When I first saw the newspaper advertisementsfor the Coalition's proposed tax reform I was struck by the people in it — their whiteness and their white (British) names — Marge and Dave, Doug and Betty, Sylvia and Alistair and their children Alex and Kate, Michelle and her daughter Chelsea and so on. It was not that it came as a surprise; rather it was the recognition of a normalising of white culture firmly based in British traditions and heritage. Here was ‘white’ presented as homogeneous (we are all white), which denies the degrees of whiteness referred to by writers on whiteness. It caused me to reflect on John Howard's understanding of Australia, his view of Australia's past. His focus on a British white heritage is mirrored by his focus on Aboriginality. This is the key to understanding what the government sponsored advertisements reveal, either consciously or unconsciously, and the particularity of their representation of ‘white’ society. I argue that the implicit agenda of the tax reform advertisement campaign, with its concept of homogeneous whiteness, is the demise of Aboriginality as well as multiculturalism, and the effacing of otherness.