On St Patrick's Day 1972, when Prime Minister McMahon asked ‘Nugget’ Coombs to comment on six weeks of public reactions to his Australia Day speech, Coombs responded that he had anticipated that: ‘urban Aborigines would be hostile since their support for land claims was essentially political and concerned with recognition of Aboriginal identity’. He contrasted them with ‘Aborigines in the areas concerned [who] would not in the early stages understand the proposals … their attitude would emerge as they were given an opportunity to study the implications of the proposals …’

The distinctions he made in this reply must be noted. One group of Aborigines (urban) could be expected to understand and react more quickly than another (remote). However, Coombs' words imply an additional distinction. The reactions of Aboriginal people ‘in the areas concerned’ – the Northern Territory reserve lands – could not be inferred from urban Aboriginal responses, because these two kinds of indigenous Australian had different concerns. Those of the urban Aborigines were political, to do with their identity. Coombs' dichotomisation of the Aboriginal constituency contrasted political worries about identity with less articulate concerns about the land itself.

This contrast was reinforced by a common distinction, in the language of academics, politicians and policy intellectuals, between ‘Aborigines’ and ‘part-Aborigines’, between ‘full-blood’ and ‘half-caste’, between those retaining Aboriginal culture and those who had lost it. In the CAA's thinking about its representation of indigenous interests, such distinctions were never far away, even if they sometimes made Coombs, Dexter and Stanner uneasy.