Tobacco control and closing the gap
Tom Calma, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner and Chair of the Close the Gap Steering Committee for Indigenous Health Equality
Tom Calma, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner and Chair of the Close the Gap Steering Committee for Indigenous Health Equality
Marking the 75th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights Fraser Oration Emeritus Professor Rosalind Croucher AM FAAL FRSA FACLM(Hon) Introduction Vice-Chancellor, Duncan Maskell, Dean Matthew Harding, Mrs Tamie Fraser and the Fraser family, Melbourne Law School staff, distinguished...
I’d also like to thank the Minerals Council of Australia for inviting me to speak today and I acknowledge all distinguished guests and participants.
I’d like to begin by acknowledging the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation on whose land we are today and pay my respects to their elders. I’d like to thank the organisers for inviting me to speak, and I would like to acknowledge you, the Aboriginal field staff. You have an important role and I pay tribute to you and your work.
My presentation today will focus on the content of my Native Title Report 2005. I will outline the debates about economic development on Indigenous land - the possibilities and the challenges. At the conclusion of this presentation I will provide some challenge statements about the responsibilities of service deliverers on Indigenous land.
It is very fitting that we discuss native title in the context of a treaty just one month after a very significant native title decision, the Miriuwung Gajerrong decision [1], has been handed down by the High Court. 406 pages of honed legal reasoning cut through almost the entire history of non-Indigenous land law in Western Australia to decide the final shape that native title would take for the Miriuwung Gajerrong people.
In championing the cause of universality (of human rights) I should emphasise that universality does not negate cultural diversity; on the contrary, I believe that it reinforces and protects cultural diversity.
To set the scene for my presentation this afternoon, I want to share two autobiographical fragments with you, both of them having to do with my experience at university.
I am very pleased to be able to contribute to this Forum and would like to congratulate the co-convenors, Rhonda and Fiona, and their organisations for this initiative, which is just one part of the Disability Advisory Council's Disability Action Plan Project running throughout 2006.
Thank you Anne-Mason and Ruth for this invitation to address your AGM on health access issues, and in particular access to height adjustable examination beds in primary health care facilities.
I've always been fascinated by numbers. Although remembering some of my maths exam results, I'm not so sure that they have been as fascinated by me. If you ask a group of people to say the first number that comes into their heads, you'll get a lot of 7's. Perhaps it's because we all have an intuitive awareness that 7 is the smallest number of faces of a regular polygon that cannot be constructed with a ruler and compass.
I'd also like to acknowledge Brian Rope's many years of contribution to the disability sector, and wish him well in retirement, and wish Nicole Lawder success as she moves into the CEO's role.
For thousands of years, Aboriginal groups, who might spend much of their time living far apart in the expanses of this land, pursuing separately the business of survival, would come together at times to meet, to trade, sometimes to resolve differences, but also to exchange knowledge for mutual benefit.
I am here today partly because Michelle Castagna was quick off the mark in organising me to come before I had accepted any of the numerous other possibilities for events for the international day.
Let me also acknowledge that we are meeting on the traditional land of Ngunnawal people. I pay my respects to their elders past and present, and all the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander men and women who have worked so committedly to eliminating sexual assault.
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