Each of the eight nominees for Australian of the Year 2023 is making Australia, and the world, a better place for everyone and they are encouraging us all to get involved.
Their passions and work vary greatly from performing on stage, improving healthcare, and standing up for people's rights.
One is teaching children to love their own bodies, while another is asking us to think about what a good death looks like.
Their work brings us together and shows us what is possible.
Here are some snippets of their stories.
Turning food waste into fertiliser with insects
Olympia Yarger is on a mission to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from food waste by feeding it to maggots.
The insect farming pioneer says she always wanted to be a farmer, but it was when she was looking at setting up a small sheep farm that she realised things needed to change to make farming more affordable and sustainable.
"My passion for climate and my passion for farming have always been sort of symbolic to each other," she says.
"The idea that you could change farming systems in a way that created sustainability and more resilient farms has always been something attractive to me."
Ms Yarger founded Goterra and a robot system that feeds food waste to maggots, turning the waste into a protein feed and fertiliser in just 12 days.
The system drastically reduces the greenhouses gasses that would otherwise be released into the atmosphere as the food rots.
Calls for active multiculturalism, anti-racism
Craig Foster, AM, is well known as a former Socceroo and sports commentator, but it's his human rights and activism that saw him appointed as a Member of the Order of Australia in 2021.
There were calls for Mr Foster to be named Australian of the Year in 2019 for his work to secure the release of refugee footballer Hakeem al-Araibi, who was detained while on holiday in Thailand and threatened with extradition to Bahrain.
Mr Foster is also involved with the Afghan Women's National Football Team and campaigning to assist women and girls trying to escape the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. You have probably seen him as one of the ambassadors for the Racism. It Stops With Me campaign.
He says it's vital we all work together to look after each other, no matter our backgrounds or perceived differences.
"Multiculturalism is about each of us helping each other. And so to do that, we have to step across the boundaries," he says.
"Doesn't matter what tools we have. Doesn't matter what platform we have. Just do something, say something. And in doing so we all help to make Australia [a] better place."
Empowerment through land and sea rights
Samuel Bush-Blanasi has been working for decades for the rights of Indigenous Australians.
As chair of the Northern Land Council, the proud Mayili man has been able to help a number of clans secure their land rights and earlier this year he was involved in the development of the Aboriginal Sea Company (ASC).
The first of its kind, the ASC allows traditional owners to benefit from fishing-related activities and also increases the protection of the environment along the Arnhem Land coastline.
While Mr Bush-Blanasi is proud of his contribution to the Uluru Statement from the Heart, it's his work with education programs that he is most proud of.
"There's one special thing in my heart, that's the Learning on Country program, where kids go to school and have an education and then venture out to be working closely with elders," he says.
Reshaping body image messaging
Taryn Brumfitt wants us all to feel better about the bodies we're in.
The body image activist, director, writer, and speaker has been campaigning for a shift in body image culture and she's taking that message to school children with a program called Embrace Kids.
"Seventy per cent of Australian school children consider body image to be their number one concern," she says.
"We weren't born into the world hating our bodies; it's something the world has taught us.
"Let's turn around that 70 per cent of Australian school children who don't like their bodies into a number that doesn't even exist. Let's get this right for our kids."
Spotlight on struggles migrants face
John Kamara jokes that when he arrived in Launceston as a 19-year-old refugee from Sierra Leone, he ran back into the plane because it was so cold.
Mr Kamara was alone, scared, and confused when he arrived in Tasmania in 2004 and while there were plenty of organisations to help newly arrived migrants and refugees, all support disappeared after a year or two.
He co-founded the Culturally Diverse Alliance of Tasmania and the African Communities Council of Tasmania to help migrants better connect with services and the wider community.
Mr Kamara says issues such as racism, labour exploitation, and a lack of recognition of qualifications from other countries need to be addressed to help Australia's migrant communities.
“I am really appealing to the government and all peoples of power — let's start the conversation," he says.
"There are people who are hurting.
"I want to see migrants and people of colour in the parliament where they can have bigger opportunities to negotiate laws and policies that impact their daily life because it's very important."
Sharing a lullaby with the world
William Barton was listening to music before he was born, says his mum Aunty Delmae Barton.
The multi-instrumentalist, composer, vocalist, and producer grew up on Kalkadungu country in Queensland, learning the yidaki (didgeridoo) from his uncle, Arthur Peterson.
Mr Barton dropped out of school at the age of 12 because he says he knew music was going to be his life and by the age of 17 he had already played with the Queensland Symphony Orchestra.
Whether he's playing at Carnegie Hall, the Sydney Opera House, or out in the bush, as long as he is sharing music, stories, and connection with others, Mr Barton is happy.
"The importance of song, culture and our dance, the oral tradition of passing on language and stories … it's about connection, it's about homage and respect to our elders, and it's about us reconnecting to the important things in life through song, through sharing of stories," he says.
"And that's the lullaby that I want to share with the rest of Australia and the world."
Myth busting healthcare
Angraj Khillan realised there was a problem when he was seeing patients in Melbourne's western suburbs not follow his advice or not show up for treatment after certain diagnoses, which he says is often down to misunderstanding and cultural taboos.
"My own Indian background helped me to understand the cultural sensitivity of how the culture and tradition attach with each diagnosis, and how we perceive and follow the advice given by the medical professional," he says.
Dr Khillan co-founded the Health Awareness Society of Australia in 2018, to deliver health education in English, Hindi, Punjabi, Urdu, and Arabic to help destigmatise and dispel taboos around physical and mental health.
By providing information sessions in various languages in both face-to-face and virtual sessions, the society had a positive impact in multicultural communities during the COVID-19 pandemic with increasing uptake of vaccines as well as spreading general health advice.
"Now we are working on post-pandemic effects on mental health issues in multicultural communities," Dr Khillan says.
Helping us all have a better death
Professor Samar Aoun wants all Australians to die well.
The researcher and advocate for end-of-life care, bereavement, and grief support says it's important we talk about death and dying in the community as it's something that affects us all.
"We can do better in palliative care," she says.
"We need to have it accessible to everyone, everywhere."
Professor Aoun, who is the director of the Motor Neurone Disease (MND) Australia Board and president of the MND Association of WA, says her award as WA's Australian of the Year is really for them.
"People who are dying only spend 5 per cent of their time with a doctor, with a nurse, with a health professional," she says.
"[End-of-life care] is everyone's responsibility … and it's everyone's business to know what to do, how to help each other.
"Think about the death that you'd like to have. You only die once and make it good."
