There is timing in politics, and then there is timing.
For the Coalition, this week has been an example of the latter.
What should have been a week centred on Australia's First Peoples has instead been overshadowed.
The latest Closing the Gap report — showing some improvements but also several targets moving backwards, in part due to the performance of some states and territories — was tabled in a Parliament distracted by an impending leadership spill.
When Malarndirri McCarthy and the Coalition of Peaks addressed a press conference at quarter to two in the afternoon, only a small number of journalists were present.
At the same time, 100 members of the Stolen Generations are in Canberra. On Friday, survivors of one of the most shameful chapters in the nation's history will gather in Parliament's Great Hall to mark the 18th anniversary of Kevin Rudd's 2008 apology.
Aunty Elizabeth Miller, taken from her home at birth and adopted into a non-Indigenous family, did not find her birth family until she was in her 50s. Speaking to National Indigenous Times on Thursday, she described the strength the apology gave her.
"We ended up down in front of Parliament House with all of the other people there to support Kevin Rudd with his speech," she says. "It was really deep and emotional for us."
On that February day in 2008, Aunty Miller returned to work and read a poem she had written to her CEO.
"I read a poem out and did a speech about the Stolen Generation — in front of everybody there — which is very brave of me, I thought," she says. "But, by seeing the apology, it gave me the adrenaline to go back and talk about it."
On Thursday, other survivors and their descendants said the government must do more to uncover records held in archives — documents that contain the literal histories of people who were taken, often obscured by layers of bureaucracy.
This should be the central focus of the Opposition, so many of whom — with several notable exceptions — have lambasted antisemitism and some forms of racism in this country but stayed silent on the attempted bombing of Indigenous people on January 26, which police allege was a racially motivated terrorist attack.
Instead, at 9 am, the Coalition is set to meet in its party room to try to unseat Sussan Ley, who, despite acknowledging the Prime Minister's speech and the survivors on Thursday, this week argued it was too bureaucratic to appoint a Commissioner for Indigenous children — a role advocates have sought for generations.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese — who should be facing scrutiny from the Opposition over states and territories breaching the Closing the Gap agreement — criticised the Coalition's priorities, saying their focus is on internal politics.
"Tomorrow, on the morning in which members of the Stolen Generations will attend the breakfast at eight o'clock, tomorrow morning at nine o'clock those opposite will be... filing into their party room in order to either depose or reaffirm the leader [of the Liberal Party]," he said.
In a week that could have centred on First Peoples and the unfinished work of Closing the Gap, the political focus has instead shifted inward, away from communities and the shameful failure of all governments to improve the lives of those most vulnerable.
