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On 7 May 2026 The Australian National University's Vice-President (First Nations) Professor Peter Yu was in Meeanjin (Brisbane) at the Stronger Smarter Institute's Stronger Smarter Together Summit. 

The theme was 'Reimagining Australia's Sovereignty'. On the first day of the summit, Professor Yu spoke about supporting sovereignty by getting First Nations businesses better access to financial capital. 

"There are historical and other barriers that exist in terms of accessing finance from normal financial institutions, banks," he said. "A level of discrimination and prejudice exists." Professor Yu said Australian Government specialist investment vehicles like the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA), Housing Australia and the Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility (NAIF) could be mandated to support more Indigenous-owned enterprises. 

The following morning Professor Yu delivered the summit's keynote speech. He addressed the conference theme of 'Reimagining Sovereignty' with a grounded view of what it can mean in practice. 

"The seminal 1992 case of Mabo 2 did not, beyond rejecting the repugnant fiction of the Terra Nullius lie that we were vacant country, address the question of our legal sovereignty. The High Court feared that any recognition of Indigenous sovereignty would fracture the legal skeleton of the Australian state," Professor Yu said. "However, for us today, we must begin to focus less on prescriptive legal definitions of ‘sovereignty’ and instead ask on what premise do we continue to assert and identify ourselves as Indigenous peoples? We know we are distinct to the rest of the broader society of Australia and the world, and the particular and peculiar characteristics that define us as such, and how do we do this? These are important questions for Indigenous peoples the world over."