We need to close the gap. But how? Some things need to happen first

The dream situation is where Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians can chat openly and freely about all the policy options. That's not generally feasible now. Things are sensitive and you'd pick your company before starting a conversation.

We've always been a bit shy of these discussions. Evelyn Waugh's son Auberon fell in love with Australia. He said he loved the openness, the commitment to "let the other bloke have his say". He added that there was one exception to this openness, namely having open discussion about Aboriginal Australians. He said we just look uncomfortable and change the subject. Some people got mad with him because he pointed out the wheel hadn't been invented. He was right to sense that this is taken as an insult. In any event, that was in the 80s and we're a lot more sensitive now.

The vast majority of Australians want Indigenous Australians to be given the respect they deserve. They also want policies that will close the gap. How, you might ask, do we achieve these two goals?

Indigenous leader Pat Anderson recently called for younger leaders to be brought forward. It's insightful and frankly courageous to point out that your own generation needs to move on. It's a good thing. It's not just that intergenerational change is both important and long overdue. The current crop just hasn't delivered. They've been too aggressive and accusatorial. Going on the attack should always be a last resort. Publicity, self-aggrandisement or stupidity have led many to that path. It's been worse than ineffective. It has turned people of good heart and faith away. Anderson might have called, not just for younger leaders, but for more effective and conciliatory ones.

In any encounter, you can choose to be the angry antagonist and maybe play the victim to boot. It won't go well. Nobody chooses at any event to sit next to the angry grump. Nobody wants to deal with them unless they have to. If you toss onto "angry victim" an aggressive, accusatory tone, then nastiness ensues. You can't effectively argue for reconciliation if you don't have more than a few grams of conciliatory in your personality. People who aren't racist do not warm to being labelled that way.

Aboriginal people need solutions-focused leaders. Take a look at Denise Bowden at the Yothu Yindi Foundation for some inspiration. While you're up that way, look at what the Gumatj clan are doing in mining and forestry. There'd be others - people getting the job done. We need more of them.

As well as some fresh leadership, the varied debate around welcome to and acknowledgment of country needs to be sorted out. We just can't keep walking around with this annoying pebble in our shoe. There's no disagreement that welcome to country was never universal and, in fact, as a ceremonial event Australia-wide, it's only decades old.

The extreme variation in performance of the welcome leads to uncertainty. Will the welcomer be gracious and welcoming or will the welcomed get a healthy reminder of how badly Indigenous Australians have been treated and walk away feeling chastised more than welcomed?

There are two other issues with the welcome. Where it was practised, it was to welcome other clans passing through. Non-Indigenous Australians don't see themselves as passing through the land on which they live, and, for many, on which their forebears have lived for well over 100 years or more.

The other is the fee charged for the welcome. Somehow, saying, "I'm welcoming you" as you sharpen your pencil and whip out an invoice pad from your back pocket seems the sort of stuff John Cleese or Ricky Gervais might have some fun with.

The money, incidentally, doesn't go to some broad fund to help Indigenous Australia. Discard that notion. Think a select few on the gravy train. Personally, I'd just stop it. For all of the above reasons, it is simply causing too much negativity towards Indigenous Australia and for no gain. It's a no-brainer.

Acknowledgment of country is different. It's not a bad thing to acknowledge traditional lands. The problem is at meetings and conferences, at which every person who opens their mouth starts with the breathless revelation that says, "I too acknowledge ...". It's ridiculous, and aggravates everyone else in the room. It sounds platitudinous and hollow, because it is. Largely because it's more about each person wanting to identify as a "good person". Conspicuous compassion is always popular. People get sick of it and feel annoyed. Oh, that we could have a decent acknowledgment at the beginning, and everyone just accept it's been done. The end.

A test might be if, at the same time, we acknowledged two more things. First, the system of government that lets us live in arguably the most stable and peaceful country in the world. That's no small thing. Second, thank all those people from around the world who've helped make Australia what it is today. I think the three acknowledgments would sit together very well.

There's more material for Cleese and Gervais in the meetings where an acknowledgment is rightly done but then looks comedic because the speaker chooses to read one out in whatever the local language was when no one in the room speaks that language. Ridiculous.

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Lastly, we will have to bite the bullet on how to qualify as Indigenous. The current test is too loose. It's allowing big companies and bureaucracies to tick the Indigenous box by employing or giving assistance or whatever to those whose indigeneity is some way back in their heritage.

The consequence of that is that those Indigenous Australians and their offspring who either haven't started a family with non-Indigenous Australians or have only done so recently miss out. Bureaucracies will almost always go for low-hanging fruit. People in regional and remote communities are harder to engage and therefore miss out to someone who had an Indigenous great-grandparent and lives in a big city. It's just easier.

If we can sort these things out, we've got a better chance of moving forward together in a very positive way. Keeping on doing stuff that makes Indigenous Australia the butt of jokes is the unkindest thing we could do. To do it because you want to look good is reprehensible.