The QATSICPP Board is proud to announce the appointment of Lane Brookes as our first Independent Director of QATSICPP. We look forward to ensuring that the voices and aspirations of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and young people are front and centre in the work of our organisation.
Lane is a 23-year-old Mandandanji man hailing from the South West QLD town of Roma, he is a born and bred local and passionate about bringing change to his community, state and country. Since completion of his schooling in 2012, he has had a variety of roles within the community. His first being actively involved in youth and community programs where he worked at the local state school as an Indigenous Teacher Aide for 2 years after leaving school, during that time he successfully completed his Diploma in Education through the Rural Area Teaching Education Program which is for Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander people in QLD. There he acquired more roles to benefit his community while learning how to teach primary school children in Far North QLD, Cape York Peninsula and the South West Region. In his spare time of the role he would mentor students with the homework, sport and extra curricular activities as well as introducing and maintaining cultural elements in their lives.
Also around this time Lane’s love for Rugby League took a different approach to the usual weekend games where at age 17 he introduced a concept to the Roma and District Rugby League calendar, it’s first ‘Charity All Stars’ based concept where players of Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander players were selected for the Indigenous Team and vice versa for the Non-Indigenous Team. He coordinated the main game while also overseeing the entire structure and organising of the whole event with his team of volunteers, where a local person or family were selected as the recipient of the event. There he would approach local business, donate his own time and money towards the event and charity to ensure that the event was a success while also captaining the Maranoa Murris Team (Indigenous Team). During it’s entirety from 2013 – 2017 it has raised upwards of $50,000 for locals doing it tough in the Roma & District Community, those include a local father with Motor Neurone Disease needing house refurbishment and quality of life with his wife and children. A young child from Roma with Vocal Cord Paralysis, Cerebral Palsy and Microcephaly, a baby from Surat with a rare disease needing specialist treatment in Melbourne, a 50 year old Aboriginal man from Mitchell who suffered a neck injury at the age of 18 and became a Quadriplegic and then lastly a 25 year old Roma man suffering from Cerebral Palsy (Leigh’s Disease) and a main component of that being that one of the main carers of that recipient was that his father had passed away before Christmas and this game assisted the family and caring team. From this work Lane was rewarded in 2013 with the Roma NAIDOC Ethel Munn Services to the Community award, the following year 2014 being the first Aboriginal and Youngest Person to win Roma’s Australia Day Citizen of the Year which then followed on through to Roma NAIDOC where he collected another community service award and Person of the Year at the inaugural Roma NAIDOC Ball.
After finishing employment at the local state school, Lane decided to take up Business in 2015 and as a first time small business owner he turned to his love of his culture where he owned and managed his own business called ‘Deadly Way’ where he would sell his own art as well as buying and selling the youth’s artwork, running art workshops, traditional dance performances, traditional dance workshops, cultural tours, school visits and keynote speaking. There he would learn the business world and travel all through the South West and Darling Downs while networking all through the state in Tourism sector. Doing this fulltime from 2015 and into late 2016, in that timeframe he was rewarded again in 2015 as South West QLD’s Rising Star where he featured on the front cover of the phone book with two of his mentees, and then in 2016 he travelled with Deputy Mayor of Maranoa Council to Perth for the Australian Tidy Towns Awards where he won Australian Young Legend because of his business and Indigenous Tourism in the region.
There he would be accepted into the Queensland Indigenous Youth Leadership Program in Brisbane and join the Eric Deeral Indigenous Youth Parliament where he was elected as Indigenous Youth Premier and leading his party throughout the program. This sparked his interest in Politics and decision making and he decided that he would like to pursue a career in that field, soaking up as much information as he could, and he was then appointed to the Primary Health Network Consumer Council to represent the South West as representative for Youth and Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Health.
This then followed onto his future employment and further development of his political learning, in late 2016 commencing into a role with QLD Health and then locked down the position of Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Liaison Officer at Roma Hospital with his brother. He would then go on to be accepted into the National Indigenous Youth Parliament program of 2017, he was one of the six QLD representatives and was elected as Indigenous Youth Opposition Leader. Which then earnt him the opportunity of becoming a Democracy Champion at the Museum of Australian Democracy in Canberra where he joins Indigenous Leaders like two other fellow Indigenous Youth Parliamentarians, Current House of Representative’s Member Linda Burney, Warren Mundine and Dr Chris Sarra. He followed on by being the Lead Mentor of the Queensland Indigenous Youth Leadership Program. Later in the year he would increase his personal development in the Health sector by being trained in the Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Mental Health program ‘Deadly Thinking’ where he has delivered and trained community members in the whole of the South West district, Lockhart River, Dubbo and Western NSW, Geraldton and mid WA areas and in the North West Kimberly region. In 2018 he would take a step up in roles from the Queensland Indigenous Youth Leadership Program and receive the opportunity of being the Co-Facilitator of the Program while also assisting in the program content to deliver to the 2018 cohort.
So now Lane currently juggles many jobs and community responsibilities and has recently commenced a Graduate Certificate in Policy Analysis at Griffith University as well as being appointed to the Queensland Youth Engagement Panel by Di Farmer (Miniser for Child Safety, Youth & Woman and Minister for the Prevention of Domestic and Family Violence) where he’ll sit for a two year term alongside ten other Youth members from across Queensland. He plans on building his profile and being involved in the government and political sector can help when he runs for the Senate, where his dreams of becoming an Honourable Member of Parliament in the Federal and State Houses while also becoming the first Aboriginal Mayor of Maranoa Council in his home of Roma in the future sometime. He takes every opportunity and wants to make sure that the next generation can achieve their dreams and that all Australians can close the gap in all targets to ensure a better future for Australia.
Achievements & Awards
- 2013 – 2017 Raised over $50,000 for Local families in the Roma and District Community
- 2007, 2013 Roma NAIDOC Ethel Munn Services to the Community
- 2014 Australia Day Roma Citizen of the Year
- 2014 Roma NAIDOC Person of the Year
- 2015 South West QLD’s Rising Star
- 2016 Australia Tidy Towns Australian Young Legend
- 2016 Queensland Indigenous Youth Leadership Program – Indigenous Youth Premier
- 2017 National Indigenous Youth Parliament – Indigenous Opposition Leader
- 2017 Queensland Indigenous Youth Leadership Program – Lead Mentor
- 2017 Democracy Champion for Museum of Australian Democracy (MoAD)
- 2018 Baton Bearer for Roma in Queens Baton Relay – Commonwealth Games
- 2018 Queensland Indigenous Youth Leadership Program – Co Facilitator
- 2019 Queensland Youth Engagement Panel – Appointed Member
