Critiquing Australian arts and culture cannot be a privilege that is afforded to just one community in a country that is home to people who identify with more than 270 ancestries.

The latest musical due to hit the Arts Centre in Melbourne Australia during March 2020, is Rolling Thunder Vietnam. ‘Rolling Thunder’ was the code name used by the Americans for their campaign to carpet bomb North Vietnam during the Vietnam/American War. An equivalent would be naming a song and dance show Operation Desert Storm – the Musical. This would be unthinkable. But clearly Vietnam is no longer a war. It's entertainment.

When non-Polynesians represent people from the South Pacific, they play God with our lives and stories: they construct fantasies about palm trees, oceans, fresh air, fit Brown women in coconut bras and large Brown men yielding spears. At the heart of this issue is the fact that we are not the storytellers.