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Paper Sings
By Daniel MaddenGovernment
Paper Sings episodes
- Episode 2: Sent
The Australian Embassy in Tokyo confirms that it has sent my daughter a letter about an Australian passport. After years without contact, that is welcome news.
But what does “sent” actually tell us?
I follow the correspondence to discover what the letter is meant to achieve and what government knows about whether it does. A request to send one letter becomes a freedom of information request about what happens after it leaves the Embassy.
(Transcript available from 13 October 2026)Written and presented by Daniel Madden.
Music: Avalanche by Soulish.12 min - Episode 1: The File Opens
In the first episode of Paper Sings, I return to the newspaper report and correspondence that started this investigation. A public account of Australian families separated in Japan meets a private exchange about what assistance is available and what happens when someone asks for it.
Transcript and supporting documents attached below.
Written and presented by Daniel Madden.
Music: Avalanche by Soulish.14 min
About Paper Sings
From the publisher's feed
“No one should be able to pull curtains of secrecy around decisions which can be revealed without injury to the public interest.”
– Lyndon B. Johnson, 1966
But first, you have to know which decisions to ask about.
I’m Daniel Madden, an Australian teacher, writer and father trying to reconnect with my daughter in Japan. I asked what my government could do to help. The answers eventually led me to ask for the paperwork.
Paper Sings follows the trail through government letters, internal briefings and records released under freedom of information. What begins as a question for one department leads to another. An assurance sends us looking for a decision. A decision raises the question of who checked the result. There is a surprising amount of work involved in finding out what an ordinary sentence means.
The consequences are less abstract. Parents and children grow older while their circumstances pass through offices, processes and reporting systems. I want to understand what those systems achieve for the people they describe and what could still be done.
You may never have needed help from an embassy or a watchdog. But if you know the feeling of receiving an answer and still needing to ask the question, then join me – you’ll be in familiar company.
Paper Sings. What the record reveals.