November 8, 2016

Refugee advocate named 2017 NSW Australian of the Year

Premier awards child soldier turned criminal lawyer Deng Thiak Adut top honour

Criminal lawyer and University of Wollongong alumnus Deng Thiak Adut was named the 2017 NSW Australian of the Year in Sydney last night (Monday 7 November) for his work advocating on behalf of Australia’s Sudanese refugee community.

Mr Adut, who graduated from UOW with a Master of Laws (Criminal Prosecution) in 2014, received the honour from NSW Premier Mike Baird during the ceremony at the Museum of Contemporary Art.

Mr Baird praised Mr Adut, who was unable to read when he arrived in Australia as a teenager from war-torn Sudan, during the event, saying the 33-year-old’s compassion and perseverance “represents the very best of what makes our country great”.

“[Mr Adut] has channelled his success into helping hundreds of people in the state’s Sudanese community navigate their way through the Australian legal system,” Mr Baird said.

As a child in South Sudan, Mr Adut was taken from his family’s farm and conscripted into the army, where he was forced to take up arms in the African nation’s civil war.

He was smuggled out of Sudan at the age of 12 by the United Nations, and arrived in Australia in 1998, where he was settled in western Sydney.

“I came to Australia as an illiterate, penniless teenager, traumatised physically and emotionally by war,” Mr Adut said in a powerful Australia Day speech delivered earlier this year.

“In the Sudan my colour meant that my prospects could go no further than a dream of being allowed to finish a primary education. To be a lawyer was unthinkable. Australia opened the doors of its schools and universities.”

Now a community leader in Blacktown, where he founded a law group to fight for the rights of the city’s Sudanese community, Mr Adut was “shocked” to be named NSW Australian of the Year, which places him in the running for the national honour to be announced on Australia Day.

He told the audience at last night’s event that Australia was not his adopted country but his home.

“I am an Australian for the rest of my life,” he said.

Mr Adut’s book, Songs Of A War Boy, which details his journey from child soldier to criminal lawyer, was published in October.
 
Photo: Deng Thiak Adut. Credit: Mark Newsham