Thank you Grace Tame. Abuse is well and truly out of the shadows.

For her - as she awkwardly bookends the role standing next to the Prime Minister - the platform is changing, but the "noise" has just begun.

"It's really important to be persistent and consistent. And, you know, you don't have to be making headlines to be making change and, you know, being successful," the 27-year-old child sex abuse survivor and advocate told The Canberra Times.

But what a year she has had.

If there has been anything - other than a one in a hundred year pandemic - to challenge a nation's consciousness and start a reckoning, it has been Ms Tame's naming as 2021 Australian of the Year.

Abuse is well and truly out of the shadows.

Usually a non-controversial platform (think back to the previous winners such as the Thai cave rescuers Dr Richard Harris and Dr Craig Challen), Ms Tame has rattled the establishment and inspired other survivors such as Brittany Higgins and Rachelle Miller.

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Call it a snowball effect or a nationwide surge, the very choice of an abuse survivor has been inspirational or triggering depending on where you come from.

But she stepped up, threw out the guidebook, and became so much more than the role.

Using clear articulation, profound trauma and sometimes damn funny humour, her fierce, take no prisoners approach has won over hard hearts. She has reached people who have never before acknowledged their own abuse. No one has been spared, particularly "Scott" as she calls the Prime Minister.

Survivors have been her priority, not Mr Morrison.

"That's what's been really hard, is that I haven't been not nice. And I haven't been disrespectful. No more than other people have been towards me. And the cause, more importantly," she said.

"There's no one size fits all means of achieving change. And what makes people so special is their unique voice.

"Because I think if you speak from the heart that's the most important thing."

It has cost her, but she insists she has "regained it all and more".

Ms Tame has retold her story even as she has been retraumatised with each telling.

That's the 365 days of wound picking, but she still wants to use what it was like for her when she was 15 so no one else should go through it.

With her new fiance and long time partner Max Heerey, she has established the Grace Team Foundation with the overarching goal of a future free from sexual abuse. Shorter term, there's legislative reform around consent and she wants all kids taught about grooming.

"I certainly didn't set out to be an agitator. It's about speaking the truth and saying what needs to be said and calling things as you see them," she said.

"I don't want to be confrontational actually. My instinct is not to be confrontational. It's to work with people, but I think also you've got to stick to your principles. You know, if you try to just please everyone, you'll end up pleasing no one, and I'd rather have firm principles and stick to them and know them inside out than have no principles."

Thank you, Grace Tame.