 You and do Paul House, my name is Paul House, I speak Yambri, Waughalu, Wiradri, Niyang. I speak Yambri, Waughalu, Wiradri language. I was born here at the center of my ancestral country at the Alcambra Hospital. Anyone born in the Alcambra Hospital? One, two, three, yes. We're an endangered species, aren't we? There's not many of us. So Yilin Galangbo, Gipavunga Wauga Bo, Miga Bo, Dita Nilvangme, ladies and gentlemen, young men, young women, distinguished guests, the Honourable Julie Bishop, Chancellor ANU, Pro-Chancellor Naomi Watts, ANU. I'd like to acknowledge Vice-Chancellor Brian Schmidt, who's not here today, apologies. Yilin Galangbo, Gipavunga Wauga Bo, Miga Bo, Dita Nilvangme, ladies and gentlemen, young men, young women, distinguished guests, Niyari Njumari, Niyambri, Waughalu, Wiradri, Niyang. I speak Yambri, Waughalu, Wiradri, Niyang. Elders past and present, Niyari Njumari, Noran Banjigul and Ninyiridu, my respects to all people and all elders from all parts of the country, Niyambri, Nunuwa, Mai'in, Gauinbanya, Ninyuga, Noran Bangodara, Yambri Nunuwa people, welcome you all to country. Yinja Malgiti, Yinja Murabu, Yinja Mali, respect, respecting, honour and respect, go slow, take responsibility, uphold, be patient. It's a philosophy, it's an ideology on country. Yinja Magagiti, Biddinga, Bogongu, Didenda, respect can be found in the journey of the Bogongmoss in the mountains. Yinja Marabala, Walamanga, Dabu, Mudan Mudden, Dabu, Banmuyugur and Gambira, respect can be found in the grinding stones and the carved trees made long ago on country. Yinja Marabala, Binadar, Binabira, Wurrawan, Yambri, Jullongu, respect can be found in the creeks and rivers flowing through country. Mambawara, Naminigul, Wujigubinya, Wuradaraigul, Winengalagu, Waaligul, looking to see and listening to hear and learning to understand. Our welcome to countries are made in the spirit of peace and a desire for harmony for all peoples of the modern ACT and surrounds. And our main aim as local custodians is to establish an atmosphere of mutual respect through the acknowledgement of our ancestors and the recognition of our rights to declare our special place in the pre and post history of the region. We warmly welcome everyone living, working, visiting our ancestral country. We have cared for Mother Earth since the dawn of time and evidence of our occupation, our sovereignty, our statehood, can be seen everywhere throughout the land. When Europeans first arrived on our ancestral lands in the 1820s right in this place, they asked our ancestors, what do you call this place? And our ancestors didn't respond by saying the barbecue area. The different response came back, Nyamburi, Namburu Nyamburi, Canberra. And in language it means to lie down to sleep at the camp. And I have to, it's a great pleasure that the ANU has acknowledged and respected and honoured our people, the Canberra, the Nyamburi people, and named this precinct on the ANU. The earliest ethno-historical records on country, the evidence is powerful and compelling and it sits in places like the National Library. The earliest records, the words were recorded of Nyamburi, Canberra here on country. Sullivan's Creek was originally named Nyamburi Creek or Canberra Creek, same as the Malonglo River, the Canberra River, and the Canberra Plains right throughout country here. And then over time, our name was quietly moved along, but we're talking about the historical truths on country. We're talking about that historical evidence is powerful. We need to acknowledge that. So, Muralmoginya yinja mara mural mural widumbirradara, a respectful way of life and cares for country. Our people who, through law and custom, hold cultural knowledge and we continue to maintain deep respect for our ancestral lands and waters. Our signature is in the land, not just our DNA. And taking care of country is important to us all. The more we look after the land and the waters, the more the land and the waters look after us. The law of the land talks about giving respect and honour to all people in all parts of the country, yinja mara mujigali, budja and burga ling, umbe yukumbrak mulion, so it respects to our Holy Spirit, our great ancestor, our army, and our key totems, the Eagle Hawk and the crow on country. I'd like to acknowledge my mother, Dr. Arnie Matilda House, as well during this wonderful reconciliation week. My mother, Dr. Arnie Matilda, was honoured with honorary doctorate back in 2017. The first Indigenous Australian to be acknowledged here at the A&U with honorary doctorate. And it's wonderful to see our matriarchs being acknowledged on country. My mother's done so much on country here. And she, I talk about yinja mara, buddha and burga yando gobo, yirago bo, marado gobo, so we talk about taking responsibility for the past, the present and the future. Yinja mara mara mara yinja yinja gira mara mara nya, respect shapes us and lifts up the people. So in the spirit of reconciliation, peace and harmony, I'd like to say guru bari welcome and wara goburi maimak, mandangu, thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you Paul for your magnificent welcome to country. Your welcomes are always so moving and informative and we deeply appreciate the fact that you play the didgeridoo for us. I too acknowledge and celebrate the first Australians on whose land we meet today and pay my respects to Elders past and present and also acknowledge the magnificent work of Dr Aunty Matilda House who's not with us today but she has certainly been part of our Reconciliation Week events so far. Vice-Chancellor may I welcome our guest speaker today our Pro-Chancellor Naomi Flutter, the Deputy Vice-Chancellor Academic Grady Menville, Professor Azmi Wood, members of ANU Council who have just finished a gruelling council meeting and are here and other distinguished academics and friends of the Australian National University. Welcome all to what is our flagship lecture in honour of National Reconciliation Week and we take this week very seriously at ANU but we live and breathe reconciliation not just in this week but each and every day, week and month of every year. We began our celebration of National Reconciliation Week yesterday with a series of events including an amazing burial poll ceremony held at the John Curtin School with guests from the Galli Wincu people of East Arnhem Land and it was the most moving ceremony about trust and partnership with ANU. Then Vice-Chancellor Brian Schmidt who sent his apologies for today, Vice-Chancellor and I launched ANU's Reconciliation Action Plan for this year and I do urge you to read it on our website. We not only read it, we live it and we had a wonderful speech by Peter Yu who is the leader of our First Nations portfolio. ANU is Australia's first and only national university and we have a particular responsibility to ensure that we provide a supportive and nurturing environment for Indigenous students and staff. In fact we aspire to be the university of choice for First Nations people across Australia and in that regard we continue to build on what we have achieved thus far. We have the Jubile Centre which is led by Ann Martin. It's a wonderful environment, a home away from home for Indigenous students. I mentioned the First Nations portfolio which has been established and headed by Peter Yu to ensure that ANU can be at the forefront, can be a world leader in teaching and research and public policy contributions in relation to Indigenous affairs. And then the Cambry scholarships which were launched last year to ensure that we can provide scholarships for Indigenous students for generations to come for this is an endowment fund that will exist in perpetuity. And we have committed $25 million, we hope to raise another $25 so that it's a $50 million fund to support our Indigenous students. And I must say that Naomi Flutter was an integral part in fact a driving force behind those Cambry scholarships and Naomi we're so grateful to you for your energy and passion. I am going to invite Professor Asmi Wood to introduce Naomi. Professor Wood is a proud Torres Strait Islander man. He teaches law at the ANU College of Law. He's a distinguished barrister and solicitor and his work in public policy in Indigenous affairs is world class. He's renowned in that field. So I'm delighted to see so many of you here. I invite Asmi to come forward to introduce our guest speaker today. Thank you Chancellor. I'd like to acknowledge that we are on Aboriginal land, the land of the Nambri and Ngunnawal people who have graciously looked after this land for tens of thousands of years and it has been a place of learning and we continue in that tradition. I have the honour and the pleasure of introducing our Pro-Chancellor. You can read her bio, it'll take me longer to read it than it would be. You have time for her speech so I'll just pick two things out. She's a graduate of our fabulous university and she won the Tillyard Prize. The two most important things. Our brother Paul, elder on this community, used the word in Jammera which means a path and he talked about the rivers and the Bogong moths and the paths that they grow but for us it's also about a path to education and this is not how negotiations work and this is not how a law school teaches you how to negotiate but when she started she said well we need to create scholarships and I said you're about five and she said no, not five, fifteen and then you know it got ratcheted up to about five million and I said oh that's too much and then she made it fifty, you put a zero on it. So in terms of negotiation it goes the wrong way but that's alright. You know she comes from the best law school in the country but you know so it is my absolute pleasure and honour to invite Pro Chancellor Nami to do the talk this year on reconciliation. Thank you. Hello everyone. Thank you Paul for your welcome to Nambri, Nanawal country. I will never tire of listening to language. Just fabulous. Can I also as I start acknowledge and celebrate the traditional owners of this land past and present and pay respects to all First Nations people who are here today. Thank you for coming and thank you Asmi. Where are you there? Thank you Asmi for introducing me. I've always loved working with you. I am really honoured to have been invited by you, by Professor Peter Yu and by Dr Anne Martin to deliver this lecture today. It's a huge honour. You three are living legends in my mind but more on that later. I also want to acknowledge in the room our terrific Chancellor. My fellow members of the ANU Council including Tanya Hosh and of course Asmi serving as well on Council. Members of the ANU Executive Ian Anderson included and others from across the ANU community and I'll single out two of my nephews and one niece who are in the back there. Very lucky to study here at the ANU. I know exactly how lucky you are. Today I thought I'd tell you a few stories about me and more importantly about how and why this notion of reconciliation has come to matter enormously to me. But also how over the last five years in particular I've come to be somewhat horrified by what I didn't know and deeply committed to doing all that I can to drive change radically and at pace. But also why I'm a bit of an optimist and can see reasons for hope in our future. I know that Australia, our country can be much better than we are. So I've structured this lecture in four parts. The first, silence. Chapter two is about respect. Chapter three, I've called discovery and chapter four is hope. That's my title slide. So starting with silence. Chapter one and my beginning. And as this task of reconciliation has really come to mean and matter much more and more to me, I've also come to appreciate the importance of the past, of our past. It's oft quoted. Charlie Perkins said while we cannot live in the past, the past lives in us. And so a little bit of information about me and my past seems like a very appropriate place to start. Here I am. In 1970, I was born in Manley in Sydney. The first child for two exceptional people who were loving and terrific parents, ambitious for me and for our community. And I'm extremely excited that my mum is in the second row here along with my stepfather today. So this brings my dad to the room. Before I started school, we'd moved to Canberra, Ngunnawal, Nambri country, as I now know, not that I knew it then. Within a few years, my sister Chloe was born. Mum going to hospital and seeing Chloe in the nursery. Are my earliest? Quite foggy memories. We extended flutters, numbered just 12 in this world. So we had a very small family and we were close and tight. Chloe and I were really lucky kids because for mum and dad, nothing was too difficult. They were young and invested enormous intellect and limitless energy in our upbringing. I know now they wanted to raise balanced, community-minded and engaged citizens. From as early as I can remember, the day began in our house with AM and the ABC News on the radio. We were brownies, girl guides, we played a lot of different kinds of sports and we became pretty committed and reasonably talented swimmers. I peaked and loved being the captain of the ACT swimming team and always enjoyed the training routine. We trained 10 times a week. Chloe swam a lot better than me and she made the Australian team. Back then alongside household names like Nicole Livingston and Kieran Perkins. With her green and gold tracksuit in our house, we were very proud Australians and we celebrated national success wherever it came, in the pool or otherwise. It's clear to me now that mum and dad also understood the transformative power of education. Possibly because their parents had made very significant sacrifices themselves to give them the very best education that they could. My formal schooling started, excuse me, in 1974 and here I am, day one of Kindi. It was six years after Bill Stanner, a very distinguished ANU academic, delivered the 1968 Boyer Lectures. Today those lectures are known for a phrase he coined, the Great Australian Silence. In his second Boyer Lecture, Stanner explained what may well have begun as a simple forgetting of other person's views turned under habit and over time into something of a cult of forgetfulness practised on a national scale. We have been able for so long to disremember the aborigines that we are now hard put to keep them in mind. His lectures seek to explain the absence of the then, from the then contemporary narrative of Australia's vast, or to quote another, distinguished ANU academic, Sir Keith Hancock, Australia's ever-present Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander history. Bill Stanner, a bit like me, was an optimist and in his third lecture he explained why and again I quote, I hardly think the Great Australian Silence will continue. In 1968 he saw two powerful forces combining to drive change. First, universities were assembling what he called a treasury of knowledge, a treasury of good knowledge, driving deeper awareness and understanding, all of which Stanner thought would serve as an antidote to what he called the mixed truths, half truths and untruths. Decades ahead of his time he framed much of this through a lens of cross-cultural competency and an awareness that we're all prisoners of personal experience. And second, he talked, addressing I think our then political and policymaker elite, about the dire consequences of inaction, what he described as vast monetary and social costs that will be imposed on the national pocket. It never seemed to occur to him that we would allow those costs to materialise as we have. His lectures offer pathways to progress highlighting the importance of education. He said, if we began in the first years of primary classes in schools, there would be a real prospect within a single generation of transforming the public mentality. Back in 1974, I started my formal schooling as part of the French Australian School initially at Turner Primary just down the road and then at Redhill. And while six years had elapsed since Stanner delivered his lectures, deafening silence prevailed. And with that, another group of young Australians embarked upon their education, one that would leave them almost entirely unaware of our history and our first people with all the long tale of damage that ignorance always brings. In 1982, eight years later, as an 11-year-old, I started high school at Canberra Girls Grammar across the lake. And while I continued to receive a generally excellent education, it remained one bereft of that treasury of knowledge that Stanner spoke of now 16 years earlier, Girls Grammar. As I worked my way through high school, I was drawn to the humanities, history, geography, French and German, partly why I love language. In history, when I look back at old reports, as you can see, I was an OK student, a B, but with an A for attitude. I learned a lot about the Middle Ages. I could rattle off the kings and queens of England. I knew about Henry VIII's many wives, what happened to them. I learned a lot about ancient Greece and Rome and about the story of Australia after 1770. But I have absolutely no recollection of ever learning about Australia's ancient history, nor any exposure to the emerging complexities in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander affairs in then contemporary Australia. I do, however, have a vague recollection of a young Aboriginal girl coming to Girls Grammar. She lived in the boarding house. It was maybe when I was in 10 or 11, but I also remember her disappearing almost as soon as she arrived. She certainly wasn't there for a term. As a 15-year-old, I was an exchange student to Germany, living in a little town, little village called Pulach on the southern side of Munich. I was there for three months. I was matched to Annika, who would later come to Australia to live with us also for three months. Her Wurtner, Lothar, was a very senior executive at Siemens. His wife, Sabina, was a politician and she led the parliamentary wing of the FDPE, the Liberals, in the otherwise very conservative state of Bavaria. They had four children and their family was a bit like ours, interested in what was going on around the world. So it's not really at all surprising that one evening at a family dinner, Lothar and Sabina would ask me about the Aborigines in Australia and about their disadvantage. With my silent education, sport-fuelled patriotism and limited worldview, I can remember confidently, probably also a little defensively, telling Lothar that everything was okay. That the Aboriginal people in Australia were fine, not disadvantaged. They lived outside the cities and they were fine. But really I had absolutely no idea what I was talking about. I'd never really met an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander Australian and I knew nothing of their history nor their situation. That was 1985. And still, at least from my standpoint, Stanner's silence prevailed. Chapter two is respect. It's 25 years now since I graduated from the great ANU Law School and the great College of Business and Economics here. And for all of my professional working life, I've tried very hard to put people at the centre of what I do. I focus on respect, meaning that I try very deliberately to recognise an intrinsic value in everyone. A fundamental equality all of the time. This is something I first learned working in Africa. And I would absolutely acknowledge that it could be hard and that I am not perfect. But to me, there's absolutely no doubt that it's a very worthy pursuit. Let me explain. After high school, almost all of my friends fled to Canberra to the big smoke to go to uni up in Sydney. I chose to stay here to study economics and law at ANU because literally there was nowhere better, given my interest in public law and economic policy. After seven years, in 1995, fresh out of law school, I landed a dream job, working with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. UNHCR sent me to Kakuma, to Kenya, Kakuma refugee camp in the country's north west. I arrived on a very little plane. We had quite a bumpy landing. As I stepped off the plane, I was hit by a hot, dry, gritty wind howling up the Rift Valley. Arriving in Kakuma, I felt an overwhelming sense of luck. A fluke of birth meant that I could leave, that I'd only be there briefly. Others would live in that camp for years, maybe decades, usually through absolutely no fault of their own. It turns out that the middle of nowhere is a perfect place for a refugee camp, and Kakuma was certainly in the middle of nowhere. Perfect if disadvantage and desperate conditions might make you feel somewhat uncomfortable, and if you'd prefer them to be out of sight. In 1995, Kakuma was also a cosmopolitan little town. Population, 30,000, mainly Sudanese fleeing the Civil War, a lot of the so-called boy soldiers. But there were also Ethiopians, Somalis, Ugandans, Burundis and Rwandans. Today it's a camp of about 200,000 people. In Kakuma, as a freshly minted lawyer, I was there to screen people arriving across the border to assess whether or not they were fleeing a well-founded fear of persecution, a UN convention definition of a refugee. At the time, most people were fleeing Civil War, and so they were deemed refugees. No interview was required. The upshot was I had some time on my hands, which I spent with the editors of the camp's newsletter running, of all things, creative writing workshops. Now, I'm not much of a creative writer. I'm no expert in Onomatopoeia and alliteration, but it turns out that that did not matter. The workshops were pretty amazing. Because appreciating great writing and maybe even writing for yourself, these are things that are possible almost anywhere, even in Kakuma. Without any funding or resources, they can enrich an otherwise very difficult life. Sitting there on the first day of our creative writing workshops, as I waited for people to arrive, I felt excited, a little bit nervous, but so were the 30 participants because none of them were writers either. It turned out that they were doctors and lawyers and judges and nurses or people on those kinds of pathways. While I certainly hadn't assumed that they were nomads or peasants accustomed to mud huts, I probably wasn't expecting professionals like me. We sat in a circle underneath a blue tarp and we introduced ourselves. I went first and told people proudly how I'd finished my law degree just two months earlier in December. I'll never forget a fellow called Jimmy Bosco Oyama, halfway around the circle, almost directly opposite me, a Rwandan Tutsi. When it was his turn, Jimmy looked across at me and he said, Naomi, like you, I studied law. I was also meant to graduate in December. With time, I got to know Jimmy and one day he told me about how he became a refugee. It turns out he was at uni. He came home to find his father, who was a judge, and his mother and sister, who was in her last year at school, killed in their home, as he described it, killed by machetes, gruesome and bloody. Exactly what happened to almost half a million Tutsis. That was the moment that Jimmy ran and he kept moving for days until he was outside Rwanda and safe. His father had been targeted as a judge. Like my dad, Jimmy's father was a public servant. And just like me, he had a mother and a younger sister and sites on a career in law. The more I got to know Jimmy, the more I realised how the differences between us were small, but for that accident of birth, me, Australian, him, Rwandan. Looking back over my professional working life, about 25 years, meeting with Jimmy and the others at the workshop is a career highlight and something from which I learnt terrific lessons, including that everyone has their own story and identity, that there's always so much we don't or can't know about the people we meet and that layers of history contribute to making people who they are. I learned a lot about human rights at the ANU, but there's nothing like working in a refugee camp and meeting people, real people like Jimmy, to make it tangible. To help you understand that in the end every person is born with hopes and deserves rights and respect and that every one of us is fundamentally equally valuable, that we're more similar than different perhaps. To me it took going overseas, working in Africa, with remarkable people facing extraordinary adversity in situations where they could be excused for feeling hopeless or helpless perhaps, to develop a sense of shared humanity. I now know I could have learned that lesson much closer to home. Chapter three is discovery. I'm a latecomer professionally to the work of reconciliation. After around two years with UNHCR I had a 20-year career in banking, full of challenge and I think lots of valuable work, but Deutsche Bank wasn't a place where I learned much about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australia. Instead that learning really accelerated one day mid-morning in early 2014. I was sitting at my desk in Sydney, busily banking and my phone rang. Hello Naomi, it's Gareth Evans and if I hadn't been able to recognise his very unmistakable voice I'd have absolutely guessed it was a prank because Gareth wasn't someone I was expecting a call from, completely out of the blue and nor was I expecting an invitation to join the ANU council. As I made my way from the trading floor where I worked into a little meeting room, Gareth talked to me about the composition of council, about the skills matrix and about the need to have a diversity of people including some in their executive careers and about gender and geographic balance. I checked the working woman from New South Wales box. Thankfully Gareth's career long focus on Aboriginal disadvantage meant that there was always Indigenous representation at our council table. I joined the council on the same day as Pat Dodson and Suzanne Corey. It was 2014 and at the age of 44 for the first time in my professional life I was working alongside an Aboriginal Australian. Discovery began and over the last seven years the ANU has gifted me much learning. Now for a second time the extraordinary intellectual Pat Dodson and I sat on council together for 18 months until he became a senator for Western Australia. To Pat, sorry, when when he became a senator Peter you also a West Australian joined our council and to Pat and Peter I have a particular debt of gratitude. I have learned an enormous amount about a lot of different things from them. Some historical including about their decades of advocacy. I'll never tire of hearing the story about them on the day they met the Queen and then shortly thereafter the Deli Lama. From Peter and before him Pat I've learned quite a lot about Yaru the native title holders in Broome and what it means there to be a traditional owner and how that helps but also how systemic obstacles including sometimes institutions of government can thrive to make it hard to realize any economic value from that interest in land. I genuinely marvel at the civil and patient way in which they pursue the change for which they advocate as Paul said be patient. As a member of council I was also introduced to RAPs reconciliation action plans in around 2015 when I read through the ANU's RAP line by line I remember being a little surprised to realize that we needed an action plan to and I quote enroll Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students and employ Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander staff in proportion to the number of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians in the overall population surely not but the penny had really dropped. Lothar never visited Australia but he was right back in 1985 in Pulach outside Munich. Please don't get me wrong I hadn't got to 44 naively assuming like I did when I was 15 that everything was in fact okay but I am living proof that it is possible in our country this century to have a successful professional career and to fail to fully appreciate the acute injustice in our midst that things could be so unjust and that we could I know we could we should indeed do so much better and that unless we do better it damages us all. In Bill Stanner's words while I was without question a supporter a cult of forgetfulness practiced on a national scale meant that I was hard put to keep the challenges front of mind. I had found my purpose and Peter, Pat and others have given me confidence to better understand and be comfortable with my role and responsibility not just as an ally but also as an agitator active and committed to reconciliation personally and professionally unsatisfied with the status quo impatient for change and a partner alongside Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians. Chapter 4 is hope because maybe things are starting to change but let's be very clear hope is of course not a strategy crossing our collective fingers won't address entrenched systemic disadvantage any hope or optimism has to be framed against reality and coupled with responsibility and I think urgency and as regards that reality here in Australia today it's worth pausing I think just briefly to reflect on the scale of the challenge. The recently released 2020 closing the gap report offers a pretty authoritative insight chronicling data that's been verified by the Australian Bureau of Statistics most of which I think pretty much all Australians would find shameful if only they knew it. The report details a gap between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians on seven metrics child mortality which is up here early childhood education school attendance literacy and numeracy year 12 attainment employment and life expectancy. When read through the lens of the individuals the families and the communities involved or when read as a mother of two sons or as a daughter it makes for I think pretty horrifying reading from start with child mortality for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander toddlers twice that of non-indigenous children right through end with life expectancy gap of around eight years. Remembering of course that it also reports averages with urban communities masking extreme underperformance in regional and remote areas there is clearly enormous an enormous amount to do but for what it's worth while I'm at the lectern let me say that I think a constitutionally enshrined voice to parliament seems like a very logical way to harness the views and the experience of indigenous people to help our parliament with the task of designing and delivering policies laws programs and services that affect and are important to them. We certainly couldn't do much worse because for the vast sums of money invested over decades outcomes are so often appalling so if the past lives in us the future is ours to make and to close today I wanted to do two things first to give you some examples from my world why I do see reason for hope and second to briefly explain what I see as my role and the role of anyone else who like me knows that we can be better and I'm sure that's all of you and lots and lots of other people so to the reasons for hope as seen by me through what I absolutely acknowledge is a pretty privileged very fortunate world whether it be at scotch college in Perth where my kids go to school through my work here at the ANU or in my executive capacity at West Farmers one of Australia's largest and most successful companies. In all of these forums I see little or no evidence of disinterest, growing awareness coupled with an appetite for change and recognition that something can be done pretty much everywhere and by almost anyone. So let me elaborate at West Farmers we regularly survey community attitudes and in the last few years we've tested community support for our goals our ambitions around proportional representation. In the last 18 months support for this ambition has grown from 54 percent of the Australian community in 2019 to 62 percent just a few weeks ago so we're clearly not there yet but we are making some progress. Interestingly 62 percent aligns closely with Crosby Texter polling of support for the voice. So let me give you a couple of tangible examples. I started this lecture with my schooling in silence back in the 70s. Fast forward to today and last week one of my sons a 10-year-old boy in grade five hosted the junior school assembly. This was his script Zach my son opened the assembly acknowledging the Wajak people of the Noongar nation. As part of this he said thrilling me to the core it is a privilege to be standing on Noongar country and Zach who is 10 he knows a thing or two about the Wajak people who they are and that they've lived here including in beautiful places like Cotteslow that we now call home 14s of thousands of years. Acknowledgements like this happen every fortnight at assembly. Last term Zach did a unit of inquiry about Perth before colonization and that's not the first time that he's learned about Australia's ever-present history. Another example here at the ANU as regards institutional governance you've heard some of this mentioned already. Today when our council meets we include two indigenous council members who are joined by another two indigenous members of the university executive that's four among the 30 or so people who lead this place in executive and non-executive capacities and there is absolutely no doubt that we are better for it whatever we are discussing. Very importantly this doesn't just happen by accident it reflects focus and commitment from our university's leadership particularly Ujuli and Brian. Still more evidence here at ANU about a year and a half ago to a claim and it's been mentioned already today and let's be honest or so a few you can see tear up at the drop of a hat there were tears around the council table too. We committed 25 million dollars of funding to endow our new and I think absolutely terrific Canberra scholarships. They aim to ensure that access to funding will never be a reason why Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians don't account for three percent of our student population. We did this knowing that our students have access to best in country pastoral care and support through Auntie Ann and her awesome team at the Jubile Center. If I turn now to workplaces and the ones that I'm most familiar with are in the West Farmers Group. The drumbeat of change is sounding. My boss the managing director of West Farmers Rob Scott another ANU alumni talks regularly and in an authentic way and a compelling way about our commitments to reconciliation including when we release our half year and full year financial results and how the two are connected. For us a key focus must be on employment we realized this about 10 years ago preparing our first wrap as the then largest private sector employer in the country and over about seven years from 2011 to 2018 we went from having a few hundred Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander team members to over six thousand. This made West Farmers the largest employer of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in the country. Representation up from about 0.1 percent to about 3.2 percent a touch over parity and in in so doing one of the amazing things that we discovered was that this also made our businesses better and stronger. Let me give you an example in Palmerston on the southern side of Darwin the local population is about 30 percent Aboriginal but in 2017 our coal store employed about 100 people maybe 120 people and none were Aboriginal. A new store manager arrived and quickly got to proportional representation hiring about 30 local Aboriginal team members and you can guess what happened the entire community started shopping in that store and sales and earnings increased. It's a simple but I think a great example showing how doing what is right can also help you to do well. We've seen this time and time again in Bunnings in Kmart from Palmerston to Edmonton in Queensland to Calgooly in Western Australia. What makes me particularly proud is that we have almost done it again because in 2018 we demudged coals and with that around four and a half thousand Indigenous team members left West Farmers and we found ourselves back at 1.6 percent about half proportional representation and in a very uncomfortable position because when you're a large employer like us 1.6 percent only means one thing that it's harder to get a job in our businesses if you identify as Indigenous and that doesn't sit at all well with any of our values but we have as I just said done it again this time in less than two years as at the end of April we've added around 1300 new Indigenous team members and we're again above 2.6 percent that's 2,800 Indigenous team members and we are well on the path to 3 percent and to me what gives me great pride is that it's not me a solitary radical change agent making this happen it's all of my colleagues all around the group led most importantly by the managing directors of all of our businesses of Bunnings, Kmart, Target, Officeworks, our chemicals business they are 100 brought in and they want this as much as I do and many many others looking across the West Farmers Group there's also lots of other evidence of change for instance while we're fast approaching employment parity we know that we are well off among our senior leaders among our top several thousand leaders representation stands at closer to 1 percent so we're trying to address this by tracking data on access to training and on career progression through tailored leadership programs and we targeted senior recruitment a final example our BOAB fund, BOAB Building Outstanding Aboriginal Businesses Fund provides grants and loans to indigenous suppliers to help them invest and scale knowing that they are more likely to employ Aboriginal people and to create wealth for Aboriginal communities we made our first BOAB grant to a New South Wales Central Coast supplier of ours called Cultural Choice which produces products now ranged in Officeworks they used it to better equip their warehouses with a forklift and with racking and it's proven to be a win win a win for cultural choice and a win for Officeworks so bringing this all together this chapter four about hope I've just given you some evidence of support or support for appetite for change along with I think actually some actual change but also an emerging recognition that anyone anywhere has a role and can take action it's this far reaching and tangles tangible support that gives me reason to be hopeful and optimistic but as I said hope is clearly not a strategy and because much more change is needed remember that reality the closing the gap report that I spoke about there are three things that I think are most important for people like me and maybe for many of you the first is to become informed the second is to take responsibility and the third is to act with urgency and for five years now that's exactly what I've been trying to do becoming informed in lots of different ways some already mentioned through people involved with the ANU all chipping away at that silence I've done it by reading including amazing eye-opening books like one that I've just finished about Jandamara who led the Bunabah Rebellion the Bunabah resistance in the Kimberley for 20 years right through until the early 1900s I've enjoyed and I've gifted lots of books published by Magabala our country's only Indigenous publisher based up in Broome I've made it a point to visit places of Indigenous significance and in the last two years I've been to Dangu or Geeky Gorge in Fitzroy Crossing to Yocala in East Arnhemland and Calguli in Western Australia and other places and in each I've learned an enormous amount if you look for them there are of course also lots of things to learn in our cities and indeed right here on campus as well through this discovery I've also come to particularly appreciate Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art especially contemporary art it is without question Australia's greatest gift to global culture I could talk for hours about spellbinding and relatable works because they speak to our country by great contemporary Aboriginal artists like Mabel Jooli Rami Ramsey Patrick Mengmeng Nyapa Nyapa Yuna Pingu artists who've come into their own in their 60s and 70s and painting ferociously now I recently bought this work by a younger artist much younger artist a literally gifted Dr Christian Thompson second I've been willing to take responsibility wherever I've had the opportunity hopefully always in a way that is respectful alongside in support of or with support from the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people that I work with as the adage goes the standards you walk past the ones that you allow to persist they're the ones that you set so in my roles hopefully always collaboratively and respectfully taking responsibility means taking and supporting action and from time to time being brave and calling things out where I know that we can be better my style is usually to roll up my sleeves and get involved which is important I think because as regards reconciliation there is no magic potion there is no panacea out there it'll be thousands of instances actually it'll be millions of instances by millions of people each taking responsibility for actions that together will contribute to a closing of gaps and a better future and third lastly acting with urgency you see I turned 50 last year and almost like a blink of an eye the majority of my career my professional career has passed me by I'm almost but not quite as old as Bill Stanner's lectures and I know that Paul started today by urging us to be patient but I do feel a bit of urgency and with that realisation I have become a little impatient probably generally but particularly on this which means that every day I do try to make sure that important things are high on my list of priority rather than just urgent things including things around our reconciliation agenda at Westfarmers for which I have accountability as you've heard I don't think that there are many things that are more important for us as a country or indeed more unresolved a final comment though about this urgency and perhaps this references what Paul was saying I recognise that for many indigenous Australians and I think here of Pat and Peter and as me I know that they have dedicated whole careers to this advocacy and that also time frames for them can be defined in generations and centuries or even millennia stories about moths but there are lots of people lots of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people that I work with very closely who are also adept very adept at urgency and they're appreciative of having others to work with and collaborate with so that's it for me and for people like me my strategy is really my approach it's not about hope it's all about becoming informed taking some responsibility and acting with urgency so thank you very much for coming to this National Reconciliation Week lecture I know with you I am speaking to the converted but I look forward to working with you to convert more and more people so that together led by and alongside Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians we can give meaning to this year's NRW tagline which is making reconciliation much much much much more than just a word thank you