission and in their absence – with the ability to investigate items that are of ‘cultural significance’.

What are these items?

Well, they could be anything… An old log someone used as a seat 200 years ago. The remnants of a building. An ancient vegetable garden. A photograph half-buried under the patio. Some rusted shovel lying against the shed. The patch of dirt where a convict broke free and ran off into the bush, or so legend has it.

A cultural item is whatever the council and its self-appointed experts say it is. How do we measure the item’s ‘significance’? It’s a bit like the antique trade – culture is worth whatever people are willing to pay.

Who would take this sort of thing seriously?

No one, but we are being asked to indulge a parallel idea put forward by the Aboriginal Heritage Council of Victoria and the only protection it has from public scorn is the use of the word Indigenous.

It is easy to tell when an idea has merit. If swapping race or gender invalidates it, then we are discussing Marxist overreach.

Spectator readers will not be surprised to hear there were widespread cries of outrage regarding the plan to increase the power of Indigenous ‘cultural investigators’. ‘Orwellian’ may be a better way of phrasing it, although Blair’s pen name is woefully overused in the progressive hellscape Daniel Andrews left behind.

The current Victorian Premier should know that there is no social licence to continue with this mission after the Voice to Parliament failed. Or perhaps the Labor Party is happy for Indigenous activism to do the heavy lifting on erasing property rights? It would certainly be on brand for a socialist-leaning government.

This comes when Australians have been locked out of several national parks because of … their race … while others, particularly in Queensland, risk losing their homes due to Native Title claims. The public money needed for the upkeep of these sprawling activist bodies is not offensive. Indigenous councils and bodies are always happy to take that without prejudice.

Are the alarm bells ringing yet?

Can people see the double standards built on racial privilege?

Respect goes two ways. Where is the respect for Australian citizens and the properties they own? Where is the respect for privacy? Where is the respect for Colonial heritage? What happened to antiquated notions of citizen equality and anti-discrimination?

The farce is made worse by the revelation this is being done on ‘suspicion’ of a violation of the Act, not as a result of it being proven.

‘Although this amendment may seem like a curtailment of the occupier’s rights, it is necessary for striking a balance between those rights and the rights of traditional owners under the Act,’ said a spokesperson.

Ah… No. It is not ‘a balance’ between rights, it is a gross overstep of boundaries and acceptable behaviour which uses race as leverage.

As one comment on The Australian said, ‘I cannot believe what I have just read.’

Police have trouble getting search warrants to look for criminal paraphernalia but we are expected to accept that members of the Indigenous community can wander in and poke about looking for a ‘violation’ of a poorly defined concept that only seems to apply to one group of Australians.

This is a nonsense.

No racial group should have power over other Australians in this country, and they certainly shouldn’t be seeking the authority to inspect their homes.

The Victorian government, under former Premier Daniel Andrews, has allowed a deeply separatist movement to form within the state obsessed with – according to their website – ‘self-determination’.

Self-determination as what, exactly? A mini ethnostate within Victoria?

Senator Jacinta Price’s audit can’t come soon enough.

‘After all, isn’t that what we are aiming for with self-determination, truth and justice and treaty?’ said one prominent Indigenous figure.

No. We are aiming for one Australia with one people who have equal standing.

At least the Victorian Liberal Party have opposed it, with Opposition Aboriginal affairs spokesman Peter Walsh saying:

‘We just will not support those sorts of powers because the only people who have those sorts of powers are police. It’s way out of line with our system of justice in Victoria.’

Flat White is written and edited by Alexandra Marshall.