Kylie Walker

Chancellor, presiding Vice Chancellor, Dean, University Secretary, Chair of the Academic Board, members of the University Executive, staff, family and friends. And of course, graduates – last but by no means least.

It’s an honour to be here today on the land of the Gadigal people of the Eora nation as we formally celebrate your getting of wisdom. Let’s also reflect on, and pay respect to, the knowledge forever embedded in custodianship of country and which continues to shape and inform our approaches to the world and to each other. I acknowledge the elders in the past who’ve held and communicated that custodianship and that knowledge, the emerging leaders who will carry it forward and any Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who join us here today.

Graduates, congratulations. You’ll leave this place to join generations in a timeless quest to know. And you’re joining their ranks at a most critical time in history for our species. You and your contemporaries around the world have signed up for science at a time when we are desperately, urgently in need of solutions. Our challenges are enormous. We live longer than ever before but our disease burden continues to grow. Access to food and water and safe shelter is more uncertain for more people than ever before. In developing nations, the modern horsemen of environmental apocalypse – climate change, food and water insecurity, ecotoxicology and biodiversity collapse – have conspired to bring existential urgency to the race for solutions.

Today’s a high point for you. You’ve worked so hard to get here. You’re about to launch into your brilliant careers, so why am I introducing such a note of despair? I do it because despair’s twin sister is hope, and I do hope. I hope because through international collaboration we have greater capacity than ever to embrace a diversity of ideas and perspectives in the creation of those solutions that we so keenly need. I hope because we also have greater capacity to connect with each other and communicate that knowledge and those ideas, and I hope because you are the solution makers.

Every day around the world, scientists are tackling grand challenges in offices, in laboratories, on ships, at the beach and in the bush. Every day, scientists are drafting tight policy informed by evidence to bring improvements to health and the environment. They’re participating in democracy as elected representatives. Scientists are applying their knowledge and creating and working towards new kinds of commercial enterprise. And in this post-truth era, scientists are inspiring and switching on new generations to the extraordinary potential for positive change brought by understanding and applying evidence.

You hold potential and power in your hands – the power to create a new kind of future for people and for the planet. Regardless of where your path takes you, you work, your vision and your potential can and will be realised if you channel your passion and if you advocate for it.

I’m not a scientist but I’ve spent most of my career advocating for and communicating science. Why is the communication of science so important that I would dedicate a couple of decades of my life to it? I have four good reasons and I’m going to share them with you.

The first reason: If people don’t know what you do, they cannot care about it, and if they don’t care about it, why on earth would they help you to facilitate it? Why does the government fund research to build the quantum computer? Why do Bill and Melinda Gates invest infectious diseases research? Why do national parks exist? Of course, they’re motivated by the race for unheard of data-crunching capacity or the pursuit for better population health or by a desire to preserve an extraordinary wilderness for future generations. But none of these commitments would have been made if the people making them did not know about the opportunity, understand the possibilities, be inspired by the potential. You might have the most exciting and the most important job in the world, but if nobody knows about it, you’re going to have a hard time getting it supported or seeing it applied. Effectively communicating what you do and why it matters is an incredibly important skill.

The second reason to advocate for your work: You’re already a role model. When I was a kid, all the scientists and the engineers and the adventurers and the doctors and all the bosses in all the books and all the television programs were boys and men. Even today, most of the CSIs and coding geniuses, the CEOs and the engineers on TV and in movies are men. I don’t believe that you can’t be what you can’t see.

I was a farm girl. I grew up surrounded by traditional hetero nuclear families. My mum worked as a teacher, but for most of the families in our district, dads went out and did the work and mums took care of the kids and the home. I grew up to be both mother and professional and to marry the woman of my dreams. So, I’m proof that you can be what you can’t see, but there’s absolutely no doubt that role models help. It’s very hard work breaking new territory; it takes an enormous amount of energy to bash down doors, particularly if you have to do that every single step of the way. I would have been so grateful to have had somebody to follow.

You and your contemporaries have worked really hard to be where you are now today. You have more hard work to come, so indulge me for a moment as I speak particularly to those of you who are not Anglo, who are not able-bodied, those of you who are not straight, those of you who are not men, those of you who might have been caring for children or elderly relatives while you completed your studies. We need you. More perspectives bring bigger potential for creative solutions, so be proud of who you are. Celebrate it, announce it, be a little bit brave and claim your place in science, wherever that might be, and show those who come after you that it’s possible – it can be theirs, too. And I urge all of you, including those in the privileged majority, to open those doors with and for each other and then, once they’re open, wedge them open so that others can come through behind you.

The third reason to advocate: Communicating your work will take you far. The more people who know about you and what you do, the more doors will open for you personally. Speaking about your work may lead to a phone call from a head-hunter. It may lead to new collaborations or exciting international connections or a career opportunity that you’d never imagined that requires bravery to step towards but that fits you like a glove. Speaking out about your work will open doors for you and for those who come after you.

The final – and to me, the most important – reason for advocating your work: The future of our species and of our planet is in your hands. Science explains so much about us – about our world and about the universe. Scientists are great imagineers, pioneers, adventurers, explorers. You’re striking out to discover, to record, to uncover the secrets of the breadth and the depth of time and space. Science brings understanding, and in understanding the world and ourselves, in seeing the elegance and the beauty and the wonder of the incredibly minute and the vast unfathomable, we start to develop a deep sense of custodianship. When we understand the extraordinary circumstances that resulted in the richness and the wonder of this planet and our unbelievable good fortune to be alive and human in this time, how can we help but want to care for it and for each other?

Too many people still leave school believing that science is beyond them – that it’s the exclusive domain of only the very cleverest of people; the pervasive cultural myth of the lone genius and the Eureka moment that perpetuates that unfortunate stereotype. So, it’s incumbent on you, you who works at the edge of wonder, to transmit that awe to others. You have a responsibility, I believe, to share your passion, to unveil your work, to inspire others to understand the sheer awesomeness of the natural world. Our challenges are indeed enormous and so are our opportunities.

As you leave this place today, I invite you to consider: What are you working for? What’s your passion? How will you advocate for your work? How will you be part of creating solutions?

Thank you.