Tom Calma

Tom Calma, Chancellor of the University of Canberra, is an Aboriginal Elder from the Kungarakan tribal group and a member of the Iwaidja tribal group whose traditional lands are south west of Darwin and on the Cobourg Peninsula in the Northern Territory of Australia, respectively.   He has been involved in Indigenous affairs at a local, community, state, national and international level and worked in the public sector for over 45 years and is currently on several boards and committees focusing on health, education, justice, reconciliation, and economic development in rural and remote Australia.  He was Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner at the Australian Human Rights Commission from 2004 to 2010 and served as Race Discrimination Commissioner from 2004 until 2009.

Through his 2005 Social Justice Report, Professor Calma called for closing the life expectancy gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people within a generation and advocated embedding a social determinants philosophy into public policy around health, education and employment to address Indigenous inequality gaps.