de Lissa Oration 2025

The de Lissa Oration is an annual event that takes place during Children's Week, and is named in honour of Lillian de Lissa, who was a world-renowned early childhood educator and reformer whose significant work in South Australia and overseas has left a lasting legacy.

Making Children’s Rights Known: Insights from Research and Practice

The 2025 Children's Week theme is 'Everyone should know about Children's Rights'. In keeping with this theme, Louise will draw from her decades of research, writing, and advocacy for children’s rights to discuss what we need to do to ensure everyone knows the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.

The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989) is the most widely ratified human rights treaty in human history, yet how well do Australian children and adults know these specified rights for people under the age of 18?  To ensure the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child is widely known to both adults and children (as stated in Article 42) this presentation will explore the pertinent policies, initiatives and potentialities of:

• Australian federal and state government departments

• Australian national curricula

• Teacher education

• National Children’s Commissioner and National Commissioner for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children and Young People

• Australian Human Rights Commission

• Public media campaigns

To respect children as people with rights we all, whether we are public figures, policymakers, academics, educators, or content creators, need to take responsibility for knowing, teaching, and enacting each specified right within the UNCRC with children and young people through peace, dignity, tolerance, freedom, equality and solidarity.

Dr Louise Phillips is the Director of Lou.P.Tales Coaching & Consulting, Vice-President of the Australian Council of Human Rights Education and honorary Associate Professor in the School of Education, The University of Queensland. She is internationally known for her research and publications on children’s rights and citizenship. Her work is informed by more than 30 years of collective experience, as an early childhood teacher, storyteller, consultant, researcher and tertiary education.