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My dream as an eight-year-old
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was that I would sail the oceans
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and drop into all of the islands.
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Hilarious.
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(water sploshing)
(gentle music)
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I'm pleased that I had this kind of childhood
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and I'm pleased that I lived when I've lived
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because I think I've had the best of many things.
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Opportunities and, you know, the beginning of the,
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my career started at the beginning
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of the sort of feminist movement
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when, you know, really things were more supportive of women.
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I've really enjoyed this era that I've been in
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and observed all the changes
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and the dramatic changes in our society,
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which have been very important
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in the kinds of work that I've done.
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I wanted to be the perinatal epidemiologist,
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the maternal and child epidemiologist of Australia.
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So that was my agenda.
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One of the first big studies we did
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because we thought
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it was the most important question to address
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was why there was such variability in neural tube defects,
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spina bifida, anencephaly, encephalocele, horrible defects.
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Epidemiologists love things that go up and down
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because if it's going up, it can come down.
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And what are the factors?
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Well, one of the factors that looked really promising
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was maternal diet.
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So we did this very good case control study.
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Carol Bower was leading it.
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Well, she was doing her PhD.
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I said to her, "This is gonna be your PhD."
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And she then did this for her PhD.
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So that really was fantastic.
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And what Carol did with my team
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was we set up the first,
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the world's first primary prevention programme
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for neural tube defects in Western Australia.
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And we found this incredible association of maternal diet
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in the three months leading up
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to the, you know, first trimester
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of protection if you had a diet that was rich in folic acid,
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which is a B vitamin.
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Well, it was stunning results.
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So people don't even sort of think about it now.
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Everyone takes folate if they want to get pregnant.
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You know, how exciting.
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And, you know, it's very unusual
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to get a primary prevention for a birth defect.
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So exciting.
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And that's why alcohol is important
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and foetal alcohol syndrome is so important.
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That's the big defects that we're working on now.
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And it took us, again, years
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to get a little label on a wine bottle
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with a pregnant lady,
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you know, red pregnant lady with a cross through her
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because it was a red
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and it was gonna be difficult to print the labels.
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Give me a break.
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Most countries now have labelling on bottles
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to encourage women to not drink in the pregnancy.
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Right?
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And the other thing that I look back on
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and I'm still enjoying
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is a very large number of Aboriginal researchers
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that we have grown
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and who are now succeeding all over Australia,
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but, you know, in lots of different places,
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and they are now leaders in research.
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And that stemmed from a question I put
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to the Aboriginal controlled health organisations
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in Western Australia
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in the late 80s, early '90s.
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And I said, "Look, you know, we're not a service provider.
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We're a research institute.
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What do you want to be,
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you know, what do you want us to be for you?"
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And they said, "We want you to be our mother."
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And a mother gives to her child
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all the love and support
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and the knowledge and the funds and everything else
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so that that child can go out
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into a world which is pretty tough and cope.
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And so what we did
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was train all these Aboriginal researchers.
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Well, it's been the most interesting
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and wonderful thing for me
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because I have got completely different perspective
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on what health is in Aboriginal communities
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and what love is and what respect is
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and it's just changed my life.
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So I have this wonderful friendships
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with all these Aboriginal researchers
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and have got the ability, therefore,
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to use all of the research findings
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that we've had in all of the areas of research
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to advocate and lobby
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for things like Aboriginal control of services
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or, you know, the way that Aboriginal people do research
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and how different it is.
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And when they lead it, of course, it works.
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That's been a very rewarding experience for me
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but also one that I think was very important
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for Aboriginal health nationwide.
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(gentle music continues)
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I have to say that early on in my career,
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I didn't get a lot of mentoring,
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which is why I'm now so keen
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on mentoring young people myself.
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And it's much tougher now.
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I had a dream run with grants.
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I was asked to go on committees early on in my career
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'cause they needed a woman.
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And so that was hugely beneficial to me
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because I found out how NHMRC worked
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and I found out how the ARC worked
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and I found out how government worked
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because I was on
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the Prime Minister's Science Council for years.
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And that was incredibly important
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'cause we could lobby, we could advocate, and so on.
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(gentle music continues)
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I actually do group mentoring now
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with groups of young people
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and I think that's very beneficial
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and I would've appreciated more of that.
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Sometimes you felt very lonely as being a working mom,
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as being an institute director,
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you know, as a woman.
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So, yeah, I often felt lonely.
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I had a fantastically supportive husband
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who half the good ideas in the institute were his ideas.
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He was just very supportive.
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(gentle music continues)
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I know.
Explain a bit more.
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Maybe I was Italian in a previous life. (laughs)
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But no, I get so enthusiastic.
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You somehow you need your hands to explain things.
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Not that there's graphs and things,
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but sometimes I do that.
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But yeah, so she did capture that
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and capture that sort of, I guess, enthusiasm for things.
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The other thing is that I always wore
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a reconciliation badge,
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and that was a very obvious one.
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It had Aboriginal designs on it.
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And even at every single minister's meeting
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or the science meetings or anything else,
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I wore that.
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I wore it when I was made Australian of the Year
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so that it was a statement
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and, you know, that was very important for me.
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But she captured that too.
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That is very obvious on the red jacket, I think,
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in the portrait, mm.
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(gentle music)
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From Perth, from little old Perth.
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Just shows you, you can do it.
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And it's a great place to do research
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because of the databases
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and because of the contained population
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and because of Telethon.
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Because of Telethon, everyone knows about our research.
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Everyone knew who I was.
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It was fantastic.