ANTHONY Mundine has several talents. He played a little rugby league and he can box a bit. His best skill, if that's the word, is whingeing. He whinges a lot.

If whingeing was a sport, he'd have a perfect score, unlike his record in boxing, which he squeezes in between bouts of whingeing. Mundine models himself on Muhammad Ali, except that Mundine - outside of the ring at least - floats like a blowfly and stings like a flea.

In his latest assault on logic, Mundine had planned to turn his back, or sit down, during the singing of the national anthem before his fight against Daniel Geale, also Aboriginal, on January 30.

The fight, for a world title, first attracted news headlines when Mundine decided that Geale wasn't really Aboriginal. And that Tasmanian Aborigines had been wiped out. Mundine also announced that Geale had married a "white woman" and had "white kids".

It seems that Mundine can spot colour, yet that he cannot see class, an observation confirmed when he later tried to apologise. And he said that Geale did nothing for Aboriginal communities - unlike him. And that Australia was a racist country. And that Australia needed a new flag and anthem.

A theme was emerging. Rather, a theme was re-emerging. Mundine doesn't appear to like Australia very much. He never has, if his public statements are any gauge. Whether those match his private thoughts, or are instead confected misstatements, slogans and insults in the pursuit of publicity, is unclear.

Mundine might have something to offer boxing, when he deigns to box here and there. Yet he has little to contribute to public life, not as long as he leverages his own heritage against other Aborigines and blows his celebrity platform to disparage those who veer into his sights. Whitefellas. Aborigines. Anyone. Everyone.

Mundine once said that Cathy Freeman needed to stand up for her people. That she is so true to herself shows that he doesn't grasp the connections between Australia and Freeman.

He said that words last an eternity, yet he cannot fashion them, as genuine leaders in the Aboriginal community do, to tell a story or plant a message.

Hints here and there suggest Mundine's background is deep with familiar plights and spiritual upsets. Early on, he sounded like a genuine soul who wanted to mentor Aboriginal teens who fell into booze and drugs.

"I want to make a difference for the next generation," he said in 2000. Yet Mundine appears unburdened by history, context or finesse. He once used to be vaguely amusing, but over time that eroded to a lack of sensitivity or care for facts or feelings. "His people", as he calls them, are his hangers-on. A journalist wrote soon after Mundine ended his rugby league career that he was "agitating on behalf of no one other than himself".

The pity? Our shared past should be held to the light on many issues, as it always is at this time of the year, when our celebration of ourselves gets tethered to the handwringing about everything collectively done since Sydney was settled on January 26, 1788.

Mundine is our nomination for the Australian of the Year, in a new category of "Obnoxious". He beats a strong field, bolstered in recent days with several nominations from Katter's Australian Party. There was the Liberals' Cory Bernardi suggesting that same-sex marriage could lead to legalised bestiality. There were the antics of mining magnate Clive Palmer and his stunt double, Wayne Swan.

Yet Mundine's mantle goes unquestioned. His petulance has been sustained since the turn of the millennium. Who can beat the guy who once said that America brought 9/11 upon itself, then say he was taken out of context, then later apologised for what he had said he hadn't said even though it was plain he had said it? Where have Nicola Roxon and her naughty mat been all these years?

Not long ago, actor Gerard Depardieu gave up his nationality to embrace another. After years of bitching about the French, Depardieu gave up being French.

Let's hope Mundine stopped trash-talking enough to see the possibilities in this example.

"Au Revoir, Australia". Given his whingeing, it's an idea that would appear to work for both Mundine and every other Australian.