Alan Carpenter, indigenous affairs minister for western Australia, has only just stepped into the radio studio when the flirting starts.

"You got a wife?" coos Mary G, his host, before he's had a chance to settle in his seat. "I can sit in your lap if you want," she trills a few minutes later.

It's Wednesday night, and in remote communities all across northern Australia thousands of people are tuned into "The Mary G Show," giggling at the to-and-fro between the politician and the Aboriginal radio host with a reputation for conducting on-air flirtations.

The humor is largely sophomoric, the music eclectic. This could be almost any community radio show with a cult following. But there's something very different about Mary G.

First, she's a genuine star - she also hosts a nationally televised variety show in Australia.

Then there's the fact that along with all the winks and nudges, she delivers important messages about things like nutrition and respecting your elders.

And finally, there's the little detail that Mary G is really a man - think Aboriginal Mrs. Doubtfire.

But what may be most important about Mary G is what her show says about the role women play in Australia's indigenous communities and the intricate kinship system that governs life in what is often described as the world's oldest living culture.

Mark Bin Bakar, the slightly meek, goateed comedian and DJ who plays Mary G, insists he never planned to have an alter ego. But when he was bored one night in 1995, he began talking to himself on the air in a funny voice, and Mary G was born.

"Mary just walked in and said something like, 'Hello, dahling, you got a wife? I wouldn't mind meeting her,' " recalls Mr. Bin Bakar. Not long after that the phone lines started lighting up.

" 'Mary' gave Mark a hard time the first time she went to air, and people in the community were quite offended by that," he recalls. "They said: 'Who's this woman talking to Mark? She shouldn't be talking to Mark like that.' "

It didn't take long for people to see through Bin Bakar's ventriloquism. But by that time Mary G was entrenched in his weekly routine, and within two years she had her own show going out across Australia on an Aboriginal radio network.

Over the years, Mary G has evolved into a distinct persona based partially on Bin Bakar's mother, who is one of thousands of members of the so-called "Stolen Generations." These Aboriginal men and women were removed from their families as children and put into orphanages as part of government assimilationist policies practiced for much of the 20th century.

Bin Baker drew Mary G's sense of humor from his mother. She and her friends had joked about their ordeal - and whatever other obstacles they encountered - the whole time he was growing up.

"There's so much pain they carry inside, and yet they can laugh at anything," he says.

The rest of Mary G, Bin Bakar says, is modeled on the elderly "aunties" who rule both family and community life in many Aboriginal communities.

With one of these women, "You don't know whether she's hot or cold sometimes because one minute she's all over you - 'I love you, my darling, and you're a really good little kid.' And the next moment she's saying, 'Don't talk to your mother like that!' " he says. "Every family has a Mary G. She keeps people balanced. She keeps people knowing who they are, where they sit in the world."

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