 Might I call now on Aunty Matilda House to join us as an elder of the Nambri Ngunnawal people on whose traditional lands we meet to give us a traditional welcome to country. Aunty Matilda. Thank you very much. Today I'm welcome you here for the 17th anniversary of this beautiful ANU, Australian National University. I was one year old, so I'm a little bit older than this place, but I do have ancestors memories and I do have a connection to this beautiful land here. And the race course that was here, my great-grandfather, who was known as Black Harry, had raced his horses around here as well, and a great stockman too he was. I was very happy to be invited here today to do this. In 1989, the Aboriginal Torres Strait Islander Centre was opened and I was very, very digibile centre and I was very, very happy to be part of that as well. Here you will find all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students and staff are strongly committed to always be here to improve the education and outcomes to the benefit of all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and their communities. In 2016, the ANU over at Chabal, I was asked to be patron of the Illumis Ward and along with Ann Martin and Professor Isabelle McBride, the Aboriginal Torres Strait Islander network established by the Illumis in the 1980s and early 1960s, 90s will enable always our people, the students and the Illumis to remain here and always being engaged with each other here at the Australian National University. I hope you enjoy this, I hope you enjoy the 70th birthday. It means a lot to everybody, to all those sitting here with me and to all those who participated so much in getting this 70th birthday to be on track. The celebrations will continue, I no doubt, you know, for quite a while but the teaching and the understanding and doing all the wonderful things for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, researching art, culture, language and history. I welcome you here to the land of my ancestors and congratulations to the Australian National University. Thank you very much. Thank you very much Aunty Matilda for that very warm and memorable welcome to country. Might I ask you all now to join with me in acknowledging and celebrating the first Australians on whose traditional lands we meet and paying our respects to Aunty Matilda and the elders past and present of the Ngunnawal people. Well, present and past Vice-Chancellors, staff, students, alumni, other distinguished guests, welcome again to this 70th birthday celebration. Reaching your biblical use-by-date can be a rather disconcerting experience for us mortal individuals as I can personally testify but for an immortal institution like the ANU with seven decades now behind us of extraordinary achievement, turning 70 really is an occasion for major unqualified celebration and today we're going to enjoy the moment with no holds barred. We're going to celebrate for a start our outstanding research achievement over 70 years across every major discipline. Established initially as we were as a purely research university, unique of its kind in Australia and extremely unusual in the wider world as well, we rapidly accumulated an unqualified, unparalleled scholarly reputation which we have proudly retained ever since. The icing on the cake I guess being the six Nobel Prizes won by our staff and students, four of them for work done directly here on this campus, most recently of course by Vice-Chancellor Ryan Schmidt. And that's more than any other Australian university and indeed more than the rest of them put together. We are going to celebrate our teaching and learning achievement since we opened our doors to undergraduates in 1960, much to the dismay there that may have been quite a few of those researchers who had to slum it for the first time in their professional lives with real-life students. We are a university more than any other in this country, certainly more than any of the other GO8s with a real Communal character with a very high proportion of our students, both graduate and undergraduate, living on campus or close by. And now through the generosity of Graham and Louise Tuckwell, unprecedented in Australian educational philanthropy, we're adding whole new dimensions to the quality of that campus residential experience. Overall, we've had now around 100,000 graduates enjoying that totally distinctive experience. An experience which our other speakers this morning, Megan Stoiles, Elizabeth Reed, Bruce Chapman, Nick Dodson and Penny Sackett are shortly going to relive with us decade by decade from the 60s through to the 90s, where the Megan and the others tell us the whole story remains to be seen, but it will still be a good one. And we're going to be celebrating, of course, the extraordinary contribution of the national public policy debate made by so many on this campus for so long. On everything from defence and security, to energy and the environment, to Indigenous reconciliation, to law and justice, to economic policy across the board, to health policy, science policy, arts policy, education policy, in fact every corner of this nation's public life. This is a university which is understood from the outset that the formulation of public policy is a high calling demanding the best available intellectual resources and justifying very substantial commitment from this university's best brains. Not something beneath our academic dignity properly left to the professional public servants everywhere else in this town and to all the other rather less professional polywafflers and megalomaniacs like me and my former life in the house across the lake. And we are now going from strength to strength in harnessing and focusing that policy engagement energy not only through the focal point of the Crawford School of Public Policy but right across the university. It's important to remember as we celebrate our founding 70 years ago with the passage of that legislation this day in 1946 just how much of the driving vision behind the creation of the Australian National University with our name very directly reflecting it was the idea as the greatest visionary of all our founders Nugget Coombs later described it of this new national university as the intellectual powerhouse for the rebuilding of society grappling with post-war problems of poverty, unemployment, social and racial justice and international misunderstanding. That vision of the ANU as being of enduring significance in the post-war life of the Australian nation supporting the development of national unity and identity improving our understanding of ourselves and our neighbours and contributing to economic development and cohesion was not at the outset a very clearly articulated vision at least in the language of our founding act and the finest legislative drafting tradition of the time that language was relentlessly pedestrian something which I hope we can remedy in the updated ANU Act that we've been negotiating with the government over the last 12 months. But that sort of vision was articulated and articulated very clearly in the words of the Minister for Post-War Reconstruction in the Chifley Government John Deadman in introducing the legislation into the parliament. He spoke of the innumerable problems awaiting solution in Australia and the world if the future was to be made safe and if people would have benefit from recent developments in physical science and medicine and in the understanding of human relationships through the social sciences. He spoke of the significant and unique contribution that Australia could make to all these areas and to Pacific Studies in particular. And above all, Deadman spoke of the new national university as an institution which as he said would bring credit to Australia advance the cause of learning and research in general and take its rightful place among the great universities of the world. Inevitably, not everyone in the parliament at the time had quite such an exalted and optimistic view of what the new university could achieve or liked the idea of even having national anywhere its name or liked what they thought the university might actually get up to. One opposition senator from Victoria thought it would be a synthetic provincial university. The member for the Northern Territory feared that rat-bag views, as he said it, would infest the university through the inclusion of the Research School of Social Sciences. And the then leader of Her Majesty's opposition, Mr. Robert Menzies, was one of those many who thought that we should be called the University of Canberra, going so far as to confess, quote, a mild feeling of horror, unquote, at the national university label. Though it is, of course, very fair to say that in later years as Prime Minister, Robert Menzies became one of our greatest supporters as he was indeed in the development of the whole university sector. It's important today, as we look back over all that we've achieved over the last 70 years, that we acknowledge in full the enormous debt of gratitude we owe to our founding fathers in those early post-war years. I should say that in using the word fathers here, I'm not being what our student reps on Council would no doubt describe as my normally, hopelessly out-of-date gender insensitive self. The unhappy reality is that in those days they were all fathers. They were all men, and it really makes quite uncomfortable viewing now to look at the photos of all those preparatory meetings with sometimes 50 or 60 people in the room, not one of them, a woman. I'm sure Liz Reid will have something more to say about that a little later on. But all that acknowledged what an extraordinary group of people they were. There were those like Howard Flory, Mark Oliphant, Keith Hancock, who lent so much of their already huge international prestige in medicine, physics and humanities to getting the project off the ground. There were the early vice-chancellors, Douglas Copeland, Leslie Melville, and bubble John Crawford, who steered and shaped the development of the university from empty paddocks into the thriving institution we have today. And certainly in the case of Crawford, there was a towering intellectual and policy contribution to the life of the whole nation. And towering above all of them, in every way except for his physical size, which was famously diminutive, but no less combative for that, was Dr. H.C. Coombs. He preferred, of course, to be called Nugget, understandable enough when you've been baptised Herbert Cole, recruited from the Commonwealth Bank to Treasury by the Menzies government after the outbreak of war, been a post-war reconstruction, and in that role, it was Nugget, Coombs as vision, determination and relentless energy that more than anything or anyone else was responsible for bringing the ANU into being. He was the de facto Chancellor during the tenure of the first three of my predecessors, Stanley Melbourne, Bruce John Cockroft and Howard Flory, who all stayed, actually based in the UK. Then he became Chancellor himself from 68 to 76, overlapping for most of that time with Sir John Crawford as Vice-Chancellor, where they made a really stellar combination. With Crawford then, of course, going on to succeed Coombs as Chancellor through to the mid-80s. A brilliant Keynesian economist, central banker and all-round public servant, enormously influential supporter of the arts, and above all a passionate advocate for the rights, including land rights of the nation's indigenous people, Nugget Coombs remains one of our greatest ever Australians. And it's right on this occasion that we acknowledge he's absolutely central place in the ANU pantheon. Of course, there are quite a few others in the subsequent history of ANU who also unequivocally deserve a place in that pantheon. Among them, and I'll name him because it will confirm all these views about Chancellor as if I don't, the longer serving of all our Vice-Chancellors Ian Chubb. Great universities depend above all else on great people. An ANU has been blessed from the outset and continues to be blessed with the extraordinary quality of our people. Our founders, our executive leadership, our academic and professional staff and our students. How we continue to attract extraordinary people in the future and to rise to ever greater heights of excellence in the years ahead will be the subject that Brian Schmitz looking forward to talk to us a little later. Let me conclude my own looking back remarks by saying just this. To create a new national university in 1946, in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War needed enormous optimism about what this reborn country was capable of becoming. It required great vision in 1946 to see Australia as so many still than it did. Not as an intellectual backwater from which anyone of any intellectual ambition had to escape but as a nation able and willing to create a world-class powerhouse of analysis and ideas of discovery and delivery. So on our 70th birthday we rejoice that those who founded and nurtured the Australian National University had that vision and that confidence. And we proudly celebrate the seven decades we have now spent justifying their optimism. Happy birthday to us. There are not many people who get to be global icons at the age of 19 but that's what happened when our first speaker was pictured outside the Canberra Rex at the Lyndon Johnson demo in 1966 for us today and summing up in a single wonderful image perhaps I should say dual image that went worldwide the spirit of the 60s as those of us who were there and who were not too out of it at the time can well remember. After an honours degree in political science she did many more things with her life not least working for many years in Parliament House as a journalist and advisor particularly for Bill Hayden who blew it and even me for a little while that our focus first up now is on the 1960s and who could be better to take us back there than Megan Stoiles. Megan, over to you. Good morning. At the age of 16 I came to the ANU from Sydney mainly to get away from home but also after studying the various university handbooks to just focus on studying political science through rather than Latin and general maths and boring subjects like that. The ANU in 1964 was a small undergraduate campus with few full time students. Political science, one, was one of the biggest units. I think we had 400 students studying it but only 50 full time. The department was located in Nissen Hutz at Childers Street and we used the Childers Street hall for our main lectures. It in fact was the focus for most social activity as well. The whole university put on dances, reviews and student theatre there. In the adjoining hut for some time was the Students Association where Daira Dell who's here today became the ANU Students Association secretary bail bonds person emotional nurse and lifelong friend for generations of students. The student body itself was an eclectic bunch. There were Canberra students who were the children of politicians, the armed service and public servants. There were a lot of rural students here. Bushwick founders George Martin from Tumba Rumba and Bill Gamich and Bob Rees who were from Wagga Wagga, not too far away from Tumba. There were a lot of students here studying Asian politics, civilisation and history. One I can mention Helen Jarvis who also did Pulsai was first a student of Indonesian at the ANU but has gone on to become Cambodia's first dual Australian Cambodian citizen and a very active participant in documenting the war crimes there. Another person who studied Indonesian was someone we knew as Sam Vutas but he later became Tony Vutas member of parliament there. The ANU was very early getting into the idea of attracting good students here by offering the money and the ANU's scholarships did attract people like Des Ball from Tim Boone, a young precocious student and a very well known respected and loved person at the ANU till today. Ross Garna was another one from Western Australia another friend of mine, Diane Austin came here as an oriental student, studies scholarship holder decided she actually wanted to do philosophy rather than Chinese but had to keep on doing Chinese to keep the money. That was a habit she continued throughout her life she got a scholarship to University of Chicago where she switched from philosophy to anthropology. And of course I guess you would say most universities have them who ended up as business people crooks and con men mainly from the law faculty some even ended up in jail. Now in the 60s has been mentioned by Gareth and others and in my topics subject there was a lot of questioning of the status quo and dissent if not revolution in the air. Not just the Vietnam war where we had academic seminars teachings and demonstrations and other issues on foreign policy. But amongst other issues they included censorship in 1964 when I arrived there was a big fuss over Bob Brissenden setting low-liter on the American literature course which of course then was banned so that led to a lot of public debate and discussion and the book eventually being taken off the banned list. Women's rights also stuck their hand up in that period and Liz will talk more about that but in 1975 I was one of the few women who chained ourselves to the bar in the hotel Civic because they said women could only drink in the beer garden or in the lounge, in the gentile places. We chained ourselves to the bar and while we were refused drinks the local SP Bookie bought them for us. Another issue that I was involved in was the university doctor this was the time when the oral contraceptive pill had just come onto the market and we naturally went to the university doctor to get it prescribed. However for some time he said no you had to be engaged to be married and take your fiance along to prove your credentials before you'd get the prescription. Now one of the things about the ANU which Gareth has also mentioned is the links that it had with the rest of Canberra and with the world through politics, through academe through policymaking and development. Finn Crisp, my political science professor used to invite his honours students around to his study in Deakin on Sunday nights and have journalists, politicians public servants and diplomats there to talk about what they were doing a sort of mini-chatham house I think with Sherry at that stage. It was part of the tradition I was fortunate enough to receive my degree from Nugget Coombs as Chancellor with Sir John Crawford as Vice Chancellor. There were also famously links through drinks as I call it. The university staff and students used to go to the hotel Civic as the closest then they moved up to the Canberra Rex across to the hotel Wellington to meet politicians and journalists and in the mid 1960s the staff club was formed down near the hospital in the form of British High Commission's residents. Students were also active in descent and in protest. The Students Association was member of the National Union of Australian University students and the question of Aboriginal rights was very big in the 60s along with the campaign to include Aborigines in the Census in the referendum. Right in South Africa was also a very big issue upon which we did demonstrate outside the embassy and we took other activities and also and I know this sounds really pathetic but we had a demonstration sitting in the Vice Chancellor's office sometime in the 60s to get students included on the University Council. Sir John Crawford handled that wonderfully and the position was created but getting back to Vietnam which was the major defining and the growing issue in the 60s it became the subject of public interest and opposition in 1964 and 65. ANU's academics both in the Institute of Advanced Studies and in the School of General Studies and students from both were early participants in the Australian politics debate. We had teachings here in which did lead to further activity and then to demonstrations. Now these were held outside the American Embassy, the South Vietnamese Embassy and outside our own Parliament. Des Ball who I mentioned before was arrested for refusing to come down from the statue of George the Fifth. He was defended by Kepp Enderby, a law lecturer here at the ANU and later Attorney General and he won that case. Another political science lecturer also arrested and in honour of that event, Bob Brissenden wrote and sang the song Muscles McFarlane, Pride of the Clan. I'm a New South Wales clopper, I can't tell a lie, was the refrain. There were a lot of legal precedents set following these arrests, as your records were kept and later used against postgraduate students here and overseas. Moving on to 1966 when the war as Gareth has talked about and as I wearing the original t-shirt the demonstration was against Lyndon Baines Johnson when he visited Canberra in October. I received letters from for some time afterwards addressed to Megan Stoil's Student Canberra and they did get to me up at Bruce Hall. Now it was not just about demonstrations, although sometimes the lines were mixed. Here at the ANU we had a wonderful tradition of student theatre with political reviews. Music was written and conducted by mathematician Matt Ward who was at the Institute and English student in Canberra Repstore at Arran Godfrey Smith produced most of these reviews including one in 1967 called From a Great Height which recalled the dropping of naparm over Hanoi and also a wonderful music adaptation of Maristafani's anti-war classic Lysistrata. Paul Tom originally from Sydney University via Oxford came to the ANU as a philosophy lecturer and introduced Victoria Arnaz and an Australia White Purcell revival. We did King Arthur Fairy Queen and Indian Queen. John Stevens another political science honours student also pioneered cabaret shows like reviews celebrating hits wartime songs, songs of the 20s in Australia Arnaz. The ANU's smallness made it possible to be in all of these things perhaps unfortunately so. For some of us it was at the detriment of our academic results. I've got a letter from Finn Chris Britton at the end of 1966 saying much as we all love you, you must wind back your extra curricular activities if you are to enter and do well in your honours year. I didn't wind back and I didn't do very well. I've also written about these events for a special ANU reporter edition focusing on the role of revolt and dissent and political activism but to conclude we didn't quite have a French revolution although leading up to the 1968 turmoil in France, Europe and the US it was along that path and I feel as William Wordsworth wrote of that period, bliss was it in that dawn to be alive but to be young was very heaven. Thank you. Thanks so much Megan. Our next speaker to take us back to the 1970s someone who after a first class honours BA in philosophy here in a B field at Oxford came back to become I think it's fair to say the single most influential and important figure in the history of the Australian women's movement. It's the incredibly high profile and path breaking work she did frustrating though it may have been at the time as women's adviser to then Prime Minister Goff Whitlam. She's been making waves ever since in an extraordinary variety of international roles focused on development gender policy and HIV AIDS and it's to talk to us now about that environment here in the 1970s that I welcome to the podium Dr. Elizabeth Reed. Hi everybody. In 1970 I returned to Canberra from Oxford and attended the first public meeting of the women's liberation movement a social movement which was to have a profoundly positive impact on the lives of women in Australia. Suddenly the focus of our attention was broadened to include not only single issues such as abortion law reform, homosexual and an end to raping marriage but now we're also addressing the structural factors that shaped our society and naming patriarchy and sexism as the enemy. In 1972 Pat E. Tok was drawn to Canberra by the Aboriginal Tent Embassy. Pat, a woman from Green Valley in western Sydney had begun her long struggle for her right as the person of fair skin to identify as Aboriginal. She too became active in the women's liberation movement. Pat became the first Aboriginal candidate to stand for federal parliament in the ACT when she campaigned unsuccessfully as an independent in the 1972 elections. I was her campaign manager so I know that. Her platform was by the newly formed women's electoral lobby focus on Aboriginal women and children's issues. Pat decided then that although she had not matriculated she'd left school to work in factories and she was a single mother of six children she wanted to go to university. Despite the initial obduracy of the ANU authorities in 1973 Pat became the first non matriculated mature age student at the ANU and in 1971 one of if not the first Aboriginal graduate of the ANU graduating as a bachelor of arts. Meanwhile in 1971 I had been appointed a tutor in philosophy in the School of General Studies at the ANU. It was a time when the making of unwanted sexual advances and other forms of sexual harassment was fairly widespread on campus. It turned myself and others off academic life. Issues of diversity and equity continue to challenge the university and I'm very pleased now to be working with the ANU to address this issue as part of its new strategic vision. In 1971 the first Women's Studies course was held at the ANU. This course entitled Women in Society was held at the Centre for Continuing Education then a part of the ANU. Women's studies as a discipline had a more difficult birth at the ANU with the first course run in 1975. When the Wickham Government was elected in 1972 Peter Walensky Principal Private Secretary to the Prime Minister argued that the women's liberation movement was the most important social movement of those times and that the Prime Minister should bring onto his small personal staff someone from the movement who could advise him on his demands. As soon as this was made public the press went berserk a state of frenzy that was sustained throughout Wickham's time. But Wickham didn't wait for there to be a member of staff. In the first six weeks of his Government he reopened the Equal Pay case and lifted the sales tax on contraception and I have no doubt at all that if anybody had mentioned tampons to him he would have lifted the sales tax on them as well. In April 1973 I was appointed advisor to the Prime Minister on matters relating to the welfare of women and children and so began over two amazing years of policy innovation a bureaucratic resistance and a feminist critique. Some of the latter mine some of it of me by the sisterhood. At the ANU the Chancellor, Nugget Coombs urban planners such as Pat Troy political scientists such as Murray Goode and those in international relations such as Stairs Ball made significant contributions to the debate around policy. In May 1973 the House of Rips debated a private member's bill on the reform of the ACT legislation laws. At the ANU a group called Orgasm rallied to counteract the 2,000 people busted in by right to life organisations. Out of the confrontation and hostility caused by the bill came a proposal so radical that it remains unique in the world the establishment in 1974 of the Association on Human Relationships tasked to look into and report back to Australians on our behaviour as individuals as members of our society and in our relationships with one another Australia was never the same again. I was appointed to the Council of the ANU in 1974 replacing John Deadman whom Gareth has mentioned both the Curtin and the Chiefly Governments. I resigned from these positions towards the end of 75 when I resigned as Whitlam's advisor and fled the country effectively a political refugee in flight from the Australian press. By the end of 1975 I was working in Iran for Princess Ashraf Palavi. Australia had had its 1111 moment and Malcolm Fraser which was over by was wise enough not to change too many of our policies. Thank you. To talk to us now about the 1980s in particular I guess the higher education reform some of the most important of which he initiated himself which turned the academic world almost upside down in that decade I now have pleasure in introducing the brilliant economists who we've been privileged to have with us at the ANU in 1984 who describes himself not very modestly in his bio as excessively modest but it's true he has absolutely nothing to be modest about. Professor Bruce Chapman. Thank you Chancellor. I was an undergraduate student in economics at the ANU and some of the teaching that I had was not just about economics it was about public policy and it was the power to thank two of my teachers Peter Drysdale and Selwyn Cornish for giving me some understanding of the importance of institutional surrounds to economic policy. The 1980s in Australian university systems were completely different from now. The enrollment rates were about 15% of the youth cohort and there were no charges for example and the system could reasonably described as elite. In 1987 John Dawkins the then Federal Minister of Employment Education and Training advertised a job and my interest in public policy led me to apply and I got that job and when I met John Dawkins he described his major problem the major problem facing him as education minister was that there were very large numbers of people wanting to go to university but could not get in because the system as a labour government they were not prepared to tax and to spend the money on enrollments and moreover there were significant numbers of people in that cabinet who believed that so called free education was regressive. There is no free education he said correctly, free means free to the students and not of course to the tax payers he believed that this was regressive in all that as context he said to me your job is to help to introduce university fees well I'd been there about an hour and I thought I wonder is it too soon to resign I did produce an options paper and the option paper suggested that a reasonable a fair way to introduce university fees was with a student loan but not the normal kind of student loan which I think has poor characteristics. This was an income contingent loan which then became known as HEX and the most important characteristics of this system is that no student would need any money to enroll secondly while there was a debt the debt would only be repaid when and if people had the capacity financially to do so if you're unemployed no payment if you're in a part time job no payment if you're rearing children and looking after aged or six parents or partners no payment was necessary it was essentially an insurance mechanism I had a very uncomfortable meeting with John Dawkins in December 1987 where he'd read my options paper he was fairly uncomfortable with it he said the series of questions they were kind of embarrassing questions and I doubt whether if you could not answer any one of these questions today in public policy would you be allowed to stay in the room how do you know what will work he said to which I said well I don't he said well how many other countries have this to which I said well none or none that I'm aware of he says what will the students think and I said well I think the students really hate it because at the moment they get this for free and it doesn't matter it's got these wonderful insurance characteristics but no they won't like it at all what about the vice chancellor he said I said well you're not giving them any money are you all the money's going to the tax office so they're all kind of old school lefties anyway they'll really hate it there's nothing going on there minister the pause has got longer and longer the look of disbelief and horror on his face got more profound and clear and he was a big question he said because they needed the money he said to me well the critical thing is to get the money when does the money come and I said well think about it it's an income contingent debt so if you introduce it kind of next year you'll graduate and then you've got to earn over the first threshold before they pay anything so the money will start trickling in about six or seven years probably I think this probably looked to him to be the worst public policy that he had ever seen but they went for it anyway that hawk cabinet recognised that they had benefits particularly the political benefits of getting it through the ALP platform and what an extraordinary cabinet that was the most important difference between Australia now and the 1980s was the hawk cabinet in my view with all sorts of extraordinary innovations progressive innovations like Medicare like child support systems like industrial relations form like the diminution of the tariff walls I think we owe a great debt to the people of that cabinet and I thank you fearless Chancellor for being part of this process other countries followed countries that looked a little bit like Australia they didn't have tuition and they wanted to expand their systems and they had public sector institutions New Zealand introduced this system in 1992 the United Kingdom in 1997 and South Africa and other countries that weren't like that changed their systems to adopt contingent loans run through the tax system these included Thailand, Ethiopia Hungary, South Korea and the Netherlands quite recently and I'm confident that there will be other countries that do this it's become a major ANU public policy export and I think roughly about 10 million people, graduates have had the experience a contingent loan since about 1989 and there are currently about 1.5 million students in that space at the moment let's compare this with the other forms of tuition that happens in countries with other kind of loan having in countries with tuition they have bank loans and the defining characteristic of a bank loan is completely unlike HEX you pay it on the basis of time it does not matter if you're unemployed it does not matter if you did not graduate and you have a poor job there is no insurance there's the systems that economists would describe as leading to consumption will suffer or they will default and let me assure you that default is a really big problem for students or for graduates because it will ruin their lives financially not necessarily the whole of their lives but it means a loss of a credit reputation and poor access to finance I don't think we thought very much about bank loans we just went straight into HEX but about 10 years ago I spent time in Colombia the minister had asked me to look at a piece of text and she said to me when I met her it's an extraordinary system it has no subsidies and I said that's not extraordinary that's unique I don't know of a system anywhere in the world where there are no subsidies she said as John Dawkins had said to me about HEX would it work and I thought no I don't think it would work I said how do you actually manage to design a system without subsidies and she said well the interest rates are kind of high I said what's kind of high 10% per year and then the idea that this was going to work it occurred to me that I should say I think that a force will be massive but I didn't I said I need to sit down with the department of education officials and we'll work this out and it was a really interesting and kind of weird experience because I don't have any Spanish except Hasta la vista baby they didn't have any English but what we all spoke was fluid econometrics and the fluid econometrics allowed us to do something that we hadn't really done before we looked at the tales of the graduate distributions to ask the following question would relatively low income graduates let's take women because they have lower incomes if they're in the bottom parts of the distribution what proportion of their income would they need to repay this debt with the 18% interest rates and the answer was extraordinary because being in the bottom 20% we calculated econometrically that the payment burden the proportion of the income would be about 70 to 80% with this system work I don't think it could work the only way it could work is by people using loan sharks or families or defaulting and that's essentially what has recently happened in this period and this is the critical point about bank loans they mean repayment hardship they mean that people have an awful lot of trouble just through bad luck for example from graduating in a period where there's high unemployment we have done this work now at ANU but jointly with nationals some ANU PhD students or new staff and these results have now been worked out for Vietnam Indonesia, Germany and the United States and what is remarkable is we get the same story if the people in the bottom 20 to 25% of the tales of the distribution of graduate income would need to find 60 to 80% of the incomes to repay debts like this and they weren't high debts, they were just debts collected without insurance this work then has become another part of quite different from policy advocacy but it's on the econometric side it's more purely on the research system and we've now been engaged with students and academics from other countries there will be a conference in Shanghai in October this year I thank Glenn Withers for helping to convene this and the research school of economics for financial assistance the joint work is going to cover many other countries for example we've done the modelling on repayment burdens for Ireland, China, Columbia now updated Brazil and Germany and many other places and moreover we've been able to design contingent loan mechanisms for the institutional context of the institutional environment as defined by earnings another ANU export this time on the research side there's a broader point about all this and that is about income contingent loans which can be used well beyond student financing what do we have here we have an extraordinary instrument we didn't think it was that at the beginning I had no idea that this template could be used but I think it's it's quite different we think about government as left wing meaning lots of regulations high tax, high spend and right wing of the other way of thinking about this contingent loan is not like that it's essentially a risk management instrument and these risk management instruments are everywhere in the public sector we just kind of didn't get at their pension systems, their road rules their occupational health and safety what we have here in Australia is Medicare and that's what the HEX system is it's an insurance mechanism that offers protection to banks repayment hardship and against default and we've now been able to put this template into work into research and analytical work in about 20 different areas including with income contingent loans for drought relief work done jointly with Linda Botter on ANU PhD person extensions of paid parental leave for business and economics for the payment of low level criminal fines with work done with ANU graduate John Quiggan let me assure you this is a really big point, indigenous incarceration is a blight in our system and two young indigenous women died in Western Australian jails a little over a year ago they were there from non payment of fines, we can fix that we can fix it almost costlessly we've done this instrument we've done the work now in research and development financing for solar energy panels for legal aid funding for brain drain compensation and all of this work, not all of this work 80% of this work comes from ANU I counted yesterday how many ANU people students, visitors or staff had been engaged in these projects the number is 29 and the number will get bigger again I think it's a great thing for the community the interaction between these scholars from all different types of academia not just economics but in political science and even in physics we have much to be grateful for I feel completely privileged to have been at this superb institution and to have been part of this process we even beyond HEX and income contingent loan which I think have worked fine we have so much to celebrate and as always with Bruce you get rather more than your bargain for and we certainly got more than the 1980s then but let's now move to the 1990s focusing on the way in which Indigenous issues came to the fore here as well as in the community more generally to talk about this let me introduce now a man, a Yarra man from Broome who knows more about these issues than almost any other Australian alive the first Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander commissioner with the Human Rights Commission now professor of law and director here of the National Centre for Indigenous Studies Professor Mick Dodson Thank you Chancellor and thank you Matilda for your warm welcome to country in the 1990s we had a decade of great change in education and inquiry and public understanding of issues affecting Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples the 1990s saw the introduction of supplementary funding assistance to universities to achieve the national education policy for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people the funding sought to increase the participation of Indigenous peoples in education decision making foster equity of participation and outcomes for Aboriginal education services that were culturally appropriate for our people the ANU in the 1990s took the opportunity to support the Jabal Centre which as Matilda mentioned was established in 1989 pre-empting the resourcing from the Aboriginal education policy the establishment and the funding of the centre allowed our families and communities as part of the ANU campus and from those beginnings let's face it we've still got a bit of work to do ANU then had the opportunity to work with our alumni playing clear research roles at the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander studies scholars such as Marcia Langton Aileen Morton Robinson Ron Herron Sam Wickham Wickman sorry and Johnston found themselves here at ANU on their education journeys our voices need to be heard throughout the 90s as this was the decade in which the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission was established it was widely regarded as the boldest reform that the Commonwealth's administration of Aboriginal affairs had seen combining regional and national councils of elected Indigenous peoples to help shape Indigenous policy and affairs it was also the decade in which the Royal Commission into Aboriginal and Lesson Custody took place I was councillor assisting the Royal Commission along with my colleagues such as the ANU's Professor Anne McGrath who coordinated the history project of the Royal Commission into Aboriginal and Lesson Custody we also had the Marbeau Decision in 1992 which overturned Terranulis and ruled that native title existed over unanalymed native crown land national parks and reserves and later that year Prime Minister Paul Keating marked the launch of the United Nations in that year the worth of the world's Indigenous peoples it must become known as the Red Fern Park Speech and people called to attention a nation struggling to come to grips with the implications of the Marbeau Decision and the shocking revelations of the Royal Commission into Black Death and Custody sadly the recent Four Corners program illustrates we still have a long way to go meanwhile our students were uniting across the country front and centre with our new students and alumni leading the debates and making their voices be heard I think this is what a university is all about in the 1990s our co-orders students worked hard supporting and encouraging each other to finesse conceptual and analytical skills to make their mark on a national and an international stage graduates with a thirst for knowledge and expertise increasingly sought to also expand their journey into the world of high degrees and research the establishment of the centre of Aboriginal and Economic Policy Research, CAPA in April 1990 was pivotal in producing high quality independent research that assisted the social and economic development of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples throughout Australia the programs would now inform will now be informed by evidence gathered by dedicated passionate researchers who work closely with our communities across Australia academics and students of the ANU are providing information, context, balance and analysis to help Australians learn about our history and cultures 1995 the National Inquirer into the separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families was announced a year later the High Court Australia ruled in the WIC decision that native title and past releases could coexist and the Commonwealth Parliament made that year a commitment to reconciliation in 1997 the Bring Him Home report of the enquiry of the Stolen Generations was the least recommending a national sorry day to commemorate the history and effects of removing children from their families again this university the Australian National University played a pivotal role ANU's Professor Peter Reid worked closely with Indigenous communities across Australia to establish LINCUP a service to help families reunite following the Aboriginal land rights Northern Territory Act of 1976 ANU researchers like Professor Merlin, Francesca Merlin Nick Peterson John Altman Howard and Francis Morphy worked with Indigenous claimers to help establish ownership of their traditional lands under that legislation and this work continued through the 80s and 90s and a lot of ANU academics worked very closely with NT communities assisting them in these pursuits one of those academics geographer Elizabeth Young later gave her an entire estate to the ANU to help Indigenous students get through university in perpetuity the Elsford Young Memorial Grant continues to support ANU Indigenous students with their education needs today I'm proud to be part of ANU and I can say we're making progress but we have to be diligent because there's much work ahead of us and in closing I should say today is my grandson Buddy's second birthday and Buddy knowing it's the horse's birthday also would say happy birthday to all the horses but today is the ANU's seventh birthday happy birthday ANU Thanks Mick to complete this historical sequence and talk to us now about the ANU in the 2000s and more particularly the Inferno literally which knocked us around so badly in 2003 I have great pleasure in introducing to the podium now physicist, former director of the ANU research school of astronomy and astrophysics and Australia's chief scientist from 2008 to 2011 Professor Penny Sackin You and I and the institutions and cultures of which we are part grow in two fundamentally different ways the familiar steady incremental growth that comes from new experience and struggling to understand something anew each and every day and the kind of dramatic growth that is born from an unfamiliar and shocking crisis that can leave us feeling momentarily uncertain and overwhelmed On Saturday 18 January 2003 a pyro tornado of unprecedented proportions hit Canberra's western edge it formed from converging fire fronts that had been days in the making fire fronts that converged on Mount Stromlo those in Canberra on that day will remember the confusion the fear the unexpected horror families were separated by roaring walls of flame communication was broken 500 homes burnt 4 lost their lives and personally for me the ANU Mount Stromlo Observatory home to the research school of astronomy astronomy and astrophysics of which I had been given custody only six months earlier as director had been totally engulfed and some would say extinguished our staff and students were safe but about 10% of them lost their homes as well as their workplace and their fires the next day I trod through the grey smoking landscape with two colleagues the telescopes lay in ruins aluminum domes melted glass and mirrors shattered the iconic commonwealth solar observatory building was completely gutted the books on its library shelves now stacked columns of ash sandwiched between carbonized covers in the workshop the newly minted high tech spectrometer nifts as we fondly called it stood breached by the intense heat our pride and joy it was conceived and built by our astronomers and engineers at the research school nearly ready for shipping to Hawaii now it would not connect collect a single ray of cosmic light the day after the fire on a Sunday I met with the top officers of the ANU and we began to chart a course forward central to that plan were the three priceless Stromlo assets that the fire did not touch its people its reputation and its spirit and as the crisis of the fire taught us there was a fourth our diverse community and the solidarity that it showed us the 2003 fires activated growth of the sort that only takes place in a crisis when the dormant epicormic buds of our stored strength are shocked into action to send forth new green shoots from the ashes within Vice Chancellor Ian Chubb's help within three weeks of the firestorm most of us were back working on Stromlo in five weeks we had the skeleton of a reconstruction plan not just of the physical infrastructure but of our intellectual mission as well and with the help of a firm called Auspace we not only rebuilt the NIFs we won the contract for a second multimillion dollar instrument these seemingly impossible miracles were made possible by the hard work of ANU buildings and ground staff and others who watched out for our safety they were made possible by donations from the public forward internal loans from the university and a grant from the Commonwealth Government made possible by international colleagues who believed in us and supported us made possible by the whole of the Stromlo team who never wavered in their determination in short the miracle of Stromlo's rebirth was made possible by community and solidarity in the face of dark crisis the stage process would take over a decade to complete stage one of a sleek modern complex the advanced instrumentation and technology center was completed the gracious Commonwealth Solar Observatory building and its library was restored and first ANU and then later Australia as a whole joined the giant Magellan telescope project the world's next generation of telescope a 20 story behemoth now under construction on a mountain top in the dark steady skies of Chile and the Phoenix that I still call Stromlo continues to rise the schools Professor Brian Schmidt now ANU Vice Chancellor won the Nobel Prize for physics in 2011 just one of many accolades for junior senior staff and students in recent years stage two of the instrumentation center opened in 2014 and it is a new Australian space facility that is unrivaled in the southern hemisphere but I must bring this to a close because these stories are now belonging to another decade every day we grow our skills our imagination are extended further compelling us to push to create to fight the temptation to remain constant and comfortable in parochialism great teachers great universities great students and great friends support us in this growth which is measured by the width of the circular tree rings of our identity what are those moments of crisis when we sit at the fulcrum of a lever that is poised to tip wildly left or right a crisis that demands we summon the energy stored in our epichormic buds nurtured by community in order that we can act to grow right now and I mention this because today in a world that sometimes seems to turn its back on knowledge and our common humanity we can see dark clouds of crisis forming over the horizon of our nation and other places in the world crises that threaten to divide to extinguish to silence crises that feed on fear but together with the strength of our institutions our diverse culture and our solidarity we will meet any crisis with the strength to act and in doing so we'll spring forth even stronger than before thank you ANU and happy birthday well thank you Penny for sharing those really inspirational memories with us we've been talking so far about the past and what a magnificent past it's been but we all know that if we want our next seven decades to be anything like as successful as the last have been in this intensely competitive national and international world we now face we can't even think about resting on those laurels so to talk to us now about the future can I introduce to you now our new Nobel Prize winning Vice Chancellor who we could not be more pleased or proud to have now leading us Professor Brian Schmidt thank you Gareth and happy birthday ANU where we stand today is part of a landscape that local Aboriginal people lived in and managed for more than 21,000 years there were open savanna grasslands with eucalypt forest and a trickling creek leading to a river the landmarks we know today like Black Mountain, Sullivan's Creek and the Longlow River were used by Aboriginal people as pathways to navigate across the landscape and bring them together in ceremonial meeting places I pay my respects to Ani Matilda and all the other elders past and present and I thank them for allowing this great meeting place of ideas and thought to be located here what a wonderful group of speakers we've heard from this morning and like us we're partially just to reinvigorate the crowd to stand up and thank them with an applause thank you all that's a lecture trick I've learned in my time here ANU people who have been part of shaping modern Australia and the modern world people who embody what it is that makes this university such a great community to belong to Megan Stoiles reminds us that academic freedom is the most fundamental of values that helps define a university the creation of new ideas the challenging of old ideas and the debating of competing ideas is the very basis for our existence the ability to put forth our ideas with conviction to change the world in which we live is the basis of why we are here Megan I think you must have inspired my parents with yourself in your t-shirt as I was conceived in 1966 I'm proud to celebrate with you today the 70th anniversary of this extraordinary institution I know many of you like me have spent much of your student and working life as part of this community and I'm so proud today to share the stage with the community of the 12 vice-chancellors who have led this great institution Professor Dean Tyrell Professor Ian Chubb Professor Ian Young The work of each of you has substantially contributed to the reputation we hold today as a university of international renown on behalf of the community I want to thank each and every one of you and I personally want to thank the three of you as the vice-chancellors who have stewarded many years here at ANU this place nurtured me it gave me the opportunity to push the boundaries as a young researcher it provided me with the environment I needed to develop and grow through the stages of my career to learn and to be mentored by those who came before me I said on the stage in February that my ambition as vice-chancellor is to pay that forward to foster a culture that has powerful potential where excellence is cultivated is expected is understood and is celebrated a culture that attracts the best and brings out the best this is a unique institution our foundation in 1946 attracted very little fanfare we garnered just a few paragraphs on page five of the Canberra Times but it was a nation building project the idea of a national university that would bring credit to our nation and help Australia take its place amongst the nations of the world was little more than a lofty ambition but big things do not necessarily have glorious beginnings they require patience they require persistence and they require an unassailable belief by a community of people that they can build something extraordinary together and this is what has happened with ANU by October 49 our founders were transforming an empty paddock into a university the foundations for the John Curtin School were laid by Prime Minister Chifley by 1950 our first academic staff had arrived and found themselves working in temporary buildings as campus construction began and in 1952 the first permanent buildings of the university were finished we stand here in 2016 at the university they imagined but did not get to see a national university that by its 70th anniversary counts amongst this community nearly 100,000 alumni 23,000 students and 4,000 staff a national university that has risen to be one of the world's great institutions a university that has populated the academic staff and leadership of Australian universities building the foundation for one of the strongest systems in the world we're part of the university where Sir John Eccles did his Nobel Prize winning work on synapses in the 1950s where John Harassani started his Nobel Prize winning work on game theory in the 1960s where in the 1970s Peter Doherty made their Nobel Prize winning discovery on how T-cells attack viruses and where in the 1990s I was privileged to be part of a Nobel Prize winning discovery of the accelerating expansion of the cosmos these breakthroughs did not happen at ANU by chance nor did any of the many equally important advances we have also made I know from my own experience they happened because this institution created an environment that allowed something big and unexpected to occur and I don't say this lightly or frivolously there is a reason that four of the five Nobel Prizes one for work done at an Australian university happened at this university it is the same reason that we count a long list of achievements as an institution from prank fenders leadership and eradicating smallpox key role in the development of digital music synthesizers leadership and development of the field of demography modeling of photosynthesis discovering the DNA sequence related to lupus and I could go on and on and on fostering an environment and creating opportunities for research that changes life that changes knowledge and that changes society is fundamental to who we are and what we want to continue to be if we are able to realize our collective vision for the ANU a catalog of iconic works advances and discoveries will follow enriching and improving life here in Canberra in Australia and around the world our 70th birthday is a day to both celebrate our past and to commit to our future and we are still a young institution those of us here today have the privilege of writing the next chapter of this university's history we have the responsibility to hand coming generations and institution even greater than the one we have inherited in my first seven months as vice chancellor I've had the chance to talk more than a thousand of you about our ambitions for the future of ANU our collective vision is clear we want to be at a university in a community that thinks big and bold that is audacious in its ambitious ambition we want to be a university that stands and is counted amongst the best in the world we want to be a university that is distinctive in its service to the nation and we want to be a university that brings together students from across the country from across the world from all social and economic backgrounds that brings them together in a community of learning that gives them the grounding and confidence so that they can go change the world together we're mapping out a plan for the next ten years of ANU a plan that will ensure that we leave a great legacy for future generations and today is part of our birthday celebrations we're committed to announce some initiatives that are at least a down payment on that plan these initiatives have come from your contributions to the discussions about our future and have set us on the path of building the university to which we all aspire research remains the heart of all that we do our research informs our education it shapes our policy contributions and it transforms the society in which we live if we are to submit our long term place as one of the world's great universities we need to retain recruit and support some of the best researchers in the world we will attract some of the very best researchers in the world by providing substantial start up grants for high potential early and mid career researchers enabling us to compete against any institution with these people these funds will also give these researchers the freedom to embark on their big ideas at the height of their creativity free of the constraints of overly conservative grant funding this investment is really an investment in the long term future of brilliant people and in the long term future of this university ANU already offers an educational experience like none in Australia and ANU education extends well beyond the classroom to our campus cultural and community life our residential experience and the international experience we offer many of our students we will build upon this unique experience to make sure that an ANU education sits comfortably among the top ten in the world we will lead the country in changing the way that universities students applying to ANU will be considered on the whole person not just their ATAR score students applying to ANU will have co-curriculum and community contributions recognized as part of their entrance criteria our scholarship program will be national and will take into account outstanding academic results yes but also non-academic achievement and financial need will be implemented over the next several years and will enable students applying to ANU at the same time to apply for their scholarships and accommodation all at once we will celebrate the achievements of our most outstanding teachers through the award of distinguished educator this award will recognize great teaching and provide funds for these educators to further extend their teaching their research into teaching and to help them share knowledge across the university ANU will extend the residential experience for which we are already renowned by 2021 we will provide any student who wants to live on campus the opportunity to do so including postgraduate students and students with children and for our students who already call ANU home starting next year we will extend the current best pastoral care ratio to all of our undergraduate residential communities this means that every undergraduate residential community will have a senior resident for every 25 students and whether you live on or off campus you will appreciate the revitalization of Union Court as the beating heart of the university community it will be home to enhance student and staff services dedicated event spaces and recreation facilities we will show the nation and our international peers that outstanding research and teaching go together building campus wide learning and teaching spaces and creating next generation approaches to education in the transformed Union Court precinct Union Court will bring camera to our campus and will be full of life from early morning until late in the evening you heard this morning from Professor Mick Dodson one of Australia's great leaders the research of Professor Dodson as many colleagues across this campus on indigenous issues is a foundation of this university one upon which we must now build a program like none other in Australia one where we become partners with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in bringing about reconciliation one where ANU becomes the University of Choice for Indigenous Australians we will launch a post-doctoral fellowship program for Indigenous PhD graduates that is designed to develop academic careers and lead to faculty positions this program will build a substantial Indigenous research and education community that is essential for us to fulfill our mission including generating Indigenous led research which informs the government policy Archival Center led by the endlessly energetic Auntie Ann Martin is the heart and soul of campus experience for our Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students and we commit to ensuring it has a secure and vibrant long-term future at this university as the National University our world goes well beyond the borders of our campus to business, to government and civil society and we need to bring business, government and civil society to us we will create a new paradigm for Australian universities working as partners with business, government and civil society to make sure our research has impact we will launch an entrepreneurial academics program that will bring people who excel in both research and in business to ANU so that we can all learn from them and I can promise you some exciting announcements on this in the not too distant future from next year students at ANU can undertake an undergraduate degree with a major in innovation and professional practice this major will comprise a new suite of vice chancellor's courses to be taught by experts in business the innovation sector and government we will also be offering a master of innovation professional practice as well as a suite of courses aimed at our PhD students there is a world of opportunity out there and we want our staff and students to make the most of it we will do these things in partnership and with guidance from the business community I will be appointing a business and industry advisory board to provide me with the critique and strategic advice we need to improve how we work with business I am delighted to announce today that Brian Hartzer the CEO of Westpac has agreed to serve as our chair ANU is renowned for impact on public policy we heard today from professor Bruce Chapman who changed the way this country provides affordable access to university education an initiative adopted by many nations our academic staff have advised and influenced government across every aspect of public policy but we can do more to pull the excellence in policy research from across our university and apply it to the grand challenges facing our world we will establish a cross campus forum that while supporting the role of the Crawford School of Public Policy as a central focal point will bring together all of the strands of public policy at ANU and act as a policy incubator for new ideas ANU people have played an enormous role in changing the position of women in our society while women like Elizabeth Reid and Susan Ryan change the way the world is for women in Australia I am sorry to say that our university does not yet deliver equal outcomes for men and women considerably more than half of our students are now women women still do not progress to the senior academic levels of the university at the same rate as their male counterparts ANU commits across the entirety of the university to the Athena Swan Diversity Program known as SAGE here in Australia pioneered in the United Kingdom while it's no magic bullet we have the ambition of achieving what only a small handful of universities have managed a silver award within five years for our STEM disciplines which it's focused on but also an equivalent level of achievement in non-STEM areas over the same period only seven universities in the UK have achieved a silver award in the program's first ten years and none have yet received a gold award in addition my experience as well as a broader body of evidence tells us that diverse leadership is good leadership over the next five years ANU commits to hiring a 50-50 gender balance in its leadership roles across the university including heads of schools directors, deans the university executive and administrative executive I benefited from leadership and action from women of the women on stage Professor Penny Sackett who was confronted as director by the most devastating of events we lost almost everything on Mount Stromlo in the bushfires of 2003 as Penny has described but Professor Sackett led us out of the ashes and quickly turned our focus to not just rebuilding but to building something bigger and better 13 years later ANU is now the strongest it has ever been and continues to stand among the best departments in the world it shows the capacity of ANU to overcome obstacles in our way and reach new levels of excellence but as I have talked all of you by far and away the strongest message I have heard from all of you was the desire for us to be one ANU to work as one community and to draw on our collective strength to lift ourselves higher we will move to create an ANU that is truly collegiate as a truly collegiate institution over the next year we will undertake a program across campus to identify ways to transform ANU into a university internationally noted for its collegiality and renown for its ability to draw across campus in all of its activities the initiatives announced here today are designed to be part of our larger ambitions and a down payment on building the ANU to which we all aspire collegiate audacious and excellent at all that we do today we thank our forebears and the giants of our history whose shoulders we now stand and we start the work on the legacy we will leave for future generations happy birthday ANU and thank you one and all thank you Brian and thanks to all our speakers for a morning that will live I think very long in all our memories no birthday celebration could possibly be complete without a cake as you wheel it in to the front of the stage can I ask our Vice Chancellor Brian Schmidt and our two student representatives with today Ben Gill and Clodora Doherty to come and join us in cutting the cake if any of you are more tuneful than I am perhaps you might lead us off in singing happy birthday to us happy birthday to us happy birthday so please including those of you who are watching online there's still plenty of sausages out there and plenty of bubble and plenty of cake to come and join us as we move outside the hall now for lunch and a celebratory drink that concludes this morning's proceedings thank you all extraordinarily much for coming and joining us that's it