THE CONFAB WITH MICHAEL G IN CONVERSATION WITH PROF LEAH BROMFIELD-SMITH

Leah is currently the Director of the Australian Centre for Child Protection.  Leah is also the 2025 SA Australian of the Year.

Leah is one of Australia’s foremost child protection experts, who has worked nationally and internationally with government and non-government organisations in establishing and implementing child protection reforms.

Join me on the ConFab with Michael G to gain an understanding of her life and passions.

Transcript

SPEAKER_05 0:01

Welcome to the Confab with Michael G. on the People Powered Radio 2XFM ninety eight point three. We're streaming online and on demand on twoxfm.org.au and tonight our guest is Lee. Now Lee was the Australian of the Year for South Australia in 2025. Now Lee is one of Australia's foremost child protection experts who has worked nationally and internationally with government and non-government organisations in establishing and implementing child protection reforms. Tonight we're going to learn a little bit about Lee's life history and passions. Welcome to the Confab with Michael G.

SPEAKER_04 0:59

Coming to the Bible.

SPEAKER_05 4:55

So I from looking at your C V, it's a well-deserved uh award for you. Before we kick off the programme in its entirety, would you like to introduce your first track that we played? Who is the performer and why did you select it?

SPEAKER_06 5:12

So my first track is um Florence and the Machines and it's uh the dog days are over. This is a song that I really like to play. It kind of um gets me in that mindset if I've been having a hard day to um to kind of pick me up, uh get me moving. I love the the music itself, but also the message about the dog days are over and that story of of um human resilience and how much we uh can actually overcome as people.

SPEAKER_05 5:42

Now you mentioned before we kicked off the programme this evening that you can remember a fair way back in your young life. So we let's start off in that journey. Your parents, tell me a little bit about them.

SPEAKER_06 5:53

Yeah, so my my mum was actually a single parent. So she had me when she was quite young. Uh I didn't actually know my dad. I didn't meet my dad until I was 18 years old. I had a stepfather though when I was um from the time I was born, he was in my life.

SPEAKER_05 6:10

So a young a young mum, uh, did she have to go out and work or what tell me a little bit about your mum and your stepdad and uh what that what sort of professions or what they were involved with?

SPEAKER_06 6:22

My career is as a child protection researcher. And um I would have said, you know, in my twenties that I became a child protection researcher because I had a uh drive for social justice. That actually wasn't which is true, I have a absolute desire to for social justice and to try and help people. Um, but it really wasn't until I was kind of in my late 20s and 30s that I was able to kind of connect the dots that the reason I have this huge social uh justice drive and desire to help people is actually because there were elements of my child that actually weren't the easiest. And my family really struggled as a single parent and a young parent. My first contact with the child protection system was actually as an infant. So I was born in a time where by being a teenage parent, and particularly in a family that were uh struggling, a wider family that struggled with poverty, that you became a client of child protection, that you were um monitored regardless of whether there was actually any um known risks. So I guess I would say that my mum experienced over surveillance and an overuse of state powers because she was a she might have been young, but she was a a wonderful mum. Yeah, she oh, she's still an inspiration to me, my mother. She's really, really strong. My stepfather, though, had a lot of challenges. He um had uh mental health conditions and he'd had some previous time uh in prison. He was a recovered alcoholic. Um he never drank while uh during my childhood, but uh did have a lot of powerful friends as a consequence of his life history. Um kind of came into our life at times, and that brought violence into our lives at um at times. Episodes were quite severe violence. So my first memory in life is actually as a four-year-old and uh my actually I'm not gonna identify who, but um people known to my stepfather uh trying to break down the door. And I remember vividly sitting as a four-year-old beside my um my one-year-old brother, and he wasn't walking, so he's in those uh little bounce and etch things, and uh I was crouching beside him as we could hear the I could hear it, uh the banging on the door as I was trying to break in the door. And I recall them breaking in the door, and from that point on, after that initial foray, I have no other memory, but I did lose my hair as a consequence of that, the trauma from that as a child. And you know, that's one moment I know that today in our world that that violence is the first memory of too many Australian children and it's carried through life and for some of our kids it's an everyday memory. I guess that really is part of what drives me.

SPEAKER_05 9:36

Now, Lee, which part of Australia were you living in at that time?

SPEAKER_06 9:40

Oh yes, so I'm I am the SA uh Australian of the Year for 2025, but I wasn't born in South Australia. This is the third state I've lived in. I was born in Hobart, Tasmania. I'm proud to be um Tasmanian. I think that um my childhood experiences also gave me a lot of the strength and resilience that I have now.

SPEAKER_05 10:00

Did you how long did you live in in Tasmania for? Did you move from Tasmania later on in life or we was it uh an earlier time?

SPEAKER_06 10:08

Well, I moved with my mum from Tassie uh with my my three younger siblings at about age twelve it was, and that was actually my stepfather's mental health deteriorated over time, and that um became less and less safe for us. And so we left. Uh left Hobart and moved to Ballarat where we knew no one, but that was uh really around um escaping what was a pretty risky situation for us. We spent some time in uh uh domestic violence shelter and kind of hiding. Before we left, my mum was very fearful that if we didn't leave that we might not survive, that it was a very dangerous time.

SPEAKER_05 10:55

And what was schooling like in in Taz in Hobart uh in your earlier life that you would have been in in primary school for a while in Hobart. Was that a a form were you able to escape the the uh environment where it was you were at school or not?

SPEAKER_06 11:10

Yeah, I mean I think I was a pretty naive kid as well. I would say that I had um a mostly happy childhood with these episodes that were terrifying really, but in the context of a mostly happy childhood, I most I felt loved and happy most of the time. And I um I loved, loved, loved reading. So I finished all of my primary school in in Taz and actually did my first year of high school. One of those kids who started school early. But I actually had uh and have, I should say, a chronic eye disease. So I'm I'm actually classified as legally blind blind. I have a a very severe vision impairment, which started when I was five. Uh, and so that really coping with that vision impairment has been a part of my entire life, but was quite difficult as a child because I missed quite a bit of school, came to school with, you know, eye patches on, and going to school in the 80s was not as particularly when you're already poor, so you don't have the right clothes, your family's known to be a bit different. That was not a great time attempted to bullying. I loved school, wasn't always the easiest.

SPEAKER_05 12:30

Were there any teachers? I mean, let's let's take it a step back. You were saying that being bullied, I'm hoping that was this the uh students and not the teachers. But but it and now there is a lot of support for people in domestic violence and also coming from a poor environment within the school system. Were they aware of your situation and was I mean at the teacher school level, were they supportive or not?

SPEAKER_06 13:00

I couldn't say as a child. I mean, we were in a small country town, everybody knew everybody. So I always felt like people knew what was happening for us. I certainly never talked about it as a child. I I always felt like my teachers liked me. But I actually had the impression, and I think it's because I'd missed school, I had to get some um extra tutoring to catch up on my maths and things like that. I actually thought that I was not very clever. And it wasn't until I was started school in Victoria, and I had this amazing English teacher who um entered me into all the national science and mathematics and English competitions, and she paid for all my entries all um herself. And she did that, and I I mean I I kind of looking back now, I can see why she did that. She just said, Leah, you're gonna be doing these competitions, your um your entrance fees are all covered. I th I think it would be a good thing for you to do. And I I did really, really well. I remember it being so surprising to me, and it was that was not until then that I actually realized that I wasn't stupid. So it was felt like this uh cataclysmic event in my life that just m made me see myself really, really differently.

SPEAKER_05 14:29

You've had it off your primary school period and you were you left Tasmania in year one of high school. So really the memories of of your primary school period wasn't really supportive or were they did anybody at that school see that light, that that spark of light in you that they saw when you're in Victoria?

SPEAKER_06 14:51

No, I I don't think they did actually. I can't say that there was any particular temperature. No one was awful to me. No one none of the teachers put me down, but I but there was no one, I mean that was extraordinary what what that that um that English teacher did for me in terms of going above and beyond.

SPEAKER_05 15:14

Now you said you've moved you you've your family moved from Tasmania to Victoria. Did you see a change in your mum and family environment? Were you able to escape the the harm and the environment when you moved into uh into Victoria?

SPEAKER_06 15:32

Well, life wasn't scary after that, but it wasn't easy. I mean my mum was uh a single parent, she had four children. My siblings had some health issues themselves that made things quite challenging in terms of their school participation. And mum was working a lot, so actually I did a lot of caring for my siblings. So for those first few years of high school, my mum was working after school. So I would kind of come home from school and do the homework, dinner time, bath time, bedtime routine with my siblings. My younger sister kind of says that I was her second mum. We're incredibly close, still. She's one of my best friends to this day. Yeah, so it it it was challenging, but still I was so loved. My mum loved us so much, she protected us so that the scary times in my earlier childhood were few and far between because she did a lot to protect us. She's a really strong and inspiring woman.

SPEAKER_05 16:38

Yeah, Lee, you saw it. No, that's okay. Lee, you were saying you moved into into Victoria. Whereabouts did you land? Whereabouts were you living in uh in Victoria?

SPEAKER_06 16:47

Uh in Ballarat, Victoria. Yeah. So we went from from Hobart to Ballarat, which are actually um similar population sizes. Uh so kind of there was a sense of, I guess, things, some kind of continuity in that it was a similar population advice to navigate. It wasn't like we kind of suddenly moved into a huge city. Yeah, Ballarat was really, really good to me. Um, yeah. Uh mum really scraped and saved and was able to send me to uh a um a Catholic school where I feel like I really did thrive. An old girls' school um really fostered uh my sense of feminism. You know, our mother superior was a qualified engineer and any building works on the ground, she was out there in her gum boots and a hard hat supervising every day. So it I I feel quite fortunate for the experiences that I had in Ballarat and the friendships that I made at school as well. It was a uh a happy time. Now Lee you're saying struggling with money. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 17:55

Yeah, so Lee, you're saying that you were um being a a pu a part-time carer for your for your br sisters and and your your the children below you. Do were you able to actually get some time yourself uh after school or on the weekends where you could actually undertake activities that uh interest you?

SPEAKER_06 18:16

Yeah, I did. I mean the weekends were really mine. It was that after school time that mum really needed help. And I I don't resent that at all. It didn't feel like a hardship at the time. It felt like we were all pulling together to lift ourselves up. And you know, mum was saving, she got has uh together a deposit for a house and kind of bought a house and was paying off a mortgage, as I said, she was um paying for my school fees. So it just felt like we were working together, and without that destabilizing influence of my stepfather and and um the people in his life and his mental health, it didn't feel like hardship to be doing any of that. It felt like uh we were teens and we were all in it together and we were making our lives better together. So, but I had weekends, I um I still I've always I would spend uh a day reading a book still today. If I could sit down and read a book from cover uh a novel from cover to cover, it's a kind of a a happy place for me. So I still had time for reading. I got really involved in things like uh youth parliament and um I was involved in Ballarat, I had like a youth group that would organise um concerts, battle of the bands, things for uh for young people living in the region, um, involved in uh drama club and doing things like the Royal South Street competitions and um drama improvisation. You know, so I I didn't not have a childhood. I I um I had a lot of lot of fun times, a huge group of friends and we did all the things that you'd expect adolescents to be doing, both the the good, the bad and the ugly. Um and yeah, I really think of my teenage years as a time of of happiness and opportunity and it really shaped me.

SPEAKER_05 20:22

So, in a sense, moving from Tasmania to in into Victoria, there was like a completely different life, a different lifestyle and a completely different environment. Do you think that the school your your time at the school and the opportunities that you were provided with in that school system gave you a different view of life?

SPEAKER_06 20:44

One hundred percent I do. And that is both a testament to the school, but also I talk a lot in my work about the postcode lottery that we have in Australia. And in Tasmania today, it's still the state with the highest levels of um people lacking literacy and and numeracy. You know, uh I remember being in school in TASI and people would still talk about, oh well, are you gonna stop at year 10 or would you go through to year 12? And Tasmania today still has a system where high school stops at year 10 and then they have these colleges for year 11 and 12, which for a lot of kids, if you're living in like in the the rural northwest, it's you know a couple of hours to get to the closest year 11, 12 college. That's a postcode lottery. Those kids are structurally um disadvantaged. Finishing high school is disincentivized. Whereas when we landed in Victoria, the Victorian uh the VCE was kind of you know relatively new. I am a bit older. And there was just this expectation. It was a time when there was an expectation. expectation that you would go through to year twelve and an an expectation that you would try for university or some other further study and that culture of aspiration I think that is so so important for children. I think about it too in terms of me feeling like as a child growing up with kind of missing school and and the disability with my eye condition that the reason that I felt like I was stupid, that I wasn't very clever is because I was experiencing that subtle form of dis discrimination that people with disability experience and that's a lack of aspiration that somehow because I couldn't see very well I mustn't be able to think very well. So for me Victoria was that move was life changing because I just experienced aspiration in ways that were so different. You know that a collective aspiration for children that they would complete 12 years of of schooling and then go on to some kind of further study an aspiration for me as a person with a disability that I could still go on and achieve and that that didn't impact my mind or my ability to contribute to uh to society. And I have to say at a school level going to an all-girls school was great for me because it it they really did introduce feminism to us really early and a sense of civics and service to community was really important for the school. And so as students we were all required to be involved in volunteering and that was so rewarding that it really shaped the kind of career that I wanted to be involved in. And changing lives is whether it's at the smaller scale of going and visiting people in an aged care home, which was one of the things we did as students to the kind of work I do now where you're undertaking research to change policy for the whole population.

SPEAKER_05 24:18

Now Lee, we before we go to part two, at what point did you think that you might go on to university?

SPEAKER_06 24:26

Well I have to credit my mum there. I don't remember a time where she didn't want me to go on to university and I don't know when I internalized it as m as my goal. I think that was part of being in that Victorian school context where there wasn't people who weren't thinking about what they'd do next. It was the majority of kids were thinking about what they'd do after school, what further education. So I would say by the time I was in kind of year eight, year nine, it wasn't so much would I go to university, it was trying to find what was going to be the thing for me.

SPEAKER_05 25:01

On that point Lee, let's pause and let's talk about your second track. We'll talk about university in part two but would you like to introduce your second track who is the performer and why did you select it?

SPEAKER_06 25:14

So my second song is A Thousand Miles Away by the Huda Guru. I travel an enormous amount for my work and there are days where you know you've had a flight come in really late and you're getting up in the morning and you think I'm so tired or those sitting at the airport with the long delays and you're just wanting to be back home with your family and particularly for me with with kids I um do very long days sometimes so that I can limit the time I'm away from my children. And this is one that just gives me a sense of solidarity. Again I love the music but it it picks me up.

SPEAKER_05 25:55

It makes me think I'm not the only one who has the the those feelings of tiredness of the travel of of missing home missing family but I'm not in it on my own as other people going through this and and that sense of solidarity I guess in any hardship is always something that uh helps me to get through estimated time of arrival 930 a m up before the sun and now I'm tired before I even begin now you're flying I got so much work in front of me flying it stretches as far as the eye can see I can see spend half a life in airports doing crosswords or attempting to sleep and when the bar is open then you'll often find the warming I never find a place where I can stay in I'd rather be a thousand miles away thousand miles away the confab with Michael G and we have in our studio tonight Lee who has come from an interesting background a traumatic background out of Tasmania into a wonderful environment in Victoria which were some of the building blocks that we'll talk about in Lee's journey as an adult. Welcome back Lee thank you now where did you go to university?

SPEAKER_06 31:03

I went to Deacon University in DeLong and I studied psychology and I um I studied psychology actually because I had a teacher when I was in U10 uh where I did a couple of uh my first couple of courses of psychology who just said you seem really really good at this have you ever thought of a career in psychology and so I enrolled with every intention of becoming a a clinical psychologist. I really thought that being in those that therapeutic contexts would be where I could help people and make a difference and so I pursued my degree uh got to the end of my four years and started to do some work in um a rape crisis centre as a counsellor advocate for children and women who'd had who were coming in for a police interview. And I was asked to actually uh offered a PhD scholarship to come back and study uh study um I'm just trying to think what they actually asked me to come back and study. The PhD scholarship was really to look at child uh child abuse and neglect in the context of the child protection system. So I'd been working as a councillor in a rape crisis centre and actually been doing a little bit of research assistant work for the chief psychologist of the local health network in a service for children who had chronic illness and disability and their families so quite a lot of grief some of the children unfortunately passed away as a consequence of their chronic illness and disability so the PhD brought together the work that I was doing in the Rate Crisis Center and then this work I was doing on trauma.

SPEAKER_05 32:47

Now Lee before we go further I just want to interrupt you there can I take you back into the into you into the university world and that environment you were studying psychology right and you and then you've you've done some work outside in that in that centre. Do you think the time that you're at the university in Deakin you're getting a sense of understanding from the research and work that you're doing at uni in some of the insight to what was occurring or what had occurred to you as a child?

SPEAKER_06 33:20

Probably not until I had done my PhD. So I at that point I still I would say that I worked really hard through my adolescence and my university years to really mask. To be as normal as possible because I'd spent so much of my early years being different and experiencing the ostracization of difference that I did a hell of a lot to cover the fact that I didn't have great vision to certainly cover the fact that my childhood had elements of adversity and trauma. I was so committed to presenting myself as as um as ordinary as could be to fit in and I felt like I really believed that myself. So I really saw myself going into psychology out of this sense of wanting to help other people and connected it to things like the volunteering that I'd done, the social justice that I'd really learned about through high school and really connected with but it wasn't until later in life that I was able to see with maturity and hindsight that it was my earlier experiences that gave me that sense of social justice of wanting to help others and particularly my motivation to help children. So I I chose things like applied psychology and child development and health psychology and all the things that were really practical that gave me all the foundations but with not a huge amount of insight into myself I was so closed off.

SPEAKER_05 35:04

Now Lee whilst you're at the uni was there any of anybody of the professors or tutors that inspired you or gave you a sense of helping you build within yourself the capability and perhaps it was just during your PhD perhaps that that may have occurred that was building the strength in you or your understanding in in you to get that degree and to translate it. Even you talked about working in the Rate Crisis Centre was there anybody in that university that helped you in the sense of understand how you could help others that you're coming across in your early part of your career?

SPEAKER_06 35:43

I had a professor during my undergraduate who really saw something in me and she was very very involved in the local chapter of the Soroptimists which is all about women in leadership and supporting gender equity. She really involved me in in the Soroptimus so as a young leader then working with girls in high school that you know just further uh solidified my feminist instincts and my desire to be part of creating gender equity. But she was an applied researcher and that really shaped me uh as a researcher. So an applied researcher you don't doing research for the sake of research you're actually really connected to social problems and the per reason for doing research is to solve a social problem. So you're bringing all of your knowledge about science into something that's just intended to create a practical solution. And that training she she subsequently was the person who um got me into got me the PhD scholarship as well although she was my not my primary supervisor for my PhD she stayed on my PhD panel and kind of really took me all the way through to um that newly minted doctorate degree. So she was so influential in my life and also the way that she led you know she created teams in universities it can be quite uh a solitary experience you know the the traditional way of working is quite kind of isolated. But she brought all of her students together the researchers that she collaborated with and she would bring us together quite routinely socially but also to share our research to present to each other to have uh this community of critical friends who would help us to make our research better before we took it out into the external world of um academic double blind peer review which can be very brutal. And so I learned a lot from her also about leadership and the sort of person that the sort of leadership that I aspired to that was really about bringing people together, seeing the strengths in people and um identifying how you could bring people with different strengths together and that to that really then the collective became so much so much more than any of us would have been as individuals.

SPEAKER_05 38:26

Alright Leon Lee you you said before that you you first w when you left university you were working in in a crisis centre. What was your expectations of what you thought you can contribute to people coming to seek counselling in that environment so I was really doing crisis support.

SPEAKER_06 38:45

So and I I didn't do it for very long before I went back to doing the PhD. It was really I guess a stepping stone for me I was trying to save some money so I could go back and do my clinical masters which was still my plan at the time and um it was a way of me kind of working out whether counselling was um a viable career for me. But I've always been level headed in a crisis I've always had strong emotional empathy and so have getting that training to be able to be that person who would come in to the hospital be the person who would do some of that I guess more psychological first aid for the victim, their extended their family members, their supporters um when they had often had a very recent sexual assault to be able to talk them through the options so they actually were were able to make choices. In that kind of crisis you have all these professionals who are involved who are doing their jobs you know police have a job to try and collect the evidence to collect it as quickly as possible to get their statements because that's kind of it gives you a stronger case. Your forensic uh medical um examiners they've got a role to play as well it's part of that collecting evidence but what can happen for the victim survivor in that context is just a further disempowerment that can kind of feel rolled over and get kind of sucked into the journey without consciously making decisions. So being a counsellor advocate in that context you're there to really slow things down a little bit to be checking in to give give ensure the victim survivor knows their rights that it's their journey that they get to make the choice and to be there for some of that immediate uh psychological first aid because people are often still in shock or high level of distress and just trying to make sense of what's just happened to them. So yeah that that was that was privilege. But I'd had this research assistant job at the same time and what I was realizing was I actually loved research you know I really found the counselling role rewarding but I realized that through research you could shape service systems. I was working for on I was doing lifeline crisis calls as well and so much of that was just struggling with the fact that there was so much unmet need that there weren't the services there that the services that weren't there weren't quite right for what people needed help with. And so I was seeing I guess those the cracks in the system that we had really by being at that front line of crisis response. That you shape things.

SPEAKER_05 41:52

Sorry now I'm gonna come back into that one. Now Lee did did the those experiences working in the Rap Cristre and in Lifeline did that change your perspective of humanity or of life in general?

SPEAKER_06 42:06

You know I think that what those experiences showed me was actually about human strength and resilience and compassion particularly the the work with lifeline. Uh because people were really struggling and sometimes that meant that they might tell you about things that were pretty terrible things that they might have done. But they're in pain themselves and to just see that people aren't black and white it's rare that you face you know true evil. People can do truly horrific things but those same people can also be hurt themselves. Same people can do good things at times. People are really really complex and I think this has really been forged through more and more through my career the more that I learn about how to respond to trauma and how to help people recover from trauma. A response that where we lead with care and compassion is actually more likely to get us to a point where people are less harmful to those in their community. And that's not about people not taking accountability for their actions but if we truly want to change the world for the better then we have to engage with victims and survivors and support them in their recovery. Absolutely we also have to engage with people who are harming people who are using violence and work out how they got where they are and what we can do to stop that continuing. We can't when you look at our our prevalence of domestic violence in this country we can't put everybody in prison. So we have to look at what are the alternatives, how do We actually help people to change.

SPEAKER_05 44:02

Now Lee, where did your life journey and particularly with your career take you from that sort of role and a lifeline? Was there a a a long journey between where you are now and where you were then?

SPEAKER_06 44:15

No, there's a actually my journey from from there is this series of kind of sliding door moments where I just feel like I tend to be in the right place at the right time. So as I said, my um my old honest supervisor and that professor who'd seen a light in me in my undergraduate degree, she kind of said there's this PhD scholarship coming up. It's about uh child abuse and neglect and child protection. You know, I think you should apply for it. And I just found my fit. I found my fit in this field, in this sector. And it brought everything together for me. I was learning all about kind of the academic knowledge about child abuse and neglect, about the systems, about what was working, what wasn't working, how we best respond. And I was able to bring into that my own linked experience and the practicalities that that brought for me. So I could kind of be immersed in reading case files about the experiences of children and families. And for me, it wasn't an other. I could imagine that life, I could imagine being there, and I could I guess that I think it brought me an empathy to that context. And that's just so much need. You know, when I came into school, I was the first person that I have come across in Australia who did a PhD that was specifically focused on the child protection system. In PhDs, uh looking at child abuse and neglect, but not actually at the main system that we have for responding. I'm really pleased to say that's different now. We have so many more researchers. But the science for the field of child abuse and neglect, and particularly for our child protection systems, is quite new. You know, our modern child protection systems really had their foundation in the 1960s. And so coming into this area, there was just there were more knowledge gaps than there were um areas where you could translate research into into policy and practice and make things better. And it just was the fit for me. I felt like this was the area that I could make a difference and that it was good for research and I loved it. And I could see this clear um line between understanding better and creating better solutions. Like um that was it for me. And I've I've never turned away from this sector, and I can't imagine doing anything else. This is my life's work, and it it draws together all of those early childhood experiences. It makes me a better researcher because I also understand the context that I'm researching.

SPEAKER_05 47:14

Now, Lee, looking at your CV, you've been involved in some royal commissions and also currently in the Tasmanian government's response to child sexual abuse in institutional settings. What was the experience like in those environments?

SPEAKER_06 47:31

Yeah, it is um a very strange thing with royal commissions, but a an amazing privilege. When I finished my PhD, I um again it was one of those sliding door moments. There happened to be a job going in what was called the National Child Protection Clearing House, and I got a job there. And suddenly, very quickly, was on this national stage, and it it gave me, I guess, an exposure across the nation to what was happening in our responses to abuse and neglect. And so I also forgot to give evidence to inquiries. I gave in evidence to multiple inquiries, but one of them was the um the Wood inquiry into child protection in New South Wales. And the senior counsel there clearly remembered me because when the National Royal Commission into sexual abuse uh started, she called and said, you know, as lawyers, we've decided that one of our pillars for this National Royal Commission needs to be research, but uh we don't actually know anything about research and it's keeping us up at night, and we think you're the person to come in and and uh and lead our research agenda. And that was a life-changing experience. And Peter McClellan is the chair of the Royal Commission, all the Royal Commissions, they led with such integrity. But they also were really committed to excellence. So when I was asked to set up a research agenda, I kind of came up with a a big agenda and said, Well, here's the things that I think you know must do, here's the things you should do, and here's the things we would do if we had more time. They just gave me my head and said, run with it. So in in four years, we undertook more than a hundred research projects. We worked with researchers from more than 50 different universities around the globe. We created this new evidence base and we really charted a different way of undertaking royal commissions in terms of the way that that research had such a strong role uh and was so connected to the the policy process and coming up with solutions. So it was um such a huge learning experience to be able to be exposed to all of that research in such a short period of time. That's an intensive learning experience. But to be able to, I guess, bring my applied research and my policy focus to it. We set up in the first year of the Royal Commission what we thought were going to be key areas for policy recommendations, and we started the solution building at the same time that we were doing all the hearings, and that's quite different for Royal Commissions. Royal Commissions do it always, I think, a really good job of the problem identification, but they can run at a time when it comes to the recommendations. I feel like the National Royal Commission was really different in terms of having that much longer lead time to come up with good solutions that all fit together into this kind of theoretical framework that I was able to um create for the commission. And um it's such a rewarding experience today. You know, I co-chair now the National Strategy Advisory Group for the National Strategy for Preventing and Responding to Child Sexual Abuse and to be able to follow through and say, here were the recommendations for the Royal Commission. How are that we putting them into practice and implementation to really change the way that we prevent and respond to child sexual abuse? I mean, that's a an amazing experience to to have, and then to to be able to go on and be asked to be a commissioner in Tasmania and kind of go back to my roots was also a an honour and a privilege as well as kind of a big responsibility.

SPEAKER_05 51:29

Now, Lee, there are times when we see Royal Commissions, and you were talking there about the implementation of the recommendations. How successful have you been able to drive, and in certain perhaps what areas, some of the implementation of the worthwhile recommendations?

SPEAKER_06 51:46

Well, I've been quite involved, I think, in things like the uh developing up at the National Royal Commission the Child Saved Principles, which is the principles we have for organizations. There's ten principles. That's something that now we see internationally. Those principles in a lot of states and territories it's actually become law. They're they are still the best evidence base for how you um make an institution safer for children. When I look at the awful events last year in in childcare centres and you do the analysis of what went wrong there, they didn't implement those 10 child safe principles. And I'm really pleased now that the um the quality standards for childcare are actually embedding those child safe principles in that. Just this week, I'm really proud of the fact that the centre, the transitive child protection that I lead, we've just finished the development of two or four courses that are now mandatory for everybody working in the early childhood setting to uh be able to understand and respond to child abuse and to understand their obligations around those child safe principles where that was not a requirement. It's just been that legislation's just been enacted. Those are really practical things. So to see that pathway from trying to work out what are the things in that go wrong in organisations, what are the things that you need to be in place to get that distilled down to the ten principles and then right through to, you know, those practical things like developing up the training packages that will be that are now available nationwide to give people the evidence-based knowledge and skills to do something different. That's a that's an amazing journey. That kind of gives me a kick every day that I go into work that I can kind of follow these things through, whether it's through the Royal Commission, through my role leading Australia's um national research centre for preventing and responding to child abuse. But to follow it through to from from problem to solution to implementation, it is really rewarding work.

SPEAKER_05 54:08

And on that note, Lee, I can see why you were awarded the Australian South Australian of the Year Award in 2025. And on that positive note, would you like to introduce your last track, Who is the Performer, and why did you select it?

SPEAKER_06 54:24

My last song is Ariane's Bad Day. I realise now my songs all have quite a bit of a negative bent to them, but ultimately makes me feel so much better. So this song it really actually reminds me and makes me think about you might have had a bad day, but you can actually get over it, push through it, and um and that we actually can all push through those hard times and make a difference. So this is another one that really lifts me up when I need that boost uh to keep on going and maintain the persistence.

SPEAKER_05 55:00

And Lee, thank you for being a guest on the Confab with Michael G.

SPEAKER_06 55:04

Thanks very much for having me.

SPEAKER_00 55:06

A public service announcement followed me home the other day. I hate it, never mind. Go away, get away, and that's the same.