Kate Emery: It might be the first time you have heard of Tremane Baxter-Edwards, but it won't be the last

West Australian

26-05-2025

One of the great privileges of being a journalist, beyond commanding universal adoration and preposterously high wages, is the chance to meet people with power, influence and fame.
But for my job, the likelihood I would ever have enjoyed a sit-down chat with WA Premier Roger Cook, singer Delta Goodrem or — a career highlight, sorry Rog — legendary chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov is slim to none.
Less often, journalists have the chance to meet someone who is not a household name but who seems so clearly destined for big things that the temptation to snap a selfie — if only to one day impress the grandkids — almost overwhelms professional decorum.
First Nations youth leader Tremane Baxter-Edwards is just such a person.
Before interviewing the Ngarinyin-Walmajarri man for today's Reconciliation Week edition, all I knew about Mr Baxter-Edwards was that he had once talked, at 17, about his ambition to be the first Indigenous prime minister.
Like many cynical adults who read that story, I suspect, I smiled indulgently and filed it alongside my daughter's vow to be a singer when she grows up 'but more famous than Taylor Swift'.
Then I interviewed Mr Baxter-Edwards, now 18, and took it all back.
Elders like Patrick Dodson are rightly held in huge regard for the work they have achieved towards reconciliation.
But if the reconciliation movement is to have a future — and it does — it needs a new generation of leaders like Mr Baxter-Edwards to take the baton from the trailblazers who have come before them.
Mr Baxter-Edwards may have grown up in a different Australia to the Indigenous elders who came before him but he is not so far removed from this country's many historic injustices: his grandmother worked all her life not for wages but for rations.
He sees in the younger generation a more progressive Australia, with strong spirits and a desire for Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians to flourish alongside each other.
And his views on the so-called culture wars and the way in which Indigenous people have been politically weaponised, should be read closely by any political party that wants to capture the next generation of increasingly-powerful young voters.
'Australia is a country for everybody and the ugliness that occurred during the last window of the Federal election should never in a million years be tolerated,' Mr Baxter-Edwards said of the debate around Welcome to Country after a prominent neo-nazi heckled the traditional ceremony on Anzac Day. 'There's a fine line between having a disagreement on something and having no respect.
'Young people are not into culture wars. Young people are not into leaders who won't stand in front of all three flags — the Australian flag, the WA flag and the Aboriginal flag. I think young people don't want disingenuous leaders who say they're here to unite the country and represent all but who put down Aboriginal people.'
Raised in Wyndham and educated at Aquinas College, Mr Baxter-Edwards is big on the value of education and the need to give anyone who wants it the opportunity for work.
He sees the value in — and difficulty of — 'walking in two worlds': the high-wire act of an Indigenous person who exists in both the Western world and on country.
He also thinks there is scope for the State Government to be doing more, in parallel to the work being done at a national level.
'For example, the Heritage Act that the State introduced in Parliament, got passed and then within two weeks shelved the legislation — that's not working with all parties,' he said.
'They worked with the Aboriginal people but you need to work with everyone. What everyone tends to forget is reconciliation is not just about us. We need the non-Indigenous folks to come with us, we need the farmers and the pastoralists and the mining people to come with us.
'It's not a journey we should be walking alone.'
One of the great pitfalls of being a journalist is the requirement of the job to reduce complex people to a simple one-line description.
Mr Baxter-Edwards is a proud Ngarinyin-Walmajarri man but he is other things too.
He is a childhood cancer survivor.
A big brother.
A scholarship student.
A federal adviser to the First Nations Reference Group and the Australian Government First Nations Education Youth Advisory Group.
He is a TAFE student, studying tourism.
He is a ranger at the El Questro Wilderness Park.
He is a reminder to older generations not to underestimate the young.
And if he winds up being Australia's first Indigenous prime minister, well, then I'll really regret not getting that selfie.