Speech delivered on 14 September 2026, Parliament House

Thank you, Vaishnavi for welcoming us, for your introduction, and for your acknowledgement of Country.

I also acknowledge the Ngunnawal people as the Traditional Owners, Custodians of this land, and pay my respects to them and all people with deep, long-established connections to the lands of the ACT and the region. And I acknowledge Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who are here at the summit, and the work being done by First Nations people across STEM across the country.  

It's wonderful to see the CSIRO's Young Indigenous Women's STEM Academy attendees alongside all of you. We know that First Nations people were the world's first scientists. It's something that we now well understand and celebrate.  

The way I celebrate that is, I'm proud to gift a series of books called First Knowledges, that was edited by Margo Ngawa Neale. Whenever I travel around the world, the story of this country is told with a combination of first knowledges and non-Indigenous people working together.  

Now, there's a few people I want to acknowledge. It's going to take up almost half my speech because this Summit attracts the most incredible people.  

I'll start with Senator the Honourable Tim Ayres, Minister for Industry and Innovation, Minister for Science; I don't think the Honourable Madeleine King MP is here; Mr Aaron Violi MP, Member for Casey, Shadow Minister for Science, Technology, and Innovation; Senator David Pocock, it's wonderful that he is here, Independent Senator for the ACT.  

All parliamentarians who are here in all forms supporting the Summit; Professor Tony Haymet, Australia's Chief Scientist; Dr Steph McLennan, Director of Antarctic Geoscience at Geoscience Australia; Jo White, the Executive Director of Questacon, the most favourite place for people who come at a certain age to Canberra. I'm always fighting to get Government House as the favourite place to visit.  

Dr Gordon de Brouwer AO PSM, Chancellor of The Australian National University, my alma mater; Mr Peter Derbyshire, Acting CEO of the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering; Megan Gilmour, CEO of MissingSchool; Dr Tony Willis, Executive Director of the Australian Council of Deans of Science; Ryan Winn, CEO of Science & Technology Australia; Jeremy King, CEO of Lockheed Martin Australia and New Zealand; and every other important person in this room. There are so many of you.  

Now, I'm delighted to be your Patron. I'm Patron of the National Youth Science Forum, and I want to therefore acknowledge the Chair, Patricia Kelly PSM, and the CEO, Dr Melanie Bagg, and the entire forum team for their amazing work in bringing this summit together.  

I also want to recognise the exceptional group of people who have given their time to all of you over these last three days- researchers and educators, leaders from industry and government, and the many panellists, exhibitors, and mentors who have shared what they know with candour and generosity, because they want you to succeed.  

And to you, the Summiteers – thank you for investing in your futures – the presence of the people, the level of their wisdom and their experience, their shared experiences says so much about you. It says something very important. It tells you all that they believe in you, your ideas, your questions, and the careers you are beginning to shape. They're telling you that you are important and you deserve our attention.  

You spent three days, whether at the ANU, University of Canberra, or here at Parliament House, hearing about future careers and the many paths a STEM career can take. I know you all jumped onto LinkedIn. You've been told to network like crazy, which is right. And I'm going to tell you that I, when I was your age, would never ever have planned or imagined I would be your Governor-General. I didn't have a STEM career. Mine was born in the liberal arts and law. But if I'd taken a linear path for my career, and assume something at the end of it, I would not be in this job today. It's the same for all of you. Your careers are the amalgam of experiences and choices you'll make, the byways that'll take you off the major routes you think you should be doing.  

And please always listen to those who say they see something in you that's worth doing which you don't think you're capable of. Always jump into that space, even if you don't think you're capable. Because if someone else can see it in you, I'm sure you will lift, and you never know where that will take you. That has been the story of my career, albeit not in STEM.  

So, this has been an extraordinary opportunity for you. I'm hoping that you leave Canberra with new knowledge and connections, new confidence, self-awareness and understanding about the great possibilities of your lives, because Australia now more than ever needs you to be part of the response to complex and challenging ideas.  

Now, STEM is often used as shorthand, but those four letters do not do justice to the range of work they represent or the profound impact they have and that you will have.  

STEM is the mathematics that makes an image clearer, the engineering that controls a rover on Mars, the chemistry that turns waste into something new and useful, the biology that identifies a threat, the technology that takes an idea from the laboratory bench to the world. It's everything from quantum devices and artificial intelligence to medical research and biosecurity. It reaches from clean energy and advanced manufacturing to defence, agriculture, space, and so much more.  

You represent all of that, and these fields are increasingly interconnected. That's why you get to know each other here and will get to know each other over the course of your career. You'll keep bumping into each other because that'll be the future - a connected one, an interconnected one - and you'll see that immense possibility in people like our Australian of the Year, Katherine Bennell-Pegg. What an extraordinary person to think of and think of a career.  

Katherine's a space engineer, as you know, an officer in the Royal Australian Air Force Reserve, the first person to receive professional astronaut wings, training under the flag of Australia, and we hope we'll get her to space as soon as possible to further inspire us.  

Now, her achievements are not only historic- they reveal a dazzling array of skills and expertise: engineering, robotics, human performance, and earth observation; complex systems, and international cooperation.  

Her career spans what an Australian STEM career could be, and reminds us that a field can change throughout your working life. Some of you will probably hold jobs that we can't even imagine today. And watching Katherine, as I have done in Adelaide, hosting much younger school groups at the Australian Space Agency, has been a highlight of my time in this role, because I watch what happens when a young person sees an Australian who's an astronaut talking about the possibilities of space.

And we can also look west, to the Wajarri Yamaji Country in Western Australia, where the Square Kilometre Array Low Telescope is being built, led by three women scientists. They have briefed me about what they're doing, and it is extraordinary. SKA-Low will combine signals from more than 130,000 antennas to examine the first billion years of the universe, including the formation of the earliest stars and galaxies.  

Imagine that, probably all of you can. I can't.  

The biggest telescope in the world is being built- it's astronomy on an immense scale in Australia. It's mathematics, computing, engineering, advanced manufacturing, and data science. It's an international scientific endeavour being built in partnership with the Wajarri Yamaji people, whose knowledge of sky and Country reaches back tens of thousands of years.  

It's a compelling example of what Australia has always done so well: combine curiosity with technical ingenuity to extend the boundaries of what we can see, understand, and achieve.  

I won't go back into history and talk about Howard Florey and Elizabeth Blackburn AC, but just last year Richard Robson won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work on metal-organic frameworks. I rang him from the back of a cab on the day he was announced as another Australian to win a Nobel Prize, and I met one of the most humble people who said, "I just followed my nose. I just did what science kept telling me to do.”

Our 2025 Young Australian of the Year, Dr Katrina Wruck, is using industrial chemistry to turn mining waste into useful materials.

And among those awarded in the most recent King’s Birthday Honours were Emeritus Professor David Blair AO, for his contribution to gravitational-wave physics and precision measurement, and Professor Jozef Gecz AO, whose work in human genetics has improved our understanding of brain development.  

Each of these Australians has made outstanding contributions, often by sharing knowledge across institutions and disciplines. That spirit of collaboration was also recognised recently at the Australian Museum’s Eureka Prizes.  

One winning team from CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology created Australia’s first operational long-range forecasts for marine heatwaves.  Ocean science, climate modelling, computing – as well as close work with communities – means warnings can now be provided weeks or months in advance, helping marine industries and conservation managers to protect vulnerable ecosystems.

Other winners made quantum simulations more than a million times more resource-efficient; developed a portable process to recover materials from used solar panels; and transformed melanoma treatment.

As I've just done with the Australian Honours investitures last week celebrating science feats in this country, these achievements show both the breadth of STEM and the deep connections between the disciplines of STEM. And, that the most important advances never sit in a single field, in a single person, or a single group.  

This matters as you think about your career. Many of the consequential careers that you will have will be found where different kinds of knowledge come together to address our biggest challenges- every one of those challenges require us to think about things differently. We've got to think about human behaviour.  

The pandemic called on clinicians, engineers, statisticians, public institutions. Our current response to H5 bird flu is drawing together wildlife ecologists, veterinarians, laboratory specialists, epidemiologists, and governments, and social media experts, and the social sciences to help communicate well. These are really big and serious challenges, but they also represent the most extraordinary opportunity to build a career, that matters.

So, there's no better place to be considering that than here at Parliament House tonight, where evidence, public purpose, and national decisions come together. This is the place where I first understood what it meant to be in a place where ideas and curiosity met the people who can make things happen- Members of Parliament, the Senators, those that represent their communities are searching always for the way in which we move forward as a nation with our laws and get ahead of problems. You would have felt that in this place as very consequential things were being debated as you've been here.  

When I first saw that, I realised I had to open my eyes and lift my sight. I needed to understand there’s a big world out there that my career could take me if I leant into the things I didn't know and the people I hadn't yet met.  

So tonight, please reach out to the parliamentarians while they're here. All the leaders that have been working with you- get into those big conversations. Tell them what you've learned. Tell them what excites you. Ask what problems they need you to solve. Listen carefully to those whose expertise and experience differs from yours.  

You came here to think seriously about your careers, I hope you now leave knowing that Australia offers extraordinary opportunities, just like the world does, to build a career, but even more so, extraordinary people to build that with. And most importantly, I hope you leave with the confidence to bring your knowledge, your curiosity, and your ideas to the conversations and solutions about our future.  

Be ambitious for yourself. Extraordinary things are going to be achieved by all of you.Congratulations on everything you've done, everything you've learned about yourselves, the connections you've made. Now it's time to go back to where you're from, engage those skills, use those networks, engage your curiosity, and help us be the very best we can be while you be the very best you can be.  

Thanks, everybody.