9 November 2026

Good evening, everybody.  

You are a sight to behold. It's wonderful to see you from this angle.  

Sue, thank you for that overly generous introduction. It goes back quite a long way, I'm feeling very old, actually. Thank you also, Sue, for you and the Melbourne Holocaust Museum for the privilege of inviting me to deliver tonight's oration.

I just want to thank Isaac for singing. I came to a Shabbat-style dinner in your family's home and met you and your brother. And to hear you sing tonight is very, very special. So, thank you.

I also want to thank you for playing the video with those powerful testimonials that come from the work of the museum. It makes the story so much more powerful to know that those testimonies come from those who are associated with the museum. And thank you also, Sue, for acknowledging the very sad passing of Eva Geller just this week. It has been a hard year for her and her family, and her passing was very sad. Very sad news this week.  

I will acknowledge, as Sue has done, that we are gathered on Traditional Lands, the lands of the Wurundjeri Woi-Wurrung people of the Kulin Nation, and I pay my respects to Elders, past and present, and any First Nations people who are joining us here this evening.

And just as the Museum acknowledges, and I saw again today, I want to pay respect to the Yorta Yorta man William Cooper, the only Indigenous person around the world who on the 6th of December 1938, powerfully protested the persecution of Jews by walking seven kilometres from Footscray to the German Consulate on Collins Street with a petition that said this: ‘We are a very small minority and we are a poor people but in extending sympathy to the Jewish people we assure them of our support in every way.’  

I was fortunate to meet a descendant of William Cooper just recently at the SHIR concert at the Sydney Opera House, Michael McDonogh, who I was able to embrace and thank for the work of his great ancestor. These stories remind us about connections and the people that do care over time. It was wonderful to see William Cooper so beautifully commemorated at the Museum today. 

Sue has done a wonderful job of acknowledging who is in this room. You are a truly spectacular group of very, very distinguished people, and I'm touched that so many of you have chosen to come out tonight for the oration. You are all distinguished guests; I just wanted to flag a couple.  

I know that Josh Burns MP was here representing the Prime Minister, but he has a very, very new baby to go home and deal with, and I think he's being a good dad tonight. I'm going to send him a copy of my remarks so that he can study them, and I'll check on that later. We also have the former Attorney General, The Honourable Mark Dreyfus KC MP joining us. I've known and worked with Mark for many years, it's very special to have Mark here, together with, in particular, the Holocaust survivors that Sue has already mentioned, and the families, the volunteers, all the generous supporters of the Melbourne Holocaust Museum.  

I particularly want to acknowledge Nina Bassat AM, who I will be on a panel with shortly. It is wonderful that we will have that conversation together with Dr Breann shortly. Just in the front row, I couldn't help myself to acknowledge John and Pauline Gandel – not only people I've known for a long time, but we share a great friendship – you share a grandparent-ship and great grandparent-ship with Linda Dessau AC CVO and Tony Howard AM KC, dear friends of mine, so I know that they would want me to acknowledge your presence here this evening. It's wonderful to see you.  

You are a wonderfully, wonderfully important audience tonight, and I acknowledge all of you.  

Now I'm very pleased to be back in Melbourne. It's a city which you may not be aware of that has shaped part of my childhood life – I was at primary school for quite a while here in Watsonia. My father was at the School of Signals at the Watsonia Barracks, and so one of my sisters was born up the road at the Greensborough Hospital, and so my school life had a start here in Watsonia.  

And I returned to Melbourne as a young lawyer, working firstly and strangely enough at the Gas and Fuel Corporation, that big brown building sitting on the Yarra that now houses a much nicer building with much nicer things in it. And then I was at Freehills, then Freehill Hollingdale and Page, as an articled clerk, I worked in the Intellectual Property section.  

Now, amongst my cohort of lawyers, I made some lifelong friends. My dear friend Rick Goldberg, who I'm really pleased to say is here tonight, makes it very special to have friends that go back to those days here, coming along to see an old friend deliver a lecture. Rick, it’s lovely that you're somewhere in the room. We used to spend quite a lot of time with his dear friend Elliot Perlman, who didn't stay in law for very long. He says he's a barrister, but I think he's more of an author nowadays.

But I'm really delighted to look back on those days of growing up as a young adult, really as a young lawyer here in Melbourne. In those years, I also, much to the horror of many of my lawyer friends, re-immersed myself into a social ritual of Australian rules football. It was an experience that I could not imagine would one day prove invaluable when I later joined the Commission in 2005 as the first woman to do so. There are many formative memories I have of my time in Melbourne during that time at the AFL Commission, and they are very important memories for me to kick off my remarks tonight.

After only knowingly encountering Jewish people through my old university friend, now Oxford professor, Professor Joshua Getzler at the ANU in the 1980s, who I knew very well and we were very fond of each other, we spent a lot of time debating. He was the only Jewish person I think I was aware of that I knew. Of course, I would have been meeting lots of Jewish people without knowing because I hadn't grown up around the Jewish community. But it was my time in Melbourne as a young woman where I felt I first really experienced Jewish culture, friends, shabbat, food, debate, music, and yes, even football.  

In fact, in a little book by sportswriter Martin Flanagan of the Flanagan famous family, Martin writes predominantly about sport and First Nations issues. He wrote a book, a little book called The Game in Time of War, and he shares the story of a Jewish writer, Doffan, described as a dyed-in-the-wool supporter of the Collingwood Football Club. Doffan tries to translate the ‘C’arn the Pies’ into Hebrew for a friend in Israel. The closest biblical translation he could come up with was, ‘Let the ravens of the book ascend!’

Pie supporters in the room, maybe you want to bring that back in fashion. I just say go Swans. I thought about that when I was invited by Rabbi Yaakov Glasman AM to visit the St Kilda Shule and Synagogue in December 2024 to support a community impacted by the arson attack on the Adass Israel Synagogue. In addition to spending time in discussion with many of the senior community members there, Rabbi Glasman showed me the prized desk of General Sir John Monash, now restored and in his office. It just worried me that just very near it sits a huge premiership photograph of the Collingwood Football Club premiership team with the Rabbi sitting right in the centre. I think he says that's as close as he's been to heaven. It was a wonderful occasion, though, to be witnessing the shul, but also to see General Sir John Monash's desk, whom I am in my role, also your Commander-in-Chief of the Australian Defence Force, and think very deeply about the Jewish stories in our defence force and military history over time. And Rabbi Glasman and I have continued to stand in close contact, as I have with many rabbis here in Melbourne and Victoria and around the country.

In fact, during 2025, Simeon, my husband, and I were making regular visits to Melbourne, and I know about that palpable fear in the sense that you, as the Jewish community, had fear and isolation. And then, just days before the Bondi attack, as it would happen, the Rabbi came up to Sydney specially to visit me at Admiralty House to continue the conversation about the work of care, connection, and responses to antisemitism. We were not to know what will be happening in a matter of days.  

And in early July this year, the Rabbi and members of the St Kilda Hebrew Congregation generously shared a shabbat style meal with me and my team – some of whom had never celebrated Shabbos. It was held on a Thursday night to accommodate my plans. It was hosted by Dr Silviu Itescu, father of our singer tonight, and his wife Nicole, along with senior members of the St Kilda Shule and Victorian Jewish community. It was a really special night at an important time for me to take messages back to Canberra through my job again.

And over the years I have so many stories of friendships and conversations and moments of deep welcome from the Jewish community across business, education, culture, and community life. There's a number of you in the audience tonight who have shared board tables with me, whom I'm very close with, where we've had these conversations outside the boardrooms. Tanya Oziel and Johnny Weiss, who are better known in Sydney, shared a lot with me through the Australia-Israel Chamber of Commerce when I used to work with the Chamber, and taught me a lot about the Jewish philosophy of Tikkon Olam – repairing the world. With many of the Jewish people I have known and been privileged to know, I feel that these themes, amongst the many that you practice, is central to responsibility for others – caring, contributing, and always leaving the world in a better place than we found it.  

I saw that most obviously again – it's another football story, I'm sorry, but it tells a very important story of unity. In 2008 and again in 2011, when the AFL Peace Team brought young Israelis and Palestinians to Australia to compete together in the AFL International Cup. Interesting enough, their coach was an Italian man, Robert DiPierdomenico, otherwise known as Dipper.  

So, you have an Italian coach of the Peace Team together with Kevin Sheedy traveling to and from Israel for the training. These were young men from communities divided by conflict and mistrust coming together to play a very unfamiliar game – our great game, but wearing the same jumper and working towards the same goal – peace. They didn't have to agree on everything, or perhaps anything, or leave their own identities behind. The players built extraordinary relationships across a divide that shaped their everyday lives. You can only imagine what those lives would be like today.  

And for Australians who did not know much about these men, it showed that our Indigenous game, Australian rules football, and many other things in our great Australian life could become bridges between communities, bringing hope and optimism. Now that story was captured in a documentary called Tackling Peace, produced by Marc Radomsky and narrated by Hugo Weaving. And the Peace Team for me reflects that spirit of repairing the whole world, where we can each play a part in repairing our little part of it.  

I had a really wonderful time during those two Peace Team visits because I was building a close relationship and friendship with the former Justice Linda Dessau AC CVO at the time, because she also joined the AFL Commission. She, of course, went on to be this State's first woman Governor and first Jewish person to serve as the Governor of Victoria, and she remains one of my closest friends today.  

I share these stories, these memories, these relationships of mine to give you tonight a little bit more of me, long before I became your Governor-General. Because together with the lessons of my parents, I grew up in an army family – I was an army brat. They're now called children of the service, but I was an army brat with my three younger sisters, one with a disability, and we grew up as a tight service family. And my parents' messages were always about serving, about community, treating people with respect and kindness, and debating ideas well and without anger. These precious experiences, now memories of my adult life that added to what I had been brought up to believe by my beautiful parents, are all about responsibility and standing for something, and also understanding the rich diversity within our Australian communities that has grown so richly over the past 80 years or more.  

Now, I was raised in a very light touch manner in a Presbyterian Church of England family. We didn't really have the rituals that you have. Ours were a bit different. In addition to celebrating Christmas Day, Good Friday, Easter Sunday, birthdays, christenings, and the like, our rituals were often military. We were the little kids who were up at two o'clock in the morning getting ready for the Anzac Day addresses and the dawn services. Slightly different rituals, but rituals, nonetheless.  

So, when I look at the rituals of Jewish memory and Jewish community, most obviously embodied in the work of the Holocaust Museum, I know the significance and how important these rituals are in enlarging our sense of who we are. And for me, I look back on those rituals that I have learned about and what I was brought up with about what my sense is today, about What Do We Stand For, the title of tonight's oration.  

Now, this is not the oration I first imagined delivering. I had written something quite different. I spent some time over the weekend watching and learning from your 2025 orator, Simon Tedeschi. I don't know how many of you saw Simon's presentation last year. Mine will be a shadow compared to Simon's work. It was monumental, powerful, elegiac, remarkable words that transfixed me, and I replayed many parts of it many times. He was speaking essentially about the power of music and art, but his essence and his reflections caused me to rethink the words I had prepared for tonight.  

He starts with the description of this city as he opened his remarks, and it reminded me so much. He said, "Melbourne, a city built by survivors and their children who came here seeking safety and surety, perhaps more than anywhere on earth."  

His oration also reminded me that we are all connected in this country and this world. The interconnections are endless. Last month, I joined several thousand people in the audience at the concert hall at the Sydney Opera House for the third annual SHIR Australian Jewish Music Festival, entitled ‘Unbreakable.’ I know many who have gone to the Melbourne edition. The concert opened with none other than Simon Tedeschi, alone on a stage at his piano, a single spotlight illuminating him for us. It was a truly breathtaking moment, setting the scene for a night of music, remembrance, joy, and a deep sense of unity when it is most needed. 

Now, the musical director of SHIR, Ben Adler, may also be known to you. Together with his team, he created in that performance a deeply moving moment of connection, bringing Jewish music and culture alongside Hindu, Iranian, and Samoan traditions, anchored, in the concert I was at, by the hauntingly beautiful and unbreakable voice of Daniella Gilboa.

Now I've come to know Ben part of these connections after seeing his music at Emanuel Synagogue in Sydney in the aftermath of Bondi. I got to know him, and then we invited him to be our guest musical artist at the State Lunch for President Herzog that I hosted in Canberra during his state visit. At SHIR, I was able to reconnect before we went in as an audience with Michael Britvan and Valentyna Poltavchenko, whose daughter Matilda Bee, whose young life was so tragically taken at Bondi.  

Now, over the weekend, it would have been Matilda's birthday – the first birthday that family has celebrated without Matilda. I'm wearing my Matilda Bee, Bee, as a mark of respect for Matilda, her family, and all that was lost at Bondi. And for all of you with any connection to that loss.  

Earlier this year, though, Simeon and I had a lovely moment where we actually welcomed Valentyna and Michael to Admiralty House in Sydney for them to be married. They approached me soon after the terrible events of Bondi as we were getting to know them and offering them sanctuary away from the media. They said they were embarrassed – they thought they needed to let me know that they were not married and thought I might have a problem with that. I know so much about your family, what you've created with Matilda and Summer. It doesn't bother me at all.  

I wasn't expecting what they did ask me. They said, "In your great powers, your reserve powers, can you marry us?" My reserve powers do not extend to marriage, but I said that if they found a celebrant, we would host them at Admiralty House for a quiet celebration, which we did. And we tried to keep it quiet because we didn't want to make a habit of this and make it a venue for hire. But it was quite beautiful. Their young little Summer, who's become a dear friend, Matilda's little sister, carried the rings. She helped with the flowers. Both girls share the middle name Bee, and Valentyna wore a small gold Bee on her veil in memory of Matilda.

Now, despite what that family had been through and the ever presence of a daughter lost forever, it was a day of love and happiness. Matilda was remembered throughout that beautiful ceremony and hosting that wedding was one of the great privileges of my time in his office as Governor-General. It's something that we will always remember, and when I spoke to Valentyna today to see how she was going after this hard weekend, we reflected on that beautiful, beautiful moment where Matilda was ever present in the beginning of their married life. And we did try to keep it quiet, and they all promised that it would be a private wedding.  

I was surprised when I saw news of it in the Daily Telegraph the next day. I wasn't particularly worried because they weren't mean about it. But I had a call from Michael apologising, saying that unbeknownst to him, despite us keeping it quiet, his sister-in-law had live-streamed the whole thing. And maybe that is a very good thing.  

Now tonight, as we've already heard, it's the anniversary of Kristallnacht, and so close to the first anniversary of the antisemitic terror attack at Bondi. I do feel the weight of responsibility in my role in this ever-changing world, and I do hope tonight I leave you with some comfort and some helpful reflections. But I suspect, as ever, I would learn more from everyone in this audience than I can offer.  

As you know so well, in March 1939, Shmuel Rosenkranz arrived in Melbourne, having fled the horrors of Europe. He was here with his father. They found a room on Royal Parade in Carlton, opposite Princes Park. Around Passover, walking to the synagogue, Shmuel saw candles in windows and recognised the smell of fish and soup. In this very unfamiliar city, other families were observing Jewish traditions that he knew from home.  

Only months earlier, Shmuel and his father had watched those synagogues burn during pogrom he had just seen. He carried that memory throughout his life, and he said, "I still weep today for what I saw on that night." Betty and Shmuel met through youth movement Habonim, now Habonim Dror. They built a family and a business, and spent decades gathering and encouraging young people to do what they could do best by being themselves. Betty shared in that work of bringing young people together and strengthening the community. Together, their contribution to Jewish education and community life is recognised at Bialik College, including the centre bearing their names, and through this oration.  

On Friday, again as interconnectedness would happen, I met with the 2026 Order of Australia. That's the organisation that issues the honours and awards, which many of you are wearing pins as members of the Order. There is the Order of Australia Scholarship that has been going for 15 years. Almost 100 young people have been receiving those scholarships that help them continue in their lives. All are chosen for exceptional achievements and values, and for their commitment to building community in Australia.

You may have seen on the front page of the Australian today a story of the first Aboriginal recipient of that scholarship, a young Aboriginal woman who has four children who's going back to university to study midwifery. But one of those six students is Jesse Wrobel from Monash University. I know his family are here in the audience. He spoke in that terrifying moment where they have to actually make a presentation to the Governor-General at Government House. He spoke of his fortune at studying at Bialik College, where he continues to this day, to mentor high-achieving students.  

As a proud Jew, he has never seen himself as a minority, but he does volunteer wherever he can. He said this, "it allows me to better understand the need for mature debate on antisemitism and build a sense of connection with the challenges faced by other minorities." It's quite a remarkable reflection from a young man who will go on to do quite extraordinary things, and I'm very proud he is a recipient of one of those very important scholarships.  

And as we approach the Bondi anniversary, we must reflect on those 15 lives taken so cruelly, and all of their families and all of the community affected. I know you know families are still grieving the terrible loss and will do for the years ahead, including the family of Holocaust survivor Alex Kleytman, who was among those murdered. People are recovering from their physical injuries, but Jewish Australians continue to prescribe fear in places where they should feel safe. Some question whether this, the country in which they have made their lives, should remain the place where their children can live openly as Jews. Nothing would make me sadder than to think that that is the truth.  

This oration asks what we stand for, and it raises another question I find I'm focused on every day in this role and since the attack. What history are we creating now? What will future generations remember of how Australians responded, all of us, and what is our responsibility now?  

When I was sworn in with the great privilege to be your Governor-General in July of 2024, I said I would put care, kindness, and respect at the centre of everything I will do. In my words to the Parliament on that day, I said that care is the gentle thought and the outstretched hand that Australians have always been ready to share when great challenges come.  

And when I speak of care, I use this formulation – we need to care for each other. We need to care for those who do the caring of others. We need to care for our extraordinary continent in all of its environmental riches and everything it has always given us and sustains us. It's another way of talking about care for Country. We must care for our civics and institutions, and we must care for the way we discuss and debate the toughest issues of our time, always with respect, without anger or division. We can always wrestle the idea and not the person. And I use that as my view of care wherever I speak, and I've been doing so for the last two and a half years. And I'll keep on using that as my formulation of what care can look like in this country.  

I have no doubt that my experience of the Jewish community in my formative period enabled me to find my way to understand what care would look like in all of those formulations. Now, a vital part of that promise for me is listening to all Australians, understanding their experiences, and recognising people whose contributions might otherwise go unseen. I've wanted Government House and Admiralty House to be places where all Australians feel welcome and where those conversations can happen safely and with good outcomes.  

Over the years, as being more of a Sydneysider in the last couple of decades, I have visited the Sydney Jewish Museum many times and have come to know a lot about the Holocaust survivors there who act as guides. In March 2025, we invited around 25 of those Holocaust survivors, many of them guides, to spend time with us at Admiralty House. They had spent years helping Australians understand what happened to their families and communities, just as those survivors and volunteers do here in Melbourne. I wanted those survivors and those volunteers to have an opportunity to be listened to, to recognise and thank them not just for their work but for their lives and their contribution to Australia's success.

Many of the survivors waited until they were leaving before signing our visitors’ book. Yvonne and Peter pleaded through their words for the details of the Holocaust to be taught in Australian schools. Leona wrote, "You must tell others our story." There were many words written in that visitors' book that day, and it was their words I read publicly after Bondi, and we brought those books out for many commemorations since.  

Now, those messages were written before Bondi. They were at a time when people were feeling uneasy. At a time when Jewish Australians were already expressing deep concern about antisemitism, survivors who had spent so much of their lives teaching others were asking us, particularly public people like me, once again to remember to teach and to listen. And Jewish women were telling me about the fears that they had been expressing for years and how difficult it was for them to feel heard. They spoke of having to explain what was happening to them and the distress of feeling that those concerns were not always understood or taken seriously. Bondi, tragically, gave those concerns a terrible new urgency.  

Now, recently, Jewish university students gave me a copy of the Treasures of Old Jewish Sydney, each of them signing the book. Through its art, architecture, and treasured objects, it tells the stories of generations of Jewish life in Sydney.  

And Rabbi Yehoram Ulman also gave me The Book of Jewish Knowledge, accompanied by a letter where he said this, "Antisemitism is not only a security issue. It is also an educational and moral challenge. To confront it properly, we must help people understand who the Jewish people are, where we come from, what we have contributed, and why the hatred directed at us has persisted for so long.”

Now, along with Conversations With My Rabbi and many other books that have been given to me in the past two years, these volumes are now shared for all visitors to the official residences. I want them to help those that visit that don't have education and don't have knowledge to understand Jewish history and culture in all of its depth and variety, alongside the history of persecution.  

I'm very grateful for the trust that people, many people from this community, have placed in me. I'm very conscious of the responsibility I have to carry their experiences beyond simple conversations. The survivors who established the Melbourne Holocaust Museum gathered testimony, photographs, documents, and objects so that generations they would never meet could understand what happened to their families and communities. You all know that so well with your interaction with this extraordinary institution.

I was introduced to one of the stories that you preserve today – the story of the Glaser family, who were desperate to leave Austria in 1938. It's a wonderful story, told so well. Perhaps I'll leave you to go and look, but it involves an amazing set of circumstances that take us to the Borer and White Ant Extermination Company. I'm going to leave you hanging there so that you go and have a look because of the things that happened to ensure that a family would make it to Melbourne.  

And at a time when so many others were being turned away, there was a family here who recognised another family's desperate circumstances, and they acted and changed lives forever. Mina Fink did the same thing, helping young survivors to come to Melbourne to find friendship. And of course, she went on to help establish this museum, support the training of the survivor guides, extending her commitment to generations who would learn from their experiences.  

I also want to recognise Sarah Saaroni OAM, who celebrated her 100th birthday this year. I'm not sure she's made it here today. Please give her my very best wishes. No doubt there'll be a letter from the King and from me coming her way. You may know her story too, and I encourage you to look at it. But she turned 100 this year, and her words have been surviving for such a long time at the Museum. She teaches us so much of what we need to know, and she shares her testimony, her artwork, which she moved to later in life, has also become part of the museum's work in preserving memory.  

Now tonight, I'm in the business of using art to tell a story too, because the heart I'm wearing, it's a small resin heart brooch. It's the artistic work of Nina Sanadze, whose work you may well know through monuments and the work she's done in archives, where she's worked, she was a beneficiary of one of the awards that were given out the Esther Awards earlier this year.  

Within this heart are some of the dried flowers collected by the Sydney Jewish Museum volunteers from outside the Bondi Pavilion. This precious gift to me, reflects a significant work that Nina is creating for the Sydney Jewish Museum to commemorate the outpouring of love that was manifested in the tens of thousands of floral tributes that were left in honour of the Bondi victims.  

I'm going to come towards the end of my oration now because today we did what I always love doing when I visit a place like the Holocaust Museum – we bumped into a school group touring the Museum. Delighted to stop and chat with those students, they were from Preston High. As Mary said, they weren't Jewish kids. They were from Preston High, and they were discovering things for the very first time.  

Their learning through the visit was evident, and I did with them what I do with every one of the 20,000 students that come through Government House every year. I always ask these young people, "What do you love most about Australia?" They've had their turn asking about my job, so I always say, "What do you love about Australia?" They did it again today, without fail. The two students I spoke to both talked about the fact that we are a diverse country with people from all parts of the planet who work together in harmony, and how proud they are of what a diverse nation we are.  

They simply said they love the diversity, the people, and the connections, and the way we live together in peace, without cynicism, probably without a lot of social media bothering them. They can tell us what we need to hear, what we need to know as adults.  

Bre, I know that you've often remembered a group of year six students from Gardenvale Primary School who visited the Hidden exhibition, and one of those students turned to their teacher and said, "every Victorian should have to come here."  

You also recall students who approach survivors at the end of a program, wanting the privilege of shaking their hands. Having listened to someone describe experiences completely beyond their imagining, they simply want to acknowledge that person directly and with human touch.  

Of course, this is all very moving, and it speaks to Bre's earlier comments this evening about why education matters, why the curriculum matters, and why it's important that we don't forget. The kids I meet all across the country, show curiosity, seriousness, and humanity. They can approach this history well. That gives me great confidence in the generations that will carry this responsibility forward.  

And Bre, you were with us in Canberra recently. Earlier this year, we had a major roundtable discussion on civics and social cohesion at Government House. You spoke about the responsibilities we carry as active citizens when we encounter prejudice or injustice. And you've written about the role that Holocaust education can play in developing empathy, critical thinking, and moral reasoning, and about what the survivors you have known have taught you. “They taught that memory carries obligations.”

So, these memories, these stories that are at the Museum, are part of Australia's story. We must understand it more fully, and when we recognise the people who have shaped it, we make a difference.  

Now, among the 28 Governors-General of this country, two of them were Jewish Australians. The first Australian-born Governor-General was Sir Isaac Isaacs, and Sir Zelman Cowen, whose daughter Kate, is here today. I'm so delighted to acknowledge Sir Zelman Cowen was the second Jewish man to serve in the Office of the Governor-General.  

Since Bondi, I've returned to Sir Zelman's memoirs and to look at the things he wrote when he became Governor-General, and he had a long life that he spoke about long before he came to that office. In 1944, after he was serving in the Navy, he wrote about Jewish participation in Australian life. He acknowledged the pride that Jewish Australians then could take in distinguished figures such as Isaacs and General Sir John Monash, while challenging any suggestion that their success meant that ordinary Jewish Australians faced no prejudice. Recognition at the highest level, he said, could coexist with exclusion in everyday life. He argued that the full participation in Australia was compatible with a continuing Jewish identity.  

I am reminded of that constantly when I think about the impact that he had. It's difficult to describe it as Governor-General, but I understand exactly what he was doing when he became our 19th Governor-General. Sir Zelman carried his understanding of recognition into that public role. He took office during a period of deep division, hoping to bring a touch of healing. He challenged the notion that the Governor-General's daily role was ceremonial. I do quote this because I hope people do know it's not just ceremonial. He said, and I think this is one of the most beautiful summaries of the role of the Governor-General.  

He said “the Governor-General ‘interprets the nation’ to itself by offering encouragement and recognition to many Australians- some of whom are not very powerful or visible in the bustle of everyday life – to the efforts of individuals and groups who work constructively to improve life in Australia.”

Well, Sir Zelman and his wife, Lady Anna Cowen AM – and, I'm sure, the children too – travelled widely, listening to those who they believe were improving their community. Those encounters, he said, “broadened our experience and understanding of the country and its people beyond anything we could have imagined.”

I recognise that account of Australia. Everywhere I travel, with the extraordinary privilege of a panoramic view as your Governor-General, and then dropping down into the fine grain of communities, that's what I see. I see this incredible project of unity and community building wherever I go, despite the stories we're telling ourselves about the decline in social cohesion.  

Now, Sir Zelman also wrote that he never had a thought of delivering speeches that ‘offered little more than platitudes,’ and so ever since I've been trying to work out how to make speeches important. And he said his speech is intellectually stretched and tested and sometimes extended to the limits of his understanding. And I understand that as well, standing before a Jewish community as a non-Jew trying to offer some peace.  

So, I did take seriously my preparation for this evening. Many people in this room have devoted decades to studying, preserving, and teaching this history. So, I'm conscious I still have so much more to learn, and to learn of the care required when speaking about the challenges that Jewish Australians are facing today.  

Sir William Deane was also conscious of that. He opened Fischl House for JewishCare in Sydney during his term, and he drew on another of your affirmations, ‘I am my brother's keeper.’  

Sir William talked about that and said the work before him was the “work of compassion in assisting families, refugees, migrants, people with disabilities, survivors of the Holocaust, the aged, the frail, and many others. It was an active expression of an abiding belief in each person's intrinsic worth and dignity.”

He also recognised that the programs had to be designed to meet particular needs within the Jewish community, but that they had not been made available to all. The responsibility that Sir William described is one we must all accept. When Jewish Australians face prejudice, threats, or exclusion, they should be able to count on the wider community to stand beside you. Your safety and belonging are part of Australia's shared responsibility.

And I'm reminded again of the care that people do have for each other when I travelled to Melbourne a couple of weeks ago after the attack on the magnificent, the wonderful Helen Haines. Interesting fact: Helen Haines represents the Federal Seat of Indi. The first person to hold the Federal Seat of Indi in 1901 until 1906 was Sir Isaac Isaacs. We are all connected.  

In order to be with her husband Phil to announce the injury she was sustaining and the message she wanted to come out to Australians, I had to postpone a very important gathering with Jewish Australians, including the New South Wales Jewish Board of Deputies at very short notice. The Board's new president, Greg Joffe, asked me to carry the community's best wishes and love to Phil Haines, to Helen and her family, and I did. And Phil asked me to say how much that had meant to him.  

That gesture meant a great deal, but I hadn't appreciated it quite so much until last night. When I was at the Alfred Hospital, I spent time with Helen – an hour with Helen, who said she had felt the strength of those prayers. Amongst the prayers of family, she knew that the country, but particularly the Jewish community, because she understood, because she has learned from many communities, how to listen with her whole body and her whole heart in representing the very best of Australians, even in difficult times.  

Now the attacks were very different in nature, and each must be understood on its own terms. But I've thought a lot about the generosity shown in that exchange, in what happened with Helen, and what Australians were saying after that attack, and how that responds in a cyclical way back to Bondi and to the fear you all lived with here before that.  

The responsibility we now have is to build a country where people can live, serve, and participate without fear. Helen and I had spoken in Euroa just two weeks before the attack on her about civics education, decency, and our responsibility to learn to disagree well. Since the attack, I have asked all Australians to exercise a collective muscle of decency. I'm really pleased to tell you that sitting with Helen last night, she couldn't have looked more alive and more happy in her face about the fact that this is encouraging the country to think differently about how we work with each other. She has a long recovery ahead, but I could feel a life force in Helen last night, which speaks to the support she's had for the opportunity for all of us.  

Our democracy desperately needs vigorous debate, informed criticism, and the freedom to hold our leaders accountable. I put myself in that category. It also means people who are willing and safe enough to take part. That's the part of my care, prescription of care for our civic life and democratic institutions that I committed to when I became your Governor-General. I've spoken all over the country about this with many different communities, and we all agree that a healthy democracy depends on that shared commitment. It must remain possible for us to argue vigorously, scrutinize decisions and challenge those in power, while always protecting the equal rights and dignity of everyone who participates.  

Earlier this year, you will know I received the Royal Commission's interim report, and shortly I will receive its final report. That will happen on the 18th of December. My constitutional responsibility is to receive that work seriously and respectfully, without anticipating its conclusion. I want to acknowledge tonight the hundreds of people, many of you in here in this room, who gave evidence, and the more than 20,000 who made submissions, often revisiting painful experiences. I also recognise all of those who supported them with care and cultural understanding, particularly members of the Jewish community who work to ensure that people's experiences could be heard.  

That responsibility to listen is matched by the responsibility to respond. The decisions made in our institutions, the way people are treated in their daily lives, and the care Australians extend to one another will all become part of the history of this period, of our period. Betty and Shmuel Rosenkranz devoted so much of their lives to the generations who had followed them. The survivors who established this museum made a similar commitment.

Bre has written that something that captures the courage involved in all of that work, saying “hope is a decision.” And she explained to me that hope is something we do, something we commit to ourselves, particularly when there are many reasons to feel fearful or uncertain.  

I've thought about the survivors who chose to tell their stories, the people who built this museum, and those who continue the work. They knew that a better future was never guaranteed, but they did what they could to help others understand the past and take responsibility for what comes next. I draw hope from their example and from the young people I again saw today.  

In 1939, Shmuel Rosenkranz walked through Carlton and recognised the candles in the windows as familiar signs of Jewish life. I want the history we leave today to show when Jewish Australians again speak of fear, the rest of the country listens, stands beside you, and acts, so that sense of home can be yours without question for generations to come.  

I'll finish with some comments Simon Tedeschi made when he concluded last year's oration. He said, "To keep memory alive is not to repeat the past endlessly, but to let it instruct us silently, to live with ghosts, but not become them.

The danger of our age is not forgetting what was done to us, but forgetting what we must not become. To live Jewishly, and that is not limited to Jewish people, is to refuse the flattening of discourse, which turns everything into sides. It is to hold complexity, even when the mob demands simplicity.”

When I stood beside Phil Haines two weeks ago, I think that's what he and I were trying to say – that we need to rediscover that muscle of decency, and that we can handle complexity with care and not always take sides. At a time when things do feel fractured, it must be possible for Australians of all faiths and backgrounds to pause and to reflect on the way in which we show care for one another, how we face into tough issues, and then once again to disagree well.  

I spoke earlier in my opening comments about a nation I spoke to when I was sworn in about extending the gentle hand of care, words echoed by so many of my predecessors.  

In honour of Betty and Shmuel Rosenkranz and all survivors, I think we can all and must stand for decency and care for one another, and apply the ethics of responsibility and showing up for our institutions, our civics, our democracies, for each other, that continue to define and buttress Australia's great success, for which I'm eternally optimistic.  

Thank you, everybody.