Speech delivered on 20 May 2026 at Government House 

Welcome to Government House, which is a house for all Australians and our visitors to feel part of. And tonight we do want to explore all of the downstairs rooms. There are many things to see here, particularly for first timers. If you haven't been here before, take the time to wander through all of the ground floor rooms, and know that this is a place where we love to tell stories. And tonight, your stories add to that. As I look out, there are a lot of wonderful things I do as Governor-General, but to be part of National Volunteer Week and looking at the best volunteers in the country is so terribly special. You are an extraordinary group for us to host tonight, and we're going to have a lovely time together. So, welcome.  

I want to acknowledge that we are on Ngunnawal land here in Canberra, here at Government House, and we're paying our respects to the elders, past and present. We generally do a number of welcomes here, use smoking ceremonies, and have elders often, particularly for the recently arrived ambassadors and high commissioners, and it's always a very important part of the ceremony of welcoming someone from their country to our country with Ngunnawal elders, and so I want to pay my respects to all Aboriginal people, and to a number of First Nations people who are here with us tonight, from country other than Ngunnawal. You're very welcome here, of course.  

I always want to acknowledge a few people, but I could acknowledge all of you, because tonight you are all our distinguished guests, but Mark Pearce, Chief Executive Officer of Volunteering Australia, joined by Daniel Press on the board of Volunteering Australia. Sue Woodward is here. Sue is a commissioner with the Australian Charities and Not-for-Profit Commission. There are CEOs of Volunteering Australia from the states and territories. I want to thank all of you for travelling and for what you do in your jurisdictions. There are state and territory volunteers of the year's finalists. I think a big round of applause for our finalists. There are many representatives from state volunteering bodies, volunteering organisations of every kind, many community organisations doing such extraordinary work. We have some very significant government representatives tonight, Emma Parker from the Department of Health, Ageing and Disability, and Chris Colett from Attorney-General's, where he has responsibility for children and families, it's wonderful to have you here as well. So, as I said, welcome.  

We like to think that this is a place of peace and belonging. We all are very welcome, and where we reflect Australia's great stories, and we celebrate the things that they teach us.  

Tonight, as part of National Volunteer Week, we're celebrating stories of volunteering right across our great country, and also here in the ACT. Now, I'm proud to be patron of about 220 organisations. I love every single one of them. Some are represented here tonight: St Johns, Lifeline, The Smith Family, the Settlement Council of Australia, FECCA, Playgroup Australia, Special Olympics Australia, Australian Red Cross, and there are many others, of which I'm patron, that I take great strength from, and in the times we're living through that are stressed and have lots of tension, lots of worries, lots of deep concerns for lots of our community, it's volunteers that hold us all together, and the work that you all do in many organisations, I think, tells us the great strong story of Australia as a counter-narrative to some of those stories we tell ourselves about division.  

Importantly, though, this week I am patron of Volunteering Australia, so tonight I'm all in for VA and volunteering organisations. Just two weeks ago, Volunteering Australia released statistics from the 2025 General Social Survey published by the Bureau of Statistics. Now, the numbers tell us part of the story of volunteering across the country. The formal numbers tell us that nine and a half million people volunteered formally and informally, and that that number is lower than pre-COVID levels, but has held steady across the last five years, which included recovery from COVID, and now we're getting that kind of increased anxiety and cost-of-living and economic pressures. We know that adults between the ages of 35 and 55 years are most likely to volunteer, and that formal and informal volunteering is highest in regional and remote areas of the country, and that the number one barrier that people who participated in the survey said was a barrier to volunteering was time, and time to volunteer. The number one reason people gave for volunteering was simply to help others.  

Now, that does tell me that volunteering in our country is a reflection of our modern lives, that problem of time. But we are generous, committed, and deeply caring, especially in the places where we need each other most. But I don't think the numbers tell the whole story, and certainly don't tell a story, with deepest respect to VA and the Bureau of Stats, what I see around the country in the fine grain of communities is that almost everyone is a volunteer in some respect.  

Just the other night in here, I had youth parliament participants, and they were all under 16 years old. They desperately want to be formally volunteering, but because of insurance problems, they can't be counted. But so many were saying, how can we be early volunteers? A week earlier, I'd been at one of my other patronages, SchoolAid, which supports young philanthropists. When I say young, I mean from grade 3 to 6, who are raising 1000s of dollars for their charities. They're volunteers, and they're 8, 9, 10, and they would be the future of the formal volunteering world, but they regard themselves, as little people, as volunteers. I spent the afternoon earlier this week in Sydney with Holocaust survivors who volunteer at the Sydney Jewish Museum, they've been doing that volunteering for decades, and now in their 80s and 90s, and some over 100. They are very serious about sharing the stories of the Holocaust with everyone at the Sydney Jewish Museum, but they probably wouldn't call themselves volunteers in that sense either. They would talk about themselves as teachers and guides at the museum.  

I've been up in Queensland over the weekend. I met three of the finalists in the Australian of the Year Awards. All three who did different things would all say they are volunteers first and foremost, and all of them told me that they'd love to get more volunteers, but things like insurance, time, and other things hold back, but the people want to volunteer, and while I was up there, I dropped in on a winner, a previous winner of an Australian of the Year, the guys from Orange Sky, the mobile wash machines, now mobile showering facilities at the back of the truck out on the streets of central Brisbane, looking after homeless people, and they can't keep up with the number of people who volunteer for them, so I suspect that the actual number of volunteers across Australia is much higher, but it's very hard to get an accurate number.  

I just hear it wherever I go, and this year the theme of National Volunteer Week is Your Year to Volunteer, but hopefully those that might not be, who have got the bug, will as part of the campaign this week, it is a call to get involved, and, as all of you know, it's asking people to choose to contribute to the fabric, very rich fabric, of our community, and a fabric which we're increasingly being told is fraying, and which volunteers typically hold together.  

It's a reminder that millions of Australians, in spite of the various pressures that our modern life somehow always find a way to help others and to work for something larger than themselves or for something that, without their volunteer hours, simply would not exist. I'm also a patron here in Canberra of Artsound FM. If anyone here in Canberra listens to Artsound, they're a 24-hour FM radio station and going for 50 years, all based on volunteers. There's only ever been one paid person at that radio station, a community radio station, and now they've extended their reach to nursing care and aged care facilities across Canberra with the golden oldies sessions that they have, which I'm sure my dad would love to be listening to.