Musical Dispatch from the Front - The Red Herring – February 2026
Frank Baarda
Shalom,
It is all going too quickly to my liking. I’m at an age at which I’m increasingly conscious of the fact that my so far wonderful stay on this planet isn’t going to last forever. I might be run over by a steamroller or a Mr Whippy van tomorrow.
Another year and another Closing the Gap report to parliament and another anniversary of the Apology to the Stolen Generations.
The telly news was saturated by the coalition’s Machiavellian moves and the visit by the Israeli president. Only a flitting mention of Closing the Gap. I gather that only four of the Closing the Gap targets out of the expanded 19(?) have shown improvement.
In My Yuendumu Story I wrote:
Closing the Gap is a construct of non-Indigenous Australia. The defined gaps are derived from Kardiya values and priorities and perspectives. No attention is paid to the Communication Gap, the Understanding Gap and the Mutual Respect Gap. The Gap is rooted in an unshakeable belief in Kardiya superiority. (Kardiya is the Warlpiri word for non-Aborigines)
In an April 2018 Dispatch there was this:
What I call the “ethnocentrically defined Gap.” A straw man of Herculean proportions.
Not long ago our Prime Minister presented to the Australian Parliament, the 10th annual Closing the Gap Report. Jon Altman wrote a well-researched report on the Report.
[‘How The Gap Widened, And How To ‘Refresh’ The Policy Approach For Remote Indigenous Australia’ – New Matilda Magazine 26/03/2018]
Jon Altman observes that each annual report is glossier and larger than the preceding one. He also observes that what was initially aimed at holding the Government accountable to the failed national endeavour to Close the Gap has metamorphosed into an incumbent Government propaganda tool, complete with tweaked statistical data and aspects of Australia’s favourite political sport: The Blame Game.
I’ve always thought of the Government’s Closing the Gap deficit model based initiative as being a very expensive monstrous missing of the point. No amount of Refreshing, nor “we want to hear from you” will alter its doomed assimilationist trajectory.
As for Kevin Rudd’s famous sorry speech, it included:
The time has now come for the nation to turn a new page in Australia’s history by righting the wrongs of the past and so moving forward with confidence to the future.
The page is stuck.
A good thing is they can’t stop the music.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ze2PpbpCt9w&t=1s
♫ ♫ ♫ Jethro Tull - To Be Sad Is A Mad Way To Be / Back To The Family - Live in Sweden 1969
Hat the hell! - One more:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2u0XXpVGUwk
♫ ♫ ♫ Jethro Tull: Bourée
Frank