The national Closing the Gap policy contains targets to address what is described as Indigenous disadvantage. In relation to education these targets include intentions to improve English literacy and numeracy outcomes, school attendance, early childhood education participation and Year-12 completion rates. However, in the last ten years progress on these targets has been minimal and policy to address Indigenous education appears to be at a standstill.

The Ngaga-dji Report,  titled with the Woiwurung word ‘Ngaga-dji’, meaning ‘hear me/hear us’, was released by the Koorie Youth Council in August 2018. It offers sustained insights into the challenges faced by young Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who come into contact with the criminal justice system in Victoria. These insights, drawn from children’s perspectives, are crucial for researchers, advocates, policymakers and practitioners from across a range of institutions to consider when working with young people.

The idea of history is not absent here, but it is also not neutral. It is quietly doing some important work. Through acknowledging that wrong was done in the past the policy discourse tends to cleave the past from the present. This allows the present to be imagined in contrast to the past: the past is when injustices were committed; the present is when those injustices are being redressed.

My survey suggests that women are significantly less represented as comment writers than their male peers. Over the 34-day period that I surveyed, there were eight days that contained only male writers and no days in which there were only female writers on these pages. There were four days in which the number of male and female writers was even; that is, two articles were written by men and two by women. There were four days when there were more female writers than male writers.