 And we will start with acknowledgement of country. So please welcome Uncle Wayne. He is an elder in presence at University of Southern Queensland and I'm very honoured to start today with Uncle Wayne. Give him his acknowledgement of country. Jinger everybody, can everybody hear me? Okay, that's no worries. In the language of my mum, that you can be a language, what I would say to you is jingery. It means a good thing. It means half, it actually means goodness and it means a solid interpretation of what country and land is all about. Today, obviously, it's free tomorrow's debate. And as a 73-year-old in the room, I can do it loud, but you've got to stand back and just give it to me. Yeah, thank you. As a 73-year-old in the room, I would say to you that I was around in a previous time, if we get a few moments, we'll talk about that towards the end. But we need to acknowledge the nature of country that we're here today. It's very important that we look at language, because language is a part of culture and voice is a part of culture. And we're talking today about student voice and people like Jim behind me and Lucy and others have all of their interpretations and understanding to be able to be shared with you. We need to acknowledge all of those people that have walked this country before. This was a tough part of town for Aboriginal people. And those of you who live around Springfield will know how tough it actually is and how it's been affected by weather, including hail storms and fire and goodness knows what, over time. But it's interesting when you come here that down the road is still Opossum Creek, right? And we have built, and I was involved from stage one, an Aboriginal school which is independently organised through Springfield and through the university. And we ran for five years the only school in a high rise for Aboriginal students in Australia, right? So we ran it in the knowledge centre behind me before we moved down the road. So you're in an unusual bit of landscape, but it's exceptionally important that we recognise the significance of country. Country keeps us all alive. You breathe here now and you're going to breathe during the day, the DNA of everybody else in this room. We hope we don't breathe the carpet and the bits of steel and plastic that are around us, but we are part of that understanding. And we are in a world where water and land and the sky don't have their own voice. But today you'll hear Lucy talk about voice. I talked to her earlier about the significance to us of what we would call control silence or listening quietly. And all of those are components and the power of silence in Aboriginal communities is there. And that's not what you're hearing at the moment, right? So if I managed to get through a Peter Dutton interview the other day, I managed to get through all sorts of interviews. But it's interesting that when you're talking to people, the voice that you've got is there. So Aboriginal in terms of my language doesn't have a word for voice, right? The word is about throwing sound, right? That's what it means. And the first word, you don't say this to the grade nine boys, it's the word booga, right? So booga means to throw. It's interesting that weima, waina, is the word for voice. So booga waina, if somebody says that to you, it's not the fact that you're going to pick your nose. It actually means quite the opposite. It's important that we recognize that the languages like all our languages and all our understandings don't necessarily match. They weave all of the way through. It's very significant. It's very significant that we have plants in the room at any time. So we have an opportunity to see this particular version of a lilypilly, which has huge amounts of vitamin C, right? So those of you that have been put up with me doing plants, sciences before, that incredible, make you jam, make you play, make you do this sort of stuff. But more significant around this particular campus, you'll find, and sorry, I've made a real mess there, you'll find this paperback, an amazing thing. So this is the flooring of Aboriginal campsites. This is the gyproc, which forms the wall of Aboriginal campsites. This is the collarbone, which forms the roof of Aboriginal campsites. So if you come to the country where I've come from this morning, you'll find it eagerly that trees are still stripped by people who collected bark up until the end of World War I. And that was a business for my mob, for my mum's mob, selling this stuff for roofing, which was used. So it's exceptionally important. Antibacterial, antifungal, so it has another use. And this becomes your nappy lines of old, right? So this is really interesting and it's environmentally friendly at any one point in time. So an amazing thing happened to me as a part of that component. My dad, like many older men, a man in his 90s, suffered from ulcers in his leg. We had the incredible six months of the blue nurses, the multiple antibiotics and multiple whatevers. But this plus, and those New Zealanders in the room, I'm gonna use the word leptispernam instead of manuka. But we'd leptispernam honey and this is a poultice on the outside. This is a bandage, became the saviour for those people. What I'm trying to say is there is a voice out there amongst our students. There's a voice coming for the next generation of researchers. There's a voice that needs to be held and shared with everybody. So it's the important that we learn not just about silence and not just about listening, but we're heading to a referendum tomorrow and I'll make a quick comment, I will be very quick. But I was around, I was 17 in the last referendum, right? That would give you an idea of me. The 1967, that was before I got a free haircut, courtesy of the Australian military. But in reality, what happened to me was a discussion in a country town. A discussion that was held around the CWA, a discussion that was held with lots of cups of tea and discussions with churches, grips, et cetera. There was none of, there was none of this. There was none of this at all. It was a really very much face-to-face person, not face-time interpretation of what we had. It's important that we recognise that we've seen all sorts of arguments, all sorts of discussions. The choice of how you vote is up to you. To me, it seems to know, brainer, it always, always was. But it is important to recognise that you need to have a voice, the same way as we need to have a voice in the past. And it's very important that it leads into what Lucy is going to talk and others are going to talk about today. Our student voice should never be forgotten. The future is in the student voice. So we use the word, judge them as the word for children or young people growing up. And it's important that we recognise the power of those generations that are here. Student voice to me as an ex-principal of high schools was always exceptionally important. It's scary for many teachers. Very scary, very scary for if you're involved in the education department as a senior executive or something. But it's very important to be able to do that. So we started those movements to put students in leadership positions and to spread those leadership positions. And it happened and it still continues on today. So if you look at organisations like Quatsis, you'll actually see that. But we're on here today about country. We live it, we breathe it, we share it. Don't forget the water component of country. Don't forget the saltwater component of country. And the saltwater component for me is exceptionally important. Don't forget, and it seems in a strange way, but the sky is a part of country. Okay, so I teach sky cosmology and all sorts of things in the bush. And it's very important to do that. I run a ranger program where we teach smoke as being part of country. Okay, so we walk with fire at a walking pace. We teach that when we start that fire, we talk to country first. Country will tell us very quickly whether it likes it or not. We then make those clicking sounds that you see with fire. And fire starts that crackling of the grass. And you watch the insects move, not die. Watch the snakes move. Watch everything. The spiders move that you found this morning. But take those opportunities to see every animal move out of the way of fire. The smoke will help these things, this flower, right? Help the eucalyptus flower. So we live in an interconnected world of which my people, the old people that walked this landscape were part of here before. What I'd like you to do is during part of the day, take the walk outside, find yourself there's some paperback trees down the back side, which is where I got this from, back towards the carpark. Take a moment to actually ingest, not just our own DNA that we're all sharing, but take a look at the animals and plants. Take a look at the soil DNA. Let's have a look at everything else that we share. We acknowledge all of those people that have walked before. This has been a landscape of walkers. Take, for example, the opportunities that you've got to listen carefully to others and to share the voices of others in a day that we've got an opportunity to have a Friday, oh, it's Friday, and the weekend coming up, and many of you look like I do, we look like, oh, gosh, what an incredible week we've had, what an incredible month we've had, what an incredible three months. Universities are running at a huge pace, right? I don't know how long that we can continue to run this pace in my mind, but we run at a huge pace. Take the opportunity that country can give you to breathe and take that opportunity today, so you may enjoy it tomorrow and the day after, how many days to come. Enjoy your day, folks, and have a great time. Thank you.