It’s been a long time coming but John Howard finally stepped up on the Aboriginal crisis. It’s a national scandal and disgrace, but let’s face it, the whole sorry mess has been politicised from day one and like the rest of us, Aborigines were doing terrible things to each other long before Captain Cook turned up.

It’s not surprising that since the PM’s announcement, the usual featherheaded rabble have elbowed their way to the TV cameras and the microphones. That ACT nitwit John Stanhope has described the Government’s strategy as “racist” — don’t forget he is the clown who has spent taxpayers’ money erecting a statue of that little crim, Al Grassby.

Pathetic Green Bob Brown is up there with his usual prissy bleating. Having sacrificed a medical degree to politics why doesn’t the good doctor resign and get out on the settlements and show us how it’s done? The simperings of some irrelevant Democrat senator are not worth further comment.

It must be recorded that in 1996, Pauline Hanson said that “welfare was killing Aborigines” and that ATSIC, which had squandered billions, had to be abolished. Of course, she was vilified and called “racist” by a chorus of breast-beating activists, including Noel Pearson — but thankfully times have changed.

For some strange reason the disaster that is separatism is being renamed “exceptionalism” — can’t we get rid of this PC nonsense once and for all?

Also, it’s madness to teach Aboriginal kids English as a second language and this, too, must cease forthwith. There must be no more warm and fuzzy bridge-walking, talkfests and other useless demonstrations. The states must fall in behind the Government as a matter of extreme urgency. Sure, there will be more problems, but these must be faced with the same resolve demonstrated by John Howard.