 Jumburu Buru Marambang. Good morning. Baladu Yaba, Nyambri, Nunawa Nyiyang. I'm speaking Nyambri Nunawa language. Yiling Galangbu, Giba Bangu, Wuga Buu, Miga Buu. Dita Nil Bang Maranya. Ladies and gentlemen, young men, young women, distinguished guests, Vice Chancellor Brian Smith, Nyari and Jamali, Nyambri, Gamal, Walgulu, Wallabalaw, Nunawa, Mujigang. Yiling Buu Jayandu, my respects to Nyambri, Gamal, Walgulu, Wallabalaw, Nunawa, Elders, Past and Present. Nyari and Jamarabu, Mujigangu, Nurembangigu, Nini Yeridu. My respects to all Elders and all people from all parts of the country here today. Nyambri Nunawa Maranya Gaembanya, Nini Yoga, Nurembangu, Dara. Nyambri Nunawa, people welcome you all to Nyambri Nunawa Country. Mambawara Naminyagu. Mujigabinyagu, Wuradaragu, Winnengala, Gubalagu. Looking to see, listening to hear, and learning to understand. Yinja Mara, Yinja Malgiri, Yinja Mara Buu, respect. Respected, respectful. It's a philosophy, it's an ideology in our local First Nation culture and heritage. Yinja Mara, respect. Yinja Mara, Magagiri, Biringa, Buogungu, Dirinda. Respect is in the journey of the Bogung moths in the mountains. Yinja Mara, respect. Yinja Mara, Balawalam, Wangadabu, Mudamadandabu, Banmuyu, Maradugurungambira, Nyambri Nunawa. Respect is in the grinding stones and the carved trees made long ago on Nyambri Nunawa Country. Yinja Mara, Balabiridabu, Binabirawu, Nyanbi Nunawa. Respect is in the rivers quietly moving through Nyambri Nunawa Country. Mudamwaginya, Yinja Mara, Mudamudadara, Wurambira. A respectful way of life, cares for country. This welcome the country is made in the spirit of peace and a desire for harmony for all peoples of the modern ACT and surrounds. And as local custodians, our main aim is to establish an atmosphere of mutual respect through the acknowledgement of our ancestors and the recognition of our rights to declare our special place in the pre and post contact of the region. Yinja Mara, Wurambira, Marandugurubu, Wurambira, Gyirugubu, Wurambira, Yandugubu. A respectful way of life, cares for country now, the past, the present and the future. Our signature is in the land, not just our DNA. Taking care of country is important to us. The more we look after our Mother Earth, the more she look after us, the land, the plants, the animals, the mountains, the rivers, it's all connected, not just environmentally, but also spiritually. The name Canberra, it comes from our word, local word right here in country, Namburu and Yambri. It means to sleep, the camp, the lie down. A little bit further to the North, the word Nunawa was recorded when our ancestors responded. The word Nunawa means here. Where else are we, Nunawa here? The law of the land talks about giving respect and honour to all people in all parts of the country, being patient, being polite, being gentle. Hold fast to each other, empower each other, respect everything living and growing. In conclusion, I'd like to say Gura Burri and wish you all the best on your studies, on your journey of studies here, on our ancestral country. Gura Burri, welcome, and Wurrga Wurri. I say, Yinja Mara, Mara Mara, Nia Nia Nia Gidama, Mara Nia. Respect shapes us and lifts up the people. Wurrga Wurri, thank you, and welcome. Paul House is a well-respected member of our community and his generosity of spirit in sharing, welcome to this beautiful country, sets us all in good stead for the journey that we have across our time at ANU. And I thank you very much for that incredibly warm and knowledgeable and the generosity of imparting such knowledge to us all. Thank you very much. I would also like to acknowledge and pay my respects to the elders of the land on which we meet, the Nunawaul and the Nambri people. I'm very proud to live and learn and raise a family on this beautiful country. And I hope that in your time with us at ANU, you take a moment every day to acknowledge the beauty and the richness of the culture and the country that we are on and work towards your own individual acts of reconciliation in all that you do. Thank you very much. It is now my great privilege to welcome to the stage our Vice Chancellor. And I say that very pointedly because he's very much our Vice Chancellor. Brian is a unique and extraordinary leader. He's the only university president in the world today who is a Nobel Laureate. ANU is a university that strives to be bold thinking with great ambition. And we can't do that as a whole of community without great leadership. And our VC has shown incredibly great leadership which has resulted in the announcement over the weekend of our Vice Chancellor being appointed for a second term as our Vice Chancellor. So hopefully everybody along this green, this avenue this morning will have the opportunity to complete your degrees, at least your first-time round of degrees or your postgraduate study under the leadership of our Vice Chancellor, Professor Brian Schmidt. Welcome everyone and thank you, Sue. I'd like to acknowledge Paul for his generous welcome to country. This is a really important part of being here at ANU. This land has been part of the Ngunnawal-Nambri traditions for a thousand generations, more than 20,000 years. And the meeting place, Cambry behind us near Sullivan's Creek, part of that. And so it is indeed worth paying respect to that tradition every time we meet here like we are today. And thank you for the privilege of meeting here on Ngunnawal-Nambri land. I also want to acknowledge that Paul is also a commencing student today. So he, like you, is starting his academic journey. So thank you all for being here today. It is great to see the new faces and I can be honest, I get a little chill down my spine looking out today. And it is my honor and privilege to be able to officially welcome you to our ANU community. But before we start, I also want to acknowledge those students who are not here today who had expected to be starting their degree at ANU and sitting with you today, but have been thwarted by the emergence of the coronavirus. So to make them feel at home and get them ready when they do make their way here, I thought it would be good. Maybe we'd start off with a way for everyone to say g'day and to make sure that we welcome those people and note their absence. This is hard on them, but we're going to be doing everything we can to make them feel welcome. So if it's all right, we're going to get a camera up here and I'm going to send a message to them today with this all saying g'day. So if you're ready, yes, we'll wait until three. So on three, we're going to wave and say g'day. Ready? One, two, three. G'day. Thank you all. And I'm going to be asking each of you if you have friends or if you want to make friends to reach out and help these people who are not here with us today, help them with their studies and help them feel part of our community. For those of you who are here, things are looking much brighter even if it is in a slightly cloudy day now that we finally have some reasonable weather and some rain to green up our grass. The bushfire, the smoke, the hailstorms have hopefully now all passed and Canberra, we hope, is back to its normal self of being what I see as being quite an idyllic spot, a place where our campus can be a sanctuary for all of you to live and learn over the next several years. Today it is indeed my joy that I get to welcome you to the ANU community because you only really get to do that once a year. As just announced, I have decided and have been offered the opportunity to continue on in this position for another five years. This is the hardest job I have ever done in my life but helping make sure all of you are given the time of your life. Well, that is something that makes it worthwhile. This is a time that will help you define the rest of your life and that is what makes this job the most important job I have ever done. The next few days are going to be intense, even daunting as you find yourself being immersed in a completely new environment full of new people from all sorts of backgrounds. But take a moment to look around. This is new for everyone. It's new for Paul, it's new for you, it's even new for us who have been here because each group of students are different than the last. Each of you brings a unique perspective and a perspective that we are hoping helps shape the world in the years coming. So take the time to be friendly, talk to people, find out their stories and make new friends as you start your journey and it's going to be one of the most intense learning journeys of your life. I grew up in the mountains of Montana and Alaska in the United States among the most remote parts of America. I started almost 35 years ago at the University of Arizona. It was 40 degrees Celsius on my first day. The desert had no green, no pine trees. So I found the adjustment just to the climate quite shocking. But also just trying to sort out new friends. Mobile phones did not exist, social media wasn't even a glimmer in Mark Zuckerberg's eyes. I don't even think he was a glimmer in his parents' eyes at that time. So connecting back home with family and friends was tough. Now, I will admit I did manage to do it through a rather talented friend who will remain nameless from high school who had learned how to ping your phone booths. They have little chimes and he could ping them and he stringed together a chain phone call involving about 40 of my friends. And he would do that about once a month until the police came calling on him and convinced him to stop. Anyway, you will have the chance to connect with friends and keep doing that. But so keep up with your old friends, but make new ones. You are amongst extraordinary people and many of the friends you make here will last a lifetime and they will help define your future. It is worth the effort. To help you, our Student Associations, Anusa and Parsa up here, represented up here, have set up a fantastic array of activities for orientation week. So it's time to get involved and see what's on offer. And as I said, it's a great way to meet new people, including those who are studying different subjects because those are the people who are going to teach you things you hadn't thought about and make you see the world in a slightly different way. They are the ones who are going to help you learn not just what you came to study, but so much more. And so I encourage you to play hard at uni and the Associations are one way to do it. But I also encourage you to never forget that the great education we offer here at ANU will set you up for the rest of your lives and is unique in Australia, unique around the world and very valuable. So please make the most of it. Finally, it's my role to provide you with some sage advice. That's what Vice Chancellor's do. So you're going to have to deal with me. I'm thinking about when I was in 1985 when I was my first year as an undergraduate. And there are things that I encourage you to think about. Maybe not in your first week, but over your time here. Be prepared to think out of the box and do things that go beyond your classes. Now, this might be, in my case, doing research. I volunteered to do research in a lab and that is ultimately the volunteer activity that enabled me to go on and do a research career in astronomy. But you might think about doing interns in Parliament House. You might think about working in a firm that you find interest, starting a business. There's all sorts of things you can do here. But be prepared to think outside the box. Take a chance to wander around this campus and learn of its history. It has this history that goes back millennia and there are modules available online to help you through it. The core modules are a way to understand indigenous history if you hadn't had a chance. But we also have a descriptive history around Sullivan's Creek and beyond. Go find out what a scar tree is when it means and see if you can find one. It is really important for you all to look after your mental health. Studying, working and socializing is important but this will be one of the most intense times of your life. You're going to be asked to step up and push yourself places that you haven't gone before and that's hard and it's hard for everyone. So do some self-care but also don't be afraid to access the support services when you need them. You don't get extra points for being tough here and I use them all the time because my job's hard too. And finally the thing I really want you to think about is being a positive part of our community. We need here at this university to show the world what civility and rationality looks like. Show the world how it is you can agree to disagree. You're not going to agree with everyone you hear around you. Be prepared to step up and talk to people about why you disagree. Don't stew. Don't get mad. Have a discussion. That discussion is the discussion the world needs and the world is looking to you as its future leaders to learn that art and unlearn some of the bad behavior that has emerged in our culture over the last 20 years. If you see something not right be prepared to intervene and make it better. Don't think it's someone else's job. Our first commencement speaker and annual alumnus Lieutenant General David Morrison told us the standard you walk by is the standard you accept. Never forget that. Don't let things happen that you think aren't right and you could be nice about it. You don't have to be mean but intervene when you think you need to. Join a club, a sport or a society. There's all sorts of things going on here. Be part of them. That's a great way to meet people. It's a great way to find your feet and get a sense of all the things that are going on and finally interact actively with your teachers and your other students in your classes. The reality is all the facts you need to know they're on Wikipedia now. We're not teaching you facts here. We're teaching you to think to critically analyze situations to learn things that have not yet been written on Wikipedia. That requires you to not just sit back and do the bare minimum digitally. It means interacting. I want you to annoy your teachers and ask them too many questions. I want you to try to solve the problems that you are given by working together with colleagues. Not cheating in the form of copying your work but talk the problem said over. That's how you learn. Learning from your peers. That is what makes us a great university. That is the thing that distinguishes this university from all else. Finally, enjoy your surrounds. Here we'll soon feel like home and I look forward to seeing you around the campus. I'm someone who's out and about all the time. Feel free to come up and have a chat on anything you want. We can talk about the future of the universe or why parking is the cost that it is on this campus. I prefer the first but I talk about the second a lot more. Remember in 1985 when I was in your seat I had no idea what my future would hold. The idea of winning a Nobel Prize was so fanciful that it was farcical to even think about it, ludicrous. So don't underestimate your future. ANU is here to help you make the most out of it and we know in this group amazing things are going to occur and you need to be prepared to step up because it might be you that fate destines to have that amazing impact. Welcome to ANU. Best of luck in your studies and look forward to seeing you around. Cheers.