Address by His Excellency General the Honourable David Hurley AC DSC (Retd) FTSE

Caroline Aunty Caroline Hughes, thank you very much for your welcome. If you’re not aware, I had the privilege in September of investing Caroline as a member of the Order of Australia for her work in reconciliation and working with the local communities here. So Caroline, thank you and congratulations again.

Joining with your acknowledgement, Canberrans here know how beautiful a part of the country this is with Namadgi down South, the Brindabellas, the Murrumbidgee, the Molonglo; we’re really blessed by nature and we thank the Ngunnawal for looking after it for generation after generation, pay respects and my constant message over the last 12 months has been be mindful of our enormous responsibility to the younger generation of Indigenous children today because their future is absolutely critical to the future of this country. In our hands, their future.

Could I acknowledge our distinguished guests, Minister Ed Husic, Professor Katherine Woodthorpe, Kylie Walker, Cathy Foley and all who have joined us this evening. I’ve got a speech here that says a lot of nice things about you, but I’m going to just leave it for a moment.

Every time I visit the Northern Rivers, to Lismore, Coraki, Woodburn, Cabbage Tree Island, ravaged by terrible floods, heart rending floods earlier this year, and listen to the stories, talk to the boaties, talk to the little kids who were taken out of the roof as the water came up to their ceilings held up by their parents I come away from those visits and I’ve got three words in my head: technology, science, and engineering. 

Because out of that tragic circumstance up there, I believe, we have been given a golden opportunity to show how good this country is. And the solution is in those three fields. How we as Australians, through our ingenuity, through our innovation, through our intellect, through our leadership, can demonstrate to the world as one of your aims of ATSE says, “climate change mitigation and adaptation”, how to demonstrate to the world how we can build a community that is adapted to climate change in the future. We have a golden opportunity in that rural community to demonstrate not only just building back, not only building better, but building for a future that will be different. That’s why I’m inspired by what you do here at ATSE.

Now I’ll come back to the good bits for you. I want to say congratulations to the new Fellows who were installed this week. And thank you for what you have contributed to date and what you will do in the future: you join a very distinguished cohort and deserve your recognition. I enjoyed reading about you and the exciting endeavours you’re into, for example, harnessing AI for social good, developing new sources of renewable energy, securing safe water and sanitation in remote communities, diagnosing illnesses earlier and more accurately, the list goes on. And what I read in that and what I see in this particular Academy makes me optimistic about the future of Australia. Now it’s not trendy to say that at the moment, but seeing it 365 days a year 24/7 every week, I’m optimistic for this country, for the quality of the people it has and the quality that you exhibit in this Academy.

When I was sworn in, I quoted the Australian author David Malouf, he said, “Australia is still revealing itself to us. We oughtn’t to close off possibilities by declaring too early what we’ve already become.” i.e. we’re not a finished product. So sometimes we are disappointed. Sometimes we are upset. Sometimes we are challenged, but we’re not a finished product. And the ingenuity, the engine, the drive, the leadership to develop that product rests in a learned Academy, such as yours, in concert of course with the others.

I want to thank you for what you’re doing in relation to STEM education. In your recent past Paper on STEM skills, I took out two major recommendations from it: the need to promote and support a culture of lifelong STEM learning and the workforce to ensure Australia has the skills it needs now and into the future, and the need to raise the profile of STEM careers in Australia to showcase their accessibility and their attractiveness.

Now, it’s not for me to comment on the merits of individual policies, but let me bring out two themes for that. First of all, I think we are a nation of problem solvers. We’re suited to lifelong learning, to adapting, to innovating. And I keep embarrassing Professor Michelle Simmons by quoting her back to herself. I’m not sure if she’s here tonight. But I share her view. When she was asked “why did she come to Australia to take up their quantum computing tasks here in Australia?”, she said, “Because Australians will take on the big challenges.” That’s our track record. That’s who we are. And that’s what we should be doing. And Michelle, of course, won this year’s Prime Minister’s Prize for Science and became the Australian of the Year.

But the right skills are here. And really, there’s no end to what we can do as a country, and certainly through my office, being able to raise the profile of STEM, particularly through the Order of Australia. I’m very pleased that this year, we finally achieved gender parity, in our honours list, and across the three highest levels in the Order. That was a significant achievement. But we’ve got more work to do. We need to represent the quality of the work that comes out of the Academy like this. So we can shout to the Australian community: This is important. And this is a future for you. Our job is not to open doors for young kids and make life easy for them. Our job is to show them how many doors are out there to knock on and what’s the pathway to them. And if the pathways are keep with maths, keep with science, then that’s our job. It’s the key to our future.

So I want to congratulate again the new Fellows, I want to congratulate those who are going to be award recipients tonight. Thank you for your contribution to Australia. Thank you for your contribution to our growth. But more than that, thank you for your potential and what you will do for us into the future. This is an important institution in the life of Australia. It has been, history tells us that, but more than that now, it is important as we take on some big challenges that face us into the future. Lismore, Cabbage Tree Island, Coraki, Woodburn, West Ballina, Casino – all those little country towns depend on us, showing the leadership to do it.

Thank you.