Michael's presentation - Thriving Places, Thriving Kids - explores the criticality of the healthy development, wellbeing and resilience of children and their caregivers and communities in the developing northern Australia agenda.

Michael is the Executive Convenor of the Thriving Queensland Kids Partnership (TQKP), a joint initiative of ARACY and Queensland leaders and organisations.

Michael grounds the presentation in core frames such as:
- The Nest: Australia's child and youth wellbeing outcomes framework
- The Resilience Scale: developed by the Harvard Center on the Developing Child
northern rural/remote side.
- TQKP's capability framework.

The presentation will outline how northern kids are travelling relative to the south, and why their healthy development is so crucial to social and economic development.

The presentation then draws on the work of TQKP, IDAC (Investment Dialogue for Australia’s Children) and ARACY (Australian Research Alliance for Children and Youth), supported by philanthropies, facilitating collaborative systems initiatives at local, state and national levels to illustrate the practical opportunities to advance child, caregiver and community development across Northern Australia.

These initiatives include:
- Thriving Kids in Disasters
- Country Qld Kids Collaborative
- Thriving Places, Thriving Kids Network
- Thriving Kids Brain Builders Initiative
- Growing Deadly Brains initiative (led by TQKP's partner Yiliyapinya),
- Childhood Builders initiative, and the
- Childhood Stewards Initiative.

The presentation will explore the roles and opportunities in key systems such as early learning, health, education, training and others, and how this is crucial to economic and social development.

Finally, the paper proposes a call to action, and how the TQKP model can help with practical ways to align efforts across three levels of government and across sectors in regional and local community place-based governance arrangements in Northern Australia.