 Welcome everyone. Great to see so many people out this evening. I'm Brian Schmidt, the Vice Chancellor of the Australian National University. And as appropriate as part of our National Reconciliation Week and tonight's topic, we had hoped to have a welcome to country from Auntie Matilda House, but unfortunately she has been delayed and so I'm going to provide an acknowledgement to instead. So we are meeting here on Nunowall, Namburi land, land that has been the traditional meeting place for the people of this area for millennia. A place that we are proud to call the National University and the area Cambry that we are actually on today gifted to us by the indigenous families here in the Canberra region. So we're very grateful for that and we are delighted that we can continue those millennia traditions and be a meeting place for modern Australia as well. So when we look at reconciliation, we have had a really busy last week here at A&U and I hope many of you will have seen the repatriation ceremony we had with the Galilinko people who are down on force here last week. A really important part of where we can make amends for what was a lack of respect done by researchers who at some level I guess did not know better, but collected samples without the consent of the people that they took them from. And so we have had through I think a really positive program over the last several years discussions with the indigenous Australians whose samples were taken and working with them about repatriating them, but also using essentially the digital copies of those samples to further medicine for their benefit. And so that's been a really important part of what journey we've been on this week. Today we're going to have a distinguished panel and we welcome Fran Kelly back tonight who will chair it. But we have the Honorable Linda Burnie, great to have you back on our campus, Fiona Cornworth and Professor Ray Francis and Geraldine Chin Moody. Thank you all for making the time to be here and contributing your expertise to such an important discussion. This week has been a time for reflection and I told one thing that we did with the Gell-Wenco people, but it is a time each year to reflect on how far we've come with reconciliation but also how far we have to go. We must acknowledge and confront our past mistakes of history and as I said that what we did last week, I think it's a good example how we can turn past mistakes into something that is beneficial. And certainly the way we approach it is by looking forward and committing to being part of a solution and trying to commit our staff and our students to thinking about the solutions themselves of reaching out and working with First Nations people and take those 60,000 years of history making it a shared history and something that propels us all forward to make Australia stronger and better. That is something we're really trying to focus on this week here. Things we're looking at are of course intersect with other issues and one of that includes the treatment of women. Domestic and sexual violence against women is a prominent issue in Australia. We see this both in our Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities and with recent events across the nation now more than ever people need to come together, support each other and demand change. The status quo is just simply not okay. All women have the right to feel safe and protected and part of reconciliation is about being on this journey together. As I've said we can only make a difference. We all work as one, continue to break down the barriers that hold us back. And as I said by doing this we think we can benefit the whole nation. It's not just ourselves, it's everyone. Tonight we are joined by a panel of leading women and advocates who are champions of change and work hard to make a positive impact. And so I'm going to invite Fran Kelly up and under her guidance, our panel is going to explore what changes we could make if Indigenous and non-Indigenous people come together and work towards meaningful lasting change. And I look forward to learning a lot tonight. And so Fran, over to you and we'll leave you in your trustworthy hands. Thanks very much Brian and thank all of you. Thanks all of you for coming out tonight in Reconciliation Week. Perhaps we do always need to start with just looking back and dealing with the notion of reconciliation itself. In the year 2000 probably many of us here walked across a bridge together in Sydney or in Melbourne or in streets and parks in towns and cities across the country as a show of support and enthusiasm for the reconciliation process. 21 years on, how has that process progressed? What does reconciliation look like in each of our daily lives? What are we doing to contribute to it? It's a question we need to keep asking. Are Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians any closer really to coming together in understanding, to understand each other, to trust each other, to work together for better outcomes for first Australians in particular than we had two decades ago? And the statistics aren't encouraging. We know them. They're a litany of disappointment and tragedy in too many cases and going backwards in too many cases. Right now as Brian mentioned, a pressing issue for the nation is the safety of women prompted by the actions of a young former political staffer called Brittany Higgins who came out three years ago alleging she was raped in a minister's office in Parliament House here in Canberra. Her description of the response of ministers and senior government staffers to her ordeal was both shocking and familiar particularly for the many, many women who've endured sexual assault and harassment in workplaces, in communities and in families over generations. Her account gave a picture of feigned interest, callous disregard, weak institution protocols, just a general sense of inconvenience or worse denial and blame. Certainly not one of good enough care and response. Galvanised by Brittany Higgins' bravery in speaking truth to power, the women of Australia came out in force to tell the government enough. And after a few goes of getting it right, the Morrison government finally responded in the May budget with a package of reforms for women's safety and security. There was double the money for more community legal support, for better resourced family court processes, for frontline services like helplines and emergency accommodation and grants for women fleeing violence. There was some a little bit for all of those things and that was an improvement. There was $26 million earmarked specifically to improve support services for our First Nations women. So far so good. But the clamour and the headlines sparked by Brittany Higgins' allegations prompted some indigenous women to put their hand up and say, hey, what about us? Yes, sexual assault and domestic violence are experienced by all women. But why was it, they asked, that disclosures by white women gain international attention, whereas sexual violence against indigenous women is too often normalised and rendered invisible? This was the question posed in an open letter by three senior Aboriginal academics. Associate Professor Hannah Maglade, Dr Marlene Longbottom and Professor Bronwyn Carlson, who made the point that one in three indigenous women and girls will be raped in their lifetime and yet our state and federal governments fail to respond and the nation fails to take enough notice. They called for indigenous and non-indigenous women to come together in solidarity and respond with respect for each other to work together to end the violence against women. Now that would surely be an important step along the path to reconciliation. Our all-female panel tonight is a blend of youth and experience, indigenous and non-indigenous women. Linda Burney, can I invite you up on stage? Linda Burney is the federal Labor member for Barton. She's a proud Wurr-Ujri woman who was the first Aboriginal person elected to the New South Wales Parliament and the first Aboriginal woman elected to the federal House of Representatives. She served as a minister in the state government and a shadow minister across a range of portfolios federally. She's currently the shadow minister for families and indigenous Australians. Professor Ray Francis is the Dean of the College of Arts and Social Sciences and Professor of History here at the ANU. She's a widely published author with a deep interest in the struggles between dominant and non-dominant cultures. Fiona Cornforth is the CEO of the Healing Foundation, which many of you might know is a national indigenous organization working with communities to address the ongoing trauma of forced removals and the ensuing stolen generations. A proud Wurr-Ujri woman from Far North Cape of Queensland, she too is an alumni of ANU where she has a master's graduate of the College of Business and Economics. And Geraldine Chinmoudi is the co-founder of 5H Values Capital and a non-executive director of Future Super, which is an ethical subrenuation fund. She's held senior leadership roles in corporate Australia, including with the ASX and Virgin. She's a passionate champion of inclusion and diversity and she's also been on the board of UN Women and Refugee Advice and Casework Service and Welcoming Australia. Would you please welcome the esteemed panel. I have a tennis arm. One, two. Yes, that's working. Thank you. I should be better with a microphone than that. I apologise. Linda Burney, just first an update really, not so much in the realm of reconciliation, but you've been up on the hill at Federal Parliament while this debate about sexual assault and harassment has been playing out. In that building, does it feel to you that progress is being made, that a culture in that place that we have all now seen can be sexist even predatory for some young women is being forced to change? It does feel like things have certainly moved. I'm not sure if changed is the right word. Fran spoke about the bravery of Brittany Higgins and incredibly brave what she has done and the way in which she pursues the issue. There was money in the budget, that's true, but you would not be surprised if I said I think that was more about throwing bits of money at a political problem more than a systemic way of dealing with the issues. For me, Fran, it's taking way too long. I mean, I have agency up there. Women that are members of parliament of a certain generation do not experience what a 22-year-old staffer experiences, and I think the voices of those staffers are very important. Just to finish up on what I'm saying, it just seems to me that the structural problems, that there has been a change culturally. There's no two ways about that, but I'm not sure that the structural changes that are required are there. For example, there are, I don't know how many MPs there are, but just say there's 150. There's 150 employers. We employ our own staff, so that to me is a structural problem. Where do those staff go if the employer is the predator? That's going to need to change, and we're still waiting on those inquiries, but you would think that that at the very least is one structural issue that will change. Just from your vantage point as an Indigenous woman who's achieved a senior place in the top institutions of the nation, I wonder, do you share the frustrations of Hannah Maglade and the others? Do you see racism underlying the response of the nation to, well, the differing response, I suppose, to the horrific murder of Hannah Clark and her children to the allegations of rape made by Brittany Higgins compared to the reaction to the murder of Indigenous women and the unacceptable rates of family violence within some Indigenous communities? I think, and I know Hannah personally, I think Hannah and the people that wrote that open letter make a really important point is, you know, it's okay to have outrage and anger, but that has to go somewhere. And the point that I have been making is that where is the voice of marginalised women in this discussion? And one of those groups, of course, are First Nations women who suffer more in terms of assault and murder and hospitalisation than the rest of the community because of domestic and family violence. And the issue for me is not just about the deaths, it's actually about the people that are maimed and end up with head trauma and head injuries that affect them for the rest of their lives. There is not enough voices from women from a cold background. There are not enough voices of people from the LGBTQI community. Those voices, if we're going to truly change the culture of this country, those voices have to be prominent in the discussion and I don't think they are now. For example, and I'll finish on this point, the way in which Aboriginal women see this issue is very different to the way that non-Aboriginal women see this issue. It's not about the individual, it's about the family, it's about the community, it's about the men, it's about the wellbeing of everyone, not just about one person. And I can tell you that the way in which the media reports on the constant death and maiming of Aboriginal women is extremely different to the way in which, as Fran has said, sensational reports of white middle-class women are reported. Well, I think the issue too is it often just does not even get reported and there's a whole loaded in that. And what you've just said there, we need to hear the voices. This is not a new refrain. This seems to be the point we get to too often, which goes to what I was saying in the 21 years since 2000, have we moved far? Ray, as an historian, what are the lessons here about attitudes to First Nations people? Because this particular debate is not special to Australia. Women everywhere are subjected to male violence, of course. But in the US, for instance, there's a movement called the Say Her Name, a response by black women to the invisibility of their deaths at the hands of police and others. Yeah, look, I think it's a really important comparison to make and we can learn a lot from other jurisdictions, not just the US, Canada and New Zealand, for example, where we have powerful First Nations voices being very active on that point. But in the Australian context, I think it's very interesting, you know, the point about the differential reporting of white and non-white. But I think we shouldn't lose sight of the fact that sometimes it takes reporting of something close to home before people stand up and take notice. So the first women to get into education were often there because their fathers thought, well, that's pretty unfair. I've got this really clever daughter and she can't get into university. And often it was powerful white men who advocated. And I think what's really struck home with Brittany Higgins case is that a lot of powerful white men in Australia think that could have been my daughter and it's made a difference. And that opens up the discussion where people look more broadly at what else is going on in that space. So what those three Indigenous women said is absolutely true, but I think it's not all negative. Okay, well Fiona, on that in terms of, you know, opening up discussion of what needs to happen, it's your generation of Indigenous women who will be the architects of change and Indigenous young men. How can you see this happening? What do you, what needs to happen for the women in your community to feel safe and for the men to commit to make it so? Well, we need to get this intergenerational healing movement underway. A lot of the issues that we're faced with in our communities are down to the fact that there were policies that removed us from families, from loving and nurturing families and it affects more of us and our populations than you would think. It has a significant impact, the rate of removal across this country. And so that is historical trauma that is yet to be addressed. And when you're faced with that, when you're operating and functioning in life from a place of distress, how can you possibly take on bigger fights on behalf of all women, of all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women? It's really difficult, but you know, we avoid, as the healing foundation, we've been able to work alongside communities who have solutions and women who are empowered more than ever to overcome trauma, to understand that it's a human experience and that it's our cultures, there are elements in our cultures that have always kept us safe and well. And if we restore those things, we reprioritise them, you know, we can lead healing in our communities. And I guess one of the big things that's front of mind for me is a visit to the Yauru country and meeting with Kimberley Aboriginal women, over a hundred of them recently, myself and my deputy CEO got to go along as observers. They wanted us there because we could bring the evidence and the research around effective healing, but they had the solutions and it was amazing, amazing to watch. They used June Oscars, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander social justice commissioners report, which has those four priority actions that include intergenerational healing or addressing intergenerational trauma. And they spent 12 hours, over three days each day, 12 hours, putting actions against each of those priorities. And can you tell us a little more about that, Fiona, because, you know, the intergenerational healing, and I know you're giving a major address at the National Press Club tomorrow, laying out some of the data and which underlies sort of this connection to intergenerational trauma and the aftermath, if you like, that still carries through today. But it doesn't sound to me like a quick fix. I mean, there is an urgent matter to be done here to keep women safe when you look at, you know, the horrific rates of violence and hospitalisations Linda was saying. But so what are some of those solutions and are they seeing because, you know, you can also look on and go, well, is that just a cop-out for the black men that they, you know, are hiding behind international intergenerational trauma? What's some of the changes that are being made, the actions taken? Are they having any short-term impact that you've seen? Yeah, absolutely. And it's creating safe spaces to tell your truth and to be heard and to seek help and support in each other like we always did, like we did before, you know. And so that's something that comes to mind. But I can tell you that I saw exactly what Annie Linda said before. It's that we look at the whole family. We look at the men. You know, there was a presentation about how we're going to catch perpetrators and these women said, hang on, you're talking about my brothers. You're talking about my dads and my, you know, and and it occurred to me then and, you know, in my reflections in Reconciliation Week that we have these wonderful matriarchs that inspire us and who've led these movements for so long. But they've also absorbed so much. They've also taken the brunt of, you know, things like Hannah Maglade and others spoke about. They've, so that my generation and future generations can be stronger and freer, like freedom from trauma experiences. And that was acknowledged as well. And, you know, that's important for us to draw strength from. But it's and, you know, we've got wonderful partnerships in the Torres Strait with Murakoska sorority. And they work with the perpetrators and they're not the only ones across the country, but they're leading the way. This small little organization in the Torres Strait saying, we're going to we're going to heal our men. We're going to lead this intergenerational healing because we've always known how to lead, sorry, how to heal our cultures have provided for it. And we need everyone else to get on board. Julie, I wonder if you have a reflection on that, but also taking away from that sphere. I mean, violence against women is not just an issue for Indigenous women and the nation has been confronted on, you know, focused on confronting the the the incidents of workplace harassment and sexual assault more broadly. We keep hearing our parliament is way behind the cultural change within corporate Australia, yet violence against women happens everywhere. And it seems to happen all the time. And those terrible statistics about police being called out to a domestic violence incident once every two minutes tells us that are the corporate workplaces of the corporate world much different when you scratch the surface. And as Fiona's just told us, have you come across programs that have small worked well that could be as a as a reference to to broaden out and replicate and make change? Thank you, Fran. So I think I mean, from a corporate perspective, when we look at creating an inclusive environment that supports people from, you know, all different backgrounds, it's important for us to think about how we move organisations through what I call a maturity journey from being compliant, basic compliance, like making sure they comply, making sure they're investing in changing mindsets and breaking down unconscious bias and getting rid of discrimination within their systems and then moving to integrate it into the way that they do business. And I think business can go about trying to address this by by helping to role model some of the policies that might work more broadly across the sector. So for example, when I was at Virgin, you know, five or six years ago, we put in place with the unions working closely with the TWU and others. Ten days of paid family domestic violence leave. And we use that as a chance to educate the workforce on why that was important. And in doing that, speaking with 10,000 people, your putting in place structures and systems, you're giving direct access to CD members of leadership. And what we saw is, I mean, I was in the position of group executive of people at that time and people come directly to me, you know, through six levels of management because they felt they could, they had a safe place to raise concerns and that we could genuinely get them help. And I think if we can provide a system that allows everybody to access those types of services in whatever organisation they're working in, whether it's family and domestic violence, whether it's sexual harassment, we create a safer place for everyone. So Linda, would you want to respond to that? I was just going to say, one minute, the most successful program I've ever seen to address the issue of domestic violence in Aboriginal communities was done through the local rugby league club. Local rugby league clubs were sponsored $5,000, that's all it costs, though we had about 30, the Wilcania Yabbies and the La Peruse Panthers and so on. And what happened, there was curriculum, there was training, we used ex-rugby league players and some non-Arabian women were involved. The men that played rugby league signed a contract. They were the fathers, the brothers, the cousins and if they stuffed up and had a DV assault charge against them, guess what? They weren't allowed to play rugby league. And at a local community level, it changed things. It worked. And did that change get embedded? It did. And some of those clubs, even though the funding has gone, change of governments, these things, but even though that funding is gone, they have maintained the program. Okay, well, I was going to ask you what needs to happen to bring Indigenous and non-Indigenous women together to demand change. And but perhaps the better issue question is if you were the Minister for Indigenous Affairs or Family Services or the Minister for Women, what's the first thing you would do to try and affect that? I would look at things from a local perspective. There is no silver bullet that's going to sort this out. So it's almost a community by community organisation by organisation. And Fiona is absolutely correct. I cannot tell you the effect of trauma of the stolen generations and the way that that stops Aboriginal women reporting because I think they're going to lose their kids. I think they're going to lose their kids because if the houses that the children will be taken to out of home care. Yeah, that's correct. So but if I was the Minister, the thing that really is important is to get immediate resources to people that are affected, immediate resources. And that's basically what we're working on at the moment. Thing is called flexible support packages, 20,000 up to 20,000 bucks for a woman and her kids if they're leaving a violent relationship on whatever she wants to spend it on. If it's white goods, if it's a lease, if it's a bond, it doesn't matter. And that's immediate resourcing. This might sound crazy, but resourcing refuges for women, for women's pets. You've got no idea how many women, particularly from rural the rural regions, stay in relationships because they've got responsibility for animals. It might be potty calves, it might be foals. It could be family pets. The really practical things, but getting resources immediately to people that need it. And the biggest issue I hear from the sector frown is not to do with a response to violence, but it is availability of social housing and places for people to go. We know in some regions in New South Wales and across this country, there is no rental. So how can you leave a relationship in a small country town if there's nowhere for you to go to? These are the very practical and pragmatic things that need to take place. And we should say, there was a pilot, for instance, of the immediate fleeing violence grants, wasn't there in the budget, up to $15,000 I think. So this is a pilot only. I think it's a pilot and it's $1,500. $1,500, is it? That you get money and the rest is in counselling services and so forth. A $5,000 dollar grant, I think. The other thing is that you should not have to use, if you're leaving violence, you should not have to use your holidays or your rec days to get out of that relationship. You should be supported, which is corporate Australia is doing a lot of this, for up to 10 days paid leave because you need that time. You get out of a violent relationship, I've done it myself. You just collapse. For three days, you don't know where you are because you've put up with that trauma for so long. So these things have to be considered by policymakers and politicians when they're thinking about the real issues faced by women. And Ray, we've been talking about working together in the context of reconciliation and in the context of making change. I think Linda started off saying Aboriginal women need to be part of these discussions. They need to be part of the groups that are collecting the data, developing the policy, making the change. So is it about working together or is it a better way of saying that about learning from each other? And what is it? I don't know even if you've had this, had done this exercise, but within Indigenous culture that you think we can learn on, is it the notion of elders, as Fiona was talking about, is there something you've seen within the Indigenous community that you think we can all learn from? Yeah, and I think I've learned a lot from Indigenous people in the time that I've been working in universities and also in the museum sector. And what I've learned is to slow down and listen more, that well, well, people like myself are brought up in families where you're taught to advocate and speak up. And that's almost more important than listening. But what I think is really important if we are to work successfully together is that people, particularly like me, take the time to listen to what Indigenous people want and how they want to do things and not be in such a hurry to charge ahead and do what we think is right. And to listen, of course, then the Indigenous women need to be at that table. So they're there for you to listen to, which is a significant change, I think, if we look at the advisory groups that get set up, they're often not there. Talking more broadly, Fiona, about reconciliation, and you touched on this, the Healing Foundation is calling for the National Intergenerational Healing Strategy, which includes truth-telling, healing through culture and community-led services. How important is the truth-telling bit of that, Fiona, the process of acknowledging the past, of hearing what happened at the point of colonisation, to the reconciliation process more broadly for all of us? It's really important for so many reasons, but one of the biggest is that how do you make solutions for a problem you haven't framed properly because you're only dealing with part of the truth and not all of it? And we have this knowledge now, this evidence about the effects of removal and how it manifests today. Just going back to linking back to my previous comments, Fran, I don't want people here to go away thinking that we're going to heal ourselves in our communities on our own because that's part of it. But when you talk about how our people come together with non-First Nations peoples, I think about this gathering we had in Townsville recently, and there's a transient Palm Island community through there as well. And we had maybe about 40 people gathered who are all involved in local healing programs, and they're all volunteers. They're all tired, burnt out, doing the heavy lifting for this community with high rates of use crime, high rates of trauma. And you had these elders that are saying, Fiona, I get $50 to go to the jail, and guess what? There's this lady that's been in and out of there for 16 years, and I finally got through to her, and she doesn't want to be there anymore. She's celebrating this triumph, but they're all volunteers. And we don't get a lot of money ourselves as the Healing Foundation. We haven't had an increase in 12 years since we're operating, but the demand is huge. And so all I can really do with that is say, look, system by system until it's workforce by workforce and sector by sector, sorry, the other way around. Workforce by workforce and sector by sector until it's system by system, everybody needs to be trauma aware and healing informed. And if we're coming together, then everybody in those workforces, everybody in those settings that we interact with as Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples needs to hear us, needs to validate our experiences, and needs to be led by us with really solid solutions. I think that was very clear in what I've read of the dialogues that led to the illeroo statement from the heart. Those gathered from what I've read, the clearest statement they wanted to make first was a recording of their history before they started talking about the constitutional, making the point that you cannot recognise that which you do not know. And I was really struck by an excerpt from one of them. This was from the Darwin regional dialogue, which said, Australia must acknowledge its history, its true history, not Captain Cook, what happened all across Australia, the massacres and the wars. If that were taught in schools, we might have one nation where we are all together. Geraldine, do you think if that was taught in schools that might make one nation that would make a difference? Absolutely. So I've got 9 and 11 year old kids and I have to say their school does a good job. I think at bringing different perspectives on history into the curriculum and my son's going out to Goduga to visit a central regional school in 12 hours out of Sydney next week as an exchange between the two schools to really try to just build that greater awareness. But I absolutely agree, I think it's up to schools, it's in the education system really needs to change, it needs to be across the system and it's up to also I think the workforce has a role to educate our parents so that the parents are also able to bring and change the biases. Often when I see bias in the workforce and issues in the workforce where you're dealing with discrimination and racism, it's based off a belief that they've grown up with and so then it becomes harder to resolve it when people are bringing those biases that are so unconscious into the workforce. So I think it's absolutely fundamental that we embrace the Uluru Statement, that we have this process of truth telling, that we have our First Nations people really advise us on how we best update the curriculum nationally, state by state and locally and then how we go about building the resources in our museums, in our public institutions to allow the community and parents to also reinforce that process and it educates the parents as well and it's not enough just to educate the kids in school. Perhaps you know I've suffered from what Wei was saying, I just wanted to all happen more quickly. We've been talking about changing this curriculum as long as I can remember. The Uluru Statement from the heart is four years old last week. Ray, if that's the blueprint and I'm sure Linda wants to chip in on this too but if that's the blueprint of what First Australians have articulated, they want a need, presumably it's this bedrock then of successful reconciliation. If our government aren't responding in a timely way, can the rest of us do it without them? We can't hold a referendum obviously unless government's persuaded to but you know what can we do? Well I think at the Australian National University we can do an awful lot because we have fantastic historians who work already, some of them are Indigenous and others work with Indigenous communities and we would love to lead a process, a nationwide process and here I'm plagiarising Peter Yu's idea. We have a local truth telling that goes across the country so that you can imagine the whole of Australia as a mosaic of local communities investigating their own story of contact and coming to terms with that and owning up to it and we've got a fabulous exhibition in the art and design gallery at the moment on the Mile Creek Massacre which is an art installation which was produced primarily by Indigenous people curated by Bianca Beatson from New England area and that relates to the famous Mile Creek Massacre where the local people have come together and they've interviewed descendants of the perpetrators as well as descendants of the victims of that massacre and they've told stories about it which actually you know try and reach a place where as Bianca puts it you can heal country and it gets back to your point too about about healing and I think that's a great model but we could if we applied that all across Australia and everybody confronted what went on in their backyard and tried to find a place to to move on from that I think that would be very powerful and here at the ANU we would love to facilitate and inspire that process. Linda do you think that the the Yulu statement of the heart basically really gives us the starting point for all the change that needs to happen? I do and I do want to recognize Brian and the leadership this university has provided over some time in relation to the Uluru statement and I've had a Peter Peter you and I met last week and we spoke about truth telling so the Uluru statement I actually think Fran that the Australian community is ahead of politicians on this one. Well we probably should remind people that four years on the process there is a process the Indigenous Affairs Minister Ken Wyatt has started a process but it's stalled and it's stalled in short of constitutional recognition. Well seems to be. I'll tell you what very briefly so the three working groups that Minister Wyatt has set up that have undertaken a national consultation on what a voice might look like were forbidden as in the terms of reference which I have a copy of of dealing with anything to do with Uluru. So what's being proposed is a legislated voice to the parliament but I just want to put to the audience here tonight that we should not think a voice to the parliament and a Makarata commission have to be dependent on each other. A Makarata commission under Uluru has two responsibilities a national process of truth telling and national agreement making which is a nice way to say national treaty making. South Australia and Victoria and other state governments are not waiting they have started their own processes in terms of truth telling and their own processes in terms of treaty making including the Northern Territory and Queensland. It seems to me that what people need to come to terms with as well that I reckon on back of the envelope this is about a hundred million bucks to do to have a national process to have a national process of agreement and treaty making and establish a Makarata commission you you can't have and I I've been to Mile Creek and I've been to them to the memorial and overlooked the massacre site it's amazing it just it's it's it's incredible um but if you want local governments local historical societies schools local communities to get involved you're going to have to pay for the what they need to do you the it doesn't it can't be done without a proper budget and a process of treaty making the model that I have in mind is led by commissioners and we have to remind ourselves everyone that this is going to take a long time it is not something you can do in two years but we've had four years where this could have started and it hasn't we're almost we're going to run out of time we would like to invite a couple of questions from the audience in a moment so we've probably only got time for a couple but um if you do have a question I would ask you to move down to the microphone there on the side and line up there and I'll come to you so you can make your way down now if you do have a question if you don't we'll just keep chatting amongst ourselves um Fiona Fiona and I'll come to the questions in a moment just Fiona before I come to the audience questions um Linda's saying okay the government's it's it's going slow it's not heading towards constitutional recognition at the moment but let's not wait let's try and get the government to agree to some kind of macaradu truth-telling um commission as we've seen being set up in Victoria but how important is in your view the voice to reconciliation and how much is constitutional recognition crucial to it for it to be embedded in the constitution look I it's it's it's really important I just I just think of all the the loss and the grief and the trauma and I think something really big has to happen um because it's just long overdue everything's long overdue in terms of healing and um you know even since they're bringing them home report that's a whole new generation that's joined us earth side since that report you've got professors and lecturers walking around here who you know um we're born after it so uh it's we can't we can't afford to wait around for another generation to join us it has to be something as big as that and it is possible um there is um a people it's people are positive about it um and I I know from working alongside stolen generation survivors and their descendants and their families and the community some of them I've already mentioned that they see where they are now and the trauma that's happened you know that's transferred across generations as being the result of the absence of a voice the absence of truth telling in any formal way um and the absence of true reconciliation through something like a macaroni commission and do you as a young indigenous leader think constitutional recognition is key to that is there I noticed from the ururu process this the fear seemed to be without it not it's impermanent any change is impermanent yeah look I am and I um I was fortunate to see how those dialogues happened across the country and um it was done properly we had really um really amazing leaders that have been there from the start involved in in in all of them and um there was I remember I remember looking on and saying there's there's no way they're going to come up with one statement and there's no way that we could come up with you know agree there's such powerful actions but but we did and that means something and the work of our our foundation um I we pride ourselves on on bringing the right people together to discuss the right things to create um action plans um in the right directions and so um that was that on a bigger scale and um it's one of those things it's unprecedented and it's once in a lifetime yeah I think we have a fabulous template now that worked um and nothing else comes close to it really um and even some of the things that are happening in different jurisdictions the their piecemeal and some of them are causing more trauma um we know that from working in communities and so it's really important that we get something that's nationally consistent that's informed by what we know about healing effective healing and what we know about um addressing trauma okay now we have a question here I think and I ask all of you to keep your questions pretty short because we're really pushing it yes thank you um today I've got an email from the war memorial as I do every month saying what's on on in June and one of the things they're celebrating is that all the indigenous people who fought and in many cases died for this country in World War one and two but not a mention not not a single word about what happened beforehand with all the massacres and and the frontier wars that went on and yet I see our government is determined to spend $500 million to enlarge the war memorial and make it just a sort of a showcase for weapons of war Linda is there any movement at all in parliament to get the recognition of the frontier wars and as you say that tell the truth about our history and what happened uh when settlement came to white settlement came to this country and should be included in the war memorial um there isn't a lot of movement across the parliament but can I just say that one of the things I've set myself before I die is that that joint is going to recognize what happened in this country prior to World War one Fiona I think I'm right in saying that you're proposing part of your proposal from the healing foundation is a healing centre which includes some kind of memorial in Canberra I think on the banks of the lake you're talking about let's say in big um that so if not in the war memorial which you know Linda set her sights on you know is there another place where this recognition could you know to be built for these stories hopefully and the idea behind that and it again is a wonderful idea from survivors themselves uh is to get exposed as many people as possible as quickly as possible to this to this healing that needs to happen and and how it needs to happen and um it it should have the truth telling it should tell the stories um but it should also talk about um healing movement and um reconciliation movements and so um it's it was part of our pre-budget submission this year but um we'll we'll keep pushing for that we know there's a memorial there now in reconciliation place that acknowledges the stories but um we're looking at things like um well I will ask us it's their their mission is to tell the stories of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples but I've said to them you can't do that without us without um what we know from our survivors from the truth telling from survivors and how they've gotten through it and how they want to lead this intergenerational healing movement and so um you know there's some hope there but it costs a lot of money well it costs a lot of money but we're spending a lot of money at the moment so now is the season I think for this um and one thing to be sure is we do need a place for all of us to go and hear the stories if we're still not learning them in the classrooms enough we need a place whether it's in our war memorial or it's by the lake in a healing we need the stories for us to know because without knowing we can't understand look thank you all of you for not asking a lot of questions that's tremendous because we are out of time so just to finish off a quick thought from all of our panel let's start with you Geraldine a thought from you about reconciliation and and how to get there and how women might lead that um so I think from my perspective as a half Chinese um Australian woman um I don't believe we can create a country of welcome a country of inclusion organizations of inclusion until um we've embraced the Uluru statement until we've gone through um the truth-telling process so from my perspective I think um everyone like me needs to use our voice and we need to um to stand up and be bold and brave and and call and support it to get the community support so we can get for example constitutional referendum approved so about using our voice to support that so we can move to the next stage Fiona a final thought from you gosh it's tough to have a phone I'm at the press club tomorrow everyone that's right in fact that's a great final thought tune in tomorrow at 12 30 is it we tune in is it televised I should know this it is it's televised yeah fantastic right um my final thought is that you know we can all act as citizens but we can also act from the positions that we have um in the community so those of us you know lots of us here in the university we can use our influence to ensure that you know education we know is the key to a lot of this stuff and we are in a fantastic position to ensure that the next generation um of educators and politicians and community leaders um know more about the things they need to know to to make this country heal Linda I know you have a final thought my final thought is that reconciliation is not a destination reconciliation is a journey and we're all part of that journey and don't ever feel that this is such a big issue what do what do I what matter it's the humble acts of reconciliation that bring about change that's terrific note to end on could you please thank the panel Linda Bernie Fiona Cornforth Ray Francis and Geraldine Chinmudi what a terrific discussion thank you all of you