Acting Director-General, AusAID
Mr Peter Baxter

Director of Scholarships
Mr Michael Hassett

Director, Master of Business Leadership Program
Dr Janet Sutherland

Indigenous Elder, Traditional Owner and Chair of the Ngambri Land Council
Ms Matilda House, much loved and much admired in our community. She teaches us ancient culture that all Australians take great pride in.

Distinguished speakers and guests

Australian Leadership Awards Scholars:

• women and men, representing 28 countries of the Asia-Pacific region
• leaders, and future leaders, in development, for our region and our world.

I acknowledge the traditional keepers of this land and their enduring contribution to our nation’s history, culture, ethos, and future.

I acknowledge too, the myriad rich stories you each carry with you, I hope you will share them, so that others may listen and learn.

 My friends, you take up your seats here because:

• you have already excelled,
• and because you demonstrate enormous talent and promise for future excellence and achievement.

 You have been selected from a fine pool of spirited and determined applicants.

 But the best reason for being here – the convincing reason – is because you want to be here.

 You have made a genuine commitment to learning leadership and leading change in the Asia-Pacific region and beyond.

 You know the influence of leadership instruction in

• empowering your studies
• your disciplines and expertise
• and your values.

They will offer you a pathway out in to the world where you will apply them to benefit others.

 I want you to know how delighted I am to join you here this morning for the start of Aspiring to Lead, Leading to Inspire.
 It is a good and necessary thing for women leaders to continue our conversations about women’s leadership. There’s not enough of it.

We must keep finding ways of showing and proving – to men and women – its merit and need in civilised society.

But there is more to it than that.

Women – and men – talk about women’s leadership because it’s different;

• women feel more willing to embrace – rather than conceal or ignore – the differences;
• we feel more confident to make our own stamp, to forge our own leadership;
• Conferences like this one can talk openly and constructively about perspectives of head, heart and hand – recognising the mix of approaches needed for strong, fair and effective leadership;
• We have, over time, learnt the value of -diversity of human skill,
     -experience,
     -and emotional and ethical intelligence

 in conducting the business of communities and nations.

I know that our Federal Sex Discrimination Commissioner will advance this platform tomorrow, but it does raise another point:

• about the need to ensure, that, in these circumstances,
• indeed in all national, bilateral and multilateral relations,
• that the meeting tables speak of diversity.

This is not diversity for its own sake, but diversity that will assure us a greater robustness in facing the issues of a world that is changing faster than we can predict.

Dr Ian Goldin is the Director of
The 21st Century School: Oxford University’s think-tank-come-research centre.

• He battled apartheid in his native South Africa;
• He fought for freedom in Chile and Nicaragua;
• He was development adviser to Nelson Mandela; and
• Vice-President of the World Bank.

Dr Goldin says that there are six things to know about 2030, even if we can’t know how they will unfold:

• the first is globalisation: the trends are getting swifter and shorter;
• the second is the evolution of development technologies: info, bio, and nano;
• the third is progress in medical science: managing miracles and ethical nightmares;
• the fourth are the new dynamics caused by ageing and migrating populations;
• the fifth: the systemic global fragility and risk brought about by climate, disease pandemic, and bio-terrorism;
• and, number six - the generation of ideas and how they ultimately determine our affluence or our collapse.

I have one to add, and that is: it’s
a lot to know.

My friends, these are the issues being flagged to you right now as you complete your undergraduate and postgraduate degrees.

And – these are the issues whose outcomes you will influence:

• by your leadership in 20 years time, as you grow into senior roles, some imagined and some beyond your wildest dreams;
• and by the diversity you bring to the mix.

As we mature, we must ask ourselves what we can continue to add to that mix.

I am still grateful for what I learnt as a young mother involved in my local community, and how those experiences helped to shape my work and career right up to this day.

I learnt how to:

• communicate,
• how to listen,
• how to organise,
• how to lobby for what was desperately needed,
• how to look after people and foster their talent.

I learnt the power of the grass roots.   
 
While law was my discipline,

• it was my interest in human rights,
• the rights of women and children, and
• the support and nurturing of families

that led me to my roles:

• with the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission;
• and the National Women’s Advisory Council;
• As a member of Australia’s Delegation to the UN Commission on Human Rights;
• and as an observer at CEDAW,

the meeting of the expert body overseeing the convention on the elimination of all forms of discrimination against women.

They were challenging roles because their constant premise was change: change in a resistant and nervous world.  

But they were equally rewarding for what they taught me, and the teams of women and men I worked with.

I mention the very same qualities that you seek today. They are as germane now as they were ten, twenty, thirty, forty years ago:

• confidence
• integrity
• connection
• resilience
• aspiration
• and, I would also say, optimism.

My colleagues and I found strength in:

• our fellowship and mutual respect;
• our leadership and mentoring of one another;
• our candour, intellectual rigour and attention to detail;
• our courage;
• and our common belief in the worth of our efforts to bring about change through effective, sustainable processes.

While the qualities required for good leadership maybe somewhat timeless, there is no doubt, that the territory has vastly changed.

Dr Goldin’s big six were not then on leaders’ radars. His language had not entered the universal vernacular. Global was a word seldom used.

I think one of the most difficult things we must do – at any time – is:

• to separate the issues from the words and images and tools we use to describe and manipulate them;
• to declutter our vision and our thinking;
• to look for the themes and patterns;
• and to draw on the touchstones offered by our own experience.

In October last year, former and first female President of Ireland, Mary Robinson, delivered the annual Griffith Lecture in Brisbane.

For the best part of her sixty-five years, Ms Robinson:

• has been a committed advocate for liberal and human rights causes;
• Through her project, Realising Rights: the Ethical Globalisation Initiative, she continues to work for a just, healthy, stable and peaceful world.

Ms Robinson has a demanding international schedule, which an audience comes to know through the stories of individuals she tells, in order to tell the bigger stories.

At Griffith University, Ms Robinson spoke of poverty – four billion of the world’s
6.7 billion people who live outside the formal legal and social structures that secure property rights, labour rights, livelihood rights, and access to justice.
She spoke of the possibilities of private sector “social” business investment to empower those living in poverty to be agents of change for themselves.

She encouraged us with examples of what is being done already.

 Then she paused to share something of herself.

Very often, she said, I find when you’re trying to bring home to yourself, never mind to an audience, how serious things are, it helps to make it really very personal.

She went on.

When my first grandchild was born, I suddenly recalibrated and found that I was thinking a hundred years ahead now – that’s his lifespan if he’s healthy and lucky.

Now I have four grandchildren and I often ask myself “They will be in their forties in 2050, will they have a liveable world?”

I understand what she means.

Mary Robinson shows us the very persuasive power of the personal and the individual to draw attention to where change is needed, and where change empowers and liberates.

She is also one of the Elders: the non-aligned group of eminent world leaders, brought together by Nelson Mandela, who work to alleviate human suffering, and to promote peace and the shared interests of humanity.

Their big six come from a document that’s sixty-two years old:

• freedom
• equality
• dignity
• tolerance
• respect
• and shared responsibility

The document is of course the Universal Declaration of Human Rights – that document which shines as a beacon of hope and inspiration to the worldc.

The Elders have often been asked what they have to offer, what they bring to the mix.

In different words and with much humility:

• They all return to the core principles that have steered fairness and happiness in humanity for a long time;
• They move us with the remembered detail of others’ stories;
• they prefer to say, “you talk, I’ll listen”
• they laugh generously,;
• and they can see through the clutter, to the things that, in their lifetimes, mattered, again and again.

My friends, I wish you the best of learning, cooperation, collegiality and friendship in the coming days.

Think hard about what you bring to the mix; make a difference with it; take a few risks, Be Bold!

Let me return to the lines of Marjorie Pizer, Australian poet and feminist who must be turning ninety this year:

Cast your words into the air –
Who knows who will catch their echo?

Cast your words into the fire –
Who knows what strength will be forged?

Ladies and gentlemen.

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