News is just now hitting the Oz airwaves that the Sorry Song has been banned at a Queensland school. The national broadcaster ABC markets a lot of items, including a songbook or two and one of these contains a song by Kerry Fletcher and the Coexistence Voices in which the notion of saying sorry for past wrongs done against our Indigenous people forms the main text.

To describe the context for nonOz 'catters, there was a recent thread about "Great white father" which went into some detail about dispossession, Terra nullius and the Stolen Generations; sorry, but I can't do blue clickies. The Prime Minister in the current Govt (a coalition between the right-wing "Liberal Party" and the more or less rednecked National Party) has steadfastly refused to even countenance any notion of an apology for such history and so the concept of "Sorry" has a particular meaning in Oz.

The pupils at the (State run) primary school were just singing songs out of the song book published by the (Commonwealth Govt run) ABC. A parent took offence that their offspring were being ideologically brainwashed and protested to the school's principal, who promptly banned any singing of the song at the school. An MP in the State parliament (and from one of the Coalition parties above but in Opposition at State level) has supported the principal's stand in the terms ("ideologically brainwashing") I mentioned and is recommending wider banning.

Censorship is still with us folks!
Unfortunately I can't find a copy of the words or I'd give them a wider circulation on Mudcat.

Sadly, and outraged, Rowan