 Good morning, everyone. Please take your seats. We are about to begin. All right. Come to Māori, Nisambu la Vinaka, everyone. Welcome and well done for braving the sprinkling rain and the slight cold today to gather with all of us for the commencement of the year, 2023. Happy 2023, everyone. I was going to say it's a beautiful day to be gathered, but it's still beautiful because we appreciate all the elements here on Nenwal and Nambri country, and we are going to celebrate the start of the A new year. Warmly want to welcome all new undergraduate and postgraduate students. Yandra is well to everyone who's joined us online and deep thanks to all of you for choosing to be part of our A and U community. I'm Katarina Tewa. I'm from the School of Culture, History and Language in the College of Asia and the Pacific, and I will be your emcee this morning. Just a few housekeeping issues before we officially start. If you do need anything, especially to do with health, well-being and hand sanitizer, do note the location of the first aid tents that are set up along here and all the wonderful volunteer marshals who are wearing pink hives who can point you in the direction of things you might need, including water. There are water bubblers that you can access. There are toilets with big signs pointing to the various buildings that are set up around here. Please consult the volunteer marshals if you need anything. I'd also like everyone to please check into the gathering. So there is QR code that I hope you can see or it will be displayed on digital screens that are set up around us. It is not a COVID check-in, but it's rather something that helps the university understand who everyone is that is gathered with us today. So please do utilize the QR code and check in this morning. Now at the end of the gathering I will give some instructions about how to leave for the wonderful free morning tea that's provided. Hopefully it comes with hot tea and coffee as well because we'll all need the heat. But I will give you some instructions about how to proceed in an orderly fashion to the morning tea so that hopefully you don't have to line up for too long. So before we go any further in our program I would like to invite someone with a very awesome name to do our welcome to country. Serena Williams. Thank you so much Serena. Is a Wiradjuri Nunawal custodian and Serena has lived in Canberra all her life and is very heavily involved in the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community. She's affiliated with the Nambri Aboriginal Land Council and has been working for years on amazing and important and impactful projects supporting her communities. Serena is passionate about the prevention of family violence with a focus on the needs of community and has a celebrated career in awareness education and training in this area. She has significantly contributed to the development and review of the nationally accredited Indigenous program DV Alert domestic and family violence response training. Serena also founded and implemented the Moleon Mora program with the ACT Women's Legal Center and the surrounding regions and is currently a program manager at the ACT Legal Center. Thank you so much Serena. Thank you Professor Katarina. First of all and I think something should be really acknowledged today is the 15 year anniversary of the Stolen Gen. The Honourable Kevin Rudd done the apology 15 years ago and I'd like to acknowledge those that have made it home, those that are still trying and those that haven't. I'd also like to acknowledge the Vice-Chancellor Brian Schmidt also ANU aluminium, LMI, Kenny Pender. I'd also like to acknowledge Ben Yates and Tristan Yip and thank you to the ANU for having me here today and respecting Ngunnawal protocols. As a Ngunnawal emerging elder and a very proud Ngunnawal Rajri woman I have had the opportunity to actually work around the ANU and do a lot of welcome to countries and smoking ceremonies and I think it's a great importance because the landscape that we're on and we're actually on a woman's song line and this is where law was made by women so we to to our left to the left of me behind me we've got Black Mountain and then we have Mount Ainsley and they are the breast of our song line of the woman and we're actually sitting on the cleavage of the of our song line of this woman so you can imagine how much heart and how much knowledge and wisdom is brought from here. I'd also like to acknowledge Yocumbrak the new residence which has a very strong significance to us as Ngunnawal people and relates back to my father. Yocumbrak is Yocumbrak, Yocumbrak the crow and is the messenger of the Ngunnawal people along with our totem, the Malian. My father was highly significant in the work that he'd done here for the for his people in the land rights movement, been one of the first four to meet with the been one of the first men to meet here on country with the four men that travelled down from Sydney with Aboriginal 10 Embassy. He also brought the Aboriginal Legal Service here to the ACT and a founding and a director member of the Aboriginal Legal Service and done a lot in this community with non-Indigenous and Indigenous people. He was passionate about his people and one of the things that he was always passionate about was education. He said to me education is the key, the key to do what you need to to do and excel in life. You need an education. He kept on walking that out all his life to us. Sadly we lost him over 28 years ago so for something to be called Yocumbrak is very significant and a privilege and an honour to our family, to his children, to the grandchildren and the great grandchildren that his name lives on with our dreaming and the name of the messenger of the Yocumbrak still lives within the story lines of the Ngunnawal people. With that I'd like to thank the ANU because I look forward to being a part of that and continuing our culture, the oldest living culture in the world. I'd like to wish all the new ANU students all the best. I think it's, it can be a scary thing but yous are here and yous are ready and yous are going to do this on the land of the beautiful Ngunnawal country and I'd like to acknowledge any other Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people here today. I'd like to acknowledge my elders past, present and future and I say on behalf of all the Ngunnawal families, Yadamura, I will sweep the lands for you to leave your footprints here on my beautiful country, Najjan, the water of the Murrumbijia, the Malonglo, the rural and the Gajambi that will cleanse you of all harm, Malian, Malian is the wedged tail eagle, she will guide, protect and oversee you on your journey here on Ngunnawal country. Once again, good luck, all the best and welcome, welcome, welcome to beautiful Ngunnawal country. Thank you. I actually agree with everything that they're saying so well done. As someone who is from the Pacific, we absolutely should pay attention to climate change and think about what's happening to our oceans and to our planet. Kampasinrapa, Vinakavakalebusara and Korpasinrapa and Vinakavakalebusarina to you and your ancestors who have cared for this land in a way that certain companies are not caring anymore all over the world. Thank you to you and your ancestors for nurturing and giving us an opportunity to share this space, an important meeting place for thousands of years. Sovereignty was never ceded, this was and will always be Aboriginal land and like the ANU, we can all commit to engaging and raising the voices, knowledges and values of the people of the land and our oceans too. I acknowledge all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students and staff joining us today and extend a greeting to any new Indigenous students or staff from around the world. As Serena shared, there are also many Aboriginal heritage features of our campus including at Cambry along the creek and amongst the beautiful trees on campus so do get to know more about these aspects of the ANU. You can care for the earth if you care for where you live and where you work so that caring starts here with our ANU community. Now a special shout out to new students who have come from diverse corners of regional Australia as well and I just want to highlight one student because sometimes we do these events and we may or may not have yet met any of our new students but I was very lucky a few months ago to meet one of our new ANU students and undergraduate Kiera Raskova from Burma-Gui from beautiful Ewan country. Much to my youngest daughter's delight the two of them have the exact same name Kiera spelled and pronounced the exact same way. It was lovely to meet her in a family and to hear that she'd chosen to enroll in a bachelor of science at the ANU. Kiera's bilingual grew up speaking Czech. I don't know if you're here Kiera but I'm giving you a wave. She's excited to be living in Fenner Hall in the heart of Cambry and she's also relieved to have secured a parking permit on campus but enough about parking. I will now hand you over to our absolutely brilliant leader our Vice Chancellor and President one of us of Australia's most eminent and Nobel Prize winning scientists Professor Brian Schmidt. Sadly but understandably the VC recently announced his plans to retire from the role as our fearless leader for the last seven and a bit rather challenging years and return to his important academic endeavors studying the sky and indeed the whole universe Vice Chancellor Brian Schmidt with the official ANU 2023 commencement address. Thank you Katarina and thank you all Serena thank you as always for your warm welcome to country it is great to see you again in 2023 and I too would like to acknowledge and celebrate the first Australians on whose traditional lands we are meeting today and pay my respects to the not a wall and Nambu people of the Cambry region and to all first Australians on whose traditional lands we meet and work. It is very fitting that we are meeting here along University Avenue a central through fare of campus which leads to Cambry which we opened in 2019 as part of a major revitalization revitalization of our campus. Cambry literally means meeting place and it has been a site for sharing ideas and knowledge that has served literally thousands of generations and that is worth celebrating please take a chance a chance to wander through our campus and see all of the history that goes back longer than is almost possible to comprehend. As you study at ANU we'll see that First Nations ideas and cultures are embedded into all that we do and as Katarina said I am the Vice Chancellor of ANU but I am also an astronomer I love to teach and yes I'm even a great grower and winemaker between everything else. Everyone here has a diverse set of things that they do and it is an amazing community and welcome to it. You too will be amazing in the diverse set of things you get up to. I have now been here for about 28 years and a little bit so you can probably guess that I do love this campus and this community and I am so pleased to welcome everyone here today. It is also exciting that we are welcoming back so many international students after COVID closed our borders. It has been tough on everyone especially our students who have been stranded away from campus so it is great to have you all back again as well and for those of you online waiting to get here we look forward to your imminent arrival. So I'm not really a corporate Vice Chancellor and so I will dispense telling you how wonderful we are in that sense and I'm guessing most of you who are here today did your research in choosing us you didn't just show up here without knowing what we are. What I want to talk about today is to reflect on what and how you might what you need to do and what and how you might take the most out of your time here on campus. Our campus is set here on 145 hectares of bushland and it has more than 150 different buildings and that means you are going to need to get out and explore a bit if you are going to understand A&U and all that it has to give. Whether it is on bike or foot make sure you go and see the campus not just go to where your classes are located. You might even meet one of our resident echidnas or see several of the more than 10 species of parrots that frequent our trees and our grasses. You might even discover a nice place to chill out and kind of relax and do your studies outside there are many such places hidden amongst the land. There are lots of coffee shops I certainly find these useful. Vanilla bean over at the John Curtin School of Medical Research has a great chocolate brownie. La Baguette at the A&U School of Art has great French pastries among other things. There's little pickle in biology there's the coffee grounds over here near the sports and rec center. God's and Headley Bull Atticus in the College of Business and Economics plus all of the places you will frequent in Cambry just to name a few. Just because you don't study in that part of campus doesn't mean you should not go out and enjoy it. These are good places to find me in the morning if that is something that you're keen to do. There are also so many things to study here and not necessarily just what is in your major your degree. Most of you have a lot of flexibility to take electives and you never know you might start out in one field and graduate in something completely different. During my undergraduate degree I took for example anthropology English literature art history and three years of Russian. Now three years of Russian was really really hard character building and now that I unfortunately have been banned from going to Russia by Putin I don't think I'm gonna get a lot of chance to use it but I will say I'm still really glad I did that. Across campus there are talks and events every day of the week of all sorts of interesting people. You have the chance to go and meet people from across Australia across the region across the world. Take those opportunities you only get these for this very short window of your life and it's amazing. Most people I meet say wish I would have done a few more of those because you just don't realize what you missed. My second piece of advice is to try and meet as many new people as possible. We're not a state-based or territory-based university although we do welcome a lot of people from Canberra but the reality is 85% of our undergraduates now come from somewhere other than Canberra. A hundred nations are represented here today a hundred nations with lots of people from every state and territory from all sorts of backgrounds. This means you won't be alone in finding your feet and I encourage you to go out and meet new types of people and find out all that each of you has to offer. Spend time with them. These people will become your friends for the rest of your life and make sure you take a chance to meet an incredibly diverse range of people not just the people who are studying what you study or grew up near where you grew up. That's why we have made A&U not just a place to study but a residential home for many of our students. Last week as Serena said we opened our newest residential hall Ukenbrook and that is home to more than 700 students. I may be cooking there on Wednesday to try out the new cooking facilities. That means there are almost 6,400 students living on campus and then many many people in the nearby. That's the largest residential cohort in any Australian university and note that A&U is one of the smallest universities in Australia. So a lot of you are here all the time and that is by design. It is deliberate because we know that the experience you have outside the classroom will be just as transformative if not more transformative than the classes that make up your degree but all are important. Many of you will not live on campus or will have moved off to somewhere nearby. Please remain involved. This might be by joining many of our clubs or societies. There are over 100 to choose from and be part of Griffin Hall, our non-resident hall. Now I came to A&U as a young researcher in astrophysics but when I did my undergraduate degree at the University of Arizona in the United States I really didn't know what I wanted to do when I was going to graduate and I certainly did not think I would be an astronomer for life. I was a good student but I was not stand out of the crowd good at high school. I decided to do astronomy precisely because I did not know what to do. I never thought as I said astronomy would be a career but I knew I would learn physics, engineering, computing, math, all these skills that would help me get a job doing something and then I also knew I would enjoy it and I was absolutely right. You don't know what life is going to turn out so make sure while you're here you do things that you enjoy. Try different things. This is how you will do it well if you try different things and find the things that you love. In the end your time here should be one of the best of your life. It will have ups and downs no doubt but we want to prepare prepare you for whatever it is that you want to do for the rest of your life. Now before I introduce our alumni speaker I want to talk about my final piece of advice which is respect and I talk about this each year because it is the one rule you really need to know to get on here. The university is going to be a completely new way of life for most of you. No matter what the only thing I want you to think about as the first thing is to put respect of your fellow human at the center of everything you do while you are here and preferably for the rest of your life. Respect for people's ideas even if you completely disagree with them. Respect how you treat your fellow human. If you can in every moment remember to treat people the way you wish to be treated or the way someone you love should be treated. If you do that then you will get almost everything right and I do want to remind you that respect for your fellow human is part of that respect pledge and it means not just standing by and watching others be disrespectful and not doing anything. Respectfully intervene or if it is such a magnitude report the incident hopefully that will not happen and as I said that will make sure that your time here and the people around you will be outstanding. So I now have immense pleasure of welcoming back one of our distinguished alumni who is sitting on the stage Kiran Pender. Kiran is an Australian writer, lawyer, and academic. He graduated from ANU with a university medal. He is now a senior lawyer at the Human Rights Law Center and an honorary lecturer at the ANU College of Law. He is one of Australia's leading experts on whistleblower protections, secrecy and free speech. He is passionate about equality and inclusion and I am delighted that he accepted my invitation to deliver the 2023 commencement address. Welcome Kiran. Thanks Brian. Hi everyone. I also want to acknowledge the traditional custodians of this land the Ngunnawal and Nambri people and recognize their elders past and present and it was such a beautiful welcome to country. We would just have the privilege of enjoying. Sovereignty was never ceded and I note that this year will be a particularly significant one on Australia's long journey towards recognition and reconciliation with our First Peoples. Let us hope that this is a year of progress. Now I live in Canberra, beautiful cold Canberra but I began writing this speech when I was up in Sydney visiting my partner who lives in Balmain and there's this beautiful cafe on the harbour that has this view of the harbour bridge and as I was admiring that view writing this speech I reflected on how bridge building is an apt metaphor for the journey that you are all embarking on today. When engineers and labourers began constructing the Sydney Harbour Bridge in 1923 they might have known where they were going in a literal sense. They were going from the north edge of the city to the southern edge of northern Sydney but they did not know and indeed they could not have known how influential the bridge would become to life in Sydney, how it would become a globally distinctive landmark. Today it's hard to imagine Sydney without the bridge just as no doubt before 1923 it would have been hard to imagine the city with it. This week each of you begin building your own bridge with your education at the Australian National University. Some of you might have a good idea of where that bridge is taking you particularly if you're taking a more vocational course maybe engineering to stick with the theme you might have a firm idea of the destination on the other side in three four or five years time maybe you will quite literally start building bridges. If you're taking a less vocational course a Bachelor of Arts say which I studied here the destination might be less clear but wherever you are studying whatever you are studying wherever you come from wherever you hope to be going this week marks the beginning of a journey into the unknown. The years ahead in the years ahead the bridge you are building to your post graduation future will profoundly shape you in ways you can anticipate and ways that you cannot. For most if not all of you your years studying here will influence the course of your life and your professional career for decades to come. Your experiences here inside and outside of the classroom will leave a truly distinctive mark in time you'll find it impossible to reflect on the course of your life without reference to your transformative years studying at the ANU. Now I've probably tortured that bridge metaphor enough so for the remainder of my remarks I wanted to reflect on three key themes of my time at this university and three lessons I've sought to apply to my life since graduating. By way of background I was in your shoes just over a decade ago in February 2011 the ANU has always felt like home to me my father studied here I spent much time in Schiffley library as a child I lived on campus during numerous summer sports camps so my O week was more familiar than different. I appreciate that won't be the same for everyone standing here today for some of you you might feel this first time stepping foot on campus that the campus is a distant alien world but I sincerely hope that in the years ahead this campus will come to feel like home for you just as it does for me and like any good home away from home I've basically never left it took me eight years to finish my undergraduate studies I probably don't recommend that another year to get a graduate diploma a few months after that I was appointed a visiting fellow at the College of Law and now I'm still here the law students in the crowd might enjoy my teaching or not in the years ahead the first theme of my studies was the international opportunities and outlook that the ANU offers I know the ANU likes to call itself Australia's national university I guess it is in the name but I think it would be more accurate to call this the nation's international university there are an unparalleled number of international opportunities on offer throughout your studies during my degrees I undertook an exchange to the US I did an internship in DC I studied ancient history in Turkey I studied international law in Geneva I competed at mooting competitions in Tokyo and New Delhi I did field work for my Honours thesis overseas I travelled to Kiribati in the Pacific I had eight international trips across three continents during the course of my studies now perhaps that student experience was atypical I was good at ferreting out opportunities and finding ways to get the ANU to pay for them although I should add I also worked a lot but there are abundant international opportunities on offer at the ANU and funds available to contribute towards them whether in full or in part my life has been forever shaped by these experiences I met some of my best friends along the way and because of the global perspective I gained from studying here much of my subsequent career as a journalist and a lawyer has had an international flavour in that respect I feel the ANU gave me an incredible head start I was not required to adapt to international environments because I'd spent my studies in them and so I urge all of you to investigate the opportunities that are available to you in the course of your studies to go abroad even if they're not available in your first year remember them keep the dates in mind check again next year and the year after with the little admin persistence and initiative the world is very much your oyster but the other facet of ANU's international character is the global outlook you get without even leaving campus we are incredibly fortunate to have faculty here who've relocated from other countries or have studied overseas many of you have moved here from interstate or abroad together in the years ahead you'll share perspectives and experiences that will make you all richer for it I grew up in Bangandoor a small country town outside of Canberra I studied alongside students from Brunei Beijing and Boston I took a class in the guh or yurt that the ANU had been donated by the Mongolian embassy I attended seminars and guest lectures from illustrious speakers from all around the world right here in Canberra for some of you who've moved here from big cities this may seem like a small place but on this campus there is a world of opportunity the second theme of my time at ANU and I really hope your time to come is that this can be this study experience you want and need there is no one-size-fits-all being a Canberra or a townie I lived at home for much my degree my Thursday nights were not spent at Moose heads I did not have a ready-made social life courtesy of residential college and that was fine by me I worked part-time throughout my degrees and my time on campus was limited I probably spent more time on the grass of South Oval while playing for ANU football club than I did lazing on the lawns of the law school but I know for many of my friends their time at ANU was shaped by their life at college by their late nights at Moose heads by the hunt for free lunchtime barbecues on campus or in this case a free morning tea there is no right way to experience your time at the ANU just as the two engineers to return to our bridge analogy seeking to span some gap might use two different designs to do so I would encourage you in the years ahead to be bold in your individuality but there's a really important anterior point too just as everyone's experiences in the year ahead will be different so too do all of you come here with different backgrounds perspectives and experiences some of you will be the first in your family to study at university others will be the children of university professors some of you grew up five minutes away others 5000 kilometers away be kind to each other embrace those different perspectives and do all you can to foster an inclusive environment in your friendship circles and your study groups not everyone has had the same experiences as you and so use the years ahead to expand your horizons the third theme is the incredible people you'll meet in the years ahead I met some of my closest friends in my first week of law school in fact I had dinner with them last night another of my best friends I met while we were student editors on the ANU's law journal I'm honored to be her best man at her wedding later this year in the weeks months and years ahead you'll form friendships that will endure for your life in your tutorials down your hall at college or across the table at the bar you might meet your life partner university is a formative experience for all of us and the friendships you make at this time reflect that but studying here exposes you not just to new friends and new romantic partners at the ANU there are hundreds of professors lecturers and tutors who will enrich your mind in the years ahead they care about your education they want to inspire you and spark your learning in the classroom and beyond make the most of it so these are some of the key aspects of my time here I hope they foreshadow some of the experiences that you have in the years ahead but I want to conclude by outlining three lessons I've put sought to put into practice since I graduated the first is the importance of paying forward the generosity that will be extended to you through mentoring and guidance in the years ahead I benefited incredibly from the wisdom of many people during my studies and in the initial years of my career many a coffee breakfast or lunch where people with more experience than me offered ideas suggestions and a sounding board people are more than happy to give up their time to help you at this stage in your life but subsequently I've tried to give back to the next generation I recall trying to pay for coffee after benefiting from career guidance from someone who refused my attempt at a gesture of thanks and said instead plenty of people brought me coffee early on this is on me but you have to pay it forward take an hour from the wisdom and kindness of others but do not forget to give it back in the years after you have left this place second I think it's important to remember that everyone takes their own path in life and that atypical does not mean impossible when I'm asked off a career guidance I begin by caveatting that one can only speak from their own experience and perspective and that the right path for me might not be the right path for you I do this because I had many a well-meaning mentor suggest that my dual paths as a journalist and a lawyer were not compatible that I had to pick one and it will be hard to forge a career across both now I don't think of myself as particularly stubborn but I hope I've proven those well-meaning people wrong I worked as a journalist through university and when I came to was graduating I faced an inflection point which path to take well I took both I didn't want to be a lawyer or a journalist I wanted to be a lawyer and a journalist and so I did through hard work and plenty of luck I've succeeded in both disciplines I tell you this not to be immodest nor to criticise those who suggested it was not a feasible path but in the hope you take from it the lesson that anything is possible don't let orthodox pathways deter you from whatever it is you want to pursue I consider myself a better journalist because of my legal skills and a better lawyer for my writing ability think outside the box and do what you want to do and finally never forget the immense privilege of the education you are gaining from your years studying at the ANU whatever you study whatever you pursue post-graduation your ANU education puts you in a special position to affect positive change whether that be through volunteer work politics or activism whether you go on to work directly at the cold face of change or indirectly through financial or in kind support in the years ahead each and every one of you will be in a position to make Australia and the world a better place grasp that opportunity because if not you who cherish the incredible experience you were setting out on this week and then put it to work thank you good luck and I hope the years ahead will be some of the best years of your life just as they were for me Korapa thank you so much Kiran for a very inspiring and and for sharing your journey through the ANU I couldn't agree more about the way in which you focused on the very local and the very global kinds of opportunities that this university affords and as someone who teaches in the College of Asia in the Pacific in the School of Culture History and Language where you can learn anything from Thai, Burmese, Mongolian, Chinese, Japanese all the way to Papua New Guinea and talk Pizzen I couldn't agree more that the kinds of opportunities you get at ANU are so unique and really important and while it wasn't so easy to travel during the pandemic hopefully things are a little bit easier now and many of you can experience some of the wonderful opportunities that this university provides for all of us so thank you so much for sharing your journey we have two more wonderful student speakers this morning the first the next one is Ben Yates who is from ANUSA now ANUSA is very important if you are a new undergraduate student get to know what some of the services and support opportunities are available the ANU Student Association is the peak representative body for undergraduates and you can find everything you need from academic to financial to legal support they can point you towards counseling mental health and well-being support or if you just need a space to come together find community and hang out this is what ANUSA can help you with so Ben is the president of ANUSA and also the undergraduate member of the ANU council so the ANUSA president sits on the council he's a fifth year law art student a bit similar to Kiran he was a resident at right hole for three years where he was a senior resident he's also a very passionate environmentalist and was a co-convener of the ANU environment collective in 2021 where he co-organized a student referendum on divestment from fossil fuels and we heard that about that a little bit this morning too with our wonderful students who shared their views this morning thank you so much Ben good morning everybody I want to start by thanking Serena for her warm welcome to beautiful none of all country and I want to earnestly encourage you to take time during your studies to understand what it means to live on what always was and always will be Aboriginal land take time to understand the 60 000 years of sovereign society and culture and the more than 200 years of survival and resistance in the face of colonization my name is Ben I'm the president of ANUSA your student union and a member of ANU council I'm acutely aware that my voice is just one of a number this week who will offer you advice and given that I want to take the opportunity to give you a piece of advice I suspect you might not hear from anyone else this week it also has added poignancy given the earlier intervention and that in and that advice is to impress upon you the importance of being disobedient as a student I'm not giving you a license to do harm to be rude to be willful far from it instead I want to briefly set out to you a case that students always have and must always be um disobedient take up their scholarly and social role as agitators disobedient to scholarly consensus political pressure and social norms at the beginning of a scholarly journey whether you're commencing your first post-school degree or at the beginning of a long doctoral candidacy you are joining a community debate and disagreement are the bedrock of successful scholarship the cause of growing knowledge has rarely been advanced by obediently repeating what is already believed knowledge is not produced through agreement but through struggle going against the grain picking the path of greater resistance you probably chose this university because of the opportunity to learn from remarkable people who you estimate might know a lot more about your discipline than you do how then do you go against the grain embracing the virtue of disobedience is to learn the difference between treating expertise with respect and with reverence there's no consistency between according to expertise the respect it deserves and holding strong in your own opinions in a last to the age in 1951 in defense of a spate of student unrest the vice chancellor of the university of melbourne john medley wrote intelligent youth is prone by nature to doubt and there's never been so much food for doubt as there is at present the need for doubt is never abated if this just disobedience is academically necessary it is also clearly socially necessary students propensity for disobedience has made us a strong powerful social class for generations we've been at the forefront of changing our society more broadly the delightful benefit of disobedience is the realization that you don't have to be the passive recipient of the conditions in which you live instead you can shape them this is especially true at universities as students you're not the recipients of a service you're the cohabitants of a community over which you can have influence i find it deeply empowering to see the changes that we campaign for in my first year being realities changing students lives today embrace those feelings of doubt and skepticism and don't be afraid to push back also remember that respect and disobedience can and should go hand in hand hold your community accountable by refusing to be obedient to what others do hold each other accountable and we get a better community for us all i'm pleased to embrace disobedience because universities have never been environments of perfect harmony descent is part of the fabric of these institutions and obedience is anathema to dissent as the president of your student union it's my task to help you dissent and to make sure that you feel and know the power that you hold whether it's helping you represent your education needs to your teachers working for a safer campus and safer communities or making sure that student life is accessible and affordable and who says here to help you represent it is here to represent you but also to help you represent yourself i was convinced of the social importance of disobedience by campaigns for climate action as mentioned and i know many of you will be animated by that as well like the activists who got up here earlier before i'm excited for a national day of action on march 17 but during my time at this university it's also been my privilege to see the work of our new departments amazing communities of students from marginalized identities who are working hard for safer experiences for their communities and creating a more diverse student body these students have corralled the other students to make this university a safer more diverse and more inclusive place so friends i implore you to take up a bit of this disobedience with you as you start your journey as students here because it is a bit of disobedience that makes an education a tool to change the world i wish you all the best in your studies and i look forward to talking to you soon thank you so much ben i could not agree more about the disobedience factor and some of those have can happen at a really micro level and some in a really macro level i do want to note that there is i think a wonderful exhibition about the history of student protest and activism at the anew in the marie ray building so if you want to see and learn more about anew's proud tradition of protest and activism please do go and check out that exhibition and i think you know some people who come to the anew from from overseas and who know about the amazing global reputation of anew's academic excellence may not know as much about these histories of protest and activism and dissent that has also shaped this institution so it is one of those factors that has helped keep keep me committed and loyal and caring towards the anew so thank you so much for bringing that up our next speaker is from parser the postgraduate and research student association and this is another really important postgraduate student body to support students it's similar to anew sir in that you can find many of the different services that you will need as a postgraduate student but often post grads come with other issues to the anew sometimes they bring families sometimes they need other kinds of support as carers as parents um or as migrants so parser is the go-to place if you need that sort of support um at the anew so our speaker is tristan yipp who is the president of parser he's currently completing a jurist doctor specializing in public law it's a lot of law grads or people studying law this morning um he also though comes from a background in modern chinese history and chinese language um tristan is committed to ensuring the interests of of postgraduate and research students whether academics social or cultural um and ensuring they're reflected in university decision making through strong post grad led advocacy um tristan thanks katarina so i'm up for this morning as the representative of the postgraduate and research students association at the anew we provide postgraduate specific student outreach and support services advocacy and community building but rather than speak particularly about our organization and what we do or even about myself i'll be speaking today more generally as a postgraduate student about the long tradition of higher degree and postgraduate study there's been the cornerstone of the anew since its founding 74 years ago and reflecting on the importance of high-level research the anew has always been a university with a difference at the time of its establishment in 1946 australia along with the rest of the world was recovering from six years of global war it was the vision of several eminent australian scholars from both the arts and the social sciences to establish a national university which would drive australia's post-war recovery and conduct research which would allow us to forge our own path in foreign affairs this would be an institution capable of leading innovative unique and groundbreaking research in areas vital to australia's domestic and foreign interests including medical research and the natural sciences economics and notably asian pacific studies an important area of strategic research which the anew has always specialized in and which has taken on new significance in today's global political and security environment it was for this reason the foresight of the anew's founders 74 years ago a vision of a world-class institution undertaking world-leading research for the betterment of society that the anew was founded as a research intensive university our founders sought to distinguish this university from the established universities of other states which prioritized undergraduate coursework and practical education over the pursuit of research in its purest form initially post graduates and particularly phd students made up the entirety of the anew's first decade of enrolment unusual at the time and unheard of for today's modern australian university sector it was not until 1960 nine years after the conferral of the first anew degree and 14 years after the anew's establishment that undergraduates finally became for the first time a part of life at the anew so why is this important quite simply research is what drives progress is what propels humanity forwards without research progress would slow to a halt and our lives as we know them today would be completely different in the last few years the last few decades and even the last few centuries our lives have been shaped by radical transformations in all fields of human endeavor politics science culture society history law agriculture medicine computing climate change all these fields and many more have taken us to heights of human endeavor which are until recently almost unthinkable the things we study and research the way we work and the way we look at the world now almost unrecognizable from 30 years ago in 30 years time the way we see the world today will seem just as unfamiliar and a new postgraduate and phd students have been and will continue to be at the heart of these substantial changes which day by day at an accelerating pace are transforming the way we understand and interact with the world over 50 percent of the student cohort at the anew is either studying a postgraduate degree or as a phd student and proportion significantly greater than any other major australian university whether in the workplace or in academia for applied skills or fundamental skills postgraduates provide the technical and analytical expertise which will drive deep societal changes for decades to come research activity has a flow and effect to the national and global economy for every one dollar spent on research around ten dollars comes back in benefits to the economy graduate research students account for over 56 percent of the human resources universities devote to research and development is our invaluable contribution to research both direct and indirect that drove this very university to raise phd stipends by 18 percent last year we are addressing some of the world's greatest challenges propelling innovation thinking critically working across disciplines combating climate change and contributing to every area of the economy public discourse and policymaking quality research is what the anew does and postgraduate and phd students are at the bedrock of this so i'll conclude with a message for today a university degree is not an easy achievement or something to be taken lightly for postgraduates and phd students particularly it can be an arduous lonely years long journey with all the disappointments and frustrations that come with research and life and struggling to balance the two higher degree study requires a level of diligence commitment and hard work a higher calling beyond what is normally expected from a tertiary qualification but the payoff is immense and advanced qualification from one of the world's finest universities and the specialized expertise necessary to change the world so know that the research you do here will set you up to be a pioneer and a leader in tomorrow's future and never forget the importance of everything you do here right here right now and if you're an undergraduate student and you're thinking of taking a postgraduate degree go for it thanks thank you so much Tristan um thank you for sharing that and for giving us a little bit of that history of research um excellence amongst post grads um that is very much part of the fabric of anu um and for that history going back to the 1940s when anu was set up and one of the first schools that was set up was the research school of pacific studies um so i am also a former hdr student of the anu who did pacific studies so i know you're all a little cold um and i don't and even though we're transitioning from the covid i don't want to say huddle up or cuddle up uh to uh make yourself a bit warmer but i will hold you just for another couple of minutes so i can share um a little bit about myself and reflect on all the wonderful words and advice that has been shared this morning from our wonderful speakers um so as i mentioned um i'm a former hdr student of the anu and i'm also a proud pacific islander um and african-american woman with connections to rambi and fiji banaba and tabata where in kiribas and washington dc my undergraduate studies were super challenging after i left fiji where i'd spent all my childhood and teenage years and moved to be in a new american environment amongst peers that i often didn't understand or relate very well to despite the fact that my mum was american despite regularly experiencing high anxiety as an undergraduate student high anxiety so high that i would have to sit in the corner of a classroom so that i could exit as fast as possible if needed um and i didn't have the greatest marks um in my undergraduate degree but i still gained a bachelor of science so i recently obtained a copy of my 1996 uh 1996 transcript from santa clara university in california and upon reviewing the grades thought why on earth didn't i just major in dance i clearly loved and thrived in my dance courses all the science and dance however did give me the literacy to transition to humanities and social sciences as a postgraduate student with real transdisciplinary skills and knowledge to do creative research as an anu phd student so i had an international scholarship and my mentors and teachers at the anu gave me a lot of space to be creative doing things creatively and like many of others have mentioned thinking outside the box asking hard questions and attending to issues of justice justice and equality have always paid off in my career a former student wrote to me last year to say that when i was her tutor at the anu in 2000 so 22 years ago i was a tutor at anu while doing my phd the fact that i allowed her to submit a poem rather than an essay for an anthropology class made a huge impact on her life and she carried that permission to express herself differently all the way into adulthood now i have no idea if chat gp and you know you're all thinking about chat gp we're all thinking about chat gp i don't know if chat gp can write a good poem but i guarantee that thinking speaking writing expressing yourself from your own unique positionality as a person of a particular heritage and a particular set of life and family experiences cannot be duplicated by artificial intelligence in my courses that i teach at the anu and pacific studies i imagine our university as a large ocean going voyaging canoe that gives all of us amazing opportunities to wave find across a vast sea filled with many single discipline and many trans disciplinary islands you may not come out of such a journey knowing everything no one can no one can know everything but you will leave with a rich and amazing basket of critical creative practical and hopefully self-care tools to navigate our complex and challenging world with care compassion a strong sense of ethics and justice and hopefully an important dose of humility and respect that respect that brian emphasized so much in his speech we need all of you to help make this world a better place for all species not just the human species all aspects of land sea and sky it was a journey for you to get here and we truly hope the rest of your journey will be filled with so much inspiration i am going to wrap up now but we're going to do a bit of a cheer before we leave maybe that will warm us all up after we do this cheer i'm going to give you some instructions for exiting and also point you towards those wonderful volunteer marshals who can direct you towards morning tea okay very cold but hopefully we get a little bit warmer now in fiji where i come from on these sorts of occasions when we cheer we say kyla so kyla is like a shout and when i say kyla you need to cheer but before that we do a couple of hip hip hurrays okay so i'm gonna do a hip hip you say hurray hip hip hurray and when i say kyla then you shout whatever you'd like or just say yay everyone ready do you want to stand up will that make you warmer because it's really cold i'm from fiji it's cold you know all right well done you can rub your hands together the psalm ones rub their hands together they say milly milly milly rub their hands together we needed to do this quite a while ago all right are you ready hip hip hooray hip hip hooray kyla yeah welcome everyone welcome new students and may you have an amazing journey all right if you're staying for morning tea sit down please and we're going to exit row by row from the back okay so please follow your volunteer marshals and make your way to morning tea if you're leaving go ahead but let's go to morning tea in a slightly organized way thank you so much