Source: Murray Darling Basin Authority
Can I start by acknowledging the Miriuwung Gajerrong people, the Traditional Owners of the lands on which we meet. Thank you very much, Auntie, for the beautiful welcome to country and the ceremony. I pay my respects to elders past and present and celebrate the diversity of our First Nations people, their ongoing culture and traditions, their education practices and their connections to land, water and sky.
I also acknowledge all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who are part of the amazing Connected Beginnings program, which I’ll talk a little bit about today as well.
The knowledge and wisdom that communities bring to Connected Beginnings is what drives the success to where we are today. Thank you to the Binarri Binyja Yarrawoo Aboriginal Corporation for having us today, it’s super duper exciting to have you joining the Connected Beginnings family.
And I really do want to make special mention of my very, very dear friend and very dear colleague, the amazing Minister for Indigenous Australians, Senator Malarndirri McCarthy, who was able to make it here with us today. Thanks so much for being here.
I also want to acknowledge Agnes Armstrong, local Miriuwung elder who is joining us today, providing wisdom and strength to this community, and here today we also have Vanessa [indistinct] from SNAICC, and without the wonderful SNAICC and the wonderful experts like Vanessa, the Connected Beginnings program just wouldn’t be possible, so thanks for everything that you and SNAICC do.
Also joined by representatives from Ord Valley Aboriginal Health Service who have signed on as the health partner for Connected Beginnings here in Kununurra, and I want to extend my respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people with us here today.
What a beautiful site this is, what a beautiful gathering we have this morning to celebrate the opening of the very last 50th Connected Beginnings site right across Australia.
As a very proud Western Australian, albeit from Perth, it took me seven hours of travelling to get up here – I was determined to make it – it’s so great to be here with you today to make this huge and important announcement.
We’ve reached our target. We had a target of 50 Connected Beginnings sites right across Australia, and today marks the day, with this site opening, that we’ve reached that target, and can I say, six months before the deadline. Six months before the deadline, and have delivered not just all of them, but on time ahead of schedule as well.
Now, for those of you who don’t know, this program, the Connected Beginnings program is really quite phenomenal, it really to me harkens back to traditional ways of doing things, traditional ways of raising children. I come from a part of world where the community raises the child. If you can’t breastfeed, you’ve got a wet nurse, your sister can breastfeed, or your sister in law can breast feed, it takes a village to raise a child, everyone goes in and raises that child. That’s how you get children who thrive, when you bring together the expertise, the parenting, health, early childhood education, language, in place and in country and on country. That’s how you get young people and children to thrive.
As you know, Connected Beginnings is helping to close not just the gap but the gaping chasm in outcomes for our First Nations children by ensuring that health, that education and family support services work together to help children and their families have that successful transition to school, and I don’t have to tell any of you just how important those first five years of a child’s life are.
By the time a child reaches school, 90 per cent of their brain has already developed, 90 per cent has already developed, which means that if we get those first five years right, before they get to school, we have the opportunity in our hand to change the trajectory of a child’s life, to make a huge difference and a huge impact, not just now, not just for those first five years, but well into school, into adolescence, and into adulthood as well.
That’s how significant this program is, that’s how significant those first five years are, and that is exactly why we need as a government, working with the community, to ensure that we do everything that we can to give the very best possible start in life for our children in communities here.
We know that when children are strong in culture and go to early childhood education and care, they have better outcomes, having that connection to their identity, to their culture, to their land, [indistinct], and place. They have better outcomes at school, they have better outcomes through adolescence and throughout adulthood.
So when we bring together quality early learning with the strong identity grounded in culture and health support it creates a bright future for these children.
You cannot separate health outcomes from educational outcomes, and you cannot separate educational outcomes on having a strong identity and a strong connection to community, to land, to culture.
We’re creating this future for our youngest Australians by empowering communities to design and deliver a program in a way that supports the individual needs, and that’s the trick there, that’s the key part of it; is empowering the communities to do that. Local knowledge, local intel, years and years of traditional knowledge passed on from generation to generation to generation.
That’s why Connected Beginnings is achieving results, because it’s about connecting communities in the beginning years of a child’s life, prioritising local knowledge and culture, ensuring that communities determine, design and implement solutions to support their own children.
We’ve been delivering this in partnership with SNAICC, the National Voice for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children, and the National Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisation, the Connected Beginnings program exemplifies all the great things that can happen, the real outcomes that you can achieve, when you actually give community the lead, not just involve them, but give them the lead, and follow them, not get them to follow you; would be the other way around.
Now when I – last year I visited one of the new Connected Beginnings sides in Geraldton, and afterwards I was doing a media interview, and the journalist said to me, she said, “Oh, this is a new way, a new way of doing things, isn’t it?” And I said to her, “New? No, it’s thousands and thousands of years old in how you raise children”.
This is the traditional way in how you raise children. You bring together everyone to wrap around a child, to watch that child grow and thrive. Everyone has a part in that child’s life. This is not new, this is old ways, and this is the ways that have been used and proven for generation upon generation upon generation, and when we listen to communities and when they tell us about these ways and the ways of and how these ways have fostered and cushioned and grown strong children and strong adults for generations, then we have that opportunity to do that for future generations as well.
Let me tell you a little bit about the Connected Beginnings program. At the existing Connected Beginnings sites, that’s 49 of them, plus this one, number 50, the average attendance of First Nations children in centre based care has increased by more than 10 per cent. That’s the real difference it’s making.
The existing sites have also seen an increase in the number of children on track in all five of our Australian early development census domains. So you’re getting more children attending and more children meeting the early development census domains; executive functioning, oral language, all of those things that we know is what creates successful learners in young children, as well as successful adolescents and adults.
And this new site here in Kununurra is being developed in partnership with Binarri Binyja Yarrawoo, the Aboriginal Corporation. It will support – get this – 600, around 600 local First Nations children. That’s pretty huge. And as the 50th site, the Connected Beginnings program now with the opening of this site now has the potential to support up to 20 per cent of all First Nations children right across Australia in those vital years before school. That’s pretty amazing, pretty amazing the difference that we’ve seen it already make, and the difference that we’re going to see it continue to make as well.
So a huge thank you from me to all of our partners who are here today and to all of our partners right across Australia who have been fundamental in making this happen, making this reality of opening our 50th site a success, a reality, and well ahead of schedule too, I’ve got to put that in again.
I really look forward to seeing the outcomes of Connected Beginnings site here in Kununurra, watching the families and the young children thrive under this program, and I look forward to coming back here to beautiful Kununurra in who knows how many, maybe a month, maybe a year’s time, and seeing the difference that you are all going to be making here that builds on the difference you’re already making as a community here.
Thank you to everyone involved, and congratulations on number 50.