 First, the confession. It is indeed a frightening thing to go down on one's knee in front of Gareth Evans, the Chancellor. There he sits, resplendent in the robes of Ramses III, great pharaoh of Egypt. It's nothing in my rich and varied life that could ever have prepared me for that particular experience. And now for the apology. For breaking all convention and removing my ceremonial hat for the purposes of this address, for which I should explain my grounds. The first is a son of a Queensland farmer, and having in the back of my mind the sounds of his strong philosophical advice as a young lad growing up, where he said, Kev, the bigger the hat, the smaller the property, and Gareth, this is a spectacularly big hat. And second, as the Chancellor would know in particular, our friends in the media delight in nothing more than having film and photographs of those of us in political life wearing silly hats. And this Gareth is a spectacularly silly hat. Finally my appeal, and that is for those of you who have come to listen to and see genuine brains and beauty and insight, then you've come to the wrong session, because that was my wife, Therese, in session this morning. She delivered a spectacular address. With me, you get the consolation prize. I'm the political handbag of this operation. And Therese, your speech this morning, I found genuinely moving. It's an honour to address this great Australian national university and knew the graduating class of 2016. I remember sitting in this hall, this very same hall, 35 years ago, when I too graduated. You should be proud of what you've achieved. As you've just heard, it doesn't come easily. I know I was proud of what I achieved way back then in the Mesolithic period. Your family should be proud too. Are you proud families? Take it in, guys and girls. You deserve that. I know that when my mother attended my graduation 35 years ago, having been the first in our family's history to darken the doors of a university, since our family first arrived here as reluctant guests of His Majesty in 1790, that she too was enormously proud. You should also be proud of this great university, as one of the leading universities of the world. This is the nation's university, one specifically created under Commonwealth statute back in 1946 to serve the nation's interests following the existential threat faced by Australia in the Second World War, for which we were then so poorly prepared. Seventy years later, barely the span of one person's life, profound challenges remain for our nation's future amidst this profoundly troubling world. And it is on these great national and international challenges and the role which each and every one of you can play as leaders of the future in your future fields of endeavor that I wish to speak today. We live, friends, in deeply unsettling times in a deeply unsettled world, where once again the great questions of war and peace rumble across the international headlines, casually almost as a matter of routine as if we have somehow become inoculated to their meaning. We live too in a troubled country with growing uncertainties on how we carve out our economic future. We also live some of us in troubled communities where the politics of race once again raise their ugly head. In Indigenous Australia, where reconciliation seemed possible not long ago, we now seem to be sliding back into older, more familiar patterns of division and despair. And then there's the planet itself, which we all share and which despite the best efforts of many, we pass to your generation in sad disrepair. Of course, our national cup remains more than half full. There is much to celebrate, much to be grateful for from those who have gone before us, and even more to encourage among our fellow Australians for the future. Our land and our people have indeed been deeply blessed. And I fear that part of our cup that remains empty may become the larger part. But somehow we seem powerless to act as if we've lost a little of our national bearings, lost a little in a national culture of learned helplessness, lost in what the Jesuits have called the globalization of superficiality, losing faith too in our national institutions, satisfied instead sometimes by a shrieking culture of partisan recrimination that now passes through our national politics, where the room for discourse on the deep questions of our future becomes increasingly marginal, where any discussion of national vision, let alone global vision disappears amidst the howls of derision from a political class and large parts of the commentariat whose first instinct is to tear down not to build up. As if we have produced such a at times vicious public culture, well beyond the realms necessary for robust disagreement and debate, where civility is lost and where to admit error is to admit weakness and therefore to yield to defeat, a culture which places facts first, I'm sorry, which places facts last and opinions first, with which we once, and what we once called truth, now seen as little more than subjective illusion. As a former prime minister of this country, I am not innocent of any of these charges. And some may say that I now, as I now live in America, although returning here several times each year, that I am now least qualified to comment. Perhaps they are right. Perhaps, however, it simply gives me a different perspective, a perspective which sees these forces that I've referred to just now at work, not only in Australia, but across the collective West, where the very notion of the West itself and the combined traditions of faith and the enlightenment it represents begin to slide into civilizational irrelevance as collateral damage in a post-modern world. I retain a passionate commitment to this country, its future and what we Australians can and must do in this troubled world of ours. And that, my friends, is where you the next generation of Australian leaders come in because it is your generation that will decide the path that we take. When it's all boiled down, there are essentially two visions for Australia's future. One broad and the other narrow. One which is confident of Australia's core values of individual freedom, of fairness, of compassion, of creativity, of enterprise, all anchored in the great institutions of our great Australian democracy. One which sees our future lying in an expansive, inclusive, tolerant society based on abiding principles of mutual respect and the guarantees of equal rights and protections for all. One whose economy is driven by innovation, by enterprise, fully wired to global markets, where small businesses become big businesses and then become global businesses and where employees are seen as partners, not as objects. One Australia whose national politics is capable of seeing the paramount importance of investing in our infrastructure, the industries, the skills formation and the immigration levels needed for tomorrow in order to boost our national population, our workforce participation and our economic productivity for the future. And an Australia that sees itself as an integral part of the regional and global community, where our values and our interests are enhanced by comprehensive international engagement, where we are active contributors to the global solution to challenges like sustainable growth, climate change and asylum seekers, rather than just being part of the global problem. That is one vision for Australia, that is one course for the future. And there is, of course, an alternative Australia, a society which is insular, judgmental, intolerant of diversity, retreating to the illusions of a racial and cultural lager. The legacy of what we thought was what was now a long-distant past, or an economy governed by some of the self-congratulatory arrogance we see from some of our corporate elites, who, after a hundred years, have failed to produce a single memorable made-in-Australia global brand, content instead with the comfortable confines of a domestic market of 24 million people, and content too with the markets seen by the rest of the world as little more than a middle-sized treasure island, or a politics content with the continued appeasement of the mining majors as if these corporate beer moths should mystically be equated with the national interest, nourished by the illusion that the mining boom would somehow magically last forever, which it has not, and that building a more resilient economic foundation based on national broadband, higher education and the industries of the future, reinforced by strong immigration, was somehow redundant. In other words, a narrow, inward-looking Australia that sees the region and the world as a threat rather than an opportunity, and one ripe therefore for playing the ever-diminishing politics of race, xenophobia and fear. My friends and you the graduates of this year, I believe that these are the alternative futures we face. In other words, we can dream and build a big Australia, not just in the size of our population, the scale of our economy, as necessary guarantees for our long-term national survival. But more importantly, Australia that is big in heart and Australia that is big in imagination and Australia that is big in innovation, big in its entrepreneurial spirit, with the politics capable of sustaining big ideas, not cringing from them, as well as in Australia playing a bigger role in the region and the world, a role of which we can be justifiably proud, or the alternative, a small Australia, a small minded Australia increasingly disappearing into itself. Friends, graduates of this great university, I stand under apologetically for a big Australia, which is why I'm here among you today. I'm here to gently encourage you, if I can do that. In whatever path of life you choose to take, pursuing your areas of passion, of fascination and vocation, pursuing them to the full but always deploying the talents that you have for the many, not the few. Each and every one of you will be leaders in your own right. You may not know that now, I had absolutely no clue when I was sitting in your position 35 years ago. Leadership is not about the title that you might have, now or into the future. Leadership is about the values, the ideas and the initiatives you bring to the table, in your family, your workplace, your enterprise, your community, your country and in the world at large. And whether together, this great national family of ours can paint a bigger, broader canvas of this our country, Australia, for its future. As what Gareth once described, as a good international citizen in this our troubled world. That's the challenge I'd like to leave with you this afternoon. And I'm confident, having watched you walk across this stage, each and every one of you are capable of rising to the challenge in your own fields of endeavor. So let us go together to prosper this commonwealth of ours, Australia. And in the words of our visionary federation fathers, work together for the common Australian good and the good of all humankind. I thank you.