Speech delivered on Friday 24 October 2025, Uluru NT.

It is very special for me to be here with you tonight. 

It could be someone in this room that is the Governor-General one day.

I hope it is.

That is what is possible because of what we are celebrating tonight.

Of course, I want to start by acknowledging the Aṉangu as the Traditional Owners of this land.

I want to acknowledge all elders past and present, particularly everyone who welcomed us so generously in the beautiful inma. 

Josephine Mick, I remember sitting with you in Muṯitjulu, with your daughter, Sammy Scales and having good talks around the Uluru Statement from the Heart back in 2023. It makes me very happy to see you doing the beautiful singing for all of us. It is very special to come back here now. 

It is amazing to think that only a week ago, Sammy Wilson and Rene Kulitja – who I know danced for the King – with Tapaya Edwards, Reuben Burton, Alison Carroll, Selina Kulitja, Rita Okai, Harry Wilson and Craig Woods, and Harry Wilson were all meeting with King Charles in Australia House in London to talk about why the last 40 years have mattered, why what happened 40 years ago mattered so much.

With you sharing dance and song and art and the stories that you have lived and telling the King who, I know, wanted to hear your stories and spend a lot of time with you.  

I have got to know the King a little bit, because I represent him in Australia. 

I am appointed by an Australian Prime Minister, and then I represent the Crown. 

And I am very conscious, in doing that, I tell people that the King cares very much about our First Nations people. 

When he was in Australia in October last year, a year ago, he travelled to Redfern in the center of Sydney, where a lot of activism has always happened, and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have come from all over the country. 

And he went there to the National Indigenous Centre of Excellence, where he was hugged. 

It was a very important part of his visit to Australia. 

And he saw a lot of Australia in those five days, I think he would have been thinking about that when he met you in London and saw the singing and the dancing, and thought a bit about what this weekend is going to represent, the celebration of 40 years of a hand back that meant so much then and still means so much today. 

I also want to show you the greatest of respect in coming on tonight, which is all about the future – the graduates, the students who have been here with such courage, who will represent everything that you have hoped for, all of the things that you've talked about, Ian Hamm, about potential and showing up and being supported. 

It is so, so important. 

So I am very, very happy to be here tonight. 

I feel like there are a lot of friends in the room, and it is nice to see so many of you. 

I want to acknowledge that there are also many Aboriginal people and Torres Strait Islander people in this room, in addition to the Aṉangu the Pitjantjatjara, who have come from all over the country. I want to pay respect to your land, your country, wherever you are from, and the big journeys that you have all made, particularly the parents, the families, the kin, all of those who are here for the students. Why wouldn't they travel to come here, to the centre of Australia, to see these young people who have achieved so much. 

So I want to pay my respects to all of your country, all over this country, sea country, land country, remote, regional. You come from everywhere. And I want you to know that in Government House and in Admiralty House, where you are always welcome to come and visit, we have the AIATSIS maps of country. We encourage everyone who comes in, to go and look at the maps of country and understand the history of this country, and understand what that has meant in the deep history of this country. And people are always appreciative of that. 

And then we match that with art to try to tell a big story about our history and about where we are going. 

There is work from the APY lands. There is work from Noongar men, senior men in Western Australia. There are works from Mornington Island. There are very important works around those houses. Again, to say you are welcome and everyone belongs. 

And I want everyone here to know that I couldn't have been happier to be asked to come and join you, particularly to see young people who are going to go off into the world and do amazing things or anything that you want to do. What you want to do, without any expectations, just to fulfill the things that you want to do. And now you can. 

I am also very conscious in acknowledging Sammy Wilson that this is a room where a very important statement was launched. This was the place where the hard work was done for the Uluru Statement from the Heart. The Statement really matters, one of the most generous offers of thinking about our country. And I remember listening when SBS translated the Statement into 60 languages, you can still go onto the SBS website and hear it in 20 Aboriginal languages and 60 languages of the migrant nation that we have become. And I hope people will keep listening to the Uluru Statement from the Heart, because it says so many beautiful, beautiful things. And Sammy, I know you have a big role to play this weekend as one of the Traditional Owners. 

It is really such a beautiful place for us to be celebrating young people. 

I also want to acknowledge 

• Hon Steve Edgington MLA, Minister for Aboriginal Affairs (NT)  
• Senator the Hon Kerrynne Liddle, Shadow Minister for Indigenous Australians  
• Hon Chansey Paech MLA, Member for Gwoja
• Ian Hamm, Chair, Indigenous Land and Sea Council
• Matt Cameron-Smith, CEO, Voyages – you must be so proud on the night like tonight, Matt, I know we've had a bit of a chat about just how good you feel about this place and how much this relies on the many young people who've come through here and will come again because of the graduating class tonight.
• Kristen Howden, Chief Executive Manager, NITA, this is incredibly hard work to do. Well, Kristen, you do that.
• The exceptional team here at Voyages, there is a team always behind the hard work, and they give so much to the National Indigenous Training Academy
• Chris Tallent, CEO of Journey Beyond
• Justin Mohammed, Ambassador for First Nations Peoples, you take a story of our history and who we are today to the world as an Ambassador for First Nations people
• Rhoda Roberts AO, Cultural Curator and powerhouse, I want to acknowledge you, because our culture and our arts have always mattered in the work you have always done. You reminded me the other day in Admiralty House that it was the Mornington Island dancers who first danced at the opening of the Sydney Opera House in 1973. And I have a painting that looks straight across at the Opera House from Mornington Island, from the extraordinary Sally Gabori, which I love to look at.
• Paul Ah Chee, Chair, NT Tourism Board of Commissioners  
• Suzana Bishop, Tourism NT, and of course, it is tourism and hospitality that is going to generate the environment in which all these young people can prosper and where things will go so well. 

But the biggest acknowledgement I want to make is the same one that Ian made, and that is to the exceptional young people tonight who have completed their traineeships and are graduating. 

They are not yet graduates, they are trainees or graduands, which is often the word used before you become a graduate. 

As you came and paraded through the room, you could hear the love and the support for you. I felt that outside talking to some of your mums and your aunties and your pops and those that have missed you while you have been away, and I think they are getting used to the idea that some of you might not go back home yet, that you might stay here, or you might go around the world, you might go to another part of Australia, because you have got the confidence and the training.

I can see in them that sense of they want you to do it, but they would also like you to come home. 

I have a 26-year-old daughter, and I miss her whenever she is not at home, but I know I have got to let her go and be the full woman that she has got to be. 

And you are going to be full people when you graduate tonight. That is why we are here. We are here for you. 

And you look magnificent. There is no group more deadly than the group that just walked through. There are some very special components to the graduating gowns – the tabards are signed with the names of all the graduates who have gone before. What a beautiful way for you to carry with you everyone who's gone before, and that represents, 772 young Indigenous men and women who have graduated from the program. 

This is your night of nights. 

I want to congratulate the trainer – many of whom were once the students who come back to be trainers. What a wonderful circular way of thinking about what you learn here and then bring back and teach others. 

So for the Academy, for Voyages, for everything you have been doing, it is no surprise that you won the Small Training Provider of the Year Award at the 2025 Northern Territory Training Awards. What a wonderful recognition by a big award that you are doing such great work. 

I know that we should all feel proud of the students, the trainees, and then the trainers. It is quite remarkable to do this. It is not easy for these young people, those of you who have come from regional, remote areas, communities that you have had to leave for what might be the first time. You have left these communities to come here to do training, leaving people and places that have been the story of your life, leaving the language and culture of your own land, and coming to a different culture, different language, and beginning a new chapter that might take you somewhere else. 

I think I heard the word courage in Ian's comments, it takes a lot of courage and guts to do that, to stay and not give up. 

I talk a lot to Adam Goodes and Mickey O'Loughlin, who are good friends of mine, about how their mums would let them go back to Adelaide when they moved to Sydney to play for the Sydney Swans. They wanted to go back home, and their mums said, ‘You're not coming home, you're staying, You've got a big future’. Adam and Michael now run their own academy for keeping students close to culture right across this country. 

I just want to finish with a couple of comments about my job as your Governor-General. When I started on the 1 July 2024, I made a promise to the country, particularly to First Nations people, when I said that I would put care, kindness and respect the centre of everything I would do. And it has been sitting with the women in Muṯitjulu, and listening, sitting with Aboriginal men and women around the country, listening to Torres Strait Islander people talking to me and my husband and our daughter over many, many years – that is where I started to think about care. What does care and kindness look like? We have that in our 65,000 years of history in this country, always shared with us in those beautiful welcomes to country and acknowledgements and smoking ceremonies, in everything you have offered to everyone who has come since. 

And when I talk about care and kindness and respect, I hope I am bringing forth something that we can keep doing all around the country.

Wherever I go, people ask me to just keep talking about kindness. Let's not be mean to each other. Let's not divide one another. Let's find a way for culture to lift our spirits. 

I think the King thinks that, too. I think he is very kind man, and he wants this country to be the very best it can. 
That is what I am trying to do, representing all Australians in my role.

We are an amazing place because of the fundamental connection to this continent established over 65,000 years.

I see that every time I preside at a citizenship ceremony, or welcome new people to this country, the thing they like most is the welcome ceremony from First Nations people, because they know that they are being welcomed by people who understand the power of connection to land. 

And so I am going to keep talking about care and kindness and respect and everything that makes us the greatest modern country in the world, underpinned by the most ancient connection to the land that was shared in London this week. 
I hope that in the months, years and decades ahead, for people graduating tonight, that you will actually know that you are part of that act of care and kindness back to the country. 

Wherever you are going, I want you to know you are always welcome to come to Sydney or Canberra. Come to Government House. Come to Admiralty House. Let me tell your stories to the rest of the country about what you are doing. 
You are our future, the young people this country, in all its diversity. 

And I hope the experience here at NITA and all you have learned, the wisdom you carry, the love of your communities, will inspire you keep saying yes to every opportunity that comes along. Always knowing that your culture is going to hold you strong. 
So thank you for inviting me along tonight. 

It is a great honour for me to be here. 

I think this graduating class might have an edge on all the others, because you are here while we spend the weekend celebrating something mighty, when 40 years ago another Governor-General, Sir Ninian Stephen, was part of the hand back. 

And I am so proud to be the 28th Governor-General, and only the second woman in the job, and someone who cares deeply about you, and everything goes on here. 

I am here to witness the celebrations for the 40th anniversary, and what this says about the strength of culture here and for all First Nations people around the country.

Congratulations to all the young people, thank you for having me along tonight.