 start by acknowledging and celebrating the first Australians on whose traditional lands we meet today and pay my respects to the elders of the Nunnawal people past and present. It's a great pleasure to be here this evening to welcome you all to the university and I'd like to begin by extending my thanks to the Honourable Kevin Rudd for joining us here this evening. Mr. Rudd shares a passion and a commitment for closing the disadvantaged gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. His address today will mark nine years since the historic National Apology to Australian Indigenous Peoples. This was a milestone moment in 2008 for this country's history and it marked a significant step towards reconciliation in Australia and I remember that day well. Mr. Rudd's ongoing commitment and leadership to this cause helps keep the issue on the agenda and moving it forward. Mr. Rudd, we commend you for your work and your efforts. Thank you. Reconciliation is one of the key planks of the new ANU strategic plan that we launched last week and of my vision as Vice Chancellor of this university. We have committed to building on our relationship with Indigenous Australia in particular to increase the recruitment and success of Indigenous students and staff but not only that we are also undertaking research relevant to the big questions facing Indigenous Australia and are going to be playing a more active role in the national debate. Professor Mick Dodson AO Director of the ANU Centre for Indigenous Studies will speak after Mr. Rudd's address. So without further ado it gives me great pleasure to invite Mr. Rudd to speak. Thank you very much Vice Chancellor or as you would be addressed in Australia Mr. President. I should say in America is Mr. President. Having just flown from President Trump's America to Malcolm Turnbull's Australia I'm relieved to be here at the Australian National University an enclave among them both. I honour the first Australians on whose land we meet and whose cultures we celebrate as the oldest continuing cultures in human history. I honour the stolen generations whose grief suffering and loss forever marks us all and I honour our Indigenous brothers and sisters who are with us today on this the ninth anniversary of the National Apology. Someone I respect greatly a senior Indigenous woman said to me the other day why on earth did you require the closing the gap report to be presented to Parliament each year. It is a disaster for the government. The last part of her remarks of course are largely true. It usually is a political disaster for the government of the day for governments of whichever political persuasion. But that's because closing the gap was never meant as a public relations exercise nor was the apology itself meant as a public relations exercise. Both the apology and the annual closing the gap statement were intended as real concrete exercises in public policy. The apology was a formal recognition after 220 years of European settlement of our systematic brutalisation of a proud people who had lived in these lands for millennia. Closing the gap was a strategic policy setting with targets, benchmarking, data collection and annual review as an annual calling to account for the nation. One without the other would have been a dead letter. It's like normal life. You can't apologise for treating someone badly without then changing your behaviour towards them for the future. As I said at the time we should have the maturity as a polity to recognise where we succeed and where we fail in this most critical areas of public policy. Particularly in an area of public policy which says everything about who we are as Australians and in addition to that how we are then seen in the world. Successes when they occur should be celebrated, failures should be acknowledged with brutal honesty and learning should be had so that they can be applied to the new approaches for the future. I hear it said sometimes that closing the gap hasn't worked and that we should try something new. I would say to such critics that such an approach would represent yet another triumph of superficiality over substance in some sort of faddish search for something that sounds new and exciting as part of a permanent political search for rebranding. Good grief. Give me a break. How purile could we get? The essence of closing the gap is the cold hard business of measurement. It's about agreed targets in critical areas such as indigenous health, education, employment and longevity. It is about collecting the data where in so many areas either at a federal or state level the data just didn't exist often because we didn't care or often because we were just too embarrassed either as national or state governments to collect it for fear of the actual story of indigenous disadvantage it would tell. It's about assembling the data into an intelligible picture for policymakers and the public and yes it's also about drawing all the above together to prick our national conscience but with the intention of adjusting policies where we need to or to continue policies where they are demonstrably working. This is what closing the gap is all about and why it should be preserved as our national framework for future indigenous policy. What closing the gap is not about is the prescription of detailed individual policies for each of the five sectors it seeks to measure. Policy solutions will vary from state to state, from city to city and from community to community. That is as it should be. Conditions differ, warranting different responses. So when we say closing the gap is not working what we may mean is that various individual policy settings in different parts of the country may not be working but that does not mean that the overall framework of measurement that we've spent years now creating under closing the gap should be replaced. What it does mean is we need to work harder on the hard stuff of policy and program delivery. The intergovernmental mechanism we agreed upon between the Commonwealth and the States was the COEG, Council of Australian Government's Agreement of December 2008. I remember it well and all the scar tissue associated with it. This was the first time in the history of our Federation that we managed to bring the Commonwealth and the States and the territories together into a united national strategic policy framework and critically with a united set of measurements of success or failure. Indigenous Australia is not all that concerned which state they might happen to live in. What they want to know is whether their lot is improving locally and whether it is improving nationally. So these are the three arms of government strategy that go to the heart of the matter. The apology itself, closing the gap as a strategic policy framework and the COEG strategy of combined national funding, individual policy settings and the nuts and bolts of program delivery. And I'm proud that this structured approach was set in concrete by my government. Friends, failing to close the gap is just not an option. This year's report I'm told will be handed down tomorrow. Knowing the political process well as I do, I'm sure it'll be leaked overnight. Let's read our morning papers with interest, fascination and surprise. It will, I imagine, be a mixture of success and failure, but better we know than we don't and I would recommend it to all of you as a central reading. Permit me to remind you just for a moment of the closing the gap targets. One, close the life expectancy gap within a generation. Two, halve the gap in mortality rates for Indigenous kids under five within a decade. Three, ensure access to early childhood education for all Indigenous four-year-olds in remote communities within five years. Four, halve the gap in reading, writing and numeracy achievements for children within a decade. Five, close the gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous school attendance by the end of 2018 next year. Halve the gap for Indigenous students in year 12 attainment rates by 2020. And seven, halve the gap in employment outcomes between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians within a decade. These are ambitious targets. I don't apologise for any one of them because it was inviting the nation to be ambitious about this underlying state of deep social injustice. But the first decade is fast drawing to a close. I have an age and I'm sure none of you have either. But the decade and its conclusion fast approaches. And for the past few years I've been calling and I've not been alone for other targets to be added to the original seven to be measured to become part of a candid national conversation again on success and failure. In previous speeches on this anniversary I've argued for an additional target on Indigenous higher education rates. I've also argued that CoA needs to consider a target to reduce the nation's appalling Indigenous incarceration rates. And I would call on the government to take that seriously and to do it soon. Those targets so far have not yet been added. Perhaps the Prime Minister might announce them tomorrow. But for the last few years on this anniversary I've also raised the alarm on the emergence of what some are calling a second stolen generation. That is the growing number of Indigenous kids being removed not just from their parents but removed from their community and removed from their culture. And I promised in the National Apology nine years ago that that would never ever happen again. Let's talk about the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander child placement principle. The removal of any Aboriginal child must be a last resort. Let me repeat it must be a last resort. That is how the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander child placement principle begins. Removal of an Aboriginal child must be the last resort. It goes on. The principle says if after consultation with a community controlled Aboriginal welfare organisation removal of a child from its family is unavoidable then the authorities must have regard to the direction of the Aboriginal welfare organisation. If such removal is necessary then the child must be placed within the extended family or if this is not possible the child may be placed within the Aboriginal community with close proximity to the child's natural family. If there is not an Aboriginal placement available then in consultation with Aboriginal and Islander care child care agencies the child may be placed with a non-Aboriginal family on the assurance of the child's culture identity and contact with the Aboriginal community are maintained. This principle was not the product of the Apology nine years ago. It's much older than that. In fact the principle was developed more than 30 years ago in response to the terrible legacy of the stolen generations. And it is now enshrined in legislation and policy in all states and territories. In WA the principle is ratified by the Department of Community Services in October of 85 and from that time Aboriginal children in WA could not be placed with non-Aboriginal carers without the approval of the Director-General and it was entered into legislation in 2004. In the territory the Northern Territory it was incorporated into legislation in the Community Welfare Act of 83 and subsequently in the Adoption of Children Act of 1994. In South Australia the principle became the official policy of the South Australian Government in 1983 and included in South Australian legislation in 1988. In the ACT it's reflected in the Children and Young People Act 2008. In Victoria incorporated the legislation in 1989. In Queensland you'll find it in the Child Protection Act of 1999 and New South Wales it became part of the law with the Children Care and Protection Act of 87, the Community Welfare Act of 87 and the Adoption Information Act of 1990. I mention all this to make it clear for all that it is more than a policy, much more than a policy, more than a guideline, much more than a guideline, much more than a good intention and more than an idea. It is the law as defined by the States and Territories of Australia. And while protecting children is a state responsibility it is also everybody's business and that was reflected in 2009 when the Council of Australian Government's COEG endorsed the national framework for protecting Australia's children 2009 to 2020. Once again I'm proud of the fact that this was done under my government. The national framework is for Commonwealth State and Territory Governments, non-government organisations, service providers and individuals with an interest in ensuring all Australia's children black and white are safe and well. So what does it say? It says Indigenous children need to be supported and safe in their families and communities. For this reason I'm disappointed by the current Third Action Plan 2015-2018 which now has been brought about within this framework. It contains a lot of business and its usual activity by the Commonwealth Government and a lot of not much at all from some of the States. I understand there is an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander working group that supports this national framework process and COEG should listen to it and make sure it is not lost in the bureaucratic processes. Call me harsh, many have, but COEG needs to do much better and I hope it does. As does of course the implementation of the national standards of out-of-home care, of which standard number three is Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities participate in the decisions concerning the care and placement of their children and young people. This isn't just about bureaucracy, it's about young lives, often very young lives. How they are raised will be both our legacy and their future. In this context I must also mention the good work of SNI AICC, affectionately known as Snake, the Secretary for National Aboriginal and Islander Child Care, and their national campaign Family Matters, which is seeking to work in every state and territory to change the story. Because my friends the uncomfortable truth is that the story of Indigenous child removal is bad and it's getting worse. As you may know I'm much given to programmatic specificity. What programmatic specificity means is simple, I like to have numbers, but on this subject the numbers are chilling. In 2006, 6497 Aboriginal children were in out-of-home care nationally. Then there was Little Children, our sacred inquiry, which increased the focus on Indigenous child welfare. By the end of June 07 it had jumped by one and a half thousand to just under eight thousand. Since then the number has grown by about additional thousand kids per year, so that by mid 2015, which is the most recent data available, it stood at 15,432. Of those 15,432 children who are now in other forms of care, one-third or just under five thousand were not placed in accordance with the child placement principle. That is a big proportion of a growing number. That is no Indigenous organisation was consulted, no extended family carer was found and no community carer was found for that one-third of the national caseload. These kids were just taken away. We all know this is a difficult, delicate and complex area. The rights of the child and our responsibilities for the safety of the child must always come first. Furthermore, we cannot today in the time we have dissect the various assumptions that these figures rest on. But what is patently clear is that the focus across the board is not on early intervention. It is not based on prevention, which would obviate the need for a family to be broken up in the first place. And when the removal of a child must occur, we also know that a third of such cases occur without recourse to a local Indigenous community organisation to identify alternative placement options within the wider family clan or culture. What is also clear in our current national circumstances is that $500 million in cuts to a range of Indigenous programmes and front-line services by the current government is not helpful. I will never condemn anyone for removing any child from harm. But it can be done in consultation with Indigenous authority, with Indigenous responsibility and with Indigenous support. Or it can be done with total disregard of community culture and family. Let us do all we can to prevent the harm, rather than just react to it. So are we looking at the emergence of yet another stolen generation? Let me be clear. Our growing challenges with child removal today are of a different order of magnitude entirely to what we saw over more than a three quarters of a century period with the brutality meted out to the stolen generations. In Queensland, for example, Queensland's Industrial and Reformatory School Act of 1865 allowed neglected or destitute children to remove from the care of their families in place in a range of institutions available at that time. Under this legislation, any child of Aboriginal descent was by definition defined as neglected. The stolen generations were not the result of underfunded child services. It was not the result of poorly implemented policy. It was the policy. According to the Bringing Them Home report, there was no Indigenous family in Australia unaffected, directly or indirectly. The stolen generations were not removed from their families to keep them safe. They were removed from their families because they were Aboriginal, full stop. And some would argue for current kids, that's still true, that racism plays a part in the terrible rates of out of home care we have today. I'm not so sure about that. I can't make the judgment. But what I am sure of is that we cannot simply stand back and let the numbers of Indigenous kids being removed grow year by year without other options being tested within the wider Indigenous community. We do not want another generation of young Aboriginal children unnecessary, separated from their culture. We do not want to see the emergence of a second stolen generation, not my design, but nor by default. So what are the states and territories doing about this? Under current arrangements between the Commonwealth and the states, the removal of Indigenous children is fundamentally a state and territory responsibility. And there is some heartening news. Some positive responses are now beginning to emerge. In New South Wales, as a result of the alarm raised in no small part by the hard work and effort of grandmothers against removals, a review was announced late last year into the case of every Aboriginal child taken into out of home care during the year 2016. The New South Wales government is also investing $90 million over four years for new family preservation and restoration services, with 50% of the new intensive family preservation places being for Aboriginal children and their families. In New South Wales, Indigenous people make up just 3% of the population, but 37% of the kids in out of home care. In WA, which is also around 3% Indigenous, Aboriginal kids in out of home care make up a staggering 52%, with only 64% of those placed in other forms of care in accordance with the Aboriginal child placement principle. Last year, WA saw the release of an early intervention and support strategy. It is sorely needed and needs to be just the beginning. In Queensland, my home state, the rate of kids placed in accordance with the principle has dropped to around 56%. In 2015, three and a half thousand Indigenous children were in out of home care. And in a state where Indigenous people make up 3.6% of the population, they make up 42% of children in this form of care. But again, in Queensland, work is underway in conjunction with Indigenous elders and organisations to develop a whole of government action plan. The Northern Territory has the worst rate bar none for compliance with the child placement principle, with only 34.8% of Indigenous kids in out of home care placed in accordance with the policy. A few years ago, they had a magistrate who said she thought the principle was getting in the way of ensuring a child's wellbeing. Well, given what we have seen recently with Indigenous youth incarceration in the Northern Territory, it would seem very much that this business of ignoring the principle does not appear to be delivering the result. Moving an Indigenous child into a non-Indigenous family is not dropping them into the lap of luxury with unheard of opportunities and a better start. Moving an Indigenous child into a non-Indigenous family, in fact, can mean something quite different. Speaking to foster carers in the Northern Territory, by ignoring community, by not engaging the Indigenous organisations and the extended families, it is not unusual to see Aboriginal kids shunted around five different foster families within one single year. Five different foster families within a single year. They are not only losing their culture, these children are losing also basic stability and any sense of home and security. Add to that the harm a change of government can do to long-term planning and strategy. This happened with the incoming CLP government in 2012, scrapping all that was learned in the 2010 growing them strong together report on child safety in the Northern Territory. I hope this report is a priority for the new Territory Labor government. Perhaps they and others could take inspiration from Victoria. In Victoria in 2014 a systemic inquiry was launched, Task Force 1000, to investigate how to stem the rapidly rising number of Aboriginal children in out-of-home care in that state, then totaling just under a thousand. In the course of a two-year inquiry their numbers rose by a further 60% nearly 1700. Aboriginal children represented 20% of all children in state care in Victoria, despite Aboriginal people representing less than 1% of the state's population. There are nearly 12 times, they are nearly 12 times more likely than non-indigenous children to be put in out-of-home care. The findings of Task Force 1000 was released at the same time as a review into compliance with the Aboriginal child placement principle. That principle and its local application was released in October of last year. The child placement principle review found that not one Aboriginal child experienced complete compliance with the principle in Victoria, not one. While the Task Force found more than 6% were case managed by a non-Aboriginal agency, 60% placed with a non-Aboriginal carer, 42% away from their extended family, and more than 40% separated from brothers and sisters. Tellingly the Commissioner for Aboriginal Children and Young People Andrew Jacomas said, and I quote him, we had child protection officials telling us they were unable to trace a child's Aboriginal family for years when we were able to trap them down on Facebook within minutes, unquote. Sir Humphrey would have been proud of the defence and shocked by the response. Thankfully in Victoria, rather than responding to reviews by ditching the principle and the policy, they have instead looked at improving delivery. And better yet, they are actively making Aboriginal organisations decision makers, not just under consulted advisers. They are also investing in that essential component called early intervention. Because keeping kids safe from harm, keeping families together, helping before it becomes a crisis where out of home care is the only option is what everybody wants. Read the Task Force 1000 report if you can. It's entitled Always Was, Always Will Be, Courery Children, but be prepared for some genuinely heartbreaking case studies. Finally, I must mention South Australia. Across the board, it would seem everyone agrees that Indigenous developed, managed and delivered services with family services built on local needs will lead to better outcomes for Indigenous children. Except, it seems, in South Australia where it appears the department is looking to abandon the Aboriginal child placement principle altogether. This is disturbing. Like Victoria, they started their review in 2014. In South Australia's case, it was a royal commission into the child protection system in August last year that we saw the findings handed down. It was broader than Indigenous kids in out of home care, but they made at least 10 recommendations directly related to Indigenous children. These were recommendations such as placing local Aboriginal support services within child and family assessment and referral networks to promote service coordination, adopting culturally appropriate assessment tools to assess kinship carers in the community, reviewing practice guidance, funding arrangements and the range of declared agencies to ensure that a recognised Aboriginal agency was consulted on all placement decisions involving Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children in accordance with the provisions of the Child Protection Act 1993. All that sounded very promising. That was the nature of the review. But part of it seems the Parliament's response has been to release a draft child and young people safety bill 2016. And in that draft bill, I'm sorry to say the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander child placement principle has disappeared. It is gone. In the old bill of 1993, we have no decision or order may be made under this act as to where or with whom an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander child will reside unless consultation has first been had with a recognised Aboriginal organisation or a recognised Torres Strait Islander organisation as the case may require. The royal commission suggested reviewing funding of agencies to make sure that that happened. But instead, it seems that the parliamentary draftsmen have rewritten the act, weakening Indigenous engagement to suggesting Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people should participate in the care and protection of their children and young people with as much self-determination as reasonable in the circumstances. And by the way, in South Australia, 30% of the children and out-of-home care are Indigenous, while they make up only 1.9% of the state's population. If all these facts are true and I'm advised that they are, then I would certainly request the parliamentary draftsmen in South Australia to review the approach taken in the current draft bill. To conclude, the purpose of running through in some exhaustive detail what each jurisdiction is doing is to report where work is underway, where it is succeeding and where it's in fact falling short. And in doing so, I'm conscious of the fact that the alarm is being raised. The results of each state's efforts are not yet known and often not yet fully implemented. So this is not the time to slacken attention but rather to redouble the call. There must be more than press releases, more than reviews and more than action plans. There must be action itself. So why not commit to a target? Let each state share what it is working, what is working for that state and what is not. Let's see 100% of Indigenous children placed within their wider family or Indigenous community in accordance with the provisions of the original Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander child placement principle. Let's see the number of kids needing to be removed drop for the first time in a decade. Let's leave up to the promise that I made in the apology that this would never ever happen again because it is not enough for all to agree that it shouldn't happen. In fact, action must be taken to ensure that it doesn't happen again. All states and territories, irrespective of their political persuasion, need to be held to account. It's complex. It's going to require immense coordination across government departments. It's going to require Aboriginal organisations being given responsibility for child welfare. It's also going to require those same Indigenous organisations to perform and to perform effectively. And yes, it's going to require money. I've never been in the business of the blame game. In my view, that's just dumb, dumb politics. I'm in the business of finding real solutions to entrenched problems. That, I believe, is smart, smart government. That's what closing the gap is about. That's what the National Apology is about. That's what, in fact, the National Apology Foundation for Indigenous Australians is about. This is the foundation I established a couple of years ago, since leaving the Prime Ministership of Australia, to make a material difference to the business of reconciliation across our country, including how we measure effectively whether we're closing the gap or not, including in critical areas such as child placement and whether, in fact, children are being placed properly and sensitively within culture rather than out of culture. The National Apology Foundation for Indigenous Australians, which I'm proud to chair, and many of whose board members are with us today, have embarked upon an enterprise, and that is to make a difference on closing the gap. Last year when I was at this university, I was pleased to announce my own personal contribution of $100,000 to the work of the foundation. And that's why today I also have great pleasure in announcing a further personal gift of $100,000 for the foundation's future work. This is a small way. This is one small way in which we can make a difference as individuals, in my case, through the foundation, collectively, but critically across our community and across the governments of our nation and the parliaments of our nation, to make a radical difference in closing the gap once and for all between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. I thank you for your attention.