ERROL PARKER | Editor-at-large | Contact
A senior public servant at the Department of Private Infrastructure & Privatisation (DPIP) spent the afternoon trawling YouTube for the perfect Acknowledgement of Country to play before a meeting at 3pm.
Executive Director of the Finance & Foreign Investment team, Wendy Rixon, finally settled on an official one from the Wagga Wagga Chamber of Commerce for a few reasons.
The first, she tells The Advocate, is that the video had a nice backing track.
There was also some nice videos at the start of birds flying over Kakadu.
“But what really got me over the line was a bit of language,” she said.
“So nice.”
Standard protocol at DPIP is for someone to acknowledge the country that the meeting is taking place on at the beginning. A few words about why it’s important and why we do it, the DPIP guidelines say.
But Wendy explained that can be tedious, especially for her and other extremely well-numerated employees over the age of 75.
“Sometimes, you just run out of things to say. It ends up as being as arbitrary as taking attendance. With a nice YouTube video at the top, it feels much more engaging. It’s more fun for everyone. Look, the Acknowledgement of Country is something we all have to do now so we might as well do it properly,” she said.
“So that’s why I think it’s best to leave it to the experts on YouTube. I mean, I didn’t have anything else to do this afternoon.”
More to come.
