 Yuma. Hello. My name is Wally Bell. I'm a Nunuwal man. You might have noticed, I pronounce it quite differently to everybody else. I say it the right way. As you can work out then, I'm an elder of the Nunuwal people. My clan group are the Yart people. We have seven different clans. My clan group come from a place they now call Yass. So I actually grew up just outside of Yass in a little place called Jeroa, our word for running water. It's out on that place that I learned about being an Aboriginal person. As is our traditional customary practice, my father took me out onto the land and taught me all about the land itself, how to survive on the country, learned all about bush foods, bush medicines, sourcing food, sourcing water, basic survival on country. That knowledge I carry with me still to this day. As Aboriginal people, we gain all our customs and belief systems from the land that we live in. Our culture and practice is quite different right across the country. As I just said, we get our customs and belief systems from the land that we live in. When you look at Australia, there's over 400 different tribal groups living in totally different environments. So we're going to have totally different cultural practice. And that's something that governments really find hard to comprehend. Everybody seems to think that our cultural practice is one and the same, and it's not. So we have probably what I'd like to call communal law, LAW law. Now that allows us to live then as our separate clan groups on country. We always live in total harmony because we look after each other. But we also look after the place that we're in. The other part of that is that we also have traditional customary law. That's the LOR part of it. Now right across Australia, every Aboriginal tribal group abides by that law. That law tells us what we have to do as Aboriginal people on country. That law must be adhered to. If you break that law, you're severely punished. Some of that law then relates to what I'm here for today. I'm going to do a welcome to country. Welcome to country then is not as simple as most people think. It's just not me as an elder standing here in front of you saying welcome to country and enjoy your next day while you're here. Under our law, we're bound to make sure that visitors to our country are safe and protected while they're here. That means that we have to look after you in two ways. We offer up a protection in a physical sense and we also offer up a protection in a spiritual sense. Now the physical protection is going to be taken care of by our spirit of the land, which means that as you walk around on country actually treading foot on the land itself, the spirit of the land is going to look after you. Make sure that you don't have any trips and falls and you know break a leg or something like that. Something we don't want to happen because that'll reflect on us very badly as the host peoples. The spiritual protection that we're offering up is going to be taken care of by our ancestral spirits. Now our ancestral spirits then, if you don't know what I'm talking about, is our past generations that have returned to the land because as Aboriginal people, our strongest belief is that we actually come from the land itself. We're here for a little while. In which time we look after this place, take care of it. We become the custodians of the land, the carers of the country. Then when our time is up, we then return back to the land where we come from. That's where we call this place our belonging place. So the ancestral spirits then, they're going to look after you like I said in a spiritual sense because everybody in this room carries your own personal aura right throughout your life. Unknown to you, under our belief systems, there's bad spirit out there as well. And that's the stuff we don't want on country because that's not only going to affect you as a person, but it does affect country as well. So our ancestral spirits are asked to remove that. The way that I get the spirits to join us though is that I've got to make a little bit of noise to let them know where I am and call for them to draw them into me. I do that by the use of my clapsticks. Got to bear with me for a minute. I've got to get the right spot to my takeover in this place. Have a real strong connection with country because I'm out there looking after it all the time. I can actually feel the presence of those spirits with us. Very strong. Hopefully you can feel that presence as well. I'd really like for you to try and feel that presence. Okay. So like I said, then the spirit of the land is going to look after you as you're walking around on country, protect you as best it can. People do silly stuff out on country, but you know, that's up to you. The ancestral spirits at this very moment then are going around everybody here, checking out your personal horrors, looking for bad spirit. Because that bad spirit, you can't see it. You can't touch it, but it's there. But the ancestral spirits know what it is. If they find that stuff, they just grab hold of it. It's a real off country. It's something we don't want to hear. Now, of course, we're bound by other tribal rips as well. So the downside of that is we're chucking that bad stuff over onto their country. Well, yeah, they'll have to take care of that business. Okay. So then as I said, the spirit of the land is going to look after you as you're walking around on country. The ancestral spirits have now looked at your horrors, and they ask that you do two things while you're here on country. The first one, a really important one, is to respect this place that you're in. Look after it. Care for it while you're here, as we have done for thousands of years. The other thing they want you to do is also to respect and be kind and courteous to other people that you meet while you're on country. So if you do these two things for us, the spirits will harmonize with your stay on Ngunnawal country. So may the spirits be with you today, tomorrow, and for always. And by always, I mean that even if you step off Ngunnawal country, the moment you put foot back on country, now that the spirits have seen you, they will look after you on your return. I'll close with some words in language. Ngunnawal, Ngunnawal, Ngunnawal, Ngunnawal. This land is Ngunnawal land. Welcome. Thank you. Chancellor, colleagues, students and friends of A&U, Wally Bell, I too begin by acknowledging the first Australians on whose lands we meet, the Ngunnawal Namburi peoples, and pay my respects to elders past and present. And Uncle Wally, thank you for welcoming us so warmly to these lands where your ancestors have met for thousands of years. It is an honour to meet here and to reminded that our campus, this great place of learning, stands on the land where hundreds of generations of Indigenous Australians learned from each other. Before I talk about the state of the university, I want to spend a moment talking about the state of the world around us. So far, it has been an exceptionally difficult summer of flame and fear of hailstones and health warnings. Smoke from bushfires has polluted our air for weeks, and in the past week, the fires reached our city. Our normally lively campus has been closed multiple times, and our Australian summer has been spent indoors, sheltering from the heat and the smoke. And then came the ice and the incredible hailstorm that impacted our wildlife and dented and destroyed our roofs, our windows, our facilities and our cars. Through both the hail and the haze, the thing that's shown out was the resilience of our community, and I pay tribute today to the dedicated staff from across ANU who have kept us safe, monitored threats, provided advice and repaired damage. And I thank every member of staff who supported a colleague or a friend who was doing it tougher than them. So I want to start by giving each of ourselves and each of these people who have contributed a round of applause. Thank you one and all. Our community is never stronger nor kinder than when we're dealing with incidents like those that have given 2020 such a dramatic and terrible start. And as Uncle Wally's presence here reminds us, finding a way to thrive and prosper in the hostility of Australia's natural environment is the legacy too often ignored of 60,000 years of Aboriginal culture. And it is a legacy we must do more to harness. In 2020, we are faced here in Australia with some of the most significant challenges of climate change yet seen on the planet. And we have an emerging threat of a pandemic that is already affecting many of our students, but also our staff and our alumni. It has restricted the travel of the many outstanding students who would otherwise have been getting ready to come to Canberra if they were not already here. I want you to look around in our auditorium. You don't know today if the colleagues nearby have recently been in Balmain, Ballarat or Beijing. I am a world expert in cosmology, but I am looking to the world leading Australian health authorities to give us advice that will keep us safe. I ask you to trust these authorities as we ask people to trust in our expertise every day. We don't yet fully know the consequences of coronavirus on our community, but let's always remember that there are people at the heart of this. And let's resolve to show the same resilience, the same care and the same kindness that has brought us through the challenges nature has thrown us over the past six weeks. We can only do this by being rational and listening to Australia's public health experts. When we're surrounded by the urgent, by critical incidents and distress, it becomes even harder to step back and think big. But that is what I want us now to do today. Our university is at an inflection point. At the start of a new decade with a new chancellor and a vice chancellor, that's me, who will be seeking his second term next week. So if someone else is giving this lecture or this address next year, you'll know my meeting didn't go quite as planned. In 2020, our strategic plan is now in its latter stages. And I'm starting to think about what A&U might look like at the end of my second term. In other words, what do I want this great Australian university to be? And what must we do to get it there? And I encourage each of you to ask yourself that same question. Let's start with the fundamentals. What defines us as a university and as our national university? Let's not focus on parking for the moment. For me, the thing that defines A&U is ultimately trust. Since 1946, we have placed integrity and quality at the heart of everything we do. And that must never change. That approach is one is the trust of Australia, of the students who study with us, of the staff who make their careers here, of the policy makers who listen to our ideas, to the philanthropists who donate to us to make the world a better place. The businesses that employ our graduates and ultimately society that relies on our research findings and believes in them. Our own social research centers findings showed that almost 80 percent of people across Australia trust A&U. Well, trust in, for example, another pillar of our democracy, the media, is that around 20 percent. So we're in a good place, but that trust in A&U cannot be taken for granted. I welcome the hired standards to which we are held, because that is ultimately the seal of trust which empowers us. It's why we met head on the disturbing reality of being data hacked late last year. Our approach was to speak openly about it with brutal transparency, to level with our community about the scale of the data breach and the implications for individual security, and to develop sector-leading protections now to help stop future intrusions that might undermine our academic freedom or the safety of members of our staff and students. Trust is our currency and having worked hard to earn it, we must work just as hard to keep it. And the only way to keep it is to invest in and insist on excellence in everything we do. And when you interact with our students, you will know that many of them exemplify excellence. They are impressive intellects. They're worldly. They're great at solving problems, thinking differently and challenging us and the world around them to do better. Last year, three of the nine Australian Rhodes scholarships went to ANU students who will now head to the University of Oxford. This is a great symbol of the quality of our student cohort. And we are privileged to attract such fine young leaders to our campus. And we must remember that this campus, our workplace, is also their home, making us unique amongst Australian research-intensive universities. Those students and their families and friends trust us to provide a learning environment that is challenging, stimulating and cutting edge, and a home that is safe, welcoming and inclusive. I will not be satisfied with simply meeting their expectation. I am setting the university this goal of delivering a student experience that is as good as the best in the world. Many ANU students travel from across Australia and around the world to a new campus in an unfamiliar city. They have chosen to spend one of the most valuable times of their lives with us. ANU will be their university, possibly the only one they ever study at. How do we validate the trust they have shown us? Well, by providing the very best experience we can, and by recognizing that each of us, whether an early career researcher, a professional staff member, or a distinguished professor, each of us have a part to play in making that experience among the best available anywhere in the world. Now, if we're honest with ourselves, we have a way to go before we meet that standard. Let's ask ourselves some important questions. When a student is considering joining us, are we always welcoming, friendly, and informative? Is our information accessible and timely? Are we responsive to queries and feedback? Do we offer distinctive programs that stand out for their quality, their flexibility, and their rigor? Do our facilities, both physical and digital, meet our world-class ambitions? Do we give every one of our students what they need to succeed? If we don't do all of these things, and do them better than any other university in Australia, we are not the national university we strive to be, and we can't be sure we are finding the best students from every walk of life and graduating these students as leaders whose inquiring minds, sharp intellects, and contemporary skillsets will inspire employers and colleagues while being the catalyst of their ability to change the world. That is why I have set this year to be the year of student experience, and I'm asking every single staff member, wherever you sit in the ANU community, to make a commitment that you will do everything you can to make our student experience the best it can be. This means improving our practice everywhere we think it falls short, listening to feedback, learning from colleagues inside ANU, and from around the world. Challenging ourselves with the question, is this what a student joining one of the best universities in the world should expect? Is it what you would expect? I know what I would expect. I expect the educational standards of the best universities in the world. I know we need to have outstanding research led teaching. We need to be a place where the connection between students, academics, and professional staff is seamless, and with and us having degree programs, experiences, and opportunities that allow me to graduate as a leader. That's what I would expect. Now parts of our university do this brilliantly already, but by 2025 every student at ANU should be able to say they received a distinctive education that is second to none. We need to be seen as the Oxbridge Ivy League institution of the Southern Hemisphere, but with an inclusive and distinctively Australian character, we need to be ANU, but we need to be great. To help figure out new ways of doing things, later this year we are going to establish in Cambry a student experience accelerator, a space where we can collaborate in teams to try out new ideas and seek real-time student engagement and feedback. Now we're going to prioritize this as soon as our campus returns to some sort of normalcy, but this new initiative will be a great way of bringing the startup mindset to improving our student experience, and I hope we can roll it out to almost anything we do in the future. Of course students are not the only priority. We have committed to investing in and insisting on excellence everywhere at ANU, and by 2025 I expect to see evidence of that commitment everywhere. That means investing in research that transforms society, that changes the way people act and the way they think. Since our researchers train the future leaders of Australia, our region and the world, we must do that well. It means ANU becoming the public policy university. We will be the brains trust to the public policy making community, listening, not preaching, and being trusted to suggest, refine, and road test policy solutions. The government is entitled to expect this from its national university, which it endows with the national institute's grant, and we must exceed their expectations. Now I cannot emphasize this enough. This is not an optional extra for ANU. This is a core reason why we exist, and so we must excel and do better than we have been doing. Being ANU also means being the place of choice for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders to engage in higher education and undertake research. Why? Because they trust their peers when they tell them that ANU is a community which embraces and celebrates the culture and contributions of Australia's First Nations people. And if that message is to be shared, we must be as good as our word and embed Indigenous culture and learnings across our campus and attract many more Indigenous staff and students. More on this in a moment. And by 2025, I want every single one of you to know you are working in one of the best environments in the world. A university you are exceptionally proud to work at because any other place will be a step down. We will be a workplace that is equitable, collegiate, that nurtures talent and provides the best working conditions of any university. Now to achieve this, I could resort to having policy drafted, creating incentives, begging, pleading and cajoling. But in the end, the only way to achieve my ambition and I hope our collective ambition is if the people who work here make it so. I ask you to remember the kindness that emerges every time we are faced with a crisis. And let's try to be that workplace every day, not just on the difficult days. I also ask that you reflect today on how you can contribute to these ambitions. What can you do in your role to achieve this level of excellence and to build Australia's trust in us. And I look forward to hearing your ideas. If Australia is to trust its national university, we must do everything we can to resemble the country we seek to serve. If we're honest, we haven't yet done enough to look like Australia. Talent exists in every community and every ethnic group at every age and is not symbolized by physical abilities or conventions. Our admissions scholarship and accommodation scheme is starting to succeed in widening the range of students who come to ANU this year. But we have a long ways to go before we can truly say that the nation's microcosm is its national university. One of the places we have the most work to do is in attracting new Indigenous talent to ANU. Less than 1% of our domestic students identify as Indigenous while the national figure is say more than 3% of the Australian population. There is so much talent, potential and imagination that we're missing out on and this is a gap we must address. And if you ever want to see that talent and what that talent and potential and imagination looks like, I recommend you go visit Anyan and the Chabal Center where Anyan and her team can introduce you to the many brilliant and committed Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students who have found their academic home here on our campus. There is no question we should be doing more, much more, to make this university accessible to as many Indigenous Australians as we can. Our campus is enriched when we embrace diversity and reflect this nation. That is why I am proud and delighted to announce the creation today of a new sector-leading scholarship scheme, the Cambry Scholarships, that will provide any Indigenous student who comes to ANU the financial, academic and pastoral support they need to thrive in our community. This will enable us to welcome many more Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students to ANU while ensuring that they are supported to complete their degrees. Now how can we guarantee that this money will be available each year? Well, the ANU Council has committed to create an endowment of at least $50 million where the university will match dollar-for-dollar philanthropic gifts until we meet that goal. The university has already provided several million dollars of seed funding to ensure the program starts this year. The investment returns will fund the program into perpetuity and so never again will Indigenous students miss out on the ANU experience. Thank the leadership of Anianne and the Council on this who I will pass on your congratulations. If you are inspired by this and I surely am and want to be part of it or you know someone who might be you can find more information through the Cambry Scholarships button on our website or just speak to our advancement colleagues who are here on campus and in the audience today. In the years to come the Australian National University can look back to this moment as the time when our commitment to Indigenous Australians took a bold new step and they along with their fellow graduates will become the leaders Australia turns to in order to tackle the problems their own generations will face. This is our university showing leadership and of course there are many domains we must show leadership. There is almost universal concern across our campus and indeed the nation of the impact of climate change. The world is looking to us and other leading universities for action and solutions. So one of our first conversations the Chancellor and I resolve that we must do something significant. Therefore I have asked Professor Mark Howden a global leader as vice chair of the IPCC and director of the ANU Climate Change Institute with esteemed colleagues like Professor Frank Yonzo to chart how ANU can not only become carbon neutral but carbon negative as fast as possible. We will be looking to many of our staff and students for expertise and help. There is so much we can do now and what being carbon negative will evolve over time but if this university and our students and staff are prepared to be part of the solution I think we can lead the world starting this year and show how we don't have to wait until 2050 or beyond to act. This group this group is going to provide a pathway and I hope all will join us in this action. Each of us are going to have to look at the contribution we can make on and off our campus and that is the only way we can succeed. But this is ANU meeting its responsibilities that trust Australia places in its national university to confront the biggest issues and create leaders with the capacity to solve the issues we haven't yet imagined. Those leaders must inspire us being willing to take a stand to speak truth even when inconvenient and to be authentic and to win the admiration of their community. They have to be trailblazers and pioneers with the strength of character to do difficult things for the first time. This brings me to our chancellor a leader of distinction who has served in cabinet under three prime ministers and across three portfolios including foreign minister the first woman to serve in that capacity one of just 15 people in Australian political history to have been elected deputy leader of the liberal party and the first woman to have done so elected seven times to represent the people of Curtin and the House of Representatives the first woman member for Curtin Julie Bishop achieved global recognition as foreign minister for a response to the shooting down of MH17 she secured Australia's election to the UN Human Rights Council on a platform of good governance freedom of expression promoting gender equality and the rights of indigenous people Julie was also responsible for creating the New Colombo Plan which has so far made over 60,000 awards to Australian undergraduates for study and travel in the Indo-Pacific region by any measure this is an exceptional record of public service her straight talking honesty won the trust and respect of the Australian people and leaders around the world and now we are honored and delighted that her service continues as one of our most distinguished and globally recognized and you guessed it the first woman Chancellor of this great national university colleagues I'm delighted to introduce introduced for the first time our Chancellor the Honourable Julie Bishop Thank you for that very warm welcome and may I first thank Wally for his welcome to country such a beautiful inspiring and haunting welcome for us all Thank you Brian for your very kind words and for your wonderful address the state of the university and I particularly focus on the Canberra scholarships and that will be a magnificent initiative for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders but also for our university our community and Australia more generally and also our ambition to be carbon negative this is my first official appearance on campus as Chancellor and I took up the role on the first of January 2020 that happened to be the day that Canberra was reported as having the worst air quality in the world that should have given some indication of what lay ahead for the university in the following weeks the extreme weather events the bushfires encircling Canberra the smoke haze caused us to close the campus and then we had the torrential rain and the hail storm that caused so much destruction to our infrastructure I visited the glass houses yesterday but the impact was so profound and so we closed the campus again and then a state of emergency was announced for the ACT last weekend and then we had to deal with the impact of coronavirus and the travel ban preventing so many of our overseas students from coming here and this was all just in the first month of my chancellorship so I decided in discussion with Brian and the team that we really shouldn't go ahead with the formal installation of me as Chancellor by the Governor-General when there were so many other priorities that we should be focusing upon and I do apologise to anyone who is inconvenienced by our decision to postpone the ceremony but I want to acknowledge how throughout all of this our Vice-Chancellor our management team our campus leaders acted in solidarity with our community in focusing on the health and well-being and safety and security of everyone and they acted with such calm professionalism with such sage advice for me and for others and always with an absolutely perfect sense of priorities so Brian and the team thank you so much for what you've done over the last few weeks in such difficult times Thank you and to you Now I've been asked regularly over the last few months why I would take on this role in my post-political life and there are many reasons it is an immense honour to be appointed Chancellor of Australia's first and only National University this is a prestigious institution it has national and global significance it has an enviable reputation for excellence in teaching and research and I've had a long-held interest in improving the quality of the higher education sector in this country not just through my own educational experience but also as education minister when I got to know this university exceedingly well and I've always believed that Australia as one of the most industrialised and developed nations on earth with one of the highest standards of living with the top 20 economy indeed we're in the top 20 of nations on virtually every social and economic indicator that counts that we should have at least one university in the top 20 around the world and that is my ambition and aspiration for ANU now also as foreign minister I came to know the university so well because it was my go-to university for public policy development whether it was the Coral Bell School or the National Security College or the Climate Change Institute or the Fenner School the research and the data and the analysis was first class always had credibility and was always accessible to me as foreign minister I've always looked at ANU as the university for that highly sought after on campus student experience and I think this adds so much to the unique character of this university that students can live and study on campus in the national capital in a group of students a student population made up from people across Australia and from around the world that rich diverse student population gives us such a unique character and it's Australia's attractiveness as a destination for overseas students that made me ponder as education minister as to the benefits of student exchange and I began wondering wouldn't it be a good idea if more Australian students studied overseas to get the benefits that so many overseas students get from studying in Australia and thus I can see the idea of the new Colombo plan where Australian undergraduates would be funded to live and study in a nation in our region and they would be following in the footsteps of the original Colombo plan of the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s which bought thousands of students to our shores to study in our universities and they went back to their home countries and became great ambassadors for Australia well I had this fantastic plan but I couldn't actually implement it there was an election and we lost but in 2013 when I came back into government as foreign minister I introduced the new Colombo plan as foreign policy and as Brian indicated around 60,000 students have now been funded to live and study and work in one of 40 countries in our region now ANU was a partner from the outset and already over 1,085 of our students have been recipients of new Colombo plan funding in about 25 countries and they come back here they come home with new perspectives new ideas new skills maybe a second language but with a much deeper understanding of Australia and it's a place in the region and they make connections and networks and friendships that could last a lifetime and that is to Australia's benefit I recall being in a joint sitting of the Houses of Parliament in October of 2016 when Prime Minister Lee of Singapore said of my championing of the new Colombo plan that it continues the spirit of exchange and builds anew the connections in good will that exists between our people but for future generations I really do hope that the new Colombo plan and student exchange is becomes a right of passage for Australian students in our university that they spend some of their higher education living and studying undertaking work experience practicums in countries in universities in our region now we are a research intensive university and I believe that ANU has a national responsibility to come up with evidence based solutions to the great challenges facing our region facing our nation and many of our researchers indeed our own esteemed Vice-Chancellor have been recognised globally for their great discoveries contributing to the benefit of humanity we're also a teaching university and we nurture inquiring minds as Albert Einstein once said now apparently he was another Nobel Laureate in physics it is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and understanding so ANU must continue to strive for excellence and embrace and defend fiercely academic freedom and independence within a culture of challenging accepted wisdom and the status quo and our students our researchers our academics must be and feel supported in their pursuit of knowledge and understanding and our graduates must have the skills and the abilities and be prepared to succeed in an ever changing ever disrupted world and we must always hold true to our values and principles that are in violet freedom of speech and thought within the rule of law now I know and I'm acutely aware of the transformative power of education perhaps I can tell you a little of my personal story and why I'm here today my father grew up on an apple and cherry orchard in the Adelaide Hills and he was head boy at Urbray Agricultural High School but as the eldest son he had to come home on the property and he didn't go to university he was then in the Australian Army during World War II my mother grew up on a sheep property in the mid north of South Australia and she won a scholarship to Adelaide Girls High select high school in South Australia and she completed her year 12 but she couldn't go on to university because her mother was dying so she went home to the property my mother and father met after the war they married and they moved home to the Bishop family property in 1955 this very established orchard was raised to the ground through the Black Sunday Bushfire they lost everything and their lives were absolutely shattered and so they worked very hard to rebuild that property but it didn't turn a profit for over 20 years and so my childhood was spent in the shadow of that bushfire event in fact I was telling one of the deans last night that my favourite book as a child I was completely obsessed with it was February Dragon by Colin Tealy a story about three children whose lives were so devastated by the February Dragon that fire breathing bushfire that we know only too well anyway my parents were determined that whatever sacrifice it took I and my three siblings would have the very best education that they could afford I went to a private girls school in Adelaide and I was the head girl I then had the opportunity to go on to university to study a course that I wanted to study and then undertake a professional career in an area that I chose and that led me to becoming Australia's first foreign minister and the first female chancellor at this university so I want for every student in Australia that has the will and the capacity to study at ANU to have that opportunity and whatever their family background whatever their circumstances if they are able to gain a place here at ANU we will give them the hope and the opportunity that they so richly deserve and I hope that our graduates continue to question to inspire to innovate to lead in our communities in our nation and globally that should be our aim that should be our legacy and I thank Brian for setting out in his address today how we will achieve that such a great vision for a great university thank you well thank you Julie at I think our community is very excited to welcome you here today it is great to hear of your vision so crystaly defined you will note without any notes so it real is up here not just what I told her to say we look forward to welcoming you further at a barbecue that will now ensue we're gonna have it because of rain at the Athenaeum and I'm very happy to see say that university house is catering it now university house you will see has been beaten up probably harder than any other part of the university other than the greenhouses and it's great to have them here today and so I suggest enjoy your barbecue but can you thank them for all what they are doing and for the resilience that they're showing thank you one and all look forward to seeing you out at the barbecue