Setting a new direction in Indigenous Affairs:

Generational changes in a post-Voice world

Thank you for the opportunity to speak with you today.

I begin by acknowledging the Gumatj Clan of the Yolngu Nation, the Traditional Owners of the land on which we meet, and I pay my respects to Elders past and present.

I also acknowledge my friend Mayatili Marika. I have got to know Mayatili and her family over the last few years here. Thank you for that generous introduction.

This is my fifth visit to the Garma Festival and my sixth to North-East Arnhem land.

This year is different for me too. I brought my family to Garma.

For the kids this is more than a trip with Mum and Dad – it’s an adventure.

I wanted them to experience the country, see the cultural richness of the Yolngu people and get a sense of their desire to walk in two worlds.

I understand that desire. As many of you know, I’m Jewish. Growing up I attended an Anglican school, and my best friend is a Muslim. It is so Australian.

I want my children to have that same openness.

To have a generosity of spirit to all they meet.

They aren’t staying for the speech because, well, Dad ain’t that interesting!

Hopefully you won’t form the same opinion.

But I am also delighted to be here not only as a father, but as the Shadow Minister for Education.

That’s because education is both nation building and life changing.

And it builds communities too.

Meeting kids where they are at – and opening the world of opportunity for them.

There is something sacred in what our schools do.

It’s easy to take for granted – the trust a parent places in a school to nurture, develop and steer their child.

Schooling is a community activity.

I’ve seen that at the Dhupuma Barker school here. Where Mums stay and chat at the school long after they have brought their child to school.

In many ways, it is no different to what happens in suburbs across our country every day.

I believe in the power of schools to transform lives and communities – and doubly so in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities.

The leaders of tomorrow are being shaped by our education system today.

That is as true of Indigenous Australians as it is of every other Australian.

I also speak today as the Shadow Minister for Indigenous Australians in my first major policy speech since taking that role.

I want to thank my leader Angus Taylor for giving me these responsibilities. I think Angus was sending a message when he put these two portfolios together.

A message about the importance of education in transforming lives down through generations, particularly for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

And that is the theme of my remarks today: a new policy direction to unlock benefits that flow down through the generations.

I wanted to take this opportunity to put some stakes in the ground.

To engage with you in a conversation about the policy direction I believe the Indigenous Australians portfolio should take over the coming years.

I think it is a conversation our country desperately needs to have.

The lack of direction in Indigenous Affairs since the Voice

As is well known I have been involved in Indigenous Affairs for many years – long before I came to Parliament.

And for most of the last two decades, the single issue which has dominated the portfolio has been constitutional reform.

That was my route into the portfolio.

I have been fascinated by the Australian Constitution since I was 10 years old and asked my parents for a copy for my birthday.

I have followed and participated in the Republic debate, the debate about constitutional recognition of local government and the debate about Recognition and the Voice.

Over 15 years, I engaged with Indigenous leaders about our Constitution.

In 2014 my friend Damien Freeman and I began work on an idea that could recognise the place of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians in our national life, without the need for a constitutional amendment – a non-constitutional Declaration of Recognition.

Ultimately, though, we joined with Noel Pearson and others like Marcia Langton and Megan Davis, who had been looking for ways to encourage constitutional conservatives to work with Indigenous elders to advance recognition. Together with Anne Twomey and Greg Craven we put a package of referendum proposals to then Prime Minister Tony Abbott.

I was part of the discussion from then up to and including the 2023 referendum.

But I think the defeat of the 2023 referendum was the Australian people sending a message.

Non-Indigenous Australians want their Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander neighbours to have the same opportunities and the same chances in life as they do.

But Australians have told us that after nearly two decades dominated by questions about constitutional reform, they want to chart a different path.

The tragedy of the last three years is that we have not seen that message reflected in government policy.

I think the simple truth is that, ever since the defeat of the Voice, the Prime Minister has lost his direction on Indigenous affairs.

When he came to power on election night in 2022, he put Indigenous policy front and centre of the national debate by promising to deliver the Voice to Parliament.

For almost 18 months he made it the central theme of political life in this country. He used persistent Indigenous disadvantage as an argument for the Voice. I did too.

After 18 months of public discourse, and a process that required every Australian of voting age to come to a ballot box and answer a question about Indigenous Affairs, there was increased public awareness of the problems.

Even on the night of the referendum, after it was clear the Voice had been defeated, the Prime Minister spoke explicitly about the difference in outcomes between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians in terms of life expectancy, educational opportunity, rates of suicide and disease.

He said this:

There is a new national awareness of these questions. Let us channel that into a new sense of national purpose to find the answers.

I agree that that is what should have happened.

But it didn’t happen.

Since October 2023, the Australian Government’s policy on Indigenous Affairs has been adrift.

It has lacked a clear direction and sense of purpose.

The signature measure of the last election, the remote jobs promise, involves creating 6,000 minimum wage and entry-level jobs at a cost of $158,000 each.

We must do better than that.

A country must be ambitious about its own people.

After all, if leaders don’t see a big future for our children, how can we build it for them?

If leaders don’t give them a target, what will they aim for?

We all know where the Prime Minister stood on the Voice. I stood there too.

But since the defeat of the Voice he just hasn’t gotten off the mat.

It is time to get off the mat.

So today I want to talk about a new direction in Indigenous Affairs.

A note of caution on the Closing the Gap targets

Before going on, I want to say a few words about the Closing the Gap targets.

Those targets have come to dominate the Indigenous Affairs narrative.

That is not surprising. The National Agreement on Closing the Gap binds governments at every level, as well as the Coalition of Peaks.

I want to sound a note of caution about allowing the targets to become the guiding beacon in Indigenous Affairs.

There are now 19 targets, and since 2021 we have reported annually on progress.

The gap has not closed in the last 5 years. At least, not so far as we can tell.

In July 2022, the Productivity Commission’s annual data compilation report on the socioeconomic targets showed four were on track to be met, and four were getting worse.

The most recent figures, released just this week, are largely the same: four on track, and four getting worse.

The picture to date is one of stagnation and policy failure.

Year after year, the targets around Indigenous employment, preschool and land title have been on track. From time to time over the last five years, healthy birthweight has also been on track.

But child development, adult incarceration, children in care and suicide have gotten worse every single year.

Targets around year 12 education, tertiary qualifications and youth engagement have improved, but have never been on track.

Almost all of the targets fall due by 2031.

We are about halfway through the life of the National Agreement, but if you step back and look at the measures as they stand today, we are yet to see any real movement on the dial.

I think it is worth looking at the targets more closely, and more critically.

As I said, there are now 19 Closing the Gap targets – far too many to form a sensible and coherent policy framework.

We report on these 19 targets annually, but we do not collect data on them annually.

Only 8 of the 19 targets are updated from one year to the next.

Less than half.

Data on child development is updated once every three years. Data on suicide is updated “periodically.”

There is no agreement on how often we should update family violence or digital inclusion.

As I understand it, there has never been a report on progress against the infrastructure target – target 9B – and there is no plan for how often it should be updated.

And for six targets I see as critical – year 12 attainment, tertiary qualifications, youth engagement, employment, housing and life expectancy – the numbers are only updated with the census.

Every 5 years.

That means we go through almost two complete electoral cycles at the federal level before we even get an update on the numbers.

This sort of nuance never features in our discussions about Indigenous policy, or in the public discourse or media reporting.

Instead, progress tends to be reduced to the number of targets that are on track and the number that aren’t.

When I said earlier that year 12 education, tertiary qualifications and youth engagement have never been on track, of course they haven’t.

Those numbers are set by the census. They will only change after the 2026 census and then will not move again until 2031 – by which time the targets are due to have been achieved.

At the risk of labouring the point: if you open the most recent Annual Data Compilation Report published by the Productivity Commission and look at progress on life expectancy, you will see figures from 2021.

Five years out of date.

That cannot be the foundation for effective, evidence-led policy.

Why do we report annually on targets that can only move every five years?

I think it is fair to say that is not what any of the parties had in mind when they signed the agreement.

The National Agreement does not mention five-yearly measurements or using census data to track progress.

My concern is that, because of the way they are measured, when the annual national discussion focuses on Closing the Gap targets, we distort the policy narrative.

Each year we have the discussion about how many targets are on track, and how many aren’t – but the unstated premise is that measured performance will move up when we do better and down when we do badly. In reality, that is not the case.

We lose track of what is happening on the ground, and our policies are backward-looking.

Because the targets are not effective or regularly measurable it makes it harder for leaders and policy-makers – ministers, public servants, peak bodies – to know whether their interventions are effective.

This is one reason that we have consistently called for an audit of the effectiveness of funding for programs in Indigenous communities.

Following the death of Kumanjayi Little Baby I wrote to the Auditor-General asking her to look at the effectiveness of the National Indigenous Australians Agency in administering and coordinating federal funding in remote communities and town camps.

If we are going to shift the dial, we have to understand whether federally funded interventions are achieving their intended outcomes and if they are not, why not. Unfortunately, the Closing the Gap data does not tell us that story.

I am pleased that the Auditor-General has written back to me and has listed this as a potential audit topic for the 2026-27 Financial Year, focusing on outcomes orientation and achieving value for money under the Commonwealth Grants Rules and Principles.

My hope is that this audit goes ahead, and that its findings help shape future federal interventions in remote communities.

Now I am not saying that the Closing the Gap agreement should be abandoned.

It was an extraordinary achievement, bringing governments at every level and peak bodies onto the same page, and sharing responsibility for delivering change.

The priority reform areas – like shared decision-making – set out guiding principles that should be central to the way we make decisions in Indigenous Affairs.

The socioeconomic targets in the Closing the Gap agreement are important and useful, and they should be treated as measures that help inform policy decisions and evaluate effectiveness.

But they are not, of themselves, the drivers that will take things forward.

A new direction in the Indigenous Affairs portfolio

My approach to the Indigenous Affairs portfolio is guided by foundational Liberal principles.

I believe in the dignity of the individual and the transformative power of personal responsibility coupled with opportunity.

I reject what Noel Pearson has called “the soft bigotry of low expectations”. Australia must be ambitious for its people. All of its people.

I see value in institutions that bind us together – cultural traditions, respect for elders, schools, faith traditions, churches and moral guidance.

As Brandon Etto, a local Dharug elder in my community, says:

Every generation inherits this land from those who came before and borrows it from those yet to come. The choices we make today will shape the Australia that our children and grandchildren inherit. Looking after Country is not just an Aboriginal value. It is an Australian responsibility.

These are as much conservative values as they are Indigenous values.

I see things that have worked in the past and want to preserve them.

I abhor the cancer of top-down bureaucratic centralisation, which does not and cannot distinguish between Cape York and Western Sydney, Northeast Arnhem Land and Circular Head.

I do not accept change for the sake of change.

I believe communities can and should direct their own futures – and that this includes being accountable for outcomes.

And I believe that we should focus on improvements that are generational.

These principles lead me to reject two equally mistaken approaches.

The first is the belief that government can fund disadvantage away.

That spending announcements rather than outcomes are a good in and of themselves.

The second is the belief that government has no responsibility at all.

Personal responsibility and community accountability are essential, but governments create the conditions that allow individuals to thrive.

In the post-Voice world, we need a way forward that is defined by greater autonomy and flexibility in our approach to Indigenous policy.

The Coalition will continue to develop policies to confront and combat Indigenous disadvantage in wherever it is prevalent.

And we will hold the Government to account as we must.

Much of the complex work in Indigenous Affairs rests with states and territories – particularly in housing, health, child protection and crime.

In all these efforts, it is important the Commonwealth is an effective partner for the states and territories.

For many years, the Coalition has been rightly focused on the safety of women and children – whether in the cities or in remote communities.

My colleagues Jacinta Nampijinpa Price and Kerrynne Liddle have led the debate on these issues.

The safety of our citizens – all of our citizens – is the first duty of government. These remain the focus of the here and now.

But as I look to the future my framework is very simple. It is rooted in three key pillars or focus areas which have the potential to be transformative down through the generations:

First, school education. Get the kids to school and ensure they complete school with a pathway to the workforce or further education that ensures they have the maximum range of choice in their lives.

Second, economic development – focusing in particular on leveraging the extraordinary asset base that is the Indigenous Estate.

And third, suicide prevention. This is a rolling national tragedy, and it deserves to be a priority.

These three focus areas I have identified are core to achieving intergenerational change for indigenous Australians.

Let me address each in turn.

The first pillar: School education

I’ll begin by saying something about education. I started these remarks by talking about the transformative effect of education; how it is nation-building; how the leaders of tomorrow are in the education system today – or at least should be.

There is no real doubt in my mind that the single best thing we can do to improve outcomes across the board in Indigenous Affairs is to get the kids to school and get them to complete school.

School attendance and meaningful school completion are determinative of so many different outcomes.

The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare reported in May of this year that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who complete Year 12, or a higher qualification, are more likely to be employed, to work full-time, and have higher skilled jobs than early school leavers.

The AIHW says that education, and particularly school completion, is also one of the strongest protective factors against the risk of arrest for Indigenous people.

School completion creates further opportunities.

In Australia an Aboriginal boy is more likely to go to jail than university.

But as I have said before: on graduation, an Indigenous graduate will earn at least on par with a non-Indigenous graduate.

And after 10 years in the workforce, the incomes of Indigenous and non-Indigenous are in effect level. Put another way, the gap closes.

Education, and particularly school education, is part of the secret sauce that drives success in Indigenous Affairs.

So what drives success in this field?

Last year there were 263,611 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students enrolled in Australians schools, making up 6.8% of all students.

The best measure to look at here is the Apparent Retention Rate that is published by the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

Retention isn’t exactly the same as completion, but it is a good indicator. Unlike completion, which relies on the census and can vary between jurisdictions, it is updated every year, it expressly disaggregates by Indigenous status and by school type, and it is more comparable across jurisdictions – which is important when you’re dealing with communities that move around.

And it is hard to complete school if you don’t stay in school!

Last year, the retention rate from year 7 through to year 12 for non-Indigenous students was 82.9%. The rate for indigenous students was 58.6%. While that figure for Indigenous students is a slight improvement on the previous year, it is below our best.

ABS data shows that, in the 15 years since 2011, our biggest single jump in school retention came in 2014, when rates leapt by 4.3% in a single year, and they stayed in the 59-62% range until 2022, when they dropped quickly.

But when you dive into the data, some powerful trends emerge.

The first is that the drop in school retention since 2022 has been almost entirely confined to government schools. In 2021, the year 7-12 retention rate for Indigenous children in government schools was 53.9%. That fell to 51.5% in 2022, and then below half in 2023 and 2024.

But in the non-government sector, the trend is reversed.

Far from dropping, the year 7-12 retention rates last year for Indigenous children in non-government schools across Australia reached an all-time high – with a retention rate of 91.4% across the country. To put this in context, that is higher than the retention rate for non-Indigenous children in non-Government schools, which was 90.2%, and much higher than the retention rate for non-Indigenous students in Government schools, which was 77.6%.

This is not me saying this. It is the ABS data.

In non-government schools last year, the Indigenous kids are lifting the whole cohort up.

But what is it that the non-government schools are doing that is so successful?

What can we learn from them? And how do we roll it out across the board so that every Indigenous child benefits?

Dhupuma Barker

Here in Northeast Arnhem Land the Gumatj have led the way.

It was the vision of Yunupingu to create the Garma Institute as an “education pipeline” for Yolngu people – marrying Yolngu knowledge and traditions with Western knowledge and traditions.

He also worked with one of Australia’s outstanding educational leaders, Phillip Heath, who brings decades of experience in Indigenous education on country to create Dhupuma Barker – a partnership with Barker college, an Independent Anglican school.

Dhupuma Barker, located at Gunyangara, teaches in community but its students, among other things, compete internationally in robotics competitions, against hundreds of schools from around the globe.

The school has become the centre of the community.

It has a great attendance rate and its teachers foster a love of learning.

The school provides the same values and education as the main campus in Hornsby in my electorate.

It provides children the opportunity to learn in Yolngu Matha and English, so they can walk in two worlds in the vision of Yunupingu.

It is a school that eliminates the needs for students to leave their community, but allows them to stand proud among the best in the world.

Other Indigenous education experiences

Earlier this week I spoke with a roundtable of other faith-based school principals in majority Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander schools who are achieving extraordinary outcomes in some of the most difficult and remote communities.

They spoke about autonomy and flexibility that the private sector brings; they spoke about the unifying effect of faith; they spoke about the extraordinary effort that goes into wrap-around and outreach services.

These things are driving success – slowly, and over years – but they are only possible because these schools are independent schools.

As one principal with experience in both the government and non-government sector put it:

The behaviour policy for my school is the behaviour policy for my school. It works in my community. The behaviour policy for the government schools is the same across the board, whether you’re in Logan or Ipswich, Mount Isa or Cloncurry.

Another principal in a school in remote Western Australia said that every morning, she had 5 staff including herself spending an hour visiting 30 different houses, every single day, to bring the kids into school.

Another principal said that he’d changed the fee policy for his school to take it from low fee to ultra-low fee. Previously, about a third of the students paid $2,500 a year to educate their child. He is bringing those fees down to $700 and even $500 dollars – $10 a week – so that a much higher proportion can pay it. In his words:

Each parent can look you in the eye and say: I have contributed to my child’s education.

They spoke about the importance of being on country, of finding staff.

They all spoke about the unifying effect of faith; how families can spot a phony from miles away but where there’s sincerity and genuineness, respect and care and the ability to bring staff, students and community together it builds a stronger community.

Government schools

These stories are not limited to the non-government sector.

Government schools take all comers.

That is part of their reason for being, and that can affect the performance outcomes for government schools.

But I have also seen amazing Indigenous education outcomes in government settings, in places like Albury and last week in Cherbourg.

I visited Cherbourg State school and met their inspirational principal, Boyd McLean.

He told me of the school’s success in improving student performance.

Taking C students and turning them to A students.

Like Philip Heath, he spoke of the importance of engendering a love of learning.

He spoke about the school as the centre of the local Indigenous community and how they have reading circles where children read to parents, and how they are developing an adult literacy class.

He showed me the difference the Clontarf and Broncos programs are making providing great mentors for both boys and girls.

His school involves indigenous people in the classroom on a pathway to becoming teachers.

Importantly, he told me how the Department had granted him greater autonomy and flexibility to deliver what works in Cherbourg, in a challenging environment with intergenerational educational disadvantage.

Autonomy, flexibility and partnership

What these stories show is that the government can’t do this alone, and it can’t do it from Canberra or the state capital.

It needs Indigenous community buy-in.

But the school itself also needs more autonomy and flexibly in providing Indigenous schooling.

We see this attitude in non-government schools – which have fewer bureaucratic layers to contend with and can be naturally more flexible.

But it needs to become more of a feature of government schools with high Indigenous populations too.

And these stories show we need the private sector – either through non-government school partnership, like at Dhupuma Barker, or through philanthropic partnership like the Clontarf and Broncos programs to help achieve the successes we seek.

When those kids get out of school with a year 12 or equivalent qualification, the evidence shows that they are more likely to find work, send their own kids to school and value education for their children as a priority. That’s the intergenerational element.

I would like to find ways to roll these success stories out across the board. Because the first pillar of my approach to the Indigenous Australians portfolio is transformation through school education.

And we have in front of us some extraordinary examples of things that work and there are dozens of others too.

The second pillar: Wealth creation and Indigenous title

The second area of focus that I believe has the potential to be transformative is the potential to unlock intergenerational wealth from land under indigenous title.

As of 30 June 2025, the Productivity Commission reports that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander legal rights cover 4.42 million square kilometres on land, and 113,496 square kilometres at sea.

That is around 58% of Australia’s landmass that is subject to native title or where land has been granted under Commonwealth, state or territory land rights legislation.

This is an extraordinary national asset base.

Why aren’t we seeing that asset base leveraged to generate access to deep capital that can start thriving Indigenous businesses?

Why aren’t we seeing it converted into durable wealth in the hands of Indigenous families and small enterprises?

I want to pick up on some of the early work that Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, Kerrynne Liddle and Tim Wilson, in his days as Human Rights Commissioner, began in this area.

Title on a map is one thing. Capital in the hands of a young Indigenous entrepreneur is something else entirely.

We know that Indigenous businesses can have profound and transformative effects on wellbeing and outcomes in their communities.

I saw it when I chaired an Inquiry into Indigenous business in 2021.

A publication earlier this year by the University of Melbourne and University of Queensland made the point that Indigenous businesses employ 135,000 people and provide one in five jobs for Aboriginal workers.

On average, Indigenous businesses and corporations pay their Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander employees around seven per cent more than non-Indigenous firms.

They are focused on areas like health care and social assistance, administrative and support services (which includes hiring, building, cleaning and gardening services) and public administration and safety (which includes government program delivery and community services).

These businesses are providing services communities want and need.

Services that are paid for.

Services that provide the dignity of work.

Services that set the example, that embrace aspiration and ambition.

Brilliant.

Let’s take that and scale it.

We also know there are policy interventions that work.

The paper made the point that the Indigenous Procurement Policy introduced by the Abbott government in 2015 is meeting its objectives – that the average number of contracts won by Indigenous businesses and corporations has more than doubled, rising from 3589 a year to 8197 a year.

Critically, the overall numbers do not show a reliance on government contracts across the ecosystem. Only four per cent of the total revenue generated by Indigenous business and corporations was through the IPP. It seems that the policy helps in the start-up stage, with many first-time recipients going on to receive larger contracts that sit outside the framework.

We know that Indigenous businesses work.

We know that they provide benefits that cascade through communities and which do not need to be reliant on government.

We know that government policy can provide a crucial kick-start, like Tony Abbott did with the Indigenous Procurement Policy.

We know that Indigenous peoples have access to, potentially, extraordinary asset bases through Indigenous title interests, but that there are constraints on land and related assets.

We know that the nature of title sometimes prevents it from being taken into account as an asset that can support financing.

We know that there are still barriers to these businesses in terms of access to capital and dealing with regulatory burdens.

We know that Indigenous participation in Australia’s investment markets is in a nascent stage, with mechanisms to effectively channel capital still relatively underdeveloped and blended finance options underused.

Why can’t we put these things together?

Why shouldn’t government look to remove regulatory obstacles, build investment capability and leverage the existing asset base – using it as security and collateral – to deliver financing that catalyses growth in the Indigenous Business Sector?

Why shouldn’t we support the development of Indigenous investment institutions that partner with local communities to generate wealth?

Why shouldn’t we aim to develop a mature and thriving market that sees policies like the Indigenous Procurement Policy sunset, for the simple reason that it is no longer needed?

You will find examples across the board of successful Indigenous businesses and the benefits they bring to their communities.

Making that a focus and unlocking the potential for growth by leveraging interests in land has the potential to change lives for generations to come.

The third pillar: Suicide prevention

The third area of focus that I want to talk about is suicide prevention.

As some of you will know, this is deeply personal for me.

I lost my own father to suicide when I was a young man. I spoke about it in my maiden speech in Parliament.

I have learned that to see a suicide as an act impacting a single individual is not to understand it at all.

It profoundly touches parents, brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, work colleagues, friends, flatmates, neighbours, and team members in sporting clubs.

At times, it becomes a virus of hopelessness.

In too many Indigenous communities, its frequency has meant it has become normalised.

And it never should be normalised. As I said in my maiden speech:

Suicide, they used to say, is a victimless crime, but they never count the loved ones left behind.

The context of my family in Sydney may be very different to the context of Indigenous families, whether in the cities and in remote Australia, but I want you to know I know the grief and the pain and the senselessness of losing someone to suicide.

And I am committed to making indigenous suicide prevention a focus of my work in the portfolio.

When I reflect on my own role now in the Indigenous Australians portfolio, I see my own experiences played out time and time and time again. It breaks my heart.

Boys left without fathers. Girls left without mothers. Parents mourning their children.

It shouldn’t be accepted as normal. It isn’t.

The rate of suicide among Indigenous Australians is 2.3 times higher than among non-Indigenous Australians.

Across the board, the majority of deaths are in men – by a factor of 3 to 1 – and it is the leading cause of death among 15- to 24-year-olds.

You can’t measure the cost of a human life and, as I said, we always underestimate the impact on family, friends, and the broader community.

On Monday, a wonderful community leader said to me, in passing, that if the Kimberley were a country, it would have the highest suicide rate in the world.

These are not statistics.

They are lives lost and they have an impact that cascades across families and communities and generations.

We can achieve stunning success in the other two pillars, but unless we also address suicide in Indigenous communities, we will not see the outcomes that we need to see.

We have changed the way we approach suicide, depression and mental health in the last 30 years.

We have spent hundreds of millions of dollars, but governments at every level and of every political stripe have failed.

Despite the best of intentions, we are failing across the board, and we are failing in particular in our Indigenous communities.

When I joined the Parliament, I said there is a role for government in supporting organisations and individuals that reach out to the socially isolated in our community; that foster innovative solutions that address suicide prevention; who enable communities to learn from what has worked and connecting those efforts across our country.

Those efforts are needed now more than ever in our Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities.

Just like there are veteran, LGBTI or men-specific approaches to suicide prevention, there are also Indigenous suicide prevention and support organisations like Gayaa Dhuwi and Thirrili. They have been talking about things like the importance of building thriving, supportive communities and postvention support.

I will do what I can for those who help pierce the loneliness, desperation and emptiness that leads to suicide.

For those who help build the strong communities.

Those who put the family and survivors at the centre.

Those who fight the contagion.

Those who provide the aftercare.

Right now, suicide is a cost that impacts Indigenous communities over generation after generation.

Reversing that cost must be the third priority for our Indigenous Affairs portfolio.

Conclusion

My friends, these are heavy topics – as they should be, given we are talking about the lives and futures of a generation of Australians.

It is time, for their sake, that we chart a new course.

To get off the mat.

To end the drift.

It is time to find the courage and the hope and the direction and the purpose to be ambitious for the future.

Let me finish with some lyrics from Troy Cassar-Daley, from the song ‘Dream out Loud’.

There’s two people in a room, one black and one white

Who’s to say who’s wrong or who’s right?

Both standing tall, both standing proud

Both too afraid to dream out loud.

It’s time for a new direction.

It’s time, once again, for us not to be afraid to dream out loud. Thank you.