Dr Dawn Casey

Director, Powerhouse Museum
PSM, HonDPhil (Qld), HonDA (CSturt), HonFAHA

Dr Dawn Casey addressed graduates from the Faculty of Business at the Great Hall, City Campus, University of Technology, Sydney on Tuesday 12 May 2009, 2.30pm.

About the speaker

Dawn Casey is Director of the Powerhouse Museum. Dawn is responsible for managing a budget of $28 million with multi-disciplinary teams located across three sites.

Dawn's career began as a clerical assistant in the public service in Cairns. In 1986 she was appointed the State Director for the Commonwealth Department of Aboriginal Affairs; and subsequently, in 1988 and in1990, worked as a senior policy advisor for The Honourable Gerry Hand, then Minister for Aboriginal Affairs and later, Minister for Immigration, Local Government and Ethnic Affairs. Her career continued to excel, as she was appointed Assistant Secretary for the Aboriginal Reconciliation Unit; Assistant Divisional Head for the Queensland Department of Family Services and Aboriginal and Islander affairs; Assistant Director General of AUSAID; and Assistant Secretary for the Department of Communications and the Arts.

In 1997, Dawn's career took a new turn, when she was appointed Chief General Manager of the Construction Task Force for the new facilities of the National Museum of Australia and the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies. Dawn managed the complex interface between architecture, exhibition design, building services, construction, works' approvals and the precincts end users, the cultural institutions. In a world first, Dawn adopted alliancing to ensure project delivery on time and within budget.

In 2004, Dawn was awarded the Public Service Medal for outstanding public service. She is also the holder of a Centenary Medal and the Clem Cummings Award.

Dawn is currently a member of the Advisory Board for the Centre for Cultural Materials Conservation at the University of Melbourne

In 2001, Dawn was awarded the Centenary Medal for service to Australian society through Aboriginal affairs and the National Museum of Australia; and in 2004 Dawn was awarded the Public Service Medal for outstanding public service, particularly as the Director of the National Museum of Australia for leading its establishment and its opening. Dawn holds an Honorary Doctor of Philosophy from the University of Queensland, and an Honorary Doctor of Arts from Charles Sturt University.

Speech

I would like to begin by acknowledging the Gadigul people traditional owners of the land upon which we are standing.

Professor Ross Milbourne, Distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen

Let me begin by giving the graduating students my very warmest congratulations on this, your special day. Something you have worked hard for over the past years is being celebrated, and you are receiving a token of that achievement. From today you will have proof that you studied, you passed, and you can proudly claim that level of knowledge or that special qualification.

I must say how much pleasure it gives me to see the latest generation of educated and informed Australians about to take their place in the world. You have all chosen a field which interested you, or in which you had a special talent. You have explored it, learned much and enjoyed doing so I hope, but most importantly, you changed. You are not the same person you were when you started. You are a little older of course, but more importantly you now have insights into many areas of life or society or civilisation which you didn't have before. You know where to go in future, to find things out that intrigue you or puzzle you. Most importantly, you are beginning to understand how much you don't know. Keep working on that one — even the rest of your life will not be long enough to catch up, but the process will bring its own rich rewards.

I hope that you will also remember the skills and talents of your best lecturers, and before them your best school teachers, and apply them in your own work. I suspect that the people you remember with the greatest respect and affection are not those who laid down the law and drilled you in the subject matter, but the ones who shared their own passion for knowledge with you in a relationship which included respect for your own judgement and values. I hope you can be like that yourselves, when you are in a position to influence or inspire the next generation.

You will forgive me I am sure for stressing the importance of education so much, because you see in positions I have held as Directors of several major Museums in this country I am constantly haunted by the consequences of inadequate education.

In the last few years, public figures in Australia have felt free to claim the most extraordinary things including those about Indigenous people, climate change and more recently the economy.

These extraordinary remarks are possible in public debate not just because politicians or journalists enjoy drama and hype, but because of public ignorance. Such claims are possible in part because many Australians simply do not know any better.

In museums we know some people come to a museum to learn, and others come just out of curiosity, to be entertained, or just spend time with the family. They may not be expecting to learn, but often they do. It is not always a comfortable experience either, especially if the visitor is one with a fairly narrow view of what Australia is, and has been, and what Australians ought to be like. We are stretching those boundaries and eroding those prejudices, all the time.

I hope you will find yourselves doing the same, in whatever walk of life your new qualifications and career choices now take you. Stretch the boundaries, erode the prejudices, check up on the facts behind the bold claim or the vague generalisation. You won't necessarily agree with me or with each other after doing that, but at least your conclusion will be an educated one — and your own.

So, whether it's the small step of a museum visit or the very large step of a degree, let me applaud education on principle, and say how essential it is to national understanding and well-being. Please — keep on learning.

I will conclude now by offering you my very warmest wishes for the future. When you look back on today, at the commemorative photograph and the certificate, I hope you will remember the day for the sense of achievement it gave you, and possibly for the great party afterwards, but I hope you will also remember it as a great beginning.

Thank you.