Spare a thought for the poor columnist. This newspaper, mindful of the need to present its political coverage in a fair and balanced way has suggested that I might like to refrain from writing about contemporary politics until after the election.

It’s a good call and I respect the need to curb the excesses of a left-leaning, shrubhugger who is unlikely to have a good word to say about our environmentally myopic politicians until they wake up.

Therefore, once again we’ll leave the here-and-now and revisit another place far from here in both time and space.

In 1998 the NT Government decided it was time for the Northern Territory to become a state, with all the rights and privileges enjoyed by other Australians. A Statehood Convention was established, to be followed by a referendum to demonstrate Territorians’ support.

The results shocked the Country Liberal Party government. A majority of Territorians voted ‘NO’ to statehood, even though many of them wanted the Territory to gain independence from the Federal Government. It was the dominance of the CLP in Territory life that made it difficult for it to get the support of other groups, particularly the Land Councils and the Labor opposition.

Aboriginal people too, were suspicious of the NT Government’s motives and mostly did not support it.

Then the following year, when the whole country voted in another referendum, this time on whether to become a republic, once again there was little enthusiasm from Indigenous Australia.

Aboriginal people well understand that their status in this country changed forever when Captain Cook claimed the whole place for the British Crown. What they were less clear about was why the whitefellas wanted to ditch the Queen. In fact, HRH Elizabeth II had even stopped at Tennant Creek one stinking hot day in 1963 and swatted flies with the locals. ‘Better the devil you know’ probably sums it up.

One warm evening in Tennant Creek, not long after the ‘YES’ vote had been soundly defeated, the auto-teller at the ANZ bank suffered a serendipitous breakdown. It started dispensing cash to all card holders regardless of their account balance.

Word spread through the Wumpurrarni population at light speed. It was rumoured that the Queen was rewarding her loyal subjects for voting ‘NO’ to the republic by handing out cash to everyone. A queue formed along the footpath outside the bank and money was reefed from the slot until the machine was emptied.

Predictably enough, the auto-teller’s generosity was not echoed by the bank staff when they arrived the next day and examined the transaction records. Their response was to advise those people who had overdrawn their accounts that the money would be deducted from the next fortnight’s pay.

For many people this would have meant no money at all for several weeks and it took the intervention of the local Member of Parliament to encourage the bank to agree to getting its money back over a longer, but more reasonable, period of time.

So there you go. When you’re out in the middle of nowhere, auto-teller or little blue-green planet, doesn’t matter; if we take all that’s offered without thinking, eventually we’ll have to pay for it.