 We're here today to talk about Indigenous affairs and some of your expertise, your long-standing commitment to Indigenous affairs and your work both on policy, research and education. And I guess the first question that comes to mind is really to talk to you about the Uluru Statement and that question of voice for Indigenous people. How do you view the Uluru Statement and where things have proceeded since then? Well the statement was significant on a whole range of fronts. The first being rarely have we seen within Indigenous Australia, which is very diverse, you're talking hundreds of nations. Rarely have we seen such a cogent collective articulation of our people's aspirations and they are a voice that's protected and enshrined in the Constitution, not at the whim of Parliament, not at the whim of the Executive Government, but enshrined in the Constitution. So that was significant. Now whilst there were some First Nations groups concerned by the statement, it enjoys an overwhelming support amongst First Nations people, as well as the voice to the Parliament, not within it and that's been a source of political contention. It's to provide First Nations people an opportunity at the highest level of policy making to influence policy in a way that benefits Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people as opposed to disadvantages them. Of course the voice is complemented by a process of mahrata and that's a process of healing of truth telling and in the longer term agreement making. Now whether that leads to a treaty or a series of treaties, that's important for Australia. Australia is kind of an outlier. Australia amongst colonised nations is kind of the poor cousin in so far as places such as New Zealand, Canada, the United States have all entered into treaties of some sort. So in Australia we have to catch up. In Australia we have to overcome long-standing legacies of prejudice and exclusion of First Nations people. I think the minute First Nations people are enshrined within the Constitution at the apex of Australian policy making, then Australia will be a better place for it. So last year we had the First Nations forum here and the messages that you're giving me now very much came through in that conversation with experts from overseas. So how do we move forward with the Uluru Statement? As you say it was incredibly important to get that consensus of a wide variety of groups across Australia. We haven't had since the release of the Statement, we haven't had bipartisan support in the country. The Conservative side of politics has been concerned that it creates a precedence where in their mind is discriminatory, that is that only First Nations people could be a part of that voice. But that fails to recognise Aboriginal sovereignty tens of thousands of years in the making and that in itself is deserved of a process of negotiation and goodwill relationship between First Nations and government. Now to come back to your question in terms of what we can learn from overseas and the fact that we haven't got the Uluru Statement landed where ideally it might be landed, I remain hopeful that we can achieve bipartisan support. If you have a look at for example one of the people who had a political allergic reaction to the Statement, Tony Abbott, it's interesting that according to Warren Mundean's biography Tony Abbott was comfortable with the idea of treaties as long as we didn't call them that. So I'm hoping our discourse and our dialogue can mature and that we can land in an area where all parties are supportive of it because the country needs it, the country is diminished, Australia is diminished until we get some sort of grand accord between First Nations and more recent arrivals. So at the moment a lot of the policy making at a federal level sits within Prime Minister and Cabinet. Do you think that that is the right place for it to be or do we need to think about sitting Indigenous policy separately again? I don't have a firm view either way. I think there are pluses and minuses either way. The plus in terms of having it in PM and C is that it's the head of government and PM and C fundamentally has a coordinating role and a strategic policy role. So to that that part of Indigenous affairs seems to me being a natural and important fit. However the Commonwealth also is in a unique situation in so far as it not only obviously creates policy but it is involved in certain service delivery. The oversight and coordination of that service delivery, I'm not sure where that might fit but certainly where it comes to strategic policy making, implementation oversight and monitoring including the important role of research it strikes me that Prime Minister's departments are natural home. So this is the year of Indigenous languages and I know here at the ANU we're offering several courses where people can learn Indigenous language which I think is incredibly important. We've heard a lot of dialogue at a federal level about Asian language instruction. How important is it that Indigenous language is taught and maintained within schools? I think when you in some ways they can't be compared other than that they are a language other than English and what do I mean by that? I mean I think Australia looks to students engaging in Asian languages because it's in our commercial and strategic interest. It's good for the economy that is with the world increasingly shrinking through information technology and of course international travel. It makes sense for Australia to be connected to its region and one of the benefits of that of course is economic growth. Where it comes to First Nations languages I think it's a different proposition. It's a proposition that ideally all Australian people will get insights in to a place, a human place that is very, very old, oldest continuing civilisation on earth. So as a teacher or a reform teacher I find great appeal in all students be they at primary, secondary or tertiary having some sort of exposure to languages because language is central to Aboriginal identity and it's an Aboriginal identity is central to place and so we all ideally want to see Australians get a stronger sense of place. One of the contentious issues that has been around for some time now is about the impact of mining particularly on places of environmental and artistic heritage for Aboriginal people. How do you see that playing out? Is there a need for a policy response to that? How do we protect those thousands of years of Indigenous culture? Mining is a contentious area and contentious within Aboriginal policy and political views. Some groups see mining as an important source of economy and income and revenue and jobs. So there are some groups that actively negotiate and seek agreement with mining companies. Then there are others with a view that it's almost the antithesis of looking after country and that mining hasn't had a good track record in some pockets of the country in terms of the restoration of lands and threats to the natural environment. When you look at proposed new big developments such as Adani in Queensland, many First Nations groups are concerned by the ecological impact not only at the site of the mine but the waters that are then connected in and around it and so we've got to be very careful including as that water makes way out to the Great Barrier Reef. Incidentally, First Nations groups up that way are older than the Great Barrier Reef but I'm absolutely confident that I want to see it in pristine condition. So there is a tension there in terms of our peoples need to find economic basis but equally and probably the voice that doesn't get heard as much as it should is nature and Indigenous rights need to be seen in conjunction in my mind and there's I think there's great policy scope here to bridge these two rights that is Indigenous rights and nature rights. So one of the areas I think most Australians are now pretty aware of is that Indigenous people have poorer health outcomes, poorer life expectancy, poorer education outcomes, higher rates of incarceration. How do we as policymakers and researchers look at those issues and make a difference? By we need to recalibrate. There's been quite a conversation over the last few years about closing the gap refresh. What I've seen is that refresh has resulted in just additional indicators being added on. It's like and apart I struggle with parts of that logic why so many of the initial goals weren't met. So let's add on some more. I would hope that policymakers are prepared to let go and by that I mean the strategic and cogent approach to empowering communities. Grass roots up always beats top-down. When communities are empowered and resourced to make change they will and there's international evidence of this throughout the world of communities that have both the will and the way to turn things around whether it's poverty, whether it's violence, whether it's you know truancy, all these social problems which are not unique to First Nations Australia. It's just that we're experiencing them the more because we've yet to overcome in this country the structural barriers that need to be overcome in order to for there to be empowerment of communities. So as we head to the next election and hopefully post-election whichever political party with whatever political stripes I think it's incumbent on them to think very hard about the strategic empowerment of communities and getting that grass roots action happening as opposed to top-down dreams.