Brooke Boney

Firstly, congratulations, all of you. It's an incredible achievement. I'd like to acknowledge the Deputy Chancellor, the Vice-Chancellor, presiding Deans, preceding director, members of the university, executive council and academic board, staff, family, friends, and graduates.

As a proud Gamilaraay woman, I would also like to acknowledge that we are meeting on the lands of the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation. I'd like to acknowledge their elders past and present.

It's an incredible fate to have survived in such hostile conditions for so many thousands of years. I often think of those people and what they would have been through, the droughts and fires, the fact that there were megafauna roaming around and, of course, the dispossession.

It makes me think about how those Gadigal people organised themselves, how leaders emerged. And what it means to be a leader, a real leader, not someone who is the most popular or who has the most power. Someone who inspires the people around them to be the best versions of themselves, particularly when it is easier to appeal to people's fears and worries.

When you think of leadership, you think of qualities like being forthright, being very strong, immovable, maybe staunch, but I don't know that we should anymore. Whatever your politics, it's difficult to deny that we are in a curious position as a Western democratic country.

The UK is in the midst of a constitutional crisis. The US and China are in the middle of a trade war. And all over the world, people are trying to get the attention of their political representatives by shutting down cities. I'm not sure those old behaviours are working as well as what they used to. I think that they might actually be dividing us more than ever before.

We are incredibly lucky to be in the positions we're in, to have been educated at this fine institution. Whose goal it is to lead positive global change, advanced social justice, and to be research driven. We should be very grateful, but we should also feel a deep sense of duty. Duty to uphold those values, but also forge a new path. One where leadership doesn't have to mean being forthright, being strong, being immovable and staunch, but maybe it means being flexible, being cooperative and collaborative.

As people who are about to enter into careers in communications, education, to sciences and international relations, you play a particularly important part in shaping the world. You are leaders. The world that we leave behind for future generations will be shaped by the choices you make.

Often, we're faced with choices about which direction we should head. Some of them are very big, but most of them are very small. They can quite often be split into two categories. I'll use a dinner analogy because it is about dinner time.

It's the difference between ordering Uber Eats and making a salad, I think. You know it's good for you and you know that you should use the food in the fridge, but somehow you can always justify paying someone on a bike to bring you a burger, always. I do it too.

Commercial television in Australia is a world that is dominated by a certain worldview. In fact, it reinforces and helps create that worldview. When I hung up, the Birkenstocks had chucked on the high heels to join Channel 9 from Triple J. The anti-establishment youth broadcast are housed in the bowels of the ABC across the road from here.

I found myself in the mainstream. I found myself in that environment expressing a perspective that was completely unfamiliar to most of the audience about our national day. I said, for those who didn't hear it, that I didn't want to celebrate it because it reminded me of the unfortunate situation many aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people find themselves in because of the decisions that were made on that day and the days that came after.

It had an impact. Some people loved it and some people really hated it. And it wasn't me trying to say, "Screw you," to the mainstream. It was me saying, "Why can't the mainstream be a little bit more flexible? Why can't we shift a little bit?" It wasn't about drawing a line in the sand. It wasn't about saying, "My view trumps yours." It was saying, "We are more than one point of view. We are many people with many perspectives." And we, as mainstream media, can be flexible and we can reflect those broad views.

What I'm saying to you is that leadership isn't about clashing and trying to yell over the top of one another about which view is superior. It's about hearing other perspectives and adjusting your own without having it hurt your pride.

We have the future in our hands. You have the future in your hands. This isn't about making huge decisions that change the fate of the nation. This is about being a leader in every part of your life, in every part of your day. It's about us being even better leaders than our parents and learning the lessons the past is trying to teach us. Thank you.