Why closing the gap starts with our children

Episode Description

In the inaugural episode of Kids, Culture, Community – SNAICC Yarns, Arrernte and Luritja woman Catherine Liddle, CEO of SNAICC, sits down with Mandy Taylor, Executive Director of the Office of the CEO, to discuss the work SNAICC is doing to advocate for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children, families and communities. They speak on the organisation’s history and its focus on policy, service delivery and programs that empower Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander organisations and communities.

With the Federal Election 2025 just around the corner, the conversation shifts to the importance of bipartisan support in closing the gap and addressing the issues facing Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and families. Catherine and Mandy speak on the need for politicians to stop using Aboriginal children as political footballs and, instead, commit to long-term, community-led solutions that truly strengthen families and communities.

Keep the conversation going—follow and share this podcast to help amplify the voices of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children, families, and communities.

As the election approaches, it’s important to make your vote count.

While SNAICC never tells people how to vote, we encourage you to think about what matters most to you and your community. Reach out to your politicians and ask how they plan to invest in children and respond to the unique needs of your community. How will they support what’s good in your community? Remember, vote like our kids depend on it—because they do.

Stay informed and find out more about the candidates in your area at ABC’s Federal Election Guide.

Links & Further Reading:

SNAICC

• History
• Our Work
• Connected Beginnings

National Agreement on Closing the Gap

• Outcome 3 | Closing the Gap
• Outcome 4 | Closing the Gap
• Outcome 11 | Closing the Gap
• Outcome 12 | Closing the Gap
• Outcome 13 | Closing the Gap

Relevant Media Release

• Goodbye Activity Test – more families able to access early education and care
• Scrapping Activity Test a gamechanger for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children
• SNAICC Welcomes Step in National Commissioner for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Young People

This artwork was created to visually represent Kids, Culture, Community – SNAICC Yarns, a podcast by SNAICC – National Voice for our Children, dedicated to amplifying the voices and experiences of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children, families, and communities.

At the heart of the artwork is a central motif drawn directly from the SNAICC Marulu design – a symbolic anchor that represents SNAICC’s identity, purpose, and vision. This central element grounds the piece, reflecting SNAICC’s leadership in advocating for the rights, wellbeing, and futures of our children.

Surrounding this are three figures, symbolising a community in conversation. These figures represent not only the act of yarning, but the diversity of voices – children, families, Elders, leaders, and community members – who will be heard through the podcast. The figures are encircled by layered soundwaves that ripple outward and inward, capturing both the expression of voice and the act of deep listening.

These soundwaves reflect how stories, knowledge, and lived experiences are shared, received, and echoed across communities – from grassroots voices to national conversations. The design intentionally shows sound as both something that travels outward to inform and inspire, and something that returns inward to strengthen identity, connection, and culture.

Content Warning: SNAICC advises Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people that this episode of Kids, Culture, Community – SNAICC Yarns contains references to topics that may be triggering to the community. Your social and emotional safety is important. If this recording has brought up any concerns or issues for you, please contact 13YARN on 13 92 76

Mandy Taylor

Welcome everyone to our first special introductory SNAICC podcast. We’re so happy you can join us. My name is Mandy Taylor. I’m the Executive Director of the Office of the CEO at SNAICC. Big title. Basically, what it means is I work to make sure my boss has got everything she needs to do her job. Talking of my boss, I’d like to introduce her—SNAICC CEO Catherine Liddle.

Catherine Liddle

Hey Mandy. I guess people know who I am as the CEO, but maybe you don’t know where I’m from—and that would be the heart of Alice Springs—Mparntwe—being an Mparntwe Arrernte person, but also on my grandmother’s side and on the side of which I follow a lot of my stories, takes me out to the Pertame Matutjara lands. So that takes you through Watarrka National Park and Uluṟu, which is the land of those beautiful sand hills and the beautiful rivers and the beautiful desert oaks. It’s nice to be with you!

Mandy Taylor

Thanks Catherine, and as you know, I’m lucky enough to make my home Mparntwe Alice Springs as well—lucky enough to live and work and be with my family on these beautiful lands of the Arrernte Nation. And can I ask you to give our Acknowledgement of Country, please?

Catherine Liddle

Absolutely. So, for this particular episode, I’m going to acknowledge that I’m sitting on the lands of the Wurundjeri mob here in Narrm, part of that great Kulin Nation. It is a beautiful day, and if you could see out my window, you’d be looking at a slightly overcast day. And I tell you what—every time I look at that overcast day, I actually think it’s hauntingly beautiful. It’s one of my favourite seasons of the day. You know, how they say Melbourne has four seasons in a day? This is the one that makes me just sit down and just be. I just be when it’s haunting like this.

Mandy Taylor

Yes, there’s something about Narrm in that early autumn. But let me ground you to where I am—and I’m, of course, in Mparntwe Alice Springs. And as I look out my window, it is the most beautiful big blue sky. And we’ve been lucky enough to have a little bit of rain recently. So, we’ve got the big blue sky, everything is green and fresh, the wildflowers are starting to bloom, a little bit of water in the waterholes has been topped up. It was a long, hot summer, as you know Catherine, and you know what it’s like at home after rain—so beautiful. And it also demonstrates—look, you’re in Narrm, I’m in Mparntwe, SNAICC truly is a national organisation.

Catherine Liddle

Yeah, incredible, hey? Incredible.

Mandy Taylor

Now, I thought we might start off with—you know, I’m sure most people are pretty familiar with SNAICC, and they know who we are and what we do, but for those who don’t, maybe we should talk a little bit about what SNAICC does, Catherine—and how we do it, and where we do it.

Catherine Liddle

Ah, wow. You know what? I never know where to start on this journey, so why don’t I start at the start? SNAICC was stood up around—in the 1980s—and it was stood up by our incredible medical services and legal services and our incredible communities who were basically saying—you know, when we look at what’s happening in Australia, we’ve got to put children first. And we know that some of the worst policies ever designed in Australia—ever implemented in Australia—related to children. We’ve got to find a way to put those children front and centre. You know, we need all these great services around us, but until we have a voice that can take the stories of our children, the aspirations of our families and our communities to government to think differently about how they work with our communities, how you keep families strong and safe, we’re going to continue to have this problem.

So, they came up with the peak body—SNAICC—the Secretariat of National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Child Care. Oh, my goodness, what an incredible name. Very, very synergetic with the 1980s. And I often reflect on that because time has changed—and changed in so many ways. These days, as most of you would know, we’re known as the National Voice for our Children. And that was really a recognition that the journey had changed, and how we even use language is changing. So that’s what we do these days. We keep pace with what is happening and forecast what might be coming. We do that in multiple ways.

One—we have three arms of business. The first is—in no particular order—the first would be our policy arm. You mob are all familiar with that. It’s been around for a very long time. A lot of you would know the work that they did to get up the Royal Commission into the Stolen Generations. A lot of you would know the work that they’ve done consistently to fight for better legislation around access to early education and care, better access to the child placement principle—pushing for that to be legislated—the Aboriginal Child Placement Principle. So—incredible, incredible pieces of work in there.

But as we’ve grown and evolved, we’ve been able to look at how we might do things differently. And our sector leaned in and it said, listen, we’ve got these incredible services, but we need a different way to come together. Can we start looking at a backbone—a type of backbone operation—that we can reach into and reach out of whenever we need to, to help us really concentrate on what we need to do, and that is delivering services for our children? So our Programs arm is now up and running, and it does our front-facing work. It is as big as our Policy arm these days. And a lot of you on the ground—if you are in services—will come into contact with that team. That team has been extraordinary in the deployment of incredible backbone programs like Connected Beginnings, they’ve started on the transfer of service delivery for early education and care services that might have been hosting the Connected Beginnings Framework into the Aboriginal community-controlled sector. They’re on the ground constantly working with communities on better ways to identify things—like those really pointy things like child sexual abuse—and how we work in ways that protect our families. They bring that voice in consistently. And one of the comments I heard very recently that speaks to how successful they were came from a fellow peak who said, listen, we’ve got to have a chat to SNAICC as the loudest and most successful backbone provider in the country. And that really was a moment to sit back and reflect and go—Wow, great work you mob, great work.

And as you identified Mandy, right in the middle, we have the Office of the CEO and that piece of work sits across the whole business and says, well, how do we translate? How do we tell people this story of what SNAICC does? How do we communicate with our communities? How do we communicate with our politicians? How do we communicate with stakeholders? It does a lot of the thinking about how we could talk differently, speak differently—and of course, it includes our incredible Comms team, but also our incredible Backbone teams as well. One of the things we’ve learned as we’ve been growing is—the truth of the matter is, and I think you picked it up a little bit earlier on—all of these arms need each other. And it is incredible to know that our sector now has those arms to wrap around them.

Mandy Taylor

It is, Catherine, and I just love the work that Programs do because they are the ones that hit the ground. They connect us to the work that’s happening at the grassroots. They connect us to the children. And I just love going out on the ground with our Programs team. But also, as you said, I just wanted to pick up on that because you’re a storyteller.

Catherine Liddle

Mhmm!

Mandy Taylor

My background, as you know, is all about storytelling in some way, shape or form as well. And I think that’s what SNAICC does really well—it tries to tell the story. And it’s interesting with our name as well—you know, you talked about the acronym—now we’re known as SNAICC – National Voice for our Children. Often, when I go out there and people say, hey, what—who do you work for? And I go, I work for SNAICC – the National Voice for our Children. And people can look at you a little odd and go what’s SNAICC?

[Mandy and Catherine laugh.]

Mandy Taylor

But it reminds me all the time—I remember hearing you tell this story a few times—and it says that snakes aren’t just scary, you know, creatures. Snakes are real protectors.

Catherine Liddle

Oh yeah, they are, as totems, they were incredible. They were changemakers. Snakes change the world. And there are a couple of snake stories that go through my country, and I often share them with mob.

One relates to Wanampi, the Rainbow Serpent. Now, he is remarkable. He’s scary. I mean, he’s bright and he’s beautiful. He brings these incredible storm fronts that churn up the earth, that create the rivers, that nurture the trees, that ensure that we have enough water for our animals to drink. But in doing that—you know—they change the landscape. And they change the landscape forever. That’s when you know it’s Wanampi—if the landscape changes forever, that was Wanampi. And they teach you these incredible stories about how to respond to transformation—is the modern word for it—but how you respond to change. And an understanding that big changes have happened in our country for thousands and thousands of years. And we’ve always understood, as Aboriginal people, that it is much easier to convey those messages in story because you remember them. And when you hit a moment in time, when those big serpents might be moving, you can understand it better. You know this is something that you get through. It is sometimes a little bit scary, because change is always a little bit uncomfortable, but there’s always a way through it. And we know that at the end of it, we’ll find a different way through.

And as you said—one of the other big ones that my family is very, very connected to—and this sits with my Nana’s side—we refer to ourselves as belonging to the Kuniya. And that Kuniya, if you’ve ever been to Uluṟu, was the giant snake that wraps around the base there. And the Kuniya’s job was to protect children. You know—she’s moved the earth to protect her children. She’s gouged new rivers. She’s moved at speed. She’s created mountains—all to protect her children. And ultimately, in fighting for children, she loses her babies. And the pain of that loss means that she’s forever frozen, and she’s forever sitting at the base of that beautiful, beautiful monolith. And she stands as a reminder of what women will do—of what we will do as protectors of our children—and how we’ll always protect our children, how we are fierce. But she also reminds us of the incredible risks we have in raising children. She also reminds us of the pain that comes when you lose a child.

Because in the old days—and it was one of the stories that my Nana used to tell us at night time—was, you’d go to Uluṟu and you’d sing out to the Kuniya. You know, you’d say ‘kapi ay, kapi ay!’, and that beautiful, beautiful serpent—she would squeeze that rock, and down would come the water. And it was how you knew you were a TO, that’s how you knew were a TO, and you’d be able to drink that water. But then you ran away. And you ran away really quickly. Because, poor thing, she was damaged. She was damaged. And because she was damaged, you might get hurt. And again, I think it tells us there are so many stories embedded in that story that we understand today.

And in my brain, I translate that and transfer that to the type of work that I do at SNAICC, so in many ways I often wonder if it was that Kuniya that said see that organisation over there? That one might be the right one for you because you belong to me.

Mandy Taylor

And what a beautiful way of putting it, as well Catherine, and linking it to that serpent story is the SNAICC story in so many ways, with so many layers of the story. It’s so illustrative of the work that we do with children. Now, I’m going to make a bit of a cheeky link, but we’ve been talking about snakes, and now I’m going to talk about politics.

[Mandy and Catherine laugh.]

Catherine Liddle

It’s not so cheeky, not so cheeky.

Mandy Taylor

Ah yeah, so—you and I—a lot of the work we do is about getting in those rooms and talking to politicians about the work that SNAICC does, and you talk to them about why it is so important that politicians back the work of SNAICC, they back the work that is led by and determined by Aboriginal communities and Aboriginal families. So, and of course, now we’re in an election period.

Catherine Liddle

Yeah.

Mandy Taylor

There’s going to be an election in a couple of weeks. I thought it might be a good time to talk about what SNAICC is prioritising, and what we’re calling for from the result of this election. Because going into it, you and I have talked a lot—the team’s talked a lot about—there are so many people who are looking at Aboriginal children in an election context and maybe not in a really good lens. And I really like how you talk about, you know, not making Aboriginal children political footballs.

Catherine Liddle

Mhmm.

Mandy Taylor

And, you know, we need those bipartisan commitments, don’t we?

Catherine Liddle

Bipartisan commitments are fundamental. I think it’s—again—when you reflect on recent movements—you know, the National Agreement on Closing the Gap—that was all about saying: you can’t keep bouncing us from election to election. You can’t keep kicking us whenever you think that you need a headline, whenever you think that you need a bit of populist boost. It was an extraordinary time when all governments came together—all colours of government, all layers of government—came together and said, you know what, we really do need to move some things, and the only way to move them is to genuinely work together.

And as you say, I’m a storyteller, and I’ve been reflecting on the journey of that national agreement — which, at the heart of it lays our children, because we know closing the gap starts with our children. Aboriginal communities have known it forever: if you have strong children, then you have a strong community. Everything is working together. I was thinking about how you can describe this — what does this stuff mean if you don’t work in it, live it, breathe it? It sounds so abstract. So how do you explain those things? I often think about it when I’m sitting on planes. Essentially, what we have is a plane that was built in partnership with Aboriginal people and all those governments. We said, look, if we’re going to be able to look up and look around at everything around us and be able to start bringing it together then we need to build this plane together, and we need to be flying it together. And again, when you’re in a plane, you’d all know that you get bumped a little bit, get pushed around a little bit. Those are the different winds that come in. Election cycles very much represent those winds that are bumping that plane around. Sometimes they’re little, tiny bumps that make your coffee move just a little. Sometimes they’re those bumps that make your stomach drop. And that’s one of the things with elections, right? They can be a little bump, or they can be that heart-stopping moment where you think, I don’t know what’s coming.

Unfortunately—and we have to be honest—some of those election cycles previous to this one have been a bit ugly. They’ve been ugly when it comes to our children, because instead of picking our children up and nurturing them, instead of going that distance that says we will do anything to protect children as a community, they genuinely have said, let’s kick you over here, let’s kick you over there, let’s respond to this narrative of an increasing crime wave, let’s respond to the narrative that Aboriginal families don’t look after their children—when all the evidence says that story is wrong. When all the evidence shows that, in actual fact, across the nation, crime rates have been dropping. All the evidence shows that when you invest in your families, they have strong, safe children. When you invest in Aboriginal community-controlled solutions, we have this incredible ability to wrap around our families, bring them along on a journey that celebrates how remarkable they are, how strong they are. And yet it gets overridden by an easy narrative that says crime is out of control, let’s lock children up, let’s take more children away.

So when you’re flying that plane through those winds, it gets a little bit scary sometimes. It takes a fair bit of energy to be trusting that the plane is strong enough—that the pilots have the right line of sight. That’s why we need bipartisan support. Because unless those pilots are all flying that plane together, it’s going to have a really rocky time finishing that flight successfully. So, this is that moment where we have to really lean in and go on this election, this federal election which is the piece that ties everything together, encourage—encourage with all your might and all your heart your leaders to genuinely care about children. To genuinely step up to what leadership means. And that means investing in those things that stop the harm, that make families strong, and that show you truly care about children by listening to your communities and investing in your communities.

Mandy Taylor

You often say, Catherine, that closing the gap starts with our children—that it should come above politics. We know that sometimes it doesn’t. So what is one of those particular things that you want to see everyone—every politician, every party—get behind that will make a difference?

Catherine Liddle

Oh look, the first one is just stop it. Just stop kicking the football. Stop it. These are children. If you truly care about children then invest in what keeps them safe and strong, those are the things that mean children are connected to their family, so fundamental to identity and success. Invest in those things that keeps families strong. Invest in those things that mean children, our children, like any other child in the country, is able to go through early education and care, have a successful transition into school, be protected in school, celebrate their learning journeys, and then be strong enough to enter the world into any career path or choice that they might need.

Now we know that starts with those incredible investments into early education and care, those incredible Aboriginal organisations that we have out there that wrap around our services. It means investing in solutions and programs that are developed and designed by communities on the ground because they know what keeps their children strong and connected. It means ensuring that we’re not having silly conversations about removing children, but rather talking to families about what keeps them strong. And you know, we know that if you have a house to live in, we know that if you have food on the table, we know that if your families have the opportunity to engage in the workforce, we know that if your children are able to walk into schools strong and ready to learn, culturally strong in their identity, the trajectory in the story changes dramatically, and it changes fast. The problem we have is every three to four years, somebody wants to reinvent that journey.

Mandy Taylor

That’s true, and suddenly we’re having to do a 360 or a doughnut and head down a different road. And as you said, it might be a road with great big potholes in it, it might be a road that’s not properly formed because people haven’t taken the time to look at the evidence, to look at what works, and to listen to the voices of the communities and of our children. But I wanted to say something, as well, before the election was called, we did have the budget, and there were a couple of positive measures in the budget. We like to give credit where credit’s due. I was really, I don’t know about you, but I was really pleased to hear the Treasurer, Jim Chalmers, reference child care, early education and care so strongly. You know, he’s acknowledged its importance. And I guess that commitment to reforming—that $5 billion commitment to reforming early education and care that was in the budget is a really important foundation that will help shift the dial. Now, that wraps up some of the funding that will go to our services—to ACCO services. But I guess the big one was abolishing the childcare activity test.

Catherine Liddle

Oh my goodness, who’d have ever thought we’d be saying that? And it was, it was an election commitment. We will get rid of the activity test. And if, you know, if I reflect on all the rooms that I go into, particularly those with early education and care representatives in them, and you start having a conversation about what some of the challenges were. There was not a single room that you walked into where they didn’t identify that the activity test—and again, SNAICC’s on record at the time, at the time that particular policy was announced, as objecting. You know, the team took it to Parliament, they actually stood up in Parliament, and said this is going to harm our families, this was designed without talking to our families about why it’s so important that you don’t block our children from being able to access early education and care when they need it. Because we know that those are children that get the support, that families get the support that they need. So to see it finally announced was just remarkable, I think again, that speaks to something that we know about advocacy, and that is, if the message is consistent, if the message is constant, then there will come a time when, if I go back to that plane, you’ll be breaking the clouds, and it’s been ready to use that moment to bring it to life. And the budget announcements that said, we go to invest in early education and care, that, I think even the treasurer used very similar words to the ones we use. I’m pretty certain he said, we know it starts in early education. We know strong children in early education. We know strong community starts there. I’m paraphrasing it, so it sounds more like something I’d say, but it was very, very similar. And I actually wondered, did we pinch his message, or did he pinch ours?

Mandy Taylor

Oh hey, I reckon you know that you’re doing something right when you hear politicians starting to use your language.

[Mandy and Catherine laugh.]

Catherine Liddle

I think so!

Mandy Taylor

So, good on you! Good on you for getting them to use your words. But there is another, there is another real biggy for us, and you know what I’m going to say, you know what I’m going to talk about, don’t you?

Catherine Liddle

I do.

Mandy Taylor

The National Commissioner.

Catherine Liddle

Oh wow, wow, wow, wow, wow! Decades and decades and decades of advocacy. You know, there isn’t a single report that didn’t identify that there was an accountability problem in how governments were responding to our children and families. And, that, until we had an accountability mechanism that was available and able to shine a light into the deepest recesses and find out what was going on, we would always be struggling to get the right policies and the right frameworks and the right investments into our communities.

Now, it’s a funny thing when you talk about shining a light, it’s easy to think that you’re only talking about really pointy things, but think of it this way: you go into your bedroom and you’re trying to find your shoes, and you can’t see anything. You can’t find them. The moment you turn your light on, you can see it. And so sometimes it’s really just going, why didn’t that program work? Why are children having trouble at this point in time? Oh, I see it. There was a simple light switch that needed to be turned on, and now we can work together. And again, what’s different between a national commissioner, now, let’s be really clear, a national, fully empowered, fully legislated national commissioner was the promise. If that is there, it is fully independent, it has powers to genuinely investigate, but moreover, it is highly flexible. That commissioner can hit the ground and work not only with the community, but alongside government, to bring out change and bring about change really, really quickly. It doesn’t require another four years of investigation, it doesn’t cost a lot of money in the scheme of things, but what it does is change things for children almost immediately.

Mandy Taylor

Exactly, and we’re seeing some really strong commitments coming out in this election campaign for children. Of course, we’ve got the Greens, who have just recently announced their early education and care policies and priorities. Their promise is to make free childhood education and care a priority—some significant reforms there as well, they include a dedicated fund for child care deserts and, for us, some really welcome news that the Greens have promised additional support for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community-controlled services, including looking at—exciting for us—the new funding models that as you know SNAICC has done so much work on, and also looking at investing into developing and growing the early childhood education workforce. Because, you know, we can’t have great services without having great workers.

Catherine Liddle

Absolutely, and you know how I said most of the rooms I went into would bring up the activity test? They also bring up workforce—without fail. People are saying, where is our workforce? Where is our opportunity to train new people? Where are the pathways that our communities need—out on communities that potentially aren’t in a major city?

You know, sometimes people really like those shiny lights of the big cities, but out in the regions—you know, that sort of country that I like to speak for—people aren’t lining up to work there. So how do we grow our own? How do we invest in workforce that is specific to that region? How do we encourage others to step up to the plate? There’s a way to do all of this. And our community-controlled organisations and all of our community reference groups that SNAICC works with—they have incredible ideas about how they might do it. And again, when I look at some of those incredible things that are coming as part of the National Agreement on Closing the Gap—while, they sound really boring: policy partnerships. But they actually are about moving the pieces to make sure that the plane can keep flying.

And one of those will relate to further education, higher education and training. And almost immediately, what people are talking about is: how do we ensure everyone’s able to access the type of training that they might need? How do we make sure that training is nuanced to the environment that they need? And how do we recognise what the workforce that Aboriginal community-controlled services need is? So in many ways, it’s a really, really exciting time.

Mandy Taylor

It is really exciting. And Catherine, you’re talking about the planes and the work that happens inside those policy partnerships—I just want to start singing that Bette Midler song You are the Wind Beneath my Wings.

[Mandy and Catherine laugh.]

Mandy Taylor

But I won’t because you know how terrible my singing is.

Catherine Liddle

Yeah, don’t tempt me.

[Mandy and Catherine laugh.]

Catherine Liddle

But it’s true! And when you think about the wind beneath the wings, that is the voice of our children, that is the voice of our communities. Without those voices, there is no friction on that plane to keep a glued in place, so it’s able to withstand any of the little bumps that it might take, or any of the big drops that might come along—because sometimes they happen.

And you know, without that consistent voice, that consistent message from our communities, it would be much harder to fly that plane.

Mandy Taylor

Well Catherine, flying the plane into an election—a couple of weeks we’ll probably know who the new government’s going to be.

Catherine Liddle

Yeah.

Mandy Taylor

Now, SNAICC, we never tell people how to vote, of course—your vote is yours. But if you had a message to people when they’re thinking about how to cast their vote, what would you say to them?

Catherine Liddle

What would I say to them? Invest in what’s important to you. Reach out to your politicians. Reach out to your leadership and ask them: how are you investing in children in my region? How are you ensuring that you’re responding to the needs of my unique community? How are you ensuring that we’re investing in the right places—and that we’re not just talking about pointy things, but rather celebrating what is good in my community? How are you leading my community, and how are you going to step up?

Mandy Taylor

I think they’re really good points. And if I could just make one too. I think vote like our kids depend on it. Because I reckon they do.

Catherine Liddle

I might pinch that one. I’m going to—if you mob hear me saying that, I pinched it off Mandy.

Mandy Taylor

You’re very welcome to it, Catherine. Hey thanks, this is our first ever SNAICC podcast.

Catherine Liddle

Aw, it’s been a pleasure. I’ve got so much more I want to tell you. Do I get another visit?

Mandy Taylor

Ah, probably. I reckon you would!

[Catherine laughs.]

Catherine Liddle

I’ll break into song that time.

[Mandy and Catherine laugh.]

Mandy Taylor

Now that’s worth listening to.

Catherine Liddle

Yeah…

Mandy Taylor

We won’t say—you think you sound like Kate Ceberano, but let’s just leave it at that.

Catherine Liddle

Yeah, no. I look like Kate Ceberano, I don’t know if I sound like her. But, you know, speaking of those planes—I’ve got to be honest—I was having a bit of trouble the other day, and it turned out I’d left my—this will come as no surprise to anyone who knows me—could not find where I had left my headphones. And the only thing left to do was sing to myself. I was gonna serenade myself for that whole flight. And the only song I could come up with was The Devil Went Down to Georgia. And I don’t know if you mob know that language, but I always take these things as messages. You know—the devil went down to Georgia, he was looking for a soul to steal, he was in a bind, he was out of time, he was willing to make a deal. And I’m curious about why that message? So I suspect the next time I talk to you mob, I’ll know why my brain singled in on that story.

Mandy Taylor

There you go. And I’m pretty glad I wasn’t sitting next to you on that flight.

[Mandy and Catherine laugh.]

Catherine Liddle

We’ll see, we’ll see how I actualise that one.

Mandy Taylor

Hey! Thanks a lot, Catherine! We’ll speak to you mob again, real soon.