To the chagrin of the Left, we didn’t get an Aboriginal Voice to parliament, but thanks to Penny Wong and Albanese we have an ‘Aboriginal Ambassador for First Nations People’. A snip too, at $350,000 for travel alone last year. Labor has also resuscitated a Gillard hand-me-down in the form of an ‘Ambassador for Gender Equality’ – a woman (genuine), but if it’s about equality why not male and female joint ambassadors, and then the way things are going someone trans and someone LGB and so on equalisingly all the way through the alphabet? But I digress.

You might not have heard we had a ’First Nations’ ambassador until federal opposition leader Peter Dutton announced that if he wins the next election he will abolish this post as ‘a waste of money’. But, then again, why should you have heard of him? (and it is a him, one Justin Mohamed, ‘a proud’ – naturally – ‘Gooreng Gooreng man from Queensland’, though one suspects from the surname that there might be a further ethnic strain in his descent). If you’re one of the 96.2 per cent of Australians of non-Aboriginal origin he doesn’t represent you. He represents our ‘First Nations People’, which is a term pinched from North America to describe what were in reality the hunter-gatherer tribes who populated our land – in peace and harmony, or so the glowing account put about by the Aboriginal ‘truth’ machine goes, until whitey turned up and wrecked this Arcadian existence.

Why, you might ask, if the ‘First People’ were really one or more ‘nations’, did they not appoint their own ambassador to represent them abroad, or, given that they didn’t have much opportunity for international relations, to represent each of these ‘nations’ to the others? One of the functions of an ambassador is to promote understanding and goodwill, and there was certainly a sore need for that in the ‘First Nations’ dealings among themselves. Far from the chink of champagne flutes, a diplomatic reception in those days usually meant a shower of spears directed by the host ‘nation’ towards any emissaries from another tribe who ventured onto its territory.

That was then, but what about now? What does the Aboriginal Ambassador do? Well, according to Penny Wong, his first priority is to provide ‘strategic guidance on the development and implementation of a First Nations approach to foreign policy’. Don’t ask what a ‘First Nations approach’ is in concrete terms. It seems to be just one of those nebulous concepts, like ‘indigenous knowledge’ that leftists feel good about saying.

Besides, why do we need an additional ambassador? Aboriginal Australians are citizens like everyone else. Can’t the vast, expensive and featherbedded foreign affairs establishment, with nearly 2500 staff abroad, represent all of us? Isn’t it ‘racist’ to say they can’t?

This ambassador has no embassy. He just turns up by plane (nine overseas trips last financial year) and chats to the locals about, as he enthused after addressing a Pacific audience, ‘Not only sharing our culture and the strength that we bring, but also talking about some of the challenges we are facing in our communities that we have, along with our aspirations. Yeah, it’s fantastic.’

In case you were worried that the appointment of a ‘First Nations Ambassador’ might have been, in the words of a hagiographical SBS profile dismissing any criticism of Mohamed’s diplomatic efforts, ‘just window-dressing’, be of good cheer. It has clear and precise antecedents, as the ambassador himself explains. ‘The basis of the role was already there to ensure that we have our First Nations expertise and our knowledges right across all our foreign affairs.’ Now do you understand?

Nor is this posting just a sinecure. The ambassador has no time to waste. ‘With the failure of the referendum campaign,’ says the SBS piece, ‘Ambassador Mohamed has found himself busier than ever, saying that his role has since generated more and more conversations.’

Conversations about the ‘climate catastrophe’ – to which the emissions from Mr Mohamed’s journeyings must contribute their share – no doubt take up a lot of ambassadorial time. National leaders in the Pacific seem always to be queueing up for ‘compensation’ for the alleged loss of portions of their territory that they say are sinking into the sea because of ‘global warming’. But what does the envoy do if the island he is visiting is one of the ‘hundreds’ that, as even the ABC admits, have expanded since his last visit? Ask for our money back?

It should be no surprise that the ambassador comes from race-obsessed Victoria or that he was in the Victorian government as ‘Deputy Secretary for Aboriginal Justice’. In fact he has had quite a nice career in the Aboriginal industry. According to Penny Wong’s elegantly written media handout, he ‘has also held the positions of Chief Executive Officer for Reconciliation Australia and Chairperson of the National Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisation, and he has represented Indigenous organisations internationally including at the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues’. Nor has his wife stayed in the gunyah sewing possum skins as might once have been customary in a traditional Aboriginal home. The ambassador ‘is married to Narrunga Kaurna woman Dr Janine Mohamed’, who is ‘Deputy Chief Executive Officer, First Nations’ at that august body the National Disability Insurance Agency.

A further vital task entrusted to the ambassador is, according to Penny Wong’s media team, to help the Department of Foreign Affairs ‘embed “First Nations” perspectives and experiences in all facets of its work’. Here we go again. What does that mean? Endless smoking ceremonies in Suva? Tanderrums in Tonga?

It makes you wonder how the Coalition could even contemplate doing away with such a valuable diplomatic asset.