Imagine if, instead of returning to the USA to become its third president, Thomas Jefferson had died in France on the eve of the revolution he was sent to support. And imagine if, in the turmoil of The Terror, the location of his grave had been forgotten, and only discovered two centuries later beneath a Paris Metro station. Any US government would have made the repatriation of its foundational document’s author’s remains a national priority, and Jefferson’s home soil re-internment – beside the eponymous Washington monument, perhaps, or on a hill overlooking his beloved Monticello – would certainly have been accompanied by great fanfare and very likely attended by the sitting president, whatever his or (let’s at least acknowledge the possibility) her political stripe.

Australia’s 1901 foundational document, subject as it was to Westminster ratification, is more like a guarantee of continued Commonwealth commitment than a Declaration of Independence. And as such, the officials who composed it are now forgotten, as would be the document itself if a couple of its paragraphs had been informed with a little more foresight. Modern Australia does have its founding fathers, but unlike America’s, they were not demigods who came together at a pivotal moment in their nation’s history. They were, rather, otherwise unassuming individuals who stepped out from different crowds at very different times. Not to rally a well-established, self-sufficient population against iniquitous foreign governance, but to address the needs of a small colony struggling against the tyranny of distance and a brutally inhospitable environment. As such, they were men of action rather than intellect; explorers and pioneers rather than philosophers and statesmen. They were also, indisputably, white. But contrary to the bilious assertions of Marcia Langton & co., the reluctance of modern Australians to vote for an Aboriginal Voice to parliament last year does not make them racists; if anything, the spotlight which the referendum shone on the challenges still facing many First Nations people has increased rather than diminished our concern for their future and our understanding of their past. And I’m sure we’re all very glad that Australia’s willingness to emulate one peccadillo of American popular culture – which began with the reproduction of Coney Island’s Luna Park in our two biggest cities and continued with the placing of gigantic simulacra of local produce beside our highways – never led to the transformation of one of our more conspicuous natural landmarks into an Australian Mount Rushmore.

Even if, in a less culturally sensitive era, someone had been allowed to immortalise four dead white males in the sandstone of Uluru or Kata Tjuta, it’s debatable who we’d have chosen as our Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and Roosevelt. But Matthew Flinders would have been a contender. Not just because his circumnavigation of the continent was such an astonishing navigational feat, but because the map which resulted – and which literally defined Australia as a distinct and separate landmass – is itself a kind of declaration of independence. It is to Flinders’ further credit that unlike Cook, Phillip, Burke and Franklin, he was happy to acknowledge his great debt to an Aboriginal contemporary, Bungaree, in his achievements.

You’d think then, that when Flinders’ long-lost grave was unexpectedly discovered last year in the bowels of Euston station, the present Australian government might have requested that his remains be sent back here – much as it has thrown its weight behind requests for European and American museums to return the Aboriginal remains in their collections. But no such request was made. Even more disappointingly, when Flinders was finally laid to rest a few weeks ago in the churchyard of the Lincolnshire village of his birth, our UK High Commissioner, Stephen Smith, chose not to attend. This is the same High Commissioner who in January tried, unsuccessfully, to cancel the Australia Day London bash. He did this because, like many on the left, he is a card-carrying Invasion Day subscriber. The reason he couldn’t attend the final interment of one of one of our founding fathers is that he and Kevin Rudd, Australia’s white guilt-monger-in-chief, chose instead to accompany the taxpayer-funded repatriation of Julian Assange. An Australian whose greatest achievement so far has been to break the world sleepover record, and who, far from commanding the respect of his compatriots and the admiration of our allies, has caused us all nothing but trouble.