In politics, words are very easy. Doing things is very hard. And what inspires me about your presence here this evening is that you are doing things. You are doing real things. You are providing opportunities to change people's lives and change them forever.
Sometimes, in the challenge of reconciliation, we lose heart. Sometimes we think it's all too hard. Sometimes we just think that for every success there are 10 failures, and why go on?
But what encourages me about your presence here this evening, and the 150 or so business leaders who were turned away from being here this evening, is the spirit of the nation is alive and well and wants to do things.
It doesn't want to emote about it, doesn't want to feel good about it - it wants to do things.
This is a very hard area. You all know that. That's why you have succeeded in the fields of endeavour which have brought you to this gathering this evening. It's a very hard area, and it therefore requires hard and determined people - hard and determined people whose heart is still tender and warm, and that again is the spirit I see present in this gathering this evening.
Whenever you feel discouraged, and I say this to my Indigenous brothers and sisters here this evening and to those of you from the non-Indigenous community, pause for a moment and reflect a bit on the journey on which we've come just over the last couple of years.
This is the place in which we apologised to the Stolen Generation, and we've had moving testimony this evening about the impact on just one of them. The thing that hit me in the heart from the Welcome to Country was the phrase "I grew up without knowing that Aboriginal people existed". How extraordinary. How frighteningly extraordinary.
But that is the reality from which we have come. It's a sad reality, it's a cruel reality, it's a heartless reality, and it's for that which we gathered as a nation on all sides of politics and from all parts of the country to simply say sorry - and we did.
But as I said on that occasion, words without deeds are but a clanging gong, a hollow symbol, and count for nothing. And that's where as a nation we embarked upon this journey called Closing the Gap.
I'll come to the practical parts of it in a minute. But when you lose heart, reflect on where we've come in just the last couple of years.
What really affected me just the other night was attending a football game on the Gold Coast in the great and incomparable State of Queensland. [Laughter] I had you all with me until that point. [More laughter]
So as I sat there with Jenny [Macklin] and with Twiggy [Forrest] and others, Linda Burney, Smiley [William Johnstone], folks from near and folks from far, I was absolutely stunned, the fact that we were there with a full stadium of people watching this game unfold. And the nation felt to me as if it was at one, wanting this enterprise to succeed, for which this game of football was an outward and visible sign of, to paraphrase the good nuns who taught Aunty [Ruth Bell] before, an inward and perhaps spiritual event.
Because there you had the world of rugby league, the NRL, the ARL, Smiley, the whole mob, out there on the field, Indig, non-Indig - it was great. Fantastic game of football, too, and the good guys won.
But you know something? The crowd loved it and the nation enjoyed it.
And so when you start to feel weighed down by it all, just step back every now and then and reflect that the spirit of getting this right is alive and well in the good people of Australia.
Now, to the practical business of what you are doing.
My first responsibility tonight is to each and every one of you, as Indigenous and non-Indigenous business leaders, is to say thank you. I mean it. I really do.
I'm married to a businesswoman. Creating a job doesn't happen like that. You operate under a bottom line. You operate with the disciplines of your banks; you operate with the disciplines of the marketplace; you operate with the disciplines of what your firm does best. And within all those constraints, what you have done as business leaders is to say 'we can make a difference'.
I just find that so encouraging, so inspiring.
Some may be just starting out on this particular journey. And I've met one or two this evening. Some are long seasoned in it and have seen the upsides and have seen the downsides and the waves on the way through. But you know, we are making a difference, because you are making a difference.
The huge firms we know something of - the BHPs and the Rios. Can I just say to large companies like that, and there are many of them here this evening and not just in the mining and resources sector, thank you for staying the course. It's good that you've done so.
I could say by reprimand that you started late, but I won't, because the nation started late. All of us started late.
But it is also the other businesses and the other firms in the financial services sector, in the manufacturing, retail, hospitality, tourism, right across the spectrum, people seeing where they are and realising what they can to transform a young Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander person's life.
So, seriously, and from my heart and from my head, thank you for that which you have done, that which you are doing, and that which you have resolved so to do.
The second is this - that I really do get it when so many of you say to me: "Kevin, we just to help. Our challenge is not throwing the doors open. We've overcome those barriers. Our challenge is finding the people." I get it. Most of us get it around this gathering this evening.
Which is why I'm equally inspired by what so many people here are doing this evening in school education and what comes after it. The great work being done in Queensland, and that's not in reference to the State - it actually was a reference to the extraordinary work being done in pioneering approaches to retaining kids at school. The extraordinary work being done in the West and now much more broadly by Gerard Neesham and the Clontarf Academy; the great work being done by Andrew Penfold, getting kids from Indigenous communities into the boarding schools of our country, and he mentioned to me just before the great work, I think, under Mark's [Arbib] portfolio of having now hundreds and hundreds of kids, Indigenous kids, in school-based apprenticeships.
So, in having the pipeline of people come through, can I say to each one of you engaged in that work at the coal face of what comes before school, of what's happening in our schools, and what is needed to keep kids at school and provide those pathways beyond school and through university and into the financial institutions to work - thank you, because that is one huge part of the jigsaw.
If I have a third thing to say tonight, it's kind of how we fit in, the Government. I was talking earlier this evening to Gerard Neesham, and, as you know, we are backing Clontarf, we are backing what Andrew Penfold's doing, we're backing what Twiggy Forrest is doing, we're backing what so many of you are doing around the country. But I was taken, in particular, by part of my conversation with Gerard about why it is that we in Government actually prefer to work with you beyond Government.
And that is because if we can bring our resources to bear, with continuity, with strength and with vigour, and persistence and certainty, the magic really happens when we harness that of people beyond Government and their passion and commitment, professional expertise and zeal. In Clontarf, we see that. I discovered, to my horror, how much money we're spending with Clontarf this evening. Someone should have given me the brief. Gerard, you've done very well - and so it is across the spectrum.
Didn't stop Gerard from asking for more, by the way - a lot more.
But you know something? It actually works well if we, creatively, are working with each other. Our job in Government when it comes to these great challenges of Closing the Gap, is to hold fast to the targets we must reach, be clear about them and be accountable in the progress that we are making towards them, but to be flexible and open about what each situation and each community demands as the local response and how you as individual firms and schools and school-related enterprises can best fit in.
It is that creative and dynamic partnership for which there is no perfect template, which, I think, will realise for us our greatest strength.
It's a long way off. Let's be honest about it. The tasks ahead are huge, the challenges formidable, but we are exploring a new way. The classic view, the Government does all, doesn't work. The alternative view, which is that random acts of philanthropic endeavour by those of you who feel virtue in your soul, it's great, but it's not comprehensive.
The creativity lies in bringing these two worlds together, and that is what we seek, in our own way, to do.
To the ministers who work with me on this, can I say to Jenny and to Mark and to others who are here, thank you. These two ministers, in particular, have their hearts and their minds fully engaged in this great enterprise, and I really would say to both of them in front of this audience how much I appreciate that work.
It's hard, it's difficult, and it can be discouraging, but with these ministers, let me tell you, you have an open door and through the Government a willing response in terms of things that work practically at the local level - and we mean it.
We will be held to account each year in this place when we, in the House of Representatives, deliver a report on or about the anniversary of the Apology to Indigenous people. The focusing thing about that report is that it is our national bottom line. It is our national balance sheet. It is our national reconciliation of accounts each year.
The targets we have set, the investments we've made, and the changes we have wrought or the failures that we have encountered. It's a good discipline for the nation, but we'd never, ever get there were it not for you making it happen in the field.
Aunty said in conclusion that she dreamt of the day when an Indigenous Australian will be Prime Minister of this country. You know something? I was first introduced to Closing the Gap on the 40th anniversary of the '67 referendum, at an event held down the road here at the Old Parliament House.
I didn't know much about Closing the Gap, to be quite honest, until I sat down with some Indigenous leaders who explained to me that it really had some horsepower. I also remember on that occasion we sang together 'From Little Things Big Things Grow' , and I think that's what we're doing here, changing all those lives, tens, then hundreds, then thousands, then tens of thousands. And that means within our lifetime Indigenous leaders in the ranks of politics, including the highest offices of the land, as should be the case.
Australian business, this journey is long and the difficulties will be great. But it won't happen without each of you fully hitched to the cart of reconciliation and what we can do for the future of the Indigenous people of this ancient land.
I thank you.
[ends]