"Time for children time to reach them, it's time it was free, yes it's time. Time for loving, time for caring, time for moving, yes it's time."

When I was 30, I doubted. I had seen change frighten people, seen others exploit it.

Now, at 60, I believe that the 18-year-old was right. The Whitlam government was dismissed, and many of its programs dismantled, but the changes made to our way of thinking are now so deeply embedded in out psyche that we forget they are relatively new.

It was the Whitlam government that established the Children's Commission and the new divorce laws so that for the first time made what was best for the child in a custody case paramount. A child has rights. Nowadays that is such a motherhood statement we forget how radical it once was.

Change not only can happen. It does, and has, and is still happening in Australia. Forty-two years ago "a man's home was his castle" and anything he did to his wife or children in that castle  was not to be interfered with.  Not now.

These days we accept, without challenge, that children have a right to be safe, in their homes and in their schools and everywhere. We accept, without argument, that all children have the right to an education, even if we don't agree what that education should be, or on what terms.

Forty-two years ago most Australian schools did their very best to exclude indigenous kids, and to Anglo-Saxonise any kid who didn't bring vegemite sandwiches in their lunch box. Today, when there is intolerance, it is the intolerant who are vilified.

But "it's time" has a new resonance for me now, because it is what our children so often lack.

A few weeks ago I as at an event for children, where they were mostly accompanied by their mums and grandmas. And the grandmas, mostly, were listening to the kids. The mum's were checking their phones for texts or emails.

This of course, is not necessarily a bad thing - perhaps they only managed to take that afternoon away from work by checking in occasionally. Checking your emails while taking our kids out can make you a good parent. But in the past year, as Childrens' Laureate, I've been asking kids what they want their schools to be like, and often they have told me what they want from home, too.

What do kids want most? Time. From hundreds of kids, across Australia.

I expected kids to say they wanted year-long holidays. Instead two out of three kids say they want longer school hours. But they wanted a large part of each day to be free for their own projects, with the teachers' assistance. Sam, who was five years old when he wrote to me, is inventing a machine to mine the asteroids. Invention is the keystone to our economy, one of the passions and triumphs of humanity. But when do kids get time to do it?

Emma, who is eight,  is composing music to make kids happy when they are sad or bored, and wants more time to play her music for her friends at school. Austin, at 14,  is working on an app. I'm not entirely sure how you invent an app, but Austin knows. He would like teachers to put up a list of their areas of expertise outside the staffroom, so kids can ask them for the help the need. All over Australia, kids want time of their own at school.

They want time at home, too. When I asked kids how many watched TV last night, nearly everyone put up their hands. But when I asked "Who found last night's TV boring?" once again nearly every hand was in the air. TV fills in time - but only if there is nothing better offered or made possible.

Kids want time. Time to have a conversation, not just remarks like "How was school? Go wash your hands for dinner." Time to ask a thousand questions before bedtime, and have at last four of them answered.

It is time for childrens' rights to time to be specified.

Every day a child has a right to half an hour of adult time, focused just on them.

Every week a child has a right to an afternoon, where no one checks their emails, but just talks, or listens, to them.

Every month, a child has a right to one full day of time.

It may not be their parent's time. It may not be their teachers. In  Children's Week we celebrate the extraordinary  people who give their time not to their own kids, but to the children of us all.  For kids, the gift of an adult's time may be the most precious of all.

* Jackie French is the Australian Children's Laureate. This is a speech she gave on Children's Day last month.