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There's so much that has happened already on this stage, and to see you all amassed here tonight is a great joy for me, particularly as I take on the patronage of Good Design. I also acknowledge that we meet on the lands of the Gadigal people. I want to thank Councillor Yvonne Weldon: a friend of mine and someone I see around Sydney a lot. I want to thank her for her very generous welcome. Gadigal people always welcome us here so generously, as everyone has done tonight, I want to acknowledge elders past and present, and I want to acknowledge all First Nations people, all First Nation designers who are here tonight. In doing that, I do acknowledge our first designers, as Jan has already done, I want to thank them for their ongoing contribution to Australia's cultural, artistic and design achievements.

The First Knowledges is a series of books edited by Margo Neale. They're infused with design scholarship and knowledge-sharing. Should we choose to read that and to learn from it, so much of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander culture that, as Jan has said, can inform our modern design thinking. Now, of course, I want to acknowledge the very important people who bring us here tonight. I'll start with Dr Brandon Gien, Chair of Good Design Australia, Rachel Wye, whose words we just heard. And I know what a spectacular Managing Director of Good Design Australia she is. Dr Sam Bucolo, Executive Director of the Australian Design Council. Minnie Moll, CEO of the UK Design Council. A very special welcome to Australia. Minnie, I have enjoyed very much hearing about your advocacy and your insights throughout the week. I want to congratulate those that have already been awarded special accolades and those yet to come. I'm very conscious that there are very many previous award recipients, nominees, designers and supporters of design throughout the room. And of course, I want to acknowledge Dr Jan Owen, and tonight, here with her wonderful partner, DJ. As you have said, Jan, we have known each other, you and me, Simeon, DJ, for over two decades. We are very close friends. We call ourselves ‘yappas,’ or sisters in Yolŋu language, and we started that when we spent time in North East Arnhem Land together, learning about design in the furthest part of our country. I followed you into the Foundation for Young Australians, and so I'm delighted to succeed you and follow you in as Patron of Good Design Australia. You will be a very hard act to follow, and I'd like everyone to thank Jan again for her exceptional leadership.  

Jan also mentioned my tragic support of the Swans. Just because you raised my footy love, I didn't intend to say this, but I think I'll just mention that it was in football and sport design as much as anywhere, and it was a design principle that led to the development of AFLW and welcomed women into the game at the highest level and for a competition the country didn't know it needed.

Now, earlier this week, I had the immense privilege of hosting Dame Quentin Bryce at Admiralty House, not far from here in Kirrabilly, to celebrate her new authorized biography by Juliet Rieden. Quentin, of course, was our first woman Governor-General, and I have learned a great deal from her as I took office, she generously shared her unique insights with me, from our first woman Governor-General to the second, and so much of that was about the design for the job. I've long looked to Dame Quentin as an enthusiastic champion of Australian art and design in all of its rich diversity, and in a beautiful moment of serendipity, I have the same opportunity, in the same week as celebrating Dame Quentin, to offer some reflections on another icon of design, the late Michael Bryce AM, her husband, the inaugural patron of Good Design Australia. Michael Bryce was, as you all know, also, the first man in the role of the Governor-General's spouse, something Simeon is doing excellently.

Michael Bryce's voice is ever present throughout Dame Quentin's biography, as it was throughout her life. You all know this. He was an architect who, in his own words, evolved into a graphic designer, a designer whose brilliant, concise inventions graced the Sydney Olympics, the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, UTS, Darling Harbour, and of course, so much more beyond this city. And he was a leader. He became a voice for the charisma and vitality of Australian design. In 2012, speaking at the National Design Policy Forum, Michael said this: “Designers are among the most important people in our society.” Now I know, and you all know instinctively what he meant. We can do nothing without design, living, working, planning, playing, creating, conserving. All of this is achieved by design of one form or another, and good design, which we are here to celebrate tonight, is the foundation of a good life for every person, including your granddaughter Jan, and for all of our communities. It also speaks to design thinking, how we solve problems. Our policymakers use design thinking to understand where a problem starts and how it can be addressed, as we've been hearing this week from the work that's been going on as part of the symposium here.

Now I've chosen some very simple but profound principles of design as I design my term as your Governor-General. Very simple principles responding to what I saw was a problem. My principles are care, kindness and respect. The Prime Minister augmented my design in asking me to be a modern, visible and optimistic Governor General. So there it is. There's my design challenge. How to be modern and visible, optimistic and put care, kindness and respect at the center of everything, and it’s present right across our country and our history.  

And I see it this way. It's care for each other, care for those who are caring of others, care for our continent and its environmental riches and everything it has given us, care for civics and institutions and care for the way that we all understand what happens right now without rancor, judgment, anger or violence, and wherever I go, I look for places and projects where those things intersect, care, kindness, respect, visibility, modernity and optimism, and I can feel it here tonight in abundance.  

You care for the country, you care for the world, you care about the future, you care for material, for use, you care for our environment. You care for life and living. And we celebrate what you do. We're celebrating everything you produce, but also the thinking that sits behind that, the design thinking you show respect for our interconnected world and for human rights and needs, you bring care to how we can imagine and shape our future.  

Now, Minnie, Brandon and Sam were all quoted in the media this week, as I said, ahead of these awards, because of the industry roundtable that was convened by the Design Council. Minnie, who spoke about the common misconception that design is surface and about the progress the UK is making by bringing a design lens to policy and programs. Sam agreed that design is not decoration. It has to be at the center, at the start of everything we do. And Brandon said something that resonated with my own lens of care. Brandon said that a big part of the design process is empathy. We're back to care, the exercise of imagining how something will be used, how someone else will encounter it is an exercise of care and empathy. It's also an act of creativity, of course. I reflected on this just yesterday, as I'm also a patron of the Paralympics Australia movement, and I hosted the Paralympic team for the Italian Winter Games in March for next year to unveil their beautifully designed uniforms, designed very particularly for Paralympians. But of course, I hosted them at Admiralty House in Kirrabilly: a splendid, beautiful official residence and a heritage home. But we had to bring in all of the equipment to make it accessible. All of those athletes needed us to think about accessibility, because the house is not accessible. Nor is Government House in Canberra, and knowing I was coming to see you tonight made me reflect on the fact that what if we put care in everything? And thought about heritage buildings to be fully accessible by everybody with any form of disability, so that any ability can be celebrated at the very highest levels of our society. So I'm giving you a challenge.  

Thank you. I am deeply honored to become your new patron. As I said, it's hard to step into the shoes of the great Jan Owen. I want to thank you for your care, for the gift of your talent and your commitment to Australian design and design thinking. It is a significant and enduring act of care that we cannot live without. As your new patron, I am just filled with optimism for what comes next, and I'm moved by this special opportunity that I now have to shortly join Jan Owen in presenting the Michael Bryce Patron’s award. Thank you, everybody.