Chairman, Tourism and Transport Forum
BA (Syd), MBA (Melb), HonPhD (Newc(NSW))

The Hon. Bruce Baird addressed graduates from the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at the Greenhalgh Theatre, Kuring-gai campus, Tuesday 21 April 2009, 10.30am.

About the speaker

The Honourable Bruce Baird is Chairman of the Tourism and Transport Forum, and former Federal Member for Cook for the period 1998–2007. For over 35 years, Bruce's impressive professional career has spanned the Australian Trade Commission service, and the parliaments of New South Wales and the Commonwealth.

Tourism and transport have been a major part of Bruce's career in both the public and private sectors. He has been at the forefront of developing government policy and innovative funding approaches.

As a former Federal parliamentarian, Bruce chaired a number of Federal Government committees including the 'Friends of Tourism', which championed the cause of the tourism sector; the House Standing Committee on Economics, Finance and Public Administration; and the Government Committee on Small Business, Tourism, Sports and the Arts. Bruce led several delegations overseas, and was the Australian representative to the United Nations General Assembly in 2006.

As the New South Wales Minister for Transport, Roads, Tourism and Olympics, Bruce was the driving force behind the lobbying strategy that won the bid to host the 'greatest ever' 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney.

Before entering Federal politics, Bruce was Managing Director of the industry lobby group, Tourism Council Australia; Chairman of the National Rail Corporation; and a member of several private sector boards including International School of Hospitality and Hotel Management; Tourism Training Australia; William Angliss College; Pilgrim International; and Wesley Mission. Bruce has been awarded an honorary Doctor of Philosophy by the University of Newcastle.

Speech

Vice Chancellor, Faculty Deans, staff, distinguished guests, graduates, family and friends of graduates, ladies and gentlemen.

I would like to acknowledge the Gadigal and Guring-gai people of the Eora Nation on whose land we meet.

Firstly let me congratulate you all on your outstanding achievement as graduates in Arts and Education from an excellent Australian University.

It is now 45 years ago that I stood like you to receive my Bachelor of Arts degree. In fact of my immediate family unit of five, four are graduates in Arts and one in Economics. In terms of my own career, I worked in the Human Resources field, completed an MBA, joined the Trade Commission Service, worked in various corporate roles and entered the NSW State Parliament and finally Federal Parliament.

Of the Arts graduates, my wife has had a successful career as a psychologist, my eldest son is a politician in the NSW Parliament and my daughter is a Senior Editor with Newsweek Magazine in New York. Our family, I hope can demonstrate the influences of an Arts degree.

I can remember when I graduated the dreams I had for the future. Travel, a successful career, marriage, family all loomed on the horizon and with the afternoon light perspective of looking at one's career in retrospect as one career comes to its closing chapters, I can find that life has been particularly satisfying.

Family looms large in regards to the most gratifying aspects, but job satisfaction has also been important and being involved in the winning of Sydney's Olympics bid was certainly a wonderful experience. However, ironically the issue with which I have been most closely associated and for which I have received the most significant response during my time in politics was that of the plight of refugees in this country. Locked up in detention centres for years at a time, without proper legal or medical assistance, suffering often from mental illnesses, these refugees came to Australia looking for a better life and fleeing from oppression.

But rather than a welcome they were met with isolated huts in remote locations behind 20 foot high barbed wire fences often accompanied by innocent children. Once having been exposed to this issue I could not let it go.

From my early involvement in the Human Rights Committee which made a report into detention centres until several years later with a group of parliamentarians we challenged the then Prime Minister's authority and introduced a Private Member's Bill aimed at reducing processing time of the removal of families from detention and a more humanitarian approach to refugees. It was not easy and despite opposition from some colleagues and from right wing advocates within our electorates we pushed ahead and were eventually successful.

So how can you make a difference? It can come upon you unexpectedly but it is likely that all of you will be given a chance at some stage in your career to make a difference for those around you.

You may look at some of the giants of human rights advocacy such as William Wilberforce, Martin Luther King, Robert Kennedy, Morgan Tsvangirai, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and our own Lowitja O'Donoghue.

Our current Prime Minister, when asked whom he most admired did not choose a politician, but a German theologian by the name of Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was born in 1904 and died in April 9, 1945 at the hand of the Nazis. He was born into an upper class German family in Berlin and his father was a Professor of Psychiatry at a Berlin University.

He went to University in Berlin and completed his Doctorate thesis at the age of 21. He then went on to Union Theological Summary in New York, which he said he enjoyed ‘as a place of free discussion’. He was also fascinated by Negro spirituals and the struggle of the blacks for equality.

He returned to Berlin where he lectured in theology. In 1933, he delivered a lecture broadcast over the Berlin radio and in which he was critical of the Nazi Party leadership. The broadcast was cut-off before he had finished. He became pastor of a German congregation in London after it was apparent Hitler had succeeded in his quest to be Chancellor of Germany.

While there he received an invitation to take charge of an ‘illegal’ clandestine seminary for the training of young pastors which he accepted immediately. After writing several books he was forbidden to write or publish and the ‘underground’ seminary was closed by the Gestapo.

However, Bonhoeffer was deeply involved in the events of his dictator-dominated country. Through his sister and her husband he learnt of secret plans to overthrow Hitler being made by General Beck and others. Bonhoeffer concluded in the depths of his soul that to withdraw from those who were participating in the political and military resistance would be irresponsible and cowardice and a flight from reality.

In April 1943, he was captured along with his sister Chantel and her husband and incarcerated in a military prison where he remained until October 1944. After its miscarriage of the Putsch of July 20, he was transferred to several other prisons.

One of those who was with him in the closing days wrote ‘Bonhoeffer always seemed to me to spread an atmosphere of happiness and joy over the least incident, and profound gratitude for the mere fact that he was alive. He found just the right words to express the spirit of our imprisonment, and the thoughts and resolutions it had brought us’.

‘He had hardly ended his last prayer when the door opened and two civilians entered. Bonhoeffer took me aside, ‘this is the end’ he said ‘but for me the beginning of life’. The next day he was hanged in Flossenberg.

We are unlikely to be called upon to make a difference to the same degree as Dietrich Bonhoeffer but we can still challenge, question, and go against the prevailing stream, talk of ethics, honesty, human rights and personal respect. As graduates in Arts, Education and the Humanities you, more than others, know what is required.

May you in your future life as Arts and Education graduates be successful in your chosen careers, but also make a difference.