Sam Newman at it again!

[PaulP]

No, but your assertion that the AFL games are full of endless boring speeches thanking sponsors is, those speeches basically happen once a season after the Grand Final, once a season as does the Catafalque ceremony, the Welcome to Country can probably be once a season too!

I can see you are emotionally connected to this issue, so you want to paint a picture conflating several issues into a single debate, that is the very divisive nature of this debate that I'm referring to. This isn't the US Senate, our issues do not come with riders.

Here we can openly discuss more than one issue in parallel, without the need to build dependency.

I don't feel I need to wear a cilice to make amends for things that happened generations ago, I don't have to punish myself or those around me as we are generations removed, more generations than can even be connected genetically. I have no gnashing or grinding of teeth, I can respect listen to and see people without needing to offer some compensation or be compensated.

As for the politics and the dollars, I would think it's a privilege to be offered to address the AFL crowds, such a forum is not available to most, it's not a paid public service.

And why exactly is sitting through a few minutes of a Welcome To Country any kind of punishment ?

How do you think oppressed groups in the past (women, African Americans, First Nations people) have made any kind of progress ? Do you think they just waited politely and patiently for the ruling classes to wake up ? Or do you think that any improvements are the result of decades of action by said groups, some of it bloody, some of it ugly, much of it painful and fruitless. The ruling classes don't make changes until they are made to. This has nothing to do with emotion, and everything to do with historical fact.

And where exactly is the "appropriate forum" for these types of discussions ? The footnotes of the Hansard ? The graveyard shift of some community radio station with 3 listeners ?