Well the long arm of the law first reached out to me when I was just sixteen Said "why you loiterin around here, boy? You're lookin all suspicious with them shifty brown eyes, wild hair A coloured person in this suburb's a surprise Well you'd best move along before someone gets the wrong idea The council flats are two blocks that way, better run the whole way" I told him I don't need no council flats The Ministry of Housing's got my back with something slightly less dilapidated Antiquated heater spitting poison right into our lungs Yeah, carbon monoxide's always been my kind of high I don't mean to complain All I'm saying is with the way in which we're living, may as well be laying in a grave We live and breathe in spaces smaller than the mausoleums Housing corpses of our lords and masters born with more than We should even consider being allowed to own They sold us a tomb so we made it a home Every skyscraper's a headstone, don't you know? It's for every worker coerced, fingers grinded to the bone It's for the people building towers for a minimum wage Selling labour for crumbs in an uneven exchange It's for the peasants who were bred to spend their lives inside a cage Every prisoner locked up for petty crime and made into a slave The long arm of the law, it's always reaching out for more With a finger on the trigger of a standard issue just outside your door We're lighting flames just praying something's gonna catch We're setting boots to asphalt, stopping cities All to show them that they've met their match And through the sprays that fill the noses that we pay them through The view of a solution is obscured and bruised, black and blue Reminiscent of our skin as rubber bullets bounce off arms and chests No second guesses, no, we're never gonna rest Till the long arm of the law is disembodied, broken, bleeding Until it's not a crime to find somewhere that's safe to sleep But the battle drags on, and drags on, and drags on, and drags on We burn their flags on the street, we have no option but attack In a world where there's more vacant homes than homeless people Millions dying of hunger while the dumpsters hold enough to feed them There's entertainers getting paid to stuff their faces with a meal That could feed families of ten or so, but that's just not the way it goes Sit and watch while the dumpster overflows I feel this overwhelming sickness being a witness To just how this system victimises people who just need assistance Vilification of the hungry and the weak as greedy ticks that need eradicating No use in elaborating on why they're there in the first place Who imposed the social stigmas based in gender, class and race Why are there kids being electrocuted to cleanse their sexuality? Why are sex workers' accounts being frozen, why are they in jeopardy? Why are brown people in cages hunger striking on Manus? I need some answers, goddammit I'm gagging on madness being jammed down my throat All I get is silent stares as fanfares declare the end of what we hold dear And I'm pretty fucking scared

Sittin and stewin and grumblin 'bout the times that we weren't saved Cos the times are getting tougher and the system more depraved And every meal we miss just carries us closer to our graves We're not sure where we're goin on this road that we have paved We watch another generation waste away in schools As values of productivity fill their heads and make them tools But there's hope in those who upturn the tables and disregard the rules And the question's asked again, why is the hand of God so cruel? So sing to me a song about a better day When the world was so much simpler, and the youth more well-behaved And I'll tell you a story of an economy that was designed to fail And you'll forget you ever heard the tale Now a CEO is making profits off your broken back The threat of starvation is the whip, now listen to it crack Some cry out for justice and the riot squad attacks If your face is caught on camera, then tomorrow you'll get the sack The politicians point their fingers, brewin up their lies The despondent of the workers sigh and turn their blindest eye The media spins stories 'bout the violence and the crime The people lock their doors, division hits a record high So sing to me a song about a better day When the world was so much simpler, and the youth more well-behaved And I'll tell you a story of an economy that was designed to fail And you'll forget you ever heard the tale And you'll forget you ever heard the tale And you'll pretend you never heard the tale