“Yet out of the very roots of the grass we shake gold. We can see the particles shining as we open pieces of the grass roots …” 

William Howitt Land, Labour and Gold; or Two Years in Victoria.

There is a gold rush on.  

This rush, however, is not of the old auriferous sort, but rather flows continually from the alluvial streams of the government purse. 

Crude racial entitlements to land, power and treasure for those with Aboriginal ancestry have grown to the point where bureaucracies with an Indigenous bent can now claim nearly double the amount of real estate on the diggings of this, the second Victorian gold rush.  

Some of the greediest pans working these modern goldfields are those of the Victorian First People’s Assembly. Set up by Premier Daniel Andrews as a sovereign entity tasked with forming a treaty ‘on equal footing’ with the Victorian State Government, the First People’s...