LET me put it this way: if Australia is not a racist country then there are millions of us every day putting in Academy Award-worthy portrayals of raving mad bigots.

How many times have you plonked yourself in a taxi in this country and been deluged with a litany of derogatory terms about every minority imaginable. And that’s just for cab fares below $5.

But the point that has to be made in the wake of the truly remarkable and – I believe – culturally significant Andrew Johns-Timana Tahu incident is not going to be illustrated by what the cab driver says to you in that sitation.

No. The point Timana is trying to make is about how you react.

Only you know if you are a racist. Only you know if you truly consider other ethnic, cultural and racial groups lower forms of humanity.

But when Gus the cabbie raves to you about ‘black c****’ and ‘greasy wogs’ and ‘slopes’, what do you do? Chances are, like me, you don’t order the cab be stopped and leap out after registering your disgust.

Chances are you refuse to engage in the conversation and concentrate on your destination – or worse, you laugh along in the safe knowledge that no-one from the group being pilloried will ever find out about your little secret.

Timana Tahu has been on that cab ride, biting his tongue, for a couple of decades apparently. On Friday night, from what I can tell, he decided to tell the cabbie to stop and got out – right in the most dangerous part of town. The part of town where his representative future risks being mugged and killed.

This is is a milestone for race relations in Australia. I could say kids learn racism from their parents but again, only you know if you are truly a racist.

So let’s rephrase. Kids learn to SAY racist things from their parents. And they learn their attitudes from those same comments. Timana Tahu has risked his standing in the tightly-knit world of rugby league to short-circuit that process – a tradition that is centuries old in this country.

I am writing this column from Townsville. Earlier this season at Dairy Farmers Stadium, I saw a young white kid pester his parents for an Indigenous jersey. It was glamorous to him. That’s what the Allstars game did.

If another kid admonishes his dad somewhere in middle Australia next time his old man says “coon”, because of what Timana Tahu did on Saturday, then never mind his time at Newcastle – Tahu deserves to be made a fair dinkum knight.

I am not setting myself up as a saint here. I repeated racist jokes into my 30s. It took me three decades to learn that racist jokes were offensive and hurtful. Thanks to Timana and others who take a stand, it should not take the current generation anywhere near that long.

The other thing ‘T’ has done with the criticism he’s attracted is he’s tricked the narrow-minded, misguided masses into exposing themselves – one by one on the bottom of web news stories when they criticise him.

People say they hope we never become as politically correct as the UK. I'll be unequivocal here: I dearly hope we do. It would eliminate my only sense of embarrassment about being Australian.

You might say the Johns family seems cursed, that Matty and Joey have got in too much trouble for everything to be kosher and for them to be good people.

I know them a bit. They are good people. Joey is not a racist and Matty is not a sex fiend. (That's Johns pictured, above, mucking around with Tahu at NSW training in Wollongong on May 20.)

Joey and Matty are just average Aussie blokes.

But as the American comedian Robin Williams said: 'Australians are like redneck English people'. The average Aussie bloke lives in a vortex, 10 years behind the rest of the world.

The things is, in the face of all those people slamming Timana Tahu as “soft” and worse, we have to realise the average Aussie bloke is often just plain wrong and is on borrowed time.

In fact, the sooner we see the end of the Average Aussie Bloke, the better.