Friday, 20 Feb 2026 at Admiralty House

Acknowledgements:
Jakelyn Troy – thank you for your stupendous work on preservation and teaching of Aboriginal language across the country. I hope people listen to your work and understand what you have been doing for a very long time. It's wonderful to have you here to provide the acknowledgement of country. 

Last week, on the night before the 18th anniversary of the National Apology to the Stolen Generations, Michael MacLeod of Message Stick convened a gathering of Stolen Generation survivors at Government House.

Ngunnawal Elder Aunty Violet Sheridan’s welcome to Ngunnawal Ngambri country supported the group to feel at ease and peaceful and be able to share some of the most deeply personal stories – some that they had only been shared before within families – about their stolen childhoods. 

It was remarkable. It was honest. It was raw, courageous, beautiful, full of love and hugs, and a determination for better futures, which, of course, today is all about. 

In welcoming you all, I pay my respects to the Cammeraygal people, the traditional owners of this land, and looking across to Gadigal land and thinking about what this place was, particularly the women who would have been fishing out there, supplying their families with food. 

It's really important that we stop and reflect about the beauty of this land, Cammeraygal land, and I hope you feel that while you're here.

I pay my respects to Cammeraygal elders, past and present, and to all First Nations people who are joining us, particularly Jakelyn. 

As you arrived today, you were welcomed by a very special painting. 

It's a magnificent Men's Medicine Pocket painting by the late Noongar artist Paddy Bedford, and it brings peace and calm and respect to the entrance of Admiralty House. 

There's a reason why I was able to come into this office with a sense of purpose as to how I would do the job, and that's because of one of our guests this morning, the Honourable Dame Quentin Bryce AD CVO, the 25th Governor General of Australia and the first woman. Dame Quentin set the standard that I hope to achieve over the course of my term, drawing inspiration from your entire career.

And today, for Bernie and Kate, and the team here, your lifetime work is represented, I think, in the Framework. 

Bernadette Black AM, CEO of Seed Futures and Churchill Fellow; and Dr Kate Harrison Brenner, Director of the Sydney Policy Lab.

I want to acknowledge your family, Bernie, who are with you today. It's wonderful that they bear witness to the work that you've done, which comes from your early experience.

I'm really delighted that the two of you, the co-authors of this framework, are able to come here. You have convened the most astonishing crowd.

We met very early in my term, Bernie in 2024, and you were determined then to produce this work. 
It didn't have a form to it then, but now it does.

Today we see what you've done together, and the work of the Sydney Policy Lab and Seed Futures, and all of your collaborating partners and the people you spent time. 

It brings us together. 

I just want to share a couple of things that you say.

In the beginning report you quote really beautifully the words of Destiny, who is 23 with a five-year-old.
She talks about the system that she currently deals with as ‘leaving me and my baby with nowhere, no one’. 

Destiny talks about being in and out of motels, having to meet conditions that were impossible to navigate. 

She asks why we can’t simply connect families earlier, and build relationships with those who understand the family.

And she says what she wants is a clear vision for people to really see families. 

It was a beautiful way to introduce the report, especially because of your own experience, Bernie, as a 16-year-old, pregnant, looking at Centrelink through those same lenses.

That was not a friendly environment, it was agitating and full of desperation. 

You also use a phrase, which reminds us why this work matters. You said it left you withering, not flourishing. 

And it's in your own story, when you introduce yourself as a social policy entrepreneur, a primary prevention and systems expert with lived experience as a teenage mother, that we see the motivation for this determined plan to ensure that future generations can thrive. 

Together with Kate you've produced a suggested framework for our country that starts with the most compelling words and reminds us of what we are, what we must do. 

The work that you all do, and the work that Dame Quentin did, has been the subject of very smart, intelligent, caring people for a very, very long time, and you represent that here today. 

I have to remind you that I have no politics or policies, and I have no money to grant. 

As Dame Quentin knows, there's a fine line. 

I can't advocate as such, but I can host things with those who do, to provide you with a platform and an ability to share this message with those that need to hear it. 

And I can remind people who may not know that this work is important, and I see your work playing out already in different parts of a system. 

I've known Dr Kelvin Kong for a long time; he'll be well known to many of you here. 

He is a proud Worimi man of Chinese– Malaysian Aboriginal heritage.

He is Australia's first indigenous surgeon. 

In one generation, his family went from living in very poor circumstances outside Maitland, with a mother and aunties determined that the next generation of babies would do well. 

Today, there is a nurse and a doctor and a surgeon in one generation – emerging from extraordinary circumstances. 

Kelvin isn't just a surgeon. His whole purpose is to improve lives through very early healthcare. 

He operates on babies where they are still in the womb, or as they are being born. He is an ear, nose and throat specialist, and he devotes a month of his life every year to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities, where he goes and works on hearing issues. 

He talks about reducing hearing loss in children having a profound impact on a child's ability to learn and develop. 

He says, ‘we can take them from limited hearing and language skills to fully functioning teenagers with real employment prospects.’

That's your framework. 

Kelvin points to that fundamental truth about primary prevention and early intervention, because when it works, as the report shows us, the impacts are dramatic. 

They're measurable, they're consequential over a lifetime, and they build futures for families and families, of course, build communities and communities, build our nation and contribute to our modern Australia. 

I want to reflect on the fact that all of you today can do something profound, and it is to be brave, and be as brave as the two of you have been with the report, and as brave as you all were, as you gave feedback on the framework, the first 1000 days of a child's life should be at the forefront of our concern. 

Three years to get things started. 

Well, it's a simple ask, but you talk a lot about what stops that happening. 

You talk about bureaucracies that fight with one another or compete with one another, you come up with a prescription that actually says we should incentivise cooperation, collaboration, working together across states, territories, federally, the Commonwealth – measure it, commit to it. 

You want the Productivity Commission involved, and I'm delighted the Productivity Commission is here, having done such great work on things like the value of childcare and the value of preventable issues affecting our community. 

I've been invested in this with a number of you for many, many years, drawing on a a very simple proposition – that we are an extraordinary nation. 

We do have the smartest people. We do have really wonderful systems, but they often do not know who their client is or who the person is, who should be central. 

And you've made children and families mothers the focus of the work, and that's not hard to do if we commit to those first 1000 days. 

That does require a lot of people giving up on some of the received wisdom that systems just go on and on and we can't do better. 

We can do better. 

That's what your report tells us. 

Your framework is story driven, it's a co design with so many of you, brought together by very significant organisations and supercharged by a Churchill Fellowship.

The product is love, empathy, compassion, the ethics of care and responsibility. 

And how do you do that? 

You have to take your strategic intuition, where the idea comes from, but then bring the right people together for a strategic conversation. 

And that's the process of becoming much, much better. 

I know we can do that. 

It was an Aboriginal elder who, after watching my behaviour in a few meetings, took me aside to say ‘your body language tells me that you are always waiting to talk. You cannot listen while you're waiting to talk.’

Active, deep listening is an act of compassion and thoughtfulness. You actually hear what others are saying. You stop, you pause, and you take it all in, even if you disagree, or even you think your point is still the best. 

And I think this report is asking us all to stop waiting to jump in and talk and say what we think is the best part of the system, or how we can fix it. 

If we listen today to our speakers and acknowledge that listening and just waiting quietly, patiently not to talk but to change, to bring forth love in those 1000 days might just be the best effort for those yet to come.

And your final hope is that Australia becomes the best country, not just for children to grow up in, but for parents to grow in – wouldn't that be wonderful. 

So, thank you all for joining us here at Admiralty House. This is a very special moment. You are all part of something that can make us an even better place. You're the reason why I put care the centre of everything I do in my job – care, kindness and respect.