Speech

23 October 2005

Speech to Geelong Grammar School

Opening

Thank you very much for the very generous introduction.

Lady Southey, Lieutenant Governor of Victoria; Sir David Hay; Mr Shane Dowling, Mayor of the City of Greater Geelong; Mr Jeremy Kirkwood, Chairman of the Geelong Grammar School Council; Stephen Meek, Principal; other distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen, students and staff of Geelong Grammar School.

It is a great honour to be invited to speak here this morning at the Year 12 Leaver's Service and Prize Giving Ceremony.

It is a particular honour in view of the fact that this is the 150 th anniversary of the school's establishment.

It is hard to believe when I look out at the audience today that 150 years ago this great school had only 14 students on a small site in Geelong.

Today of course, Geelong Grammar is considered one of the greatest schools in Australia - I would argue the greatest, not that I am biased!

It provides outstanding opportunities for over 1500 boys and girls and young men and women. Students come here from every state in Australia and from over 20 foreign countries.

I only really fully appreciated my time at this school many years after I had left.

Of course I appreciated at the time the incredible resources, the opportunities and my friendship group.

But like many things in life, I only realised the full benefits of the school in hindsight.

I also only realised in hindsight the sacrifices that my parents made in sending me to this school.

People make sacrifices in different ways to ensure their children receive the best foundation in life.

There is, of course, the financial commitment.

But there is also the investment of time and energy.

And, in my case, like so many others coming to this school, the distance from home and the time away was a significant sacrifice for me and my family.

To the students here tonight, if you are anything like me, you too may not fully appreciate the opportunities you have here and the sacrifice and commitment that your parents are making until many years later.

The sacrifice that they are making is often an enormous one and it is worth reflecting upon.

I say to the parents here today, thank you for making that commitment.

In my role as a government leader, I can tell you the government recognizes the sacrifices that you are making.

It recognises that you have paid your taxes to support the state school system but have chosen a non-government school which carries Ľ of the public subsidy of a state school because you believe this school gives your son or daughter the best start in life.

It will continue to support you financially and politically in the education choice that you have made.

This Government understands that you have the right to make that extra effort for your children - and we will not penalize you for that.

It is character that counts!

The year 12 class that will be graduating this year will be entering a very different world to that which I entered several decades ago.

When I finished school, agricultural products still dominated our exports; there were few women in positions of authority; you typically entered one job often in your local community and stayed there for the rest of your life; traveling or working abroad or even interstate was highly unusual; you married early and typically started a family early.

This was a time when a telephone was something that had pride of place in your home…you walked to the phone, you didn't carry it around with you.

Computers were something you knew they had at the Houston Space Flight control centre, but most of us had never seen one, let alone carried one around in our brief case.

In my day, if you wanted to send someone a text message, you got out a pen and paper, wrote a letter and sent it in the post.

Now I use my phone to send out and receive brief messages to and from people all around the world.

Today, of course, services industries dominate the economy with massive technological advancements across every industry; women are in senior positions in every facet of the workforce; people have multiple careers which span Australia if not the world; global companies are omnipresent…and the only real certainty is that the world will continue to change.

To someone like me, at the age of 54, it is hard to imagine what it would be like for someone leaving school today….taking on such a different society to that which I entered when I finished school….and all the challenges that it brings.

It would be easy to think that what is required to succeed in this vastly different world would be fundamentally different to that which I required when I finished school back in 1969…and certainly different to that required by the 14 inaugural students back in 1855.

But this is only partly true.

While the skills required to achieve in today's society are vastly different, and will constantly need to be updated, the personalattributes required are the same as ever.

They were the attributes required in the 1850s…in my generation…and will be required for all future generations.

We should talk about these attributes and their relevance to you; because each and every one of you has an opportunity to make a difference in this world… to achieve in whatever field you decide…to fulfill your grandest ambitions…and to make the best contribution you can to the community around you.

What is most essential to seize these opportunities and achieve your potential are not the skills you acquire (important as they are), but are your personal attributes and character.

The world is full of highly educated yet unfulfilled people.

Because at the end of the day, as the old saying goes "it is character that counts"!....whether in science, business, community groups or politics.

So what are the magical attributes?

There are of course many.

But I put it to you that there are four things that stand head and shoulders above the rest.

First, you need a personal vision of what you want to achieve.

Where do you believe you can make the greatest contribution?

To what do you wish to devote your talents?

What do you want to achieve, not just in a year but in 10 or 20 years?

You need to contemplate the future and paint a picture of your end point.

Forget the cynics and the pessimists, who are always out in abundance, as you paint your canvass.

One of the greatest inventors of all time, Thomas Edison, set himself the vision of coming up with a major new invention every six months and a minor one every 10 days.

And this great vision was in the days when the US Congress was contemplating closing the Patent Office, in part because, as one Congressman said: "It now appears that everything practical has already been invented."!

Thomas Edison went to patent over 1000 inventions over his life - the last when he was 83.

Your vision should be bold, just as Thomas Edison's was, but at the same time, it needs to be realistic and obtainable or you will become discouraged.

It should also be more than just acquiring a position.

For instance, it is pointless aiming to become Prime Minister for the sake of it.

You should covet such a position because it would enable you to implement the changes and reforms that you believe in.

So as you aspire to careers in law, in business, in a myriad of fields, think about what you can achieve - rather than what you can attain.

One of my visions is to see democracy flourish in Iraq and in the Middle East because I truly believe that this will lead to freedom, prosperity and peace in this troubled region.

I hold this vision with great clarity, regardless of the setbacks which we inevitably encounter and I will do everything I can to assist in the achievement of this vision.

You need to establish your own vision of what you want to achieve.

As 17 or 18 year olds, graduating from the greatest school in Australia, you have the chance to shape your nation and the world.

Don't put artificial limits on your plans.

Think big!

The second attribute required for success or achievement is sheer determination and persistence.

In my opinion, this is the characteristic that underpins nearly every success story.

You will struggle to find a single example of great achievement that has not involved determination and persistence.

Calvin Coolidge, the 30 th President of the United States, stated this best when he remarked that:

"Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not - nothing is more common that unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not - unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not - the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent."

President Coolidge, in making this remark, may well have been reflecting on one of his predecessors, Abraham Lincoln.

I am sure that most people here would have heard of this man.

He stands as one of the great leaders of the modern world having united his country and begun the process of abandoning slavery for ever.

Yet few people today would know that Lincoln drifted in his early adulthood, went bankrupt in business, lost several elections before he ran for President, lost the woman he loved, and suffered bouts of severe depression.

As Coolidge said, persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.

In Australia, our own Prime Minister is known for these same qualities.

He has often been under-rated by his opponents.

He has endured many setbacks in life and he has seen his own political obituary published many times.

Yet today he stands alongside Robert Menzies as Australia's greatest Prime Minister.

How did he achieve this?

How did he defy the odds?

He is certainly talented.

He is a gifted debater and public speaker.

He has a fine eye for policy detail and an ear tuned to public concerns.

Importantly, he is firm and clear in his views - he knows what he stands for.

But most importantly it is due to his sheer determination and tenacity over decades to achieve his goals.

He is, as Michelle Grattan of The Age describes: "the man who never gave up".

Closely related to persistence and determination is courage - the third tenet to achieving success.

Possessing courage involves having an inner strength when tough decisions need to be made…when failure is ever threatening.

It doesn't mean being reckless, but it means giving something a go - even when others may be criticizing you or waiting for you to fail.

Sports people are often said to have courage.

And yes, at times, it does involve this.

But think of the decisions that business entrepreneurs have to make - your parents may be such people - frequently putting their entire life savings on the line for an idea which may not work.

Bill Gates dropped out of Harvard to follow an idea of building computer software!

Great writers also frequently possess courage as Helen Garner (a Geelong Grammar alumnus) did when she challenged the feminist orthodoxy in her book The First Stone.

At its heart, courage involves having conviction that your course of action, your ideas, or your policies are right.

You need to truly believe in them.

Your ideas or your actions won't always be right, but without the courage to back them you will never know.

The final key ingredient to achieving your goals and making a difference is, in my opinion, teamwork.

"If I could see further than others, it was because I stood on the shoulders of giants" remarked Isaac Newton.

Isaac Newton is known as being a great individual mathematician and physicist.

But what he says in this comment is that he could only achieve such success because of the work of the people around him.

Implicit in Sir Isaac's words are humility.

True teamwork requires modesty.

To work successfully with others you need to recognize their contributions and therefore recognize that your own successes must be shared.

Great leaders, therefore, while strong and self-confident, usually have a sense of humility.

Without it, there can be no teamwork.

And this is the case in any endeavour.

You need great people around you and you need to operate as a team.

It involves building the respect and support of others.

It requires deep loyalty to the people you work with, particularly the leader, and if you are the leader, then you need to show loyalty to the people whom you expect to follow.

Assembling and operating as a team is perhaps the hardest task, but it is also the most powerful.

Building a personal vision, persistence, courage and teamwork.

These are the things, in my opinion, that really count.

I ask you to reflect on them and work on them.

They are hard…they don't come automatically…but if you get them right, nothing will stop you.

An honourable profession

I want to finish up today by making a metaphorical call to arms.

Less than a month ago, Mark Latham, the former leader of the Australian Labor Party, and the man whom all the current Labor MPs urged us to install as Prime Minister, warned the young people of Australia not to go into politics, saying that the system is sick and broken.

In saying this, Mark Latham was wrong.

It was a vindictive, defeatist commentary from someone who had benefited so much from parliamentary life.

Worse than that, it was an attempt to vandalise our democracy.

Like a defeated army, when Latham saw he could not hold the fort, he tried to destroy the buildings as he retreated.

Our Parliamentary system deserves better than that.

The Australian parliamentary system may not be perfect, but nor is it sick and broken.

It stands as one of the great constitutional systems in the world.

And being an elected representative in this system - a politician - is one of the most honourable positions that one can hold.

Why?

Because politicians are given the trust of the community to make decisions on their behalf.

They are given the authority of the people, through our constitution, to represent the community and the nation and to change it - hopefully for the better.

It is a huge responsibility, and one that politicians, regardless of what the popular perception is, do not take lightly.

At its heart, political life is about public service.

The remuneration of political office is not great; your family life is negatively affected; you are constantly in the spotlight and frequently publicly ridiculed.

But 99% of politicians accept these burdens because they want to do good for the country and they know that there is no other position where their work can count so much.

This is why political office is an honour and should be treated as such - not held in disdain as Mark Latham does.

The parliamentary system will continue more than adequately without Mark Latham.

But it cannot continue without your engagement….it cannot flourish without good people having the courage to stand for election and stand up for your community and your country in Australia's Parliament.

I encourage you to think about becoming involved in politics.

You should engage and contribute - join a political party and help to shape the future of political debate and policy.

Obviously I would encourage you to join the Liberal Party.

But, if you are so inclined, join the Labor Party or one of the minor parties.

And by all means, later on think about a career in politics.

It is rewarding, satisfying and one of the greatest ways to have a positive impact on the world.

Our democracy needs the best, the brightest and the most committed.

Australia needs people with vision, determination, courage and humility.

Conclusion

So thank you again for inviting me today to address the year 12 Leavers' Service and Prize Giving Ceremony.

I wish all the year 12s the best of luck with your exams and hope that you achieve your dreams whatever they maybe.

In graduating from Geelong Grammar, you are off to the very best start!

ENDS