The white-anting of ATSIC has been brought about by the usual suspects

I say lucky because they ensure essential services right around Australia are up and running.

Beadman was only half right. ATSIC was meant to be a funder of last resort.

Its programs were meant to supplement the provision of essential services to Aboriginal communities from commonwealth, state and territory governments.

But, as the Auditor General has found, it was being drawn more and more into becoming a replacement funder because those governments refused to accept their funding responsibilities to "needy Aboriginal kids everywhere" and the rest.

And while they happily shifted an ever-increasing burden to ATSIC they sat back and watched it take all the mainstream media flak from Jones et al for the lack of outcomes it was never established to address, nor given the unfettered power to fix.

Jones failed to mention ATSIS.

Let's move to the other end of the spectrum. On April 7 the raging debate about the ATSIC/ATSIS abolition saw the Melbourne Age roll out some comment from Grattan and The Australian with the thoughts of Mr Kelly.

Ms Grattan led her analysis with the accurate observation that the most radical divide had opened between the Coalition and Labor over how to handle Aboriginal affairs since the Hawke government proposed the creation of ATSIC in the late 80s.

But it all went downhill from there.

She claimed the present system is a "mess" and a "shambles" with the government using the opportunity to abandon "self-determination".

The second-last paragraph noted a plea the day before from the acting ATSIC Chairman for "ATSIC to be saved" but went on to inform readers in the final paragraph that "ATSIC has so trashed its own reputation that it has almost dealt itself out of a vitally important debate."

Pure pop.