Three stories that make you wonder at our sense of political — public — priority:

Therese Rein sells up to staunch mounting allegations of incipient conflict of interest.

Australian foreign aid is already a faltering component of our total economic output. Now it seems that what aid we do give is directed in significant part to domestic private industry and the support of foreign policy and security agendas that have no impact on feeding, educating or watering the starving and underprivileged.

And then there’s Aboriginal Australia, made much of over the weekend in celebrations marking the 40th anniversary of the groundbreaking referendum of 1967, but waking today to an unchanged world of untimely death, marginalisation and stunted opportunity.

Sorry barely seems to cover it.