There's a lot to be said for words - the right words - when it comes to talking about architecture in Indigenous Australia.
And journalist Stan Grant is adamant that the term "country-centric" just doesn't cut it in this age of empty rhetoric.
It's about as meaningful - or hollow - as the words "reconciliation" and "healing" are in the wake of the defeated referendum on the Voice to Parliament.
Speaking before his keynote address to the Australian Institute of Architects conference on Monday, he said the design and architecture industry was slowly learning more about its role in what he terms the "culture of erasure".
And through that, there was space to build a stronger connection between our urban fabric and Indigenous connection to and caring of country.
But back to the idea of architecture that is "country-centric"; the very words prompted a snort of derision from the celebrated journalist and Wiradjuri man.
"It's Orwellian - there's no 'country-centric' approach to architecture!" he said.
"Of course, this is what we do now. Language is put into our service. There's no meaning to those words, it's about as meaningless as reconciliation or healing.
"These are just empty words now. We've hollowed them out.
"I mean, there's no reconciliation after 'no'. How absurd to stand there and talk about healing.
"It's just political convenience now, and words like that, 'country-centric'? Seriously, let's accept the fact of our creative destruction. And let's accept the fact that we knock down these trees and we impose ourselves on the environment."
He said his feelings would be the same even if the referendum had succeeded.
The conference was held the day before the institute's national awards were being announced on Tuesday, highlighting some of the country's most innovative and inspirational buildings.
Jury chair and prominent Canberra architect Shannon Battisson said the theme of this year's conference was the concept of "precedent".
"We're trained to look at things that have happened in the past, what are the lessons we can learn from them and use that precedent study to help develop the work that we do now," she said.
She added that Grant had been invited to speak because of his strong stance on what we should be willing to accept in modern political discourse.
"Obviously with his very public stepping down from the ABC and how he did that, he really made a strong stand about the culture that we accept and the culture that we continue to work within, versus actually making a stand for something," she said.
Grant said he would be focusing on the concepts of home and exile.
"I want to talk to them about the importance of not having a home. I didn't have one when I was growing up - I was constantly on the move," he said.
"And I suppose what that gave me was a sense of exile.
"And exile may be the most true home we have in a world where we are supposedly rooted, where we have to dig in and build things."
He said there was no escaping that clearing land to build things was, essentially "an act of violence", but that treading lightly was still possible.
"What I'm saying is, let's accept the fact that Australia itself is an act of colonisation, and there is violence associated with that act, and that we have swung our axes and damaged the country and damaged the people of the country," he said.
"Let's accept that, let's not try to re-fashion that into nice words. And let's accept that we have a responsibility coming out of that. And the responsibility is to be more gentle on the place."
