The Eastern Suburbs Action Group are holding their monthly meeting. Come along and get involved.

This month we have two speakers and appropriately, given the dire results in last week’s Productivity Commission report on the state of Indigenous communities, they are:

Professor Larissa Behrendt is Professor of Law and Director of Research at the Jumbunna Indigenous House of Learning at the University of Technology, Sydney. She is admitted to the NSW and ACT Supreme Courts and is a Judicial Member and Alternate Chair of the Serious Offenders Review Council and a Land Commissioner of the Land and Environment Court. She has worked in Canada and at the United Nations with First Nations organisations and is currently undertaking research on Indigenous governance and policy issues. She is a fellow of the Australian Social Sciences Academy, a Foundation Fellow of the Australian Academy of Law, and a member of the ARC College of Experts. She has had books articles published on property law, indigenous rights, dispute resolution and Aboriginal women's issues. She is a regular columnist in the National Indigenous Times. Her books include, 'Achieving Social Justice: Indigenous Rights and Australia's Future' and the award winning novel 'Home'. She is a board member of the Museum of Contemporary Art and a Director of the Bangarra Dance Theatre. She is the Chair of National Indigenous Television Ltd.

Geoff Scott has worked in Indigenous Affairs since the early 1980s. He has worked in various positions in program delivery and policy in both federal and state governments. He has held positions including Manager of ATSIC’s New South Wales State Office,servicing one of the largest Aboriginal populations of any Australian State; Director-General of the New South Wales Department of Aboriginal Affairs; Deputy Chief Executive Officer of ATSIC and Acting Chief Executive Officer of ATSIC. He is currently the CEO of the NSW Aboriginal Land Council and Chair of the Australian Indigenous Leadership Committee. He is also on the Steering Committee for a new national representative body.

Please come along and bring any of your friends and family with an interest in Indigenous matters.

Reading

• a recent report in The Australian on prisons in the NT
• a report that Defence for Children International has just released which focuses on ill-treatment and abuse of Palestinian children.

There's no agenda as such, apart from our guest speakers and any updates, if available, on our various campaigns. The minutes for June’s meeting are simply that we heard the report prepared by Dominique Estival about the recent Branch AGM.

You can find us at Durty Nelly’s, 9–11 Glenmore Road, Paddington (just off Oxford Street), upstairs in the restaurant space.

Look forward to seeing you! Sybil

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