Senator Macdonald says
it looks ramshackle.
Well Senator, it is a tent,
it's asking white Australia
to pay the bloody rent.

You told the bully boys
to pull it down in 72,
but Aboriginal women and men
just put it up again.

You claim it is an eyesore
that it stops you seeing all the sore eyes,
that Trachoma still blinds,
and a clean water supply would fix.

Blacks should find another way
to express their undoubted gratitude
for 18 times the incarceration rates,
dying ten to 20 years younger than whites,
and for dispossession of such magnitude.

You say the tent's been there too long.
27 years too long.
27 years of heartbreak and tears,
as their babies die at three times the rates of whites.
Their mortality - their reality.
The long years spent.
Perhaps, it's time
to pay the rent.
But,
you say that we should
replace it with an ornament,
after all it's just a tent.
A garden gnome wouldn't do.
What about an Aborigine
standing on one leg holding a spear.
We could have 27 of them,
one for every year
the embassy has stood:
and for all the years
you've never really understood:
that it celebrates survival
211 years since your arrival.
It's in the parliamentary triangle.
We need some fancy dingle dangle
that would look nice,
at not too great a price.
Something to adorn
the parliamentary lawn,
with a message that was mute.
Now, that would