Translator: Jennifer Ung Reviewer: Cristina Bufi-Pöcksteiner
Hello, Adelaide.
Audience: Hello.
I'd like to take this opportunity to personally acknowledge
that today we're meeting on Kaurna land.
Always was, and always will be.
I'd like to pay my respects to their elders past, present and future.
June 8th 2016 was a day that changed my life forever.
I was lying on the couch with my son, Isaiah, on my chest,
breathing him in, watching the little mannerisms as he slept,
and thought, this moment, right here, was perfect.
But with a single phone call,
all the happiness of that moment had been torn away.
There are some moments in your brain that never let go.
This was one of those moments.
My sister Nikita called me out of the blue
to say that our beloved mother, Wendy, had passed away.
I'll always remember that feeling
that everything that was keeping me upright
had suddenly dissolved.
I mean, I'd only been speaking to her a couple of nights before,
something random about watching "Q and A".
Now, this vivacious, loving,
life-of-the-party, adoring grandmother
was gone.
Our connection to culture ... gone.
The next month was a bit of a blur, organising her funeral.
I wouldn't have been able to do it without my beautiful wife Hilda,
my sister Nikita, brother Benjamin
and the rest of our loving friends and family.
A few weeks later,
I, along with probably many people here,
saw the horrific footage of what happened in Don Dale Detention Centre.
For those that don't know,
Don Dale is a juvenile detention centre in the Northern Territory.
Four Corners aired some horrific footage
of young Aboriginal lads between the ages of 12 and 16.
These lads were hooded,
beaten,
stripped,
tear-gassed.
There's no other way to say it,
these lads were -
these were Human Rights violations.
A few days later,
I found out that one of the lads was from Borroloola.
Borroloola, a day's drive from Darwin,
is a place where our beloved mother,
myself and extended family are forever connected.
My mother could have been related to this lad.
He could have been my nephew,
my cousin.
Knowing that we shared that community made me incredibly sad.
August the fourth, every year,
is the National Children's Day
for Aboriginals and Torrens Strait Islanders.
It's a day where we should be celebrating our kids' connection to culture.
It should be a day when we promote their cultural identity.
But unfortunately, this was the day -
this day was marred by a political cartoon published in "The Australian".
The cartoon, drawn by Bill Leak,
shows a police officer bringing an aboriginal child
to what appears to be the aboriginal father.
The father, barefoot, and with a beer in his hand,
makes a comment to the police officer as if to say he didn't know his own child.
This depiction, this cartoon,
is a negative stereotype, an incredibly negative stereotype.
It says that aboriginal fathers are drunks.
It says that aboriginal fathers don't know their children.
In a single image, Leak had undermined my love for my children,
belittled my relationship with my parents,
and shifted the blame from those guards in the Don Dale Detention Centre
onto the victims' families.
This cartoon, this ignorant racist cartoon, enraged me.
It could have been so easy to act out in anger.
Our people have had an angry fire in our bellies
for 230 years.
But there comes a point
when maybe anger isn't the right place to come from.
I wanted to tell Bill Leak that I'm a proud aboriginal father.
I wanted to say,
"I know everything about my two glorious kids."
I wanted to say,
"Hey, I don't mind a couple of beers, but I'm not a drunk."
But most of all, I wanted to tell Bill Leak,
"I don't fit your negative stereotype."
So, I turned the anchor on its head.
I posted a photo
of my two beautiful children, Eva and Isaiah, and myself to Twitter,
and said simply that "I'm a proud aboriginal dad".
After I put that tweet up,
I spent the rest of the day with my family,
not giving it much thought.
But out of sight and out of mind,
this single image had ignited a social movement.
When I came back to Twitter,
when I came back to my phone a while later,
#IndigenousDads had lit up Twitter.
And it was fantastic.
(Cheering) (Applause)
Aboriginal dads put photos up of their children.
Aboriginal women put photos up of their proud aboriginal dads.
Community leaders put photos up.
Celebrities put photos up.
Sporting stars put photos up.
And it was such a beautiful movement.
Within 24 to 48 hours, thousands of images were shared.
And this overshadowed that negative cartoon.
The offence that this cartoon caused
was obvious:
700 complaints were made to the National Press Council.
The National Press Council stated
that despite the fact that those complaints were made,
they did not sanction the cartoonist or the paper.
They said this cartoon
did not cause substantial offence, prejudice or distress.
I say to Bill Leak, to "The Australian", and to the National Press Club,
that in the words of George Washington,
"Truth will always prevail where it comes to bring it to light."
That's the beauty about #IndigenousDads and social media as a whole:
it bypasses the mainstream media.
People whose voices were once hushed get to speak up.
Social media has the ability to drive social change.
We all have the ability to drive social change
because, slowly but surely,
we are changing the conversation, one photo at a time.
Thank you.
(Applause) (Cheering)