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The University of Newcastle Graduation Ceremony Friday 8 May 1998 YOUTH AND LEADERSHIP IN MODERN AUSTRALIA. An address on the Occasion of the Conferment of the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Laws. The Hon Justice Michael McHugh AC Justice of the High Court of Australia Introduction Chancellor, I express my deepest gratitude to you, the Deputy Chancellor, the Vice Chancellor, the members of the Council and the University for the great honour that this University does me and the High Court of Australia by conferring on me an honorary doctorate of laws. When Chief Justice Mason received a similar award from Griffith University in 1995, he took it as a gesture that recognised "the importance of the High Court and its contribution to law and justice in the Australian community." 1 So do I. I am immensely proud to join today's graduates. It is now 34 years since I left Newcastle to go to the Bar in Sydney and later to the High Court of Australia. The geographic distance between the Chambers in Church Street where I commenced legal practice in Newcastle in 1962 and the High Court of Australia standing on the shores of Lake Burley Griffin in the Australian Capital Territory may be significant, but the emotional distance is not. To me, Newcastle is still my neighbourhood. Is it any wonder then that it gives me great pleasure to return to Newcastle and stand witness to the many changes that have come about in the development of our city - this University not the least of them. In his poem, Little Gidding, T S Eliot declares 2 : "We shall not cease from exploration; and the end of our exploring will be to arrive at the place where we started and know the place for the first time." I find myself in that position today. The University of Newcastle When I left Newcastle more than a generation ago, it was a vastly different city from that which I see today. The age of Menzies still had 18 months to run. Australia in Donald Horne's timeless phrase was the "lucky country". Unemployment by today's standard was very low. Newcastle was a thriving and prosperous city with none of the worries for its future that now concern it. Time may have falsified my recollection of those days, but I remember Newcastle as a serene and comfortable place in which to live. It had most of the things that made life enjoyable for the working class families that constituted the bulk of its population. One thing that it did not have, however, was its own university. True it is that, since the early 1950's, a person could live in Newcastle and obtain a university education. But degrees were awarded not by a University of Newcastle but by the University of New South Wales. Moreover, the range of degrees that could be obtained by studying at the then College of the University of New South Wales at Tighe's Hill was a narrow one. All that commenced to change in 1965 with the establishment of what is now the great institution which has conferred these degrees upon us today. Since its foundation, this University has quickly become recognised as a leader in tertiary education. With an enrolment in excess of 18,000, 56% of whom are women, the University of Newcastle now offers a range of diverse and socially important courses. Statistics indicate that it is ranked fourth among the 12 universities in New South Wales in its ability to attract first preference applications from those enrolling in undergraduate programmes. Perhaps an even more impressive statistic is that of the 36 public universities in this country, the University of Newcastle is ranked ninth in its capacity to secure major government research funding. This is an outstanding achievement for a university which is based in regional Australia. It has achieved much of which it can be proud. In turn, its graduates are justly entitled to be proud of their achievement in graduating from this great University. Tertiary Education Today The increased emphasis on university education in the last 30 years has meant that significant pressure is being placed on the resources and funding of all universities. This pressure has occurred when Australia has been forced to become a competitive society. Competitive societies may be wealth maximising and efficient, but they are uncomfortable places for those who live in them. And universities, being at the heart of their societies, have been unable to escape the effect of the economic theories that, for better or worse, drive a competitive society. In these times of budgetary constraint, there is the unfortunate but obvious effect that lack of funds will deny some people the opportunities that today's graduates will enjoy in the future because of their education at this University. Consequently, it seems to me that the new status, entitlements and opportunities of the graduates impose upon them a moral responsibility to give something back to the community. Role of Youth in Modern Australia This brings me to my central theme today. From time to time, you hear and read criticism of the attitudes, aspirations and sense of community of our young people. People who proffer such criticism cannot have seen an occasion such as today. They cannot have considered the stamina and willpower needed to complete a degree at a modern university. Their misconceptions about the attitudes, aspirations and sense of community of our young people are especially galling when you remember that those misconceptions are largely held by a generation which has made life so much more difficult for the next generation. Environmental degradation, economic instability, racial disharmony and unemployment are not issues created by our youth. Those who stereotype and denigrate our young people cannot realise the harm they often cause. Only last Saturday, the respected social researcher, Mr Hugh MacKay, pointed out 3 that Australia is the only country in the world where the suicide rate peaks in the under 30 age group. The reasons for that dismal statistic are not hard to find. As Hugh MacKay pointed out 4 : "There is a negative, even nihilistic, mood in the air: a feeling of disappointment and despair that some young people are absorbing without quite understanding what's happening to them." He pointed out that they look in vain for signs of hope and messages of encouragement from our leaders. As a result, "they become cynical, detached and all too easily, alienated." 5 Australian Youth and Leadership If Australia is to become and remain a just as well as a competitive society, if it is to provide a life that is worth living, its self interest requires that we nurture and encourage our young people, not isolate, denigrate and alienate them. It is here that today's graduates and their fellow graduates around the nation have such an important part to play. They have the capacity, the training and the opportunity to be the leaders of this nation, if not today, then certainly tomorrow. It is they who by example and leadership must give our youth a sense of destiny and a sense of belonging to a just and caring community. It seems evident that my generation has failed to set that example and to give that leadership. At all events, that seems to be the perception of many of our youth. Leadership is concerned with persuading people to achieve goals that are wanted or desired by the followers of the leader. It is the giving effect to the goals of the followers that distinguishes leadership from the brute exercise of power. There are several forms of leadership. But I want to talk about what has been called transforming leadership 6 . Transforming leadership brings people to realise that they now want or desire goals which hitherto they have ignored or even rejected. I am not speaking, therefore, of leadership where people are persuaded to follow someone because to do so will promote the existing interests and values of the followers. I am speaking of that form of leadership that seeks to raise the standards or elevate the conduct of a community by changing its opinions and practices often by reference to ultimate ethical values. By ultimate ethical values, I mean universal and enduring values such as justice, freedom in all its aspects, equality, and respect for the human rights and the dignity of every individual, irrespective of colour, race, creed or nationality. The leadership of which I speak necessarily means that the leader is an opinion maker, not an opinion follower. The leader must educate his or her community to see that its collective interest is often best served by abandoning some accepted opinions and practices and adopting new ones. The relevant community may be large or small. It may be a nation or a small town, a suburb or a neighbourhood group, a whole workforce or a few workers. The size or composition of the community does not matter. What matters is that the leader is able to identify some pernicious practice or opinion and raise the consciousness of the relevant community so that its members see that the practice or opinion is contrary to what is truly their best interests and want to change it. Leadership in the sense to which I have referred may even mean that the leader has to convince a community that ideas, deeply rooted, perhaps for many generations, have to be abandoned in favour of other and more ethical or productive ideas. For too long, young people have been kept out of leadership roles. Hopefully, one recent event indicates that this may be changing. We recently witnessed the Constitutional Convention in Canberra. One of the highlights of that Convention was the positive leadership role played by the young delegates on both sides of the republican debate. It was a stroke of good management, bordering on genius, that each State was represented by a set number of youth delegates appointed by that State. No one following the affairs of the Convention could fail to see that it was these representatives of Australian youth who often provided the thinking, common sense and vision that was needed to make the Convention a success. We saw Australian youth at its best, young thinkers and leaders unsullied by cynicism and party loyalties and inspired by a moral vision of the sort of nation that Australia should become. Despite our social, economic and other problems, these young people, like Tennyson's Ulysses, thought "tis not too late to seek a newer world." 7 Justice Frankfurter of the United States Supreme Court once said that, "Wisdom too often never comes, and so one ought not to reject it merely because it comes late." 8 I would add that it should not be rejected for coming in the guise of youth. Importance of Individual Professions The disciplines in which today's graduates have been trained provide them with the status, authority, skills and capacities to exercise leadership and to bring about change in Australian society. For those of you who have studied law, you now have the opportunity to use your skills and intellectual capacity to overcome division and distrust in society; in that respect, your tact and capacity to mediate and compromise and to persuade people of their ethical and moral obligations as well as their strict legal rights may be more valuable to the community than the ability to draft a perfect statement of claim or a water tight contract. For those who have studied medicine and health science, you have the opportunity to make a crucial contribution to the well being of the people of Australia and for that matter the wider world. Some of you may even have the opportunity to seek answers to the most fundamental questions concerning human life; of trying to unlock the intricate codes of conditions such as cancer, HIV/AIDS and our genetic make up. In doing so, and in examining the threads of life in all of us, you may yet uncover an aspect of the human condition that is otherwise unknown. Your responsibilities, both medically and ethically, are great. By all means pursue the glittering prizes of your professions. To desire to excel at your profession is a noble ambition. But most of all realise that you have the opportunity and, I would say, duty, to provide leadership, in the sense to which I have referred, not only in your professions but in the wider community. Do not be afraid therefore to question and challenge the conventional wisdom, if you think it wrong. Do not be afraid to participate in those issues that go beyond the boundaries of your professions and disciplines and affect the wider community. Your intellect and education at this University have fitted you to lead and make important contributions to Australian society. Most important of all, do not shirk your responsibilities of citizenship. Conclusion Let me finish by congratulating the graduates for their diligence and industry and their loved ones for the support which is always a condition precedent to an occasion such as this. Thank you Chancellor for inviting me to return to the place where I started, and allowing me, in Eliot's words, to know it for the first time.
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