Caro Meldrum-Hanna

Firstly, I acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land on which the UTS campus stands and on which we’re here tonight, the Gadigal people of the Eora nation. And I’d also like to acknowledge those seated on stage with me – Pro Chancellor, Deputy Vice Chancellor, University Secretary, the Dean of the Faculty, Member of the Academic Board, and all staff, family, and graduates and friends that are here tonight. I just need to actually start before I begin, I need to get a bit of a reading on the room here, because I’ve noticed there are not a lot of journalism graduates right own. In a show of hands, how many plan to enter journalism? Okay, that’s pretty good. Many who aren’t. 

But I ask because most of you, I hope, with a journalist in your lifetime, and in your career. And if you do, embrace it. Now, it’s a real honour to be here tonight, because not only did I graduate from UTS but I actually never planned on being or becoming a journalist. It just sort of happened. I was at UTS studying and I was given an internship, it was called, which is basically just a fancy word for working for free for a month over at the ABC. So, I was finishing my law degree and my communications degree and I was asked to go over and participate in an internship in the investigative unit, which was fantastic, and I was just bitten by the bug then. I absolutely loved journalism. 

I thought I was going to be a lawyer, but I became a journalist. And my story is very unlikely in terms of my career, but bear with me and hopefully I will impart something insightful or some words of encouragement to you all sitting in front of me. So, you know the program I work on, Four Corners. I don’t know how many of you watch it though, because we certainly know over at the ABC that our audience is an older audience. So, hopefully some of you know of this program. It’s on every Monday night, it’s 45 minutes in length and it’s actually been on air for almost 60 years. And that may not sound like a lot of time, but in the highly competitive, ferocious world of television, that is bloody remarkable. We’re actually the second-longest-running program, a public current affairs program, in the world – we’re only second to Panorama on the BBC in the UK. And I didn’t think I’d really get a job there, to be honest. I love television, and I love pictures, and I love asking questions, just a naturally enquiring mind. And my path onto this program was quick, to be honest. You’ve heard about some of the programs that I’ve reported, so you sort of know the stuff I do, but it’s really hard to get a job in journalism. Newsrooms are shrinking. It’s a changing landscape. Jobs aren’t as readily available as they used to be, and there’s not a lot of training, I don’t think, for young journalists that are coming through, so I really do genuinely wish you luck. But if I can do it, so can you. 

So, you know I had an internship, and then I worked on 730 Report, and reported some stuff there, you know, giving it a good crack. I was very green. I was cutting my teeth, and I was asked to come up and report a story on Four Corners. So, I’ll just tell you the average age of a reporter at Four Corners is around 45-50 years old. And when I was asked to come up, I hadn’t turned 30 yet. So, I was terrified. And I’m actually getting a dry mouth thinking about how terrified I am, so let me just get my drink. So, totally terrified, and I arrive at Four Corners, and I’ll set the scene for you: so, you walk in and there’s the big 4 logo on the wall, and then around it there are pictures and articles over the years, the amazing star reporters and their seismic stories they reported and changed the world on, and then there’s a huge long cabinet, the length of this wall, covered in awards and trophies that reporters and teams have won over the years. So, it’s intimidating, to say the least. So, in I went, reported the first story, went pretty well. Made a few mistakes, that’s okay, and was asked to stay on, which I couldn’t believe. 

I then continued reporting and within 18 months of being there, and I turned 30, there I was going up on stage at the Walkley Awards, winning the Gold Walkley, which is the highest honour in Australian journalism for a story I did on greyhound racing, and exposing live baiting, which is a seriously hard story to make – I look back and I don’t know how I did it. But I remember standing at the bottom of the stage at the Walkley Awards and my name had been called out, and I didn’t believe it, because I honestly didn’t think I was good enough, I thought I was too young, I thought I hadn’t done enough, I thought there are so many other people in this room that are better than me who have been doing this for years, and my colleagues had to push me when my name was read out because I was frozen in my chair, and said, ‘Caro, they’ve read your name, it’s you. Get up!’ And I was about to walk up onto stage again, I froze, and I turned around and I said to my colleagues, you have to deliver this speech to a room full of, you know, the full-blown stars of the media, and I turned around to my colleague and said, ‘I can’t do this; I don’t think I can do it.’ And my colleague said, ‘Well, you have to.’ So up I went. And I don’t really remember what I said, but I hope I thanked all the right people. And looking back on that, yeah, an amazing honour, and I’m telling you all of this, my sort of trajectory, I’m not boasting at all. I’m really not. I’m probably quite vulnerable when I say this – I’m telling you this because I know I’m not the best. I’m not the best at what I do.

There are so many other journalists out there who are amazing and who are better than me, but I tried, and I made a huge amount of sacrifices early in my career, and I just worked so, so hard, maybe that paid off. Luck, too. I was in the right place at the right time, but more than this, and I’ve really had a chance to reflect on it, because I know when you’re starting out and entering the workplace, it’s really daunting, and it’s going to be really hard, and I look back on, I guess, how I’ve done it and what I’ve done and I know it’s not because I’m the best; it’s because four things I hope I can give you to you tonight. Number one: from the very beginning, I surrounded myself with people who are better than me, and I still do surround myself with people who are far better than me, and I listen to them. I soak up their experience and knowledge like a sponge. And I spent years behind the scenes researching, nowhere near a camera – wasn’t getting in front of a camera – before I actually reported, so if you put in the hard work behind the scenes and do those hard yards, it works. I took risks, is the second thing, and I really pushed myself to be brave, and you will, absolutely, every single one of you, I hope it doesn’t happen, but you will come up against someone in a workplace that will tell you, you’re not good enough; you can’t do it. It’ll happen. It happened to me countless times. Don’t listen to it. You can do it. Keep going. Surround yourself with those people who are better than you and believe in yourself. The third thing I learned is that you can get ahead and be really great at what you do when you collaborate, and when you share your skills with someone else and when you listen before you speak. Because other people almost always have a far better idea than yours or will improve on your idea. And fourthly, I learned that being successful and becoming very good, it doesn’t come down to being tough and ruthless in the workplace, and particularly for all of the women here in the audience, don’t listen to anyone telling you, think like a man or be like a man in the workplace. Great, men. Love the way you think, absolutely, but you don’t have to be tough to be good. I have found that through my work and the people I watch around me who are so great, the reason why they’re so great is because they work with compassion, and they work with sensitivity, and they work ethically to reach and achieve really great goals. So, to everyone here, the next generation of storytellers and truth-seekers, and also guardians and custodians of information that journalists so desperately want, good luck and work hard and be brave. Thank you.