It is great to be here. I acknowledge Warren, my Indigenous Advisory Council Chairman, Alan Tudge, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister, Mick Gooda, Social Justice Commissioner and everyone here from Melinda Cilento from Reconciliation Australia. Michael, thank you for the welcome to country, Danny Gilbert, Co-Chair of the Indigenous Advisory Council. Where do we stop? Because this is a terrific cause that we are here to acknowledge and to advance today.
A better deal for indigenous Australians is at the heart of the priorities of my Government just as much as securing our borders, fixing the Budget and building a future for all.
A fair go for Aboriginal people is at the heart of what this Government wants to achieve for our country.
And a fair go for Aboriginal people means a country where kids go to school, where adults go to work, the ordinary law of the land is respected and observed, because these are the indicators of good people, happy people living in tranquil communities.
Going to work is so important. It is so important. Nearly all of us derive a substantial sense of who we are, nearly all of us derive a big part of our identity by what we do every day and this is why it’s important to have meaningful work as a central part of one’s life.
And we’ve still got a long way to go when it comes to ensuring that Indigenous people have comparable employment outcomes to Australians more generally.
We had the Closing the Gap statement in Canberra – in Parliament – last week and a lot of progress has been made in closing some of the gaps. The Indigenous child mortality gap is close to closed, the Indigenous education gap is closing, but unfortunately the life expectancy gap is as great as ever and if anything, the employment gap has possibly gone backwards a little bit.
So things like reconciliation action plans in our great businesses like this bank are very important if we are to do the right thing by all Australians in the years ahead.
Congratulations Cameron on what’s been achieved here at the bank. You have had a Reconciliation Action Plan for just about as long as any business in Australia.
Your plan is acknowledged to be as high a quality a plan as any business’ in Australia and it’s great you’ve gone from under a dozen Indigenous employees back in 2008 to close to two hundred now, but I know you’re not going to stop there.
Two hundred is a lot, but in a bank like this there’s a lot more that can be done, as there is in so many other fields of life, so many other businesses. The Commonwealth Government itself has a long way to go to achieving real justice in this area.
And it is so important that we have more indigenous people working in banks because a bank should not be foreign country to Indigenous people. And as long as it is an alien place to Indigenous people that means that their participation in the economic life of our country is diminished. Their involvement in the real economy of our country is less than it should be.
It’s good that the bank is not only doing what it can to employ more Indigenous people to promote greater Indigenous awareness amongst its own staff. It’s particularly good that the NAB is reaching out to Indigenous people as customers because financial literacy is almost as important as literacy itself in a country such as ours.
Yes, we do not measure our real wealth just in dollar terms. Our real wealth is in our hearts, as well as in our wallets, but nevertheless, nevertheless, it is very important if the real wealth of this country is to grow that Indigenous people are absolutely a part of it.
Finally, could I say thank you to Reconciliation Australia. Reconciliation Australia does great work. Reconciliation is about moving away from them and us; them and us is not the right way to think of this country in any way, shape or form. It’s about us and building a bigger, braver, richer us that’s what reconciliation is all about and it’s great to see it so well and truly aspired to here at the National Australia Bank.
Thank you, Cameron. Thanks everyone.
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