Adam Goodes Takes Inaugural First Nations Ambassador Role at Adelaide University
adam goodes has taken on the inaugural role as First Nations Ambassador at Adelaide University, giving the newly merged institution a high-profile figure to work across Indigenous priorities. The appointment links directly to a proposed 10-year strategy aimed at First Nations students, staff and researchers.
Goodes and Nicola Phillips
The role will see Goodes liaise with Indigenous leaders across different university portfolios and with Vice Chancellor Nicola Phillips. Adelaide University employs about 12,000 staff, but only about 1.2 per cent are First Nations people, while 752 First Nations students were enrolled as of April 1.
Goodes said he wants the university to produce more PhD students and more Indigenous researchers. He said: “It’s always somebody else asking the questions and it would be really great for us at our university, if we can create more PhD students and create more Indigenous researchers”.
Adelaide University targets
He also set out the broader aim in sharper terms: “Adelaide University being the university of choice for First Nations Australians, that would be a real tick of approval for us as a university but for that to happen, we know that we have to create changes within universities, not only as institutions, but as it looks and feels on the ground for our people as well”. Goodes said the university would aim to lift First Nations participation rates and retention rates, but specific targets have not been set.
Goodes said the ambition carries weight because education has been central to his life. “Legacy to me is not something that I think about and breathe every day of my life, but education has been a key part of my life, and it’s helped and supported me,” he said. “I wouldn’t be in this position right now and accepting this role if education wasn’t something that I was passionate about.”
Goodes, 2014 and 2023
The appointment also adds another chapter to a public life that has already stretched far beyond football. Goodes was born in Wallaroo and is an Adnyamathanha/Narungga man. He won the Australian of the Year award in 2014, had a fifteen-year career with the Sydney Swans and was immortalised in a bronze sculpture in 2023 depicting his war dance at the player’s entrance of the club’s headquarters.
That background sits against a university setting where Indigenous student numbers are about seven times higher than Indigenous staff numbers, and against a recent state election campaign in which SA One Nation leader Cory Bernardi criticised Aboriginal flag signage at the university that showed a Kaurna greeting, “Niina Marni”. Goodes’ new role now puts him inside the structure that will shape the 10-year strategy, not outside it.
