Speech delivered on 16 October 2026, Hyatt Hotel Canberra
Thank you, Paul Girrawah House, for welcoming us to country this evening.
We've known each other a long time. I was born in the Royal Canberra Hospital slightly earlier than you, but we grew up sort of together. You went to school with my sister, and it was Aunty Matilda House-Williams OAM, who I think I remember most growing up here, teaching those of us growing up in Canberra who didn't know otherwise what it meant to respect country. You were the first person I remember seeing acknowledgements of country, and it was always with an extraordinary sense of generosity and inviting those of us that had no education about Aboriginal people in. It was one of my great privileges.
Aunty Matilda, just recently I presented you with the insignia for your Australian Honour in the Order of Australia. Possibly one of the first people to receive such an award at Government House draped in a possum cloak is very special.
I'd also like to acknowledge the Ngambri, Kanberri people, the Ngunnawal, and those who are the traditional owners of this land, and their Elders, past and present, and acknowledge all First Nations people here tonight.
And of course, I want to acknowledge:
the Honourable Anthony Albanese MP, Prime Minister of Australia;
Senator the Honourable Katy Gallagher, Minister for Finance, Minister for Women, and Minister for the Public Service and Government Services;
the Honourable Dr Andrew Leigh MP, Assistant Minister for Productivity, Competition, Charities, and Treasury;
the very many senators, MPs, federally and ACT local representatives, past and present;
Professor the Honourable Bill Shorten, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Canberra;
my dear friend, Professor Tom Calma AO, former Chancellor of the University of Canberra, an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice and Race Discrimination Commissioner;
JP (John-Paul) Moloney, Managing Editor; and the entire Canberra Times family, past and present;
and to all of you, this has got to be one of the greatest Canberra distinguished guests events of all time.
So welcome to everybody.
As you know, I am a proud Canberran – the only Australian Governor-General to have been born in this city. It's a joy to celebrate one hundred years, a centenary of the Canberra Times, with you tonight.
My first appearance in the paper was on the 14th of September 1965, when the birth notices announced a daughter, Samantha, to Jenny and Bill. I was one day old, so the paper has literally been part of my life from the very beginning and continues to be so over many significant periods of my time connecting and out of Canberra.
My parents were prodigious newspaper readers. I remember the thump of the paper landing on our driveway in Curtin, and my father, in particular, reading it cover to cover. It was the only paper with local news, but had a core focus on the nation's big issues and gave international context.
The paper was part of the rhythm of our family lives and my life as I grew up. It fed our interest in politics and the wider world. And you shared and celebrated the best stories of community, just as you do today. Perhaps that might explain why my sister Suzanne chose journalism as her career, and ended up marrying a newspaper man, Mark Riley, from a different source of journalism. He was up in the Newcastle Herald and then the Sydney Morning Herald. So, we've had a lot of journalism in our family.
My 92-year-old father was recently reminiscing about the paper, the long history of the paper that he recalled, and he told me about the terrific reporting of the intellectual and political jousting of Fred Daly and Jim Killen. He chuckled as he remembered their wit and humour, and almost longed for a bit more of that now.
Ian Warden, with his Gang Gang column, was famous in our household. It was a family must-read. Norma Allen's About Town captured the social life of the capital, where diplomats, politicians, and local identities met at charity balls and diplomatic teas. And I loved the simplicity and wit of Geoff Pryor’s cartoons. I'm so glad you're here tonight, Geoff.
When I started my arts-law degree at ANU in 1983, I stuck one of your cartoons to my political science folder. You may recall it. It had Bob Hawke, just newly elected prime minister, coming down from the mountain in biblical robes and sandals, carrying an umbrella in the driving rain, just as the drought broke. He said he'd just fixed the drought, and he was now going to fix the deficit. I still have a copy of that cartoon. Geoff, I carried that work around for years, and recently, looking at it, brought lots of memories back about studying political science at ANU, but also the profound impact of your cartoons over many generations.
Now, while studying, I worked for the Chief Magistrate of the ACT, Ron Cahill, and people say rather than going to pubs, you should go to the magistrates' court to get to know a city. And it was the Canberra Times reporters who brought those deeply human and revealing, often poignant stories to readers every day.
And JP, we both come from families with deep connections to Canberra. Your father, Michael Moloney, gave many years of service to St Edmund's College, where the grandstand bears his name. And my parents ensured that we were always involved in the Canberra community, whether collecting donations for local charities or raising money and giving focus to the disability community. Like your family, we never thought to call it service; it was simply being part of a community, something I think you continue to instil in the paper today.
Generations of families have helped make Canberra the place it is today, and the paper has respectfully grown up alongside them.
Next year, we celebrate the 100 years since the opening of the Parliament here in Canberra, and since 1926, a year before that historic moment, you have been our paper of record, following Canberra from a quiet, dusty bush capital to the modern capital city we know today. You've served this city and throughout the nation, reporting both the everyday lives of Canberrans and the decisions that affect all Australians.
Now, when the Shakespeare family started the paper, Canberra was a much, much smaller place. It was tiny. Heather Shakespeare OAM helped run the office on the corner of Mort Street. She collected the advertising and later became company secretary.
And at the 50th anniversary, Heather credited the paper's survival to this: ‘the loyalty of the staff and the refusal of the proprietors to accept what appeared to be certain financial ruin.’
Tonight we celebrate that extraordinary persistence and thank generations of advertising and office staff, printers and delivery teams, alongside the magnificent reporters, editors, photographers, and cartoonists.
The paper has been shaped by remarkable people. Editors such as Ian Mathews AM and by Michelle Grattan AO, whose appointment in 1993 was historic – the first woman to edit an Australian metropolitan daily. Just a magnificent moment of history.
And Jack Waterford AM, who has been mentioned already, your name is of course synonymous with this paper. Your fierce independence and scrutiny of politicians and the public service has been part of Canberra's life for more than half a century. Your pioneering use of freedom and information earned you the Graham Perkin Australian Journalist of the Year Award in 1985. Your contribution extends beyond journalism. You spent two years working with Fred Hollows’ trachoma program and helping establish medical services for First Nations people.
I caught up with Gabi Hollows earlier this week at another event, and she told me she was having dinner with you, a great friend. It was lovely to see those friendships and people coming back to Canberra and keeping in touch.
Emma Macdonald OAM’s reporting on Mr Fluffy brought sustained attention to families facing the consequence of loose-fill asbestos in their homes.
And after the paper's Walkley-winning coverage of the 2003 bushfires, a reader told researchers: ‘They've got a reporter who knows the issue and knows the background.’
That is the true value of knowing a community and staying with its stories.
Now, my own relationship with the paper has continued into my time as your Governor-General. Megan Doherty, you were there at Bonython Primary School just days after I was sworn in in the Parliament, and you gave me another title: Chief Hugger. There was a bit about selfies and sandshoes, that kind of stuff, but Chief Hugger.
And Prime Minister, in appointing me, you asked me to be a modern, visible, and optimistic leader, and that I could do that in a way that would bring confidence back into a system that helps to underpin a democracy. I added care, kindness, and respect to your ask of modernity, visibility, and optimism, and that has remained the focus of all that I do.
Now, my appointment was criticised by some. You can take a guess at who. But I remember with gratitude the Canberra Times had an editorial taking the opportunity to support my appointment by the Prime Minister, and I value that genuine engagement with an office that belongs to all Australians.
Here in Canberra, our democratic institutions are part of the life of our community. They're inseparable. Taking an interest in their work is part of our civic pride, and respect for those institutions includes asking questions of people who serve in them. And as you've already heard, we've seen the decline in the interest in civics, the rise of disinformation, misinformation, and a general lack of interest in our great democratic principles – it's become even more vital for journalism to play a role in reminding us what makes our country so very, very strong: to celebrate modernity and optimism and care and kindness.
And those of us entrusted with public office have also got a responsibility to explain our work, to listen and answer questions. That includes me.
Your reporting gives people the information to form their own views and contribute to our national life. And I think participation in our democracy, grounded in good understanding, supported by great journalism, is itself a form of care. And your care for this city includes remembering the people who helped make it, and holding to account those that do the work on behalf of the nation, whether it's in health or education, schools, sport, whatever it is, you're there, and you allow us to be generally optimistic if we know the truth of things, and to celebrate the very good of this city.
Wherever I travel, in the privilege of this office, I constantly see the broader Australian community not wanting to be divided, but yearning for kindness and respect in the way we address the issues of our time – the very tough issues that we live in. In our nation's capital, it's been the Canberra Times that has continued to respect its leaders, continuing a tradition of independent and reliable journalism.
I'm so pleased that tonight I was given the wonderful David Pope commemorative photo that brings together Lindy Lee's magnificent Ouroboros and the wonderful Canberra bus stop as a way of saying that this place has always been doing things in a way that's uniquely about Canberrans and the future modernity and care in our democracy.
And I always, still to this day, read the hard copy of the newspapers every morning. I do go online a bit, but I much prefer a hard copy. And I still, with the Canberra Times, pull out sections of the paper that celebrate local Canberrans, so I can write a small note, because that's where I learned about who the great people here are, through the Canberra Times.
I started with remarks about my birth notice. It seems appropriate then to just conclude with a reflection on other notices about the end of our lives.
My younger sister is obsessed with the funeral and death notices. She regularly checks in the paper and online for the Canberra Times death notices. She rings us all and tells the family when someone we've known, whether it was at school or during our university years or otherwise, when they've left us. She tells us the story about those that we might have forgotten, but suddenly are brought to life by the fact that they've been remembered in the Canberra Times.
Checking those notices is a very Canberra thing to do. I don't see it happening in most parts of the country, but I certainly see it happening here. And through those notices and your beautifully crafted obituaries, we learn more about the lives that have touched our community over a very, very long time.
Yesterday, Maurice Dunlevy’s life was celebrated at the National Press Club. He died just on the 6th of October, aged 90. Arriving in Canberra in 1962, he wrote for this paper for a very long time and helped establish one of Australia's first journalism degrees at the University of Canberra. His work lives on in the people he taught and the city whose story he helped to tell.
Ultimately, this paper has helped generations of Canberrans to know one another and explain the local news and the world to all of us here. You've also been incredibly generous.
JP, you've continued the tradition. You train up a lot of journalists at the Canberra Times who go on to great lives and great careers in many other parts of our great media, and you do that selflessly, producing great journalists who help us understand our world across the country.
So, to everyone who has made this paper part of our lives, I want to thank you for your magnificent contribution to our nation's capital city.
Happy 100th birthday.