Simeon and I are both delighted to welcome you all to Admiralty House.

The Official Residences – here in Sydney and Government House in Canberra – are places of peace and belonging, where everyone is welcome.

These are places to speak and listen, to share experiences and to receive the wisdom of others.

Where every handshake, every embrace, every idea, is given and received with care, kindness, respect and love.

It is the same spirit of welcome and care that I have seen so powerfully reflected in the Fiona Wood Foundation, and in Fiona’s own energy and appetite for bringing people together to build community and achieve results.

We also see that in the Foundation’s logo – so representative of the “ripple effect” a burn has on a patient and the wider community.

As you say, the intertwined lines symbolise your vision of working together to make a difference through improving the outcomes and quality of life for those affected by burn injury.

Which is, of course, why we are here today.

To celebrate the transformation of the Fiona Wood Foundation’s decades of accumulated experience, expertise, brilliance and compassion into a scaffold for a broader, more expansive medical research enterprise to accelerate advances in burns prevention, treatment and care.

Following the trajectory of your career so far, Fiona, it makes absolute sense that your bold vision will find a bigger canvas through the Centre for Burns Research Innovation and Translation, which you will Chair.

And I am delighted that we have the opportunity to explore this new horizon with you today.

As your Governor-General, and together with Simeon, who is a partner in everything I’m doing, I have promised to put care, kindness and respect at the centre of my term.

Care for each other, care for those who care for others, care for our extraordinary continent and its environment beauty, care for civics and institutions, and care for the way in which we discuss and debate the issues of our time without judgement, anger or violence.

And I am eager to dispel the notion that care is something soft and yielding, lacking enterprise or genius.

There is a hard edge to care.

And we find it, so often, in the sciences that focus on the wellbeing of people and their environments, and which overlay rigorous research and pragmatic, evidence-based conclusions with deep compassion and great hope.

As Fiona describes it: ‘taking science and innovation along that pipeline to change lives’.

This is what has driven the Foundation’s important discoveries into the lifetime impact of a burn injury, and the physical and mental health outcomes that endure long into the future.

Understanding that means recognising, again in Fiona’s words, that 'every intervention from the point of injury will influence the scar worn for life’.

What those interventions are – from prevention, treatment and long-term care and observation – lies at the heart of the Foundation’s new initiative.

As you all know, burn injuries affect our most vulnerable -- children under five years of age, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children, and children from lower socioeconomic backgrounds.

I witnessed that in November last year, during my first visit to the Fiona Wood Foundation, when I was privileged to meet many of the team’s patients.

But I was also struck by the broad impact of burn injuries, on people from diverse backgrounds and age groups.

On that occasion, I spoke with a farmer who was critically injured at work on his remote property, a student burned while cooking at home, and a young girl recovering from serious burns, with her parents and baby sister.

After many weeks as an in-patient at Perth Children’s Hospital, the little family was heading home to be reunited with their other children, and continue the path to healing.

I haven’t forgotten the beautiful relationship of trust that was so evident between those patients, their families, and the Foundation.

It was a powerful demonstration of an integrated system of research and treatment with an unstinting focus on positive future outcomes.

Of the Foundation’s pursuit of scarless healing in mind and body.

And of its commitment to travelling the road of care as a community.

I am so grateful for that memory, and honoured that you are here this morning to share the Foundation’s ambition for what lies on the horizon.

Thank you.