It used to be believed that treaties could be agreed only between sovereign nations. No longer. The Victorian government, forward-looking in all things except accurately calculating its budgets, has elevated itself to quasi-national status and is forging ahead with a ‘treaty’ with the Aboriginal ‘community’. (By Aboriginal, of course, they mean part-Aboriginal; the whole ‘first nations’ establishment is part-Aboriginal and could in different circumstances be just as easily ‘proudly’ proclaiming its Irish or English or other non-indigenous ancestry.)

This treaty, according to a website blurb, will, by ‘addressing disadvantage, racism and oppression, as well as resourcing self-determination’ – note that well, it means establishing a separate Aboriginal government – bring about the happy condition in which ‘the cultural and economic divide between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Victorians would lessen’. Just how it will do that, when years of throwing millions of dollars at Aboriginal ‘welfare’ have not been able to, is not explained.

Those unkind enough to point out that the funds poured into these schemes have been known, unaccountably, to disappear, and would of course be guilty of the vilest ‘racism’. Yet experience suggests that far from any ‘lessening’, the ‘economic divide’ between deprived Outback Aborigines and the urbanised power-seekers who claim to represent them would grow wider by the day, the more money the taxpayer contributed.

If treaties can now be agreed between just about anyone, why stop there? Surely there is an infinite range of parties whose relationships with each other could be put on this formal legal footing.

Where can we start? How about Penny and the Palestinians? She and Albanese should stop pussyfooting around with their dislike of Israel – a visa refusal here, a call for a ceasefire there – and simply announce a treaty with Hamas. We’d all know where we stood then. For added effect, they could declare Jews in Australia enemy aliens, as happened with German and Italian residents during the second world war. And just think of the avalanche of Muslim votes for Labor such a treaty would attract. ‘Muslim Votes Matter’, which claims to hold the ‘potential deciding vote’ ‘in over 20 federal seats’ would be delirious with triumph.

Talking of the Muslim world, Pakistan’s delegate to the Australian Senate, Senator Mehreen Faruqi, should be pressing for a treaty with the land of her birth. A treaty – and Penny should be gladly up for this – would streamline the exchange of Australian ‘aid’ for Pakistan ($11.5 million to be handed over this year) with the migration from its shores to us so useful in maintaining community harmony and in counteracting the pernicious influence of the pro-Israel element (see above). Similar treaties should be made with allies like Afghanistan, to which the federal government has generously issued 26,000 special entry visas for locals in distress to come and do their bit for the housing shortage here. Perhaps in exchange we could have some of the surplus equipment left behind when the Americans ran away and use it to offset our own depleted defence resources.

Defence of course is based on a labyrinth of treaties and partnerships. The Aukus agreement, though not technically a treaty, is one that right-thinking people (which if the term is ever used by the ABC means left-thinking people) regard with suspicion, as they do all defence initiatives. This quasi-treaty should be dumped and replaced with a real treaty with the superpower that Labor would like to regard as potentially our truest friend, China. That way not only would we be securing our future but we would save ourselves the embarrassment of being in alliance with Trump’s America, something that no less a figure than our distinguished ambassador to Washington, Kevin Rudd, would wholeheartedly recommend, given that he has called the President a ‘village idiot’ and other equally unflattering epithets.

There are plenty of other places where the enthusiast for treaties could recommend a formal alliance. What about our good friends in Somalia, many of whom are driven by want to eke out a living from piracy? A treaty could help them by granting residence in Australia to far more than the present appallingly low numbers. In return, Somalia could offer Australia a preferential trade agreement on machetes, a national specialty, the manufacture of which is sadly neglected by our local industry.

The Albanese government need not be immune to the new vogue for treaties with categories rather than nations. I understand it is contemplating a treaty with the Association of Feminist Parliamentary Staffpeople to stipulate that females working in Canberra who report any sort of ‘harassment’ be paid vast sums of public money in compensation if they claim they will never be able to work again, but be allowed under the terms of the treaty to keep their compensation when they do find another remunerative job.

Treaties with the inanimate? Why not? Chris (‘Lights Out’) Bowen could conclude one with the weather, arranging for the wind to blow and the sun to shine all the time once he has completed his destruction of our power stations.

Victoria’s treaty efforts have already inspired some Queers for Palestine (Naarm branch), to send a delegation to Gaza to offer ‘a treaty of friendship in solidarity with the oppressed victims both of Israel’s fascist genocide’ and its ‘unprovoked aggression towards a good neighbour’. Unfortunately the response has not been encouraging, which shows that good international relations can only be negotiated with skill and generosity. According to the few queers who survived, the delegation, gaily adorned with keffiyehs, was interrupted in their hotel room while compiling a report on Israeli atrocities and hurled from the balcony. Undeterred, the queers say they will make another ‘goodwill visit’ just as soon any of their number can be induced to volunteer.