Wendy Machin

Thank you for the honour of inviting me back here today to be with you as you’re awarded your degrees. My congratulations on your achievements to date. I envy the opportunities before you and wish you every success in seizing those. I also wish to take this opportunity to acknowledge the Gadigal people of the Eora nation on whose ancestral lands the university now stands, and I pay my respects to their people past and present.

I grew up in a small country town, less than one-tenth the size of the student body here. As I finished my high schooling, I wasn’t too sure what to do and I had vague notions of becoming a landscape architect. So naturally I enrolled in a BA Communication here, at this university now known as UTS, but back then it was the Institute of Technology and I majored in public relations. Less than six years after graduating from that, just short of my 27th birthday, I was a member of parliament in NSW. How did that happen? For a long time, I thought it was largely chance and some good timing, but on looking back, I can see the patterns and influences that have shaped my life and my career, and I’ll return to those shortly. But if I can give you one tip from my life and learnings today, it would be to expect and embrace the unexpected and to seize opportunities as they arrive, even though they might challenge, you, because they may not necessarily be there when it suits you or your timing.

So like you, my adult story – my postgrad story – started here. That was in 1977, 40 years ago. That is shocking too. I came from my little country town, Wingham, on the mid-north coast of NSW. I didn’t know a soul here, and hardly anybody in Sydney. At that time, the faculty was based in a rundown department store – I think it was the Hordern Building on George St where world square now stands. It was a dump. I’m sure it wouldn’t have met any planning or fire regulations – the tower hadn’t been finished; I think it was only just started, let alone some of the interesting buildings you now have. There was no university accommodation, and I lived for my first two years at a Sydney University college and then a share house. I was terribly lonely and homesick for the first few months, but I persevered and made friends, many of whom are still friends today. As the years have passed I’ve come to understand how my time at university was one of the major influences in my life.

As some of the academic staff may recall, back then there was more than a bit of politics within my faculty. For many of – I can hear a chuckle behind me; someone remembers. For many of us, and for many of our subject, it was a strong Marxist lens applied to the subject material and the teaching approach taken. This was new to me and something of a political awakening, probably not the one that some of the staff might have been hoping for in their students, as I went on to become a National Party MP. That early exposure to political theory and the challenges it posed me piqued my curiosity, and during my student years, it led me to sneak into an ALP election campaign rally. I thought that was fascinating, and I’m sure that was when the seductive nature of politics first took seed in me.

On graduating, I took the first job going, like many of you may do, and I ended up working up as a promotions and recruitment officer for the Young Nationals Country Party. I went on to become an alderman on North Sydney Council at 24 and an MP just before I turned 27. I did actually also work in PR for a few years, and the skills I learned here were and remain relevant and useful for me today. But another huge influence that I’ve realised only later in life is a personal one: it’s my older sister and only sibling Jan, who unknowingly changed the world for many people in her community. Jan is profoundly intellectually disabled as the result of a birth that went horribly wrong. She’s totally dependent on others for her survival. She can walk and has a few words and sounds, can feed herself if she’s provided with food, but is not capable of pouring herself a glass of water or making a cup of tea. This tragedy was devastating to my family, but sadly, it’s a tragedy that many families still experience and live with today. We were fortunate in living in a close community, and my parents were financially secure, so our family and friends worked for the rest of their lives to get better local services for people like Jan through endless fundraising and lobbying. Today, that district has some of the best accommodation and employment services for people with disabilities in country NSW.

So that is how Jan changed her world, but for me, one of the early lessons I learned from Jan is that we all hit roadblocks along the way, and bad things happen to good people. It is indiscriminate. But we have choices. We can choose to be angry or a victim, or we can choose to learn from it and seek change for the better. So when I was young, I was laughed at and bullied because of her disability, but I learned from this that we don’t choose to be born disabled or black or white or gay or straight or smart or stupid. I learned early on the need for empathy, and to know what it’s like to stand in someone else’s shoes. I’m sure this helped me in my political career and subsequent roles. Many of you will hit challenging hurdles in life and work, if you haven’t already. It’s how you deal with it that counts. It’s important to acknowledge that things can be really tough. Often these things teach you the most, whether it’s in life or business. Things don’t always go according to plan, so learning when and how to seek support is critical in overcoming these challenges and building your own resilience and your own support networks.

I’ve told you a little bit of my political career, one that lasted for 11 years, four elections, a marriage and two-and-a-half babies. I still have the latter, plus a third baby. It’s a long way from landscape architecture, but it was incredibly rewarding, and as I look back I see why I ended up there and why I’ve taken on some of those subsequent roles. For me, it’s about communities. I’m a joiner, I like working in teams and I like leading teams. Regrettably, few politicians these days enjoy a great reputation. Some deserve that, but most are good people trying to do their bit to improve their communities and their country. They must balance a range of wildly competing views and demands, and are on call virtually 24/7. But it is a very rewarding career, and I hope and expect some of you will try that. For me, there were many big issues and many important debates in Parliament, but the most satisfying thing was being able to use my position and my knowledge to be able to help people who didn’t have access or the knowledge that I did. More than 20 years on, people still come up to me in my home area and thank me for some small thing I did for them – generally something I’d forgotten, but it always touches me and reminds me of the humanity and purpose of politics.

Earlier, I also asked how does a 26-year-old single woman get pre-selected by the National Party in 1985 in one of its safest seats? As with my election to North Sydney Council, I didn’t actually expect to win, but I thought the experience would be great for later in life. Winning the party nomination wasn’t easy, and the PR and communication skills that I learned here were instrumental in my success. But I do have to say, I found it quite odd and sometimes confronting when the product I was promoting was actually myself. One of the recurring issues in that preselection campaign was my gender. At every meeting I was asked, ‘What if you get married, Wendy?’ Meaning, you’ll just go and have babies and leave, won’t you? None of the other eight candidates, all men, were asked this. My parents and I were outraged, as it was immediately putting me in the position of having to defend my gender. So my solution for the final meeting was to place a question with a friend in the audience – a good old Dorothy Dixer. He duly asked, ‘What if you get married?’ I looked appropriately surprised and said, ‘It seems everyone is trying to marry me off in this campaign, so would any single guys come and see me after the show?’ They all laughed, it became a non-issue, and we moved on. I continued to encounter this issue for some years, and sadly, it is still with us. I read a piece just yesterday about our very capable Foreign Affairs Minister, Julie Bishop, saying when she was the only woman in cabinet, none of the men listened to her comments and suggestions, but inevitably when a man said the same thing shortly after, all the blokes said, ‘Brilliant!’ So when a few more women came into the cabinet, they struck a deal: whenever one of the women spoke, the other women would go, ‘Brilliant!’ still a bit of work to be done, isn’t there?

So the world you’ll go into is a very different one to the one I entered after my studies almost 40 years ago. We’ve seen enormous change in a short period of time through the digital revolution. When I was in your place, there was no internet, no mobile phones, no social media. To study, we went to the library and we got out reference books and we hoped that we beat the other students there to get the most useful books. There were also no plagiarism programs, so perhaps we did have a small edge there. We are more connected than before, yet ironically we see increasing human disconnection and isolation. My own children long for the simplicity of those past days and their perceived lack of pressure by not having to be instantly available and responding, by not having to worry about how many likes or how many followers you have.

So as you may have picked up, another strong theme in my life and career is that of community. Following my 11 years in Parliament, I‘ve gone on to work in other membership organisations most of my professional life. More recently, as the Vice Chancellor said, that’s included 12 years on the NRMA board, which has something like 2.4 million members. I also now chair the board of the Customer and Banking Association, which you may know better or its members better as credit unions and building societies. These are mutual organisations owned by their members, and in fact, mutual organisations are quite an old concept but have faded from awareness, but you could say they are the original peer-to-peer organisation and enjoying something of a resurgence as people become disillusioned with bigger, listed institutions. As a business model, mutuals and co-ops do not get the prominence in teaching that many of us thing they should, and I encourage and challenge the university to perhaps think about that in its business faculty.

So, as you all go on to do other things – work, further study, travel, relationships – you will become part of new communities. I hope you will be a constructive part of those communities, and that you will do what you can to make them better places. You are starting from a privileged position with a great education from a leading university in a rich and free country. In your careers, I encourage you to take risks – calculated ones – and don’t be afraid of failing sometimes. And in a time of change, while you may take a short to medium-term view of your career path, I strongly urge you to take a very long-term view of your reputation. So my sister Jan is not aware of her disability, and she’s happy, but because of that, in spite of that, her life has changed her little world. She’s taught us about tolerance and understanding, about not discriminating, about kindness and selflessness – all qualities the world needs more of today. This university has as an integral part of its character principles of equity and diversity. As you leave and take your next steps in the world, keep these principles to the fore. If my sister can change her world, imagine what you can do. Thank you for your attention today, congratulations on your achievements, my very best wishes for long, successful and enjoyable lives to all of you. Thank you.