There is something wrong

when a child comes home from school (a state school) and asks, "Why do we have to keep doing that acknowledgment stuff?"

He apparently meant the "acknowledgment to country" which they are now required to recite in the classroom each morning. His parent explained what the acknowledgment was and his next question was, "But I have always lived here right from the very first day I was born so why is it any different for me?"

That is a much harder question to answer. Should it be different? When are we going to stop saying it is? When are we going to stop saying that land was "stolen" and that some people have more rights than others because (some of) their ancestors were here earlier? 

All this has been argued and discussed until most people are heartily sick of it all. It came up again yesterday. There is a new development on this street. There were concreting vehicles here yesterday - to pour concrete for what we think is going to be a rather large swimming pool. There were multiple other vehicles and a great many "workers" (most of whom did not appear to be doing too much) watching grey sludge slide down pipes and into the ground.

They were, as is often the case, a rough lot and their language was liberally sprinkled with words I do not use. At one point I heard one of them say, "It's a f.... bone what his dog had. Don't go finding any more or we might have one of those f....sacred sites on our hands."

Apparently one of the men had his dog with him and the dog had a bone. The worker who told me this then went on at length about the problems there are in the building industry because of sacred sites. 

I believe genuine sites should be respected but they are now well documented around here. What is extraordinary is the number of undocumented "sacred sites" that seem to appear when a planning application is made. Like the daily "acknowledgment" it seems they have become almost obligatory.  When are they going to stop?