Most readers will recall the unseemliness, violence and still-lingering political odours surrounding this year’s Australia Day incident in Canberra—the riot which was said to have arisen from that long-festering slum called the Aboriginal Tent Embassy. Sceptical minds tend rather to think that its seeds might have been germinated in the private office of the Prime Minister herself; media reports made much of the fact that, in the ensuing fracas and the security hustling, the Prime Minister lost a shoe. A wit of my acquaintance instantly exclaimed: “That’s no big deal, surely? They can just nail it back on again.” He…