 So this is my seventh O week. I know I don't look that old, but really I started here as an undergrad and a post grad and now I'm a staff member. So, but I've lived to tell the tale and it really is an exciting time at university. There's a great vibe around campus, there's a great energy. So I hope that you all get really involved in the activities and enjoy yourself. First of all, I wish to pay my respects to my elders, to my father, Arnold and my mom, to my cousins who are here and to everyone who is here in attendance. So what am I here to do? I'm here to give you a welcome to country. For international students and some domestic students, this may be the first welcome to country ceremony that you have been to. So I'll give you a bit of background information. Indigenous Australian cultural traditions have a history of continuity unrivaled in the world. They've been performed for millennia and emerged today as a symbol of respect and recognition. A welcome to country ceremony is such an example. We perform a welcome to country because historically Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people would require permission before entering into another's country. This is much like requiring permission to enter into someone's property or getting a tourist visa. They often involve certain activities like a smoking ceremony or cultural exchange. My cousin, older cousin Billy will be here to give you a bit of information on the smoking ceremony, it's significant afterwards. So to welcome you to this country, I'd like to give you a glimpse into the history of this land. Within the last 100,000 years, my ancestors undertook a remarkable journey, leaving the continent of Africa, traveling through continental Asia and Southeast Asia, and arriving on Australian soils, sometime between 50 and 60,000 years before present. On this journey, they would have encountered other human species, undertaking the first open sea voyages, and upon arrival at Sahul, which was the Australian New Guinea continent connected together, confronted by rather fearsome looking giant marsupials, giant birds, perhaps a four to seven meter long monitor lizard known as megalania. My ancestors were the first people to walk this land. They performed ceremony, they spoke for country, they managed its lands and waters. It varies around Australia, but my ancestors and much of Southeast Australia were mobile, but not nomadic. Indigenous Australia is one of the most culturally diverse in the world. It consists of a patchwork of autonomous nations, potentially two to 300 distinct language groups. Each nation maintained by borders, just as any other, and with a shared but distinct belief systems, ceremonies, and cultural expressions. Land in which my ancestors lived was shaped by religious figures. Our ancestral beings carved rivers, raised mountains, and rested in the stars. Such figures, such as the great biomy, can be seen at night as a mosaic of stars looking down at us. They directed our life, they informed our decisions, taught us ceremonies, and gave us language. Language was taught a stories of them since time immemorial. Indigenous beliefs tie people to land in a form of mutual responsibility to one another. It enriched their being. It is a deep spiritual connection and a holistic existence. The land nourished us, provided food, shelter, clothing, and medicine, but most importantly, spiritual wealth. Since European arrival, Aboriginal Torres Strait Islanders have experienced persecution and dispossession. In a kind of historical and geographical inequality, Aboriginal nations of Southeast Australia were the first to experience such tragedy. It was where the first Christian missions were established to save a dying race or to offer a salvation from our blackness. I would like to stand up here as the descendant of Ngunnawal and speak to in a language of my ancestors, but this is not possible. For my great grandfather was denied the most basic human rights. If you research Ngunnawal language, you will see it is classified as extinct. We were dispossessed of our land and our culture, our stories, and language that described our creator beings. By the 19th century, protective legislation was in full swing. My grandparents were forcibly relocated to, from their country here in Canberra to live on Christian missions and government reserves. These communities were tightly managed, leaving in access required approval from a mission manager. This was a time when Aboriginal Australians were only equal on the sporting field or on the battlefields. Indigenous servicemen returning from World War II were not able to drink in the pubs with their non-Indigenous peers. Since the time of white settlement, governments have used no less than 67 classifications, descriptions, or definitions to define Aboriginality. In 1915, an amendment to the Aboriginal Protection Act in New South Wales gave the Aboriginal Protection Board power to remove children from their families without having to establish evidence of neglecting court. In Western Australia, the director of native welfare was a legal guardian of all Aboriginal children until 1965, whether their parents were living or not. This was a time that my father was, who's here, was born. It was a time he was born into mission life and a time prior to the 1967 referendum, which afforded him the same rights as non-Indigenous Australians. My father and his siblings were brought up tough on the periphery of society, never to be acknowledged for who they were and the history they endured. Dad had to start work early as a labourer, pay his way to support his family. He had to move to where the work was, leaving the mission for jobs like fruit picking, construction, traveling with boxing tents, and he worked on the construction of Scrivener Dam or the building of Lake Burley Griffin when he was only 15 or 16 years of age. These were the only jobs that Indigenous Australians or immigrants could get. University was well beyond his grasp, but not for any fault of his, but the views and fault of society which have pervaded the last 200 years. I contemplate whether ANU's founding visionaries, intellects and administrators, the sagacious Nugget Coombs, who my father speaks very fondly of, remembering the time when Nugget, as he was referred to, would visit them at the Aboriginal Ten Embassy, if they included Indigenous Australians in their vision for the university. This, of course, was no fault of theirs, but more so the fault of society which denied Indigenous Australians. We represent some of the most disadvantaged in the world. We were reminded of this every day by government and so-called experts, but this does not define us. Rather, it is the many thousands of years which we tell a story of proud existence. The last 200 years demonstrate resilience. We are a strong people. If there is one people that really embodies the definition of resilience and strength, I would say it's Indigenous Australians. For instance, like my older cousin Billy who is here reviving cultural and retailing stories through ceremony and language. Indigenous Australians are succeeding in tertiary institutions, producing more and more graduates. I've been lucky to study and work with brilliant Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders who have gone on to be doctors, lawyers, scientists, engineers and teachers. I tell you of my father's upbringing, his intrinsic disadvantage on a mission where access to education and basic services was limited. I tell you of my ancestors' dispossession, however I stand here as a graduate from ANU. This is, of course, because of the nourishing environment my parents provided me with, but in many ways it's my father's upbringing that drives me to do better. So some of you may question how is this relevant to a welcome to country? And to this I answer yes. If there is one welcome I could give you as an original owner, it would be to give you a small glimpse into the history of this land. The ANU rests upon the land of my ancestors and because of this, the ANU is part of this story. We're all part of this story as new and continuing students and as staff. The ANU represents one of the most recent chapters in a history which is millennial old, as it is today as it was in the past. This is a meeting place where people would come to exchange knowledge and share in ceremony. I ask, however, that as I welcome you to this country that you take the story of this land with you. I ask that you acknowledge the history of this land and the history of my ancestors' sacrifice. This story ties us all together. I welcome you to another country. That's right. Hello everyone. How are you? My name's William T. Tompkins. My local mob here just called me Billy T. I'm a Ngunnawal Raju man. And as Rob was saying, our mob were disadvantaged in a bad way. A lot of our mob were taken away and put in homes and institutions. And they had that sense of loss of culture. There's a gap there. And a lot of our mob didn't grow up to learn their culture, learn their language, learn their stories or their dance. But it's up to that individual to come forward and be strong in themselves and believe in themselves and to bring back that culture back to their country and to learn that culture, to learn their songs, learn their languages and learn their stories. And that's what I've done. I was taken away when I was eight months of age, putting in an institution, watered the state until I was 19. And then I found my family. Through that period, I had to learn where I was from, who I was, who my people were, my country, my language, my stories and all my songs. And I think I've done it. So, a lot of people out there find themselves in destitutions, institutions, mentally sick because they haven't got that spirit within themselves to help them find their country, their song, the languages and all the stories. So I'm here to do a welcome for you today and a smokey ceremony. The smokey ceremony represents who we are. It brings us together when we have ceremonies, marriages, deaths, newborns, people coming into our country. That's how we welcome you, mob. From all around the world, from nation to nation, from country to country, this is what we do today. We welcome you with our speech and a song and a smokey ceremony to clear all that bad spirits that you might or might not bring with you. And this is what a smokey ceremony is for, to make you feel welcome and, you know, a hard year of studies. Ma la ga lu, yen ji ma la, yen ji ma la, yen ji ma la ma, yen ji ma la. That song, that song is welcome to country. And the talking of the Boru, the kangaroo, the Murrumbidji River, which we, you know, our mob used to go and camp down here and also respect to all people from all walks of life. Thank you very much. This is a young institution, but you can hear that it's built upon a very long tradition and an unbroken tradition of learning. I wanna thank Rob and I wanna thank Billy for welcoming us to your country. Every step that you take on this land, we hope is a step in respect, recognition and reconciliation because this is ongoing business. There's sorry business from the past, but there is still much that we need to do and I wanna thank you both for your generosity in making us welcome to your country. I also wanna acknowledge that this was this past week, the ninth anniversary of the Prime Minister saying sorry for those past wrongs. It's not enough to say sorry once, you have to live sorry as well. So thank you both. I wanna welcome your, thank you. I wanna welcome you all to this commencement event. This is our second commencement. It's a beautiful Canberra day in Ngunnawal country and we've got some very special guests for you today. We're gonna kick off with our two student presidents, James and Alyssa. I'm gonna introduce them both and then I'm gonna invite them up to come and speak and James will come first. Now, Monday, if you are at the welcome down in Llewelyn Hall, I think what James was trying to do was to present himself as Harry Potter. I think that was what was kind of suggested in his introduction. He is the president of the Undergraduate A&U Students Association, which is the peak representative body, as I said for undergraduates. Now, if you are Harry Potter James, then Alyssa has got to be Hermione. Definitely, okay, pretty cool. She is the president of PASA, which is the postgraduate research students association, so all the graduate students and it's one of the great highlights of my life that I actually get to meet with these guys once a fortnight. They come in the door and they tell me all the things that are working well at A&U and all the things that could get a lot better. So my view is that if you wanna get really engaged in A&U, make sure you get engaged in both PASA and Anusa, let them know what's going well, let them know what could be made better and you can bet your bottom dollar that they will come and they will tell me about it and hopefully we will help and we will make this university even better. So I wanna welcome James up to the stage first, aka Harry Potter. Good morning, everyone. As money said, my name is James Conley and I am the president of the A&U student association. I would also like to start by acknowledging the traditional custodians of the land in which we meet, the Ngunnawal people and pay my respects to the elders, past, present and future. I would also like to extend that respect to any indigenous student here with us today. This is truly a surreal moment for me. In 2014, I was a first year like you who attended the commencement address and I remember watching this older charismatic student take the stage to speak and it was the first time that I had seen an Anusa president and as he spoke about what he and Anusa did, I thought two things. One, that job seems unbelievably difficult for a student and two, I could never do that job. Bizarrely late last year when I found out that I had been elected president, the first thing that went through my head was that Wednesday of my first week sitting and listening to this older student who I was convinced that I could never be. From first year to now, a lot has changed and A&U has been instrumental in that change. But if I can dwell on that memory for a moment more, let me tell you three things that I learned about Anusa in 2014. One, we're the peak undergraduate representative body. This means we represent students on university committees from UniSafe to college education committees, all the way up to university council. We can assist you with representations of your experiencing issues with a teacher or you'd like to make an academic appeal. Two, we provide important free confidential services to students including a free legal service and have a student assistance unit run by professional staff. They can assist you with anything from Centrelink to tax, emergency grants and referrals to appropriate services. Three, Anusa ensures your experience at A&U is all it can be through facilitating a unique social experience. From Friday night party in Oweek to clubs and societies to first year camps, which I can't recommend enough, Anusa has your interests covered. So in summary, whatever you need, we're here to help and we should be your first port of call. Now I know that's a lot for newly arrived students to take in, but know we're here to help in any way that we can. Anusa facilitates the new A&U Facebook group where we try to answer your queries so join it if you haven't already and we're committed to your safety as well. The A&U OK app is in its second year and communicates important safety information about campus so if you haven't downloaded it, you can do so now. Now the real reason that I am here is because that I have been in your place not too long ago and I do know how you're feeling. There's anxiety, there's excitement, there's a bit of fear, there's uncertainty about where you fit in. Now I don't have the answers for everything but here's four things that I know for certain. One, at A&U you'll make friends that will last a lifetime so broaden your horizons and get involved. Now I can't promise you that you'll meet your spouse even if Therese Rayne tells you it's a thing, it is most certainly not. I spent my first three years at Bergman College which unfortunately should also tell you where I'm from and what I study. But one of the best decisions that I made was getting involved in a society. I met new people with similar interests. I learned invaluable skills that helped me today as president. Behind me is Market Day so after this go join a society and have fun. Two, university is a learning environment that is conducive to critical thought so dare to be challenged. Take your beliefs about the world and how it functions and lay them on the table where they can be viewed, debated, torn apart and strengthened. Critically engage with discussions about how we as a society could be more inclusive of oppressed and marginalized groups. It was one thing for me to espouse what I believed were feminist values but critical conceptual engagement at ANU allowed me to reflect more broadly on the role I play within the privileged space that I occupy. So I'd urge you to embrace those conversations about feminism, about race theory, about gender and queer theory, ableism and religion. Consider what your role is in contributing to a culture of inclusivity and respect. Three, coming to university as an undergraduate coincides with a time of personal growth and development so discover yourself. Embrace the you that you have ignored or haven't even noticed before and love yourself for it. Like most first years I came to ANU pretty scared not just because this was a big new unknown but because there was a little niggling part of me that I couldn't reconcile due to the people that I loved. I remember one of my first days at Bergman. The first years got sat down as a group to talk about respect. I'd come from a conservative school where the guys would use the term gay as a pejorative. I was told that this wasn't the culture at ANU. That at ANU we were accepted and respected everyone. From a scared first year I was empowered to get involved in queer advocacy. I took an old position at my college and created a queer office position to advocate for and support others. And in so doing I embraced the me that I had discovered. Four, finally you're going to have stuff ups along the way. Things won't work out the way you wanted sometimes and that's okay, believe me. It took me six months down at ANU psych clinic and a doctor telling me that I had depression before I realized that. So much good fortune is based on luck. So it is futile comparing yourself to others. Focus on what you want and why you want it and work for it. Giving yourself room for setbacks. Seeking help when they come. So before I finish I would also like to acknowledge the work of the students and staff who constantly strive to make our community better. The number of student leaders and staff throughout the university who dedicate their time many as volunteers for something they believe in is truly remarkable. ANUSA is driven by students who volunteer to lead and by an incredible team of staff who are committed to supporting students and seeing them succeed. To them all I say thank you and in particular I'd like to thank the ANUSA OIC team, Cam, Alyssa, Jeevan, Pip and Ryan and everyone else who has spent months working together to bring you what I hope you've found to be an excellent and welcoming week. Broaden your horizons, dare to be challenged, discover the you in ANU and know that no journey is without setback or difficulty. On behalf of ANUSA, welcome to ANU. Hello everyone, my name is Alyssa and it's an honor to be here today to speak to you as the President of the Postgraduate Research Students Association, PASA. I'd also like to start by acknowledging the Ngunnawal people, the land on which we're meeting and to pay my respects to elders past, present and emerging. Similar to Robbie, this is my seventh year at ANU and over my time here I have learned and experienced much and would like to offer you some of my learnings today in the hopes that it might enrich your experience. I came to ANU in 2009 to study commerce in large part to please my parents, it must be said, who are a product of their day, valuing the financial security that such a degree could bring. Whilst I enjoyed my degree, it wasn't until the later years that I started taking courses outside my discipline, philosophy, gender, art theory and the Vice Chancellor's courses in leadership and unraveling complexity. It's very different to marketing and management I can assure you. One of the things I love most about university is that it equips you with a way of thinking of approaching problems and a language that allows you to communicate which is extremely powerful. More than this, you're also in a community that values knowledge and learning and whilst we might approach things differently, we all have the capacity to find common ground and communicate with one another. It must be said that the conversations I've had with people outside of my discipline I found most enriching and particularly in the post-grad space, we have an extremely diverse community with over 40% of our students being international so I'm privileged to be able to speak to people from across the world every single day. I knew at the time in my commerce degree that the courses I had been taking outside of my discipline had opened my mind, expanded my thinking and sometimes scared and challenged me but it wasn't until several years later that something clicked and I realized that working in the public service just wasn't doing it for me and I was on the wrong path. It was at this point that I decided to return to ANU in 2014 to pursue feminist theory and gender studies as a framework for understanding and addressing inequality. The reason I chose this path is in no small way attributed to the fundamental issues I see in our society, in particular the treatment of women and the treatment of people that don't subscribe to a gender binary. It is also this acknowledgement of inequality that led me to approach PASA. When I commenced in 2014, the debate around exclusion zones of abortion clinics was heating up in Canberra. This was an important issue as women in our community were being publicly judged and harassed for choices concerning their reproductive health. I approached PASA wanting to lead a student voice to this and the voice of young women who unfortunately were much missing in this debate. But also over my time in 2014, I was concerned that there was not adequate representation for postgraduate women on campus. Many of the PhD students that I'd spoken to and the early career academics I'd met were struggling with caring commitments that had slowed their career progression and impacted on the academic study. As such, myself and a couple of friends that I'd met here decided to run a campaign to create the women's officer position in PASA, the first in the organization's history. I then went on last year with a great team to be elected as president running on a platform of equity. My time as women's officer and president has reconfirmed to me that there is still much work to be done in the university and in society more broadly to make this an inclusive and safe space. The fact that in 2017, having a family can be a significant disadvantage is a sign of inequality. The fact that people are sexually harassed and assaulted is a sign of inequality. And one, unfortunately, that is known to be a particular issue in the university context. As a student leader, I have supported many women who have experienced sexual assault and harassment and I'm sure other student leaders could say the same. Unfortunately, all too often we think about these things as statistics, as numbers on a page rather than people's lived experience. But I know that this is unfortunately not true. People do live this every day and as a woman growing up in Canberra, almost every woman that I would consider a friend has experienced sexual harassment or assault at some point in their lives, some very recently. These issues are symptoms of a systematic social problem that does not value women. And of course, women are not the only marginalised groups as we've heard today and as James has said, discrimination touches the lives of many in our community. It is our responsibility as a community to step up. As students, we're in a unique position to use our collective power and demand change. One of the wonderful things I've learned about my time in Pasa is that if you have the courage to stand up and demand change, there will almost certainly be someone that stands beside you and that's certainly been my experience. ANU and Pasa have been important parts of my life and my journey and is a great honour and responsibility to represent the 11,000 postgraduate students at ANU which comprise 50% of our student population, research and coursework students from across the world. A little known fact is that for the first 14 years of ANU's life, it was entirely postgraduate. So it's important to remember that post grads in case you're ever feeling a bit ousted by all the undergrads running around. Our connection to this institution and the importance and role that post graduates and all students play to the university is paramount. However, university can be a challenging time. So at these challenging times, I encourage you to seek out support from Pasa and from Manusa. Pasa is an independent organisation from the university. We are run by students, for students and our sole purpose is to support you. If you are a postgraduate student, you are automatically a member of Pasa and can access our services and ask us for support at any time. We have a three fold mandate to support you. The first is welfare where we provide free financial, academic, personal and legal advice. Advocacy where we represent you across the university and to government and community building where we run social, cultural, academic and sporting events in order to combat social isolation and bring the community together. My time at ANU has been a pivotal part of my life. It has transformed me into the true self, my true self and provided me with many opportunities and I believe it can do the same for absolutely everybody here. As a final thought in preparing for today, I wouldn't have to look at ANU's history which I'd thoroughly recommend. It's some exciting documents and the orientation program from 1968, helpfully stated, the essential point about orientation week and university life generally is that it will be only as good as you are prepared to make it. I think that that rings true today and is with that sentiment that I encourage you to make the most of your time here, to challenge yourself, to step outside your comfort zone, to realize your power and potential and the ability to create positive change in your own life, the lives of others and this community. I hope you all enjoy our week, the 2017 academic year and your time at university and on behalf of PASA, I welcome you to the ANU. I say thank you to both James and Alyssa. Look, we live in a very unsettled world and I think ANU provides you with the privilege of being able to stand for what you believe in. You've had two great examples there. It is a privilege. So never forget that while you're here, you do have the opportunity to stand for what you believe in and remember that there are many, many thousands and in fact millions of people in the world who do not have that privilege. So make the best of your time, stand up for what you believe in and help us to make a fairer and a better world. I'm gonna now hand over to our next speaker which is Jamila Rizvi. Jamila is one of our ANU alumna. We're very proud of her. You might have seen her on the project, The Feed, The Drum, and ABC News Breakfast. So there's a whole range of age groups and audiences there. So you will have seen Jamila somewhere. She's considered one of the leading voices for young Australian women, breaking down barriers in media to promote her own brand of feminism. She was editor-in-chief of Mamma Mia, the women's news network websites which attracts over two million people to the website per month and very shortly she's got a book coming out on women and work which we're all very excited about. Please join me in welcoming our 2014 ANU Young Alumnus of the Year, Jamila Rizvi. Thank you, Mani. I'd also like to begin by acknowledging that we meet today on the lands of the Ngunnawal people and also that I work and live every day on the lands of the Wurundjeri people. I pay my respects to their elders, past, present, and emerging. Welcome, my friends, to the Australian National University. This is exciting. This is Orientation Week. You're finally here. I think there's been some mad administrative error because I got in a lot of trouble about two years ago from the Chancellor for giving a speech at graduation that was apparently excessively subversive and not enough of inspiration. So I'm gonna give you a lot of inspiration, so fuck it up. Today, my friends, you join a new fraternity and your fellowship and a new family. You become a student at one of the greatest educational institutions in the world and most certainly the finest in this country. Or, to put it slightly less eloquently, suck at Sydney Uni. Congratulations on your excellent choice. Over the next three, four, five, or in some cases, 10 years, don't laugh that ended up being more than a few of my friends. You will learn more than you ever dreamed possible. You will have your capabilities stretched, your understanding challenged, and your ability to reason honed. Some of the world's best minds work and teach right here at the ANU. The ones who don't are regular and welcome visitors. To have the opportunity to learn from them is a tremendous one. Pay attention, respect, and be grateful to them, even when they're teaching STAT 1008, which will be, I promise you, the most mind-numbingly boring six months of your entire life. Just push through, it will get better. While I know it all seems very theoretical right now, this is the place where your adult character will be shaped. It is the place where you will learn the kind of person you will be and what the contribution you will make to this world is. That contribution may not turn out to be what you think and hope it will be today. Success is likely to look very different to you in a decade's time. Australia and the world feel like they are changing faster than ever before. With that comes opportunity, but also uncertainty. Your generation, which I think I technically still get to count as the same as my own, just, faces a future that looks very, very different to what our parents did. Most of you will work to support yourselves while at university. Some will work more than you will study. Most of you will graduate with a heck step. Few of you will own a house before you have children. Fewer still will have a single career for life, but instead skip and hop between industries and specialties for the five or so decades of your working lives. I want you to know that that is okay. Change is okay. There's nothing wrong with doing it differently to the people who came before you. There's nothing wrong with setting your own expectations rather than remaining captive to those of your parents. My parents expected me to pass stat 1008. Here comes the inspiration. I want you to imagine like a big, like snow-capped mountain and like, you know, a little person climbing up, you know, that kind of thing. And this is the inspirational quote beneath it. Mathematician and philosopher Alfred North Whitehead, who I'm well acquainted with, having Googled him yesterday, once said, the art of progress is to preserve order and change and to preserve change amid order. As the newest members of the ANU family, this is your task as well. To first preserve what this wonderful university stands for as Australia's intellectual gateway to the world and the vehicle by which we take our seat at the table of the civilized nations. And second, to be part of the ANU's continuing evolution, to meet the demands of a changing Australia, a changing world and a changing people. Here it is possible to meet and to become entrepreneurs who are building apps and businesses and cultural enterprise. Here it is possible to unlock the promise of stem cells or the meaning of verse, to speed the creation of drug therapies or to struggle with the meaning of justice, to design a human organ on a chip or a public space that draws people back again and again. It is possible to improve human health a continent away or to create sustainable energy sources that will be vital to our future. All of this is possible if you are prepared to face up to and deal with the uncertainty ahead. The key is knowing what you are willing to let go and knowing what you are willing to fight for. That is what you're going to learn here at ANU and it's far more important than remembering an equation or a particular piece of case law or that famous philosopher's quote, don't worry, I've forgotten his name already. Some of that important learning is going to happen in the classroom but I'm so sorry to the many deans and academics who are sitting around here right now, the bulk of that learning will happen outside of the classroom. Over the course of your degree, you will learn just as much from each other as you will from your teachers. I want you to remember that university is about more than books. It is about more than timetables and exams and lecture theaters and libraries. It is about more than who gets the pass marks and who gets the high distinctions. It is about more than caps and gowns. It is about more than essays and oral presentations. It is, and this is a big one, about more than beer. University is about becoming a citizen of the world. So I want to quote another great philosopher, Coach Taylor from Netflix drama Friday Night Lights. You are the Netflix generation so you know who I'm talking about this time. Before every game, Coach Taylor and his players shout out, clear eyes, full hearts, you can't lose. Here at the ANU, your teachers will help you to strengthen your minds, but it will be your peers who will be the ones that keep your eyes clear and your hearts full. Halfway through my third year at ANU, I was running in the student elections. I wanted someone's job over there. It's all right, I got it. I handed a pamphlet to a really good-looking nerdy guy who was walking through Union Court. We got married 18 months ago. During my first week of university, I sat next to a blonde-haired cardigan-wearing girl who looked like a geeky cartoon character in Foundations of Australian Law. She was the bridesmaid at that wedding. In the few years I spent as a student on this campus, I met the man who became my husband, the woman who became my bridesmaid. I met six or seven people who have become members of my staff. I met dozens more who I have relied on to help me land jobs, get promoted, and get over horrible boyfriends. I'd like to end on a somewhat somber note, and I hope that is okay with you. It is fashionable at the beginning of a speech like this to bemoan how old you have gotten, to spend a few minutes reflecting wistfully on misspent youth and meditating on one's own morality. Mortality, I apologize. You notice that I didn't do that, and I also can't say the word mortality. This is why. My friends, in a shockingly, shockingly short period of time, the people sitting around you will be running the country. That is not a joke. It is a fact. I am 30 years old, and since graduating from ANU, less than six or seven years ago, my peers are already saving lives as surgeons. They are building whole cities. They are publishing books. They are running the media. They are taking seats in parliament. And some of them never got that chance. It has been seven years since I graduated, and already there are people who I studied with, who I worked with, who I partied with, and who I loved, who are no longer with us. Looking out at this sea of irrepressibly eager and impossibly young faces, I can appreciate the sentiment of regret and longing to be younger again. It is sad to know that the great joys ahead of each of you are now behind some of us on stage, but I am not sad about the passing of time. I am so grateful for it. Getting older is a privilege. Learning is a privilege, and it is not one that is extended to everybody. Today, mostly having not even entered your 20s, oh my God, you will feel invincible. I get that because I felt the same. Hold on to that feeling because it will not be there forever and nor will you. I don't say this to depress you, but to implore you, to give everything you've got to this experience. Do not hold back. The next stage of your lives is a glorious one. Soak up every second of it, every minute, every hour, every week, every semester, every year. You have the privilege of joining a community unlike any other on the planet. It's a place where people think and act, where they imagine and realize. It's what all of you do and what all of you can do that fills me with such optimism about the ANU and Australia's future. So join the clubs, go to the parties, attend the rallies, read the student newspaper, skip the odd lecture, sit on the lawns and just talk to your friends, drink the jelly shots very safely, Marnie, very safely. Dress up like an idiot, run for student elections, go on exchange, take the internships, and stay for another game of pool. You can sleep later. Clear eyes, full hearts, can't lose. Can't wait to see what you all do next. Well, thank you, Jamila. That had an elegant sufficiency of subversiveness about it. So I want to thank you for that. I want to make two notes. The first, it is not compulsory to get married when you come to ANU. If you are already married, I'm not asking you to change. If you are not married, if you wish to get married while you're here, you can do so or afterwards. And I want to acknowledge this territory's proud history in standing for marriage equality as well. So whoever you find that you love, hopefully it goes well. The second point is, can you put your hand up if you're doing statistics at ANU? If you're enrolling in statistics, hand up nice and high. Okay, Jamila, they're available to help you afterwards. Okay? So I want to thank Jamila very much for this. Please join me again in thanking her. Our second and keynote speaker for today is ANU alumna, Therese Rain. She's actually Doctor Therese Rain because last year she received an honorary doctorate from the university. She's a very passionate businesswoman. Doctor Rain established INGIS in 1989 and she is the chief entrepreneurial officer. That is one of the coolest job titles you're ever gonna have. INGIS is a really inspirational invention. It assists a disadvantaged unemployed people by addressing their conditions and helping them to return to work. She's actually standing for something she believes in strongly. This is a proud part of ANU tradition. Today INGIS employs 2,000 people in 150 offices around the world. Please welcome our keynote speaker this morning, 2014 ANU alumna of the year, Dr. Therese Rain. I don't want to follow Jamila. What a fantastic welcome. In 1975, from all across this great southern land, we arrived here in Canberra, the meeting place at the Australian National University. It was hot and dry like it was earlier this week. And it was so dry that the grass crackled under our feet. From all over Australia we came. I was a young 17 year old, very young. I came from Melbourne and I came here grateful for early entry which ANU had offered me and which had arrived just two or three days after my father was involved in really a life threatening motor vehicle accident on the way home from work. So I was really grateful to be here. I arrived here with Cathy from Sydney who was a singer and a writer and she was studying English. I arrived here with Graham from Corryong, a tiny little town up in the mountains on the border of Victoria and New South Wales. I arrived here with people from big cities and small towns, including someone I met, I think, on the second day of university when we were walking back from a student Christian movement meeting up there at Bruce Hall. He says we'd met the day before but I don't remember. He came from a tiny town called in Mundi which had about 261 people in it. People came with all sorts of lived experiences of what it was to be Australian and learning people's different perspectives was one of the things that I most loved about being here. We came here with people from all over the world, with Damien who had studied pure maths at Oxford and was theoretically here to do his PhD which turned out, I think, to be a page and a half because what he seemed to be majoring in was learning how to play the squeeze box in a bush band. We arrived here with someone who was using the nuclear accelerator to do research in nuclear physics. We arrived here with, and he was from the United States, we arrived here with two wonderful people, one of whom was a lecturer in linguistics, a professor in linguistics who was seeking to document the two to 300 indigenous languages that I did not even know existed. And his wife, also from the United States, Grace, who was a musicologist who was documenting and capturing and recording indigenous ceremonial music. We arrived here without a wonderful welcome to country smoking ceremony or without any acknowledgement as we've had today of the indigenous lands on which we meet, the Ngunnawal country in which we meet, without a wonderful smoking ceremony, without hearing language spoken, without acknowledgement of the elder's past, present and emerging. I thank you for that welcome. It's become an important part of Australian life to understand that we are privileged to live here in a country where there is continuing culture of over 40,000 years, the longest continuing civilization on earth, and we have much to learn from our indigenous elders and friends. I came here to study arts and law. I remember going and signing up and I thought I'll do English literature because I love books, I'll do psychology because I'd read dibs in search of self. And I'll do law. And maybe I'll use that in alternative mediation. There must be another way of solving disputes other than in court, or maybe because the Family Law Act had just been passed. I might be able to use the psychology working with children where families were breaking up. None of that came to fruition so that initial dream of what I was going to be doing for five years at ANU, I discovered the law was not for me and I became intrigued by psychology and particularly clinical psychology. I ended up doing an Honours Degree with Professor Dawn Byrne, who I'm looking forward to seeing at Morning Tea. Soon I have not seen him since I completed my degree in 1981. And my degree was my Honours Thesis was in Learned Helplessness as a Model of Depression. It was the work of Martin Seligman who is now known as the father of positive psychology. I think a lot of my learning, as Jamila said, was not actually in the classroom. There was a huge amount of learning in theories and concepts and frameworks, philosophy and questioning how we make meaning out of life, how we perceive the world. A lot of that was stimulated by and inspired by what was happening in the classroom. But a huge amount of learning happened finding out about real eucalypts from someone who sat across me at the table at Bergman at lunch or infinite infinities, things I knew nothing of. It was a wonderful, it was just a wonderful time of expanding my mind, expanding my brain, expanding my sense of how people from all over the world in this most international of universities perceive and understand and experience life. Kevin and I had a chat on the second day of university over a cup of tea, very respectable, in his room with the door ajar. I asked him about his life and where he had come from, what his experience was, his father had been killed in a car accident when he was 10 and mine of course had just been in a car accident. He had grown up in country Australia, I had grown up in urban Australia in one of the big cities, the big smoke. I asked him, we talked about politics, about what was happening, we just had the dismissal of the duly elected prime minister, Goff Whitlam, by the governor general, so it was a fairly electric time in the parliament of the day and there were new policies on education and we talked about that. And I said to him at the end of the conversation, you know, I think the parliament needs someone like you, someone who has a vision for the country and someone who cares about the world. I asked him what he was studying and he said he was studying Chinese. And I said, why? And he said, well, Richard Nixon had just had recognized China, China was this large country to Australia's north, we were in the China region and it was really important that somebody and lots of people, as many as possible, spoke the language and understood and respected the worldview that came from China because after all, the 21st century would be the China century. He had a lot more perspicacity than I did. I was not nearly as clear as that. I left this university with a plan, I was going to go off and study and go and do my masters in psychology. I had a big week for my last week. I had my thesis in on the Tuesday, I did my final exam on the Thursday, packed my apartment on the Friday, got married on the Saturday to Kevin and we left the country for five years on the Sunday. I had a plan, we were going to Sweden, I was going to learn Swedish in six months and then I was going to do my masters in 18 months at Uppsala University in psychology and then come back qualified and registerable as a psychologist. And if that didn't work, I would get a job as a psychologist in Sweden and I would get registered that way. The wheels came off those plans within two weeks. So they changed the rules about how long you had to study Swedish for and how long the masters would be and it meant three years and we were only in Sweden for two. And the ambassador very helpfully called me into his office and said, hello, Mrs. Rudd. I said, that's not my name. My name is Therese Rain, R-E-I-N. And he said, no, I put you in the handbook, the diplomatic handbook as Mrs. Rudd and Mrs. Rudd it is. I said, no, it's really not. And he said, look, I think that women should be barefoot pregnant and in the kitchen and I was negotiating reciprocal working rights for spouses in Sweden, but I'm not going to do that now. So if you want a job, maybe you can work as a receptionist or something in one of the embassies. It was not helpful, it was really not helpful. So the plans, the wheels fell off the plans. In the end though, I came back to Australia, back to Canberra, which is really home with the smell of the eucalypte here on this campus and the flights of birds and that crisp summer heat. I came back here with two little babies and I got a job as a rehabilitation counsellor. And it was when I was with one of my very first clients who was a young man with a back injury who could no longer work as a boiler maker, could no longer ride his Harley Davidson, could no longer rough house play with his kids, could no longer make love to his wife. It was when I was with him that I thought, oh, I know about this. I know about this. Because my dad had become a paraplegic as a result of a plane crash during the Second World War and that meant he had no feeling or movement below upper back, he could move his arms. He had been told he would die within five years. He decided to go to university and study to become an aeronautical engineer. He overcame barriers of access, of transport, of it being admitted, of accessing the library, of getting in and out of the lecture theatres. And he graduated. He graduated in Sydney Town Hall to a standing ovation. He then went on and worked. People said he couldn't work because he was disabled. But he applied and applied and with my mum, encouraging and urging him on, got a job as an aeronautical engineer and had the opportunity to follow his field of fascination which was flight. He became a Paralympian. He loved being an elite sportsman. He won gold for Australia in archery and carried the flag at the original Paralympics at Stoke Mandeville. So as I was talking to this young boiler maker, I thought, I know about this. I know about, I know about when things happen to you, that you can push ahead or you can retreat, that you can find solutions or you can give up. I know that with encouragement and support practical issues can be solved and it's important, in fact, critical to reimagine yourself and dream. This is my life's work. This is what I wanna do. I also knew from my thesis all those years before by then about reversing learned helplessness. So this theory came into practice and grew to not just working with injured workers who couldn't go back to their pre-injury jobs but also into working with people who were unemployed and long-term unemployed because of environmental degradation like Fisher people in Sweden where the fish had been killed off by the acid seas or people whose jobs had disappeared because of the flight of global capital like people working initially in the dockyards in Glasgow or people who had been in prison or people who had just hit a brick wall because of disability or people who had been discriminated against because of their gender. And I built a company which was in the end, 6,000 colleagues working in 12 countries with half a million people at any one time. Each one individuals, each one with potential. Each one with possibility. And our goal was to help them into decent lasting work. I love that work. This is what I would say today. The future is completely unknowable. It's completely unknowable. There is so much changing in the world of science, in the world of creativity, in geopolitics, in technology, and how we relate to each other, how we talk to each other. When I was at university, there were no mobile phones. Little or no mobile phone that was a computer with the statistical packages program on it. Like when I wanted to use SPSS, I had to go at 2.30 in the morning to John Curtin, medical school, with my pile of data punched cards to access the program to do the analysis of my research results. So much has changed. So much is changing and the future is completely unknowable. So here, I urge you to learn to be open, to foster your lifelong curiosity, to challenge yourself, to build relationships with other people with whom you may do great things in the future in a world of changing complexity and challenge and possibility. Find the thing that you are most passionate about, the thing that you want to change in the world, the thing that you want to create. And know that you're standing, based on your work here at ANU, your learning and your relationships, that that will enable and catapult you into futures that we can't even imagine now. I think, well, if I as a young 17-year-old girl can have experienced and contributed a little bit that I have done and had the opportunity with Kevin to do amazing things, if I, one person can do that, imagine what all of us here seated today and in this great university can achieve in the world, I wish you the very best and welcome you. Thank you, Therese. Your story is one that is your own, that is not unusual for students here and I think it is entirely appropriate for our commencing students to get a sense of someone who's gone out and changed the world and to see that that journey is not straightforward, it was not laid out in front of you, but rather it happened. And as you say, the future is unknowable. I also wanna reflect on our Welcome to Country today by Robbie and Billy. Robbie, one of our many, you know, an outstanding student, Billy welcomed you to country. And in thinking of that welcome, that welcome is for you today, but it's for tomorrow, and I want you to think of the words you heard today, the words of the land we stand on today and that you will study on. I don't want you to forget them and that is I think your job in reflecting on that welcome today. In doing so, I'd also like to pay my respects to the non-whale elders past, present, and future. O Week is one of the most exciting weeks on campus. It's a time when we, the staff, get to see the excitement of young people for the first time coming onto this campus where the vitality of the university is re-tapped. And it's the time of year that I personally look forward to because it signifies what a university is all about. You've heard from our great speakers today that A&U is a university with its own unique way of doing things in its own unique spot in Australia and indeed the world. We offer our students an experience unlike that you're gonna get anywhere else, and you are now part of this community. But ultimately the journey as you have heard is of your own making and is not gonna be done by your professors, but rather yourself. Now as the nation's university, we have a responsibility to serve our society and reflect our society and its all of its diversity. And I do hope that you will rise to this challenge while you are here, but also after you leave. And you should take solace from our speakers that you can do it. Therese and Jamila, it is great to have you both back on campus for your words of inspiration. And from my respect, it is great to have you as people we can proudly call our alumna. And I guess that you also, the fact that you can signify what you've done to these young people, it is so great that you're prepared to come back and tell your stories, personal as they are. James and Alyssa, the passion you have for representing the students is evident in both your speeches today and the work you do. People need to know that we, the university, had to argue very strongly to include our student representation on our council. And we did so successfully in the new ANU Act. And it's because they matter. They have enormous respect and power on your behalf. And we put them at the highest ranks of the university. To my colleagues and professional, both professional and academic, thank you for coming out to supporting today's event and welcoming our students today. Most of us here who are not here for the first time will remember our first day at university. For me, I grew up in the mountains of Montana and for moving to Alaska. I come from relatively small town places. I went to study at Tucson, Arizona, in the middle of the western desert in the United States. It was 43 degrees Celsius when I landed, which was a bit of a shock from Alaska, I can tell you. I was shown my dorm, a cement bunker located underneath the football stadium, bleachers, six of us to a room, a very small room with three sets of bunk beds, three desks, and three closets and nothing else. It didn't even have air conditioning, which in Tucson was actually a bit of a stretch. Now of course, we've subjected you to 41 degrees and no air conditioning here on this campus for those of you in our residence colleges, but the good news is 43 degrees was a normal day in Tucson where here it was the hottest day of the year and one of the hottest days, probably the hottest day you'll ever have here. So the good news is you're not likely to have any more of those 41 degree sea days. The bad news though, for those of you who have never experienced a real winter or even a Canberra winter for that matter, you're gonna have a little bit of climatic shot when it's minus seven, minus eight in the mornings come mid-year. But along the way, you're gonna meet people who are just like you. You're gonna meet people from completely different backgrounds from you. You're gonna meet people who will inspire you, people who will challenge you and make you think things in a way different than you have before. That is what a university is about. You're gonna have a chance to meet people who are the future of this country and the world. In my case, when I reflect back to my time at university, I was with my wife as she threw off, as she taught aerobics. A young man named Barack turned out to be Obama who began to become the president of the United States while we were at Harvard together. And the person that she threw Barack off the gym floor there was a woman named Cheryl Sandberg who is now the COO of Facebook and iconic leader of American industry. That all happened within 10 seconds. Think of what might happen here. My wife certainly in all that time didn't know that was gonna happen and I didn't know that was gonna happen and she didn't know she was of course going to end up marrying a Nobel Prize winner. And if she did, she probably would have chose someone else. Looking around you, you may well be sitting next to a future prime minister. You do not have to marry them. A future iconic leader of a multinational company or a future Nobel Prize winner. Or all those roles might be you. You could be one of the people who creates one of Australia's great social enterprises or whose thoughts and ideas are read by hundreds of thousands of Australians each week. These people are going to be drawn from people with your experience and society has invested in you substantial amounts of resources and letting you come to the national university. And we don't put a lot of pressure on you but society is expecting a lot from you. And the way you deliver is by being who and what you are and following your passions. As you have heard today, Australia's produced more women and men who have changed society and changing society than you could possibly dream. Our people are found around the world in all parts of government, business and civil society. But what you do, well that's up to you. And we will be giving you the tools to chart your way in an uncertain future. For many of you out there, this might be your first time at university but we're also joined by people who are returning. You may be coming back for your final year. I'm guessing most of you not quite sure what the future looks like and you shouldn't. But the good news is we don't tell you what to do but we do give you options. And we give you the time and the opportunities to figure out how you're gonna do your little part for planet earth. The university is here to support you on that journey. We try to do the best we can. We won't get everything right but we will try to help you realize your full potential. I came to ANU 23 years ago as a 27 year old postdoctoral fellow and no one really knew but they gave me the opportunity to go out and measure the future of the universe. And I got the wrong answer. That could happen to you or probably won't because that means I'm wrong if you get something similar or different. But that environment that's helped me is the environment you have come to. My job as vice chancellor is to give you every chance to succeed. To succeed in being happy, to be in a safe and secure environment and to be in an environment that is, has a fundamental culture defined by trust and respect. A culture where we are all proud to be at the national university. These values are absolutely critical to me. We are part of a university that is committed to providing opportunity equally to women and men, to indigenous and non-indigenous Australians, equally to people living with a disability, equally to those who aspire to do great things regardless of their sexuality, religion, ethnicity, or socioeconomic status. There are gonna be people here who are not like you. Embrace them, learn from them. That's the great part of being at a university. As Alyssa talked about, this is a place where sexual assault still occurs, but it is not something we accept. We will not accept it until none occurs. So I ask you to be part of our safe, inclusive campus and to do your best to respect your fellow students, your fellow staff and do your part of holding up that fundamental value of this university. Now this year, we're going to commence on one of the biggest redevelopment projects that this university has ever seen. We're going to completely revitalize the heart of A&U Union Court just behind us. This means that from July, you can start to see some changes around the place. And yes, I'm sorry to say that there will be some annoying disruption. But to help with this, the first thing you're gonna see is the construction and then opening of a new pop-up village. It's gonna have student common area, bars, cafes, food outlets, mobile food vans, shops and retail space, as well as some new facilities and hang out spaces for a new St. Parça. It's gonna be the temporary center of A&U while we undertake the main Union Court transformation. But I think you're gonna find it's so good that we hope you probably aren't gonna want us to tear it down at the end. So with some of the pain, there is some gain. By 2019, when we open up the new precinct, we will have a new heart to our university that will transform how and what we can do on campus. And that new precinct is gonna include state-of-the-art learning facilities, laneway cafes, outdoor music and performance spaces, some cultural and entertainment, a cultural and entertainment precinct, more services than we have, more shops than we have, as well as a gym and a pool. It's something to look forward to as we experience what is going to be the unavoidable construction that comes with it. Today, as you look around University Avenue, you will see on our flags the Armato, Naturum, Primum, Cognicere, Rerum. It means first, to learn the nature of things. It doesn't mean we're trying to beat the University of Sydney to learning things. It means to go through life successfully, you first need to understand the basics. You need to understand the nature of things. That is what we aim to do for you here. Education is the great leveler of the playing field of life. It is the vehicle society gives each of its citizens to enable them to transform their talent into the human capital that they can use to achieve their life's ambitions. I hope each and every one of you will use your time at ANU to realize those ambitions, ask meaningful questions, not be afraid to fail, not be prepared to challenge when things aren't right. Please, for yourself, for the nation and for the world, become the best you can be. I look forward to watching your journey, and I welcome you to the ANU, and you can consider yourself commenced. Thank you.