Ian Watt AC

Ceremony: 4 May 2017, 10.30am

Speech

Graduates. Most importantly, graduates, for this is your ceremony and your celebration. Partners, family and friends, I wish to acknowledge the traditional owners of this land on which we meet today, and in the spirit of reconciliation, their elders past and present. I’d like to begin by thanking UTS for awarding me the honorary degree of letters. I am delighted and still more than a little amazed that a great academic institution considers me worthy of such an award. And that feeling remained even during the Vice Chancellor’s eloquent accounting of my career. I found myself wondering, am I dreaming? But if I am, I certainly don’t want anyone to wake me up until the ceremony is well and truly over.

It’s a privilege and a pleasure to speak to you today, and to share, even in a small way, the achievements of each and every graduate. To each one I offer my congratulations. In graduating from the Faculty of Law or the Faculty of Health, you have demonstrated that you are highly intelligent, have strong analytical and conceptual skills, can master difficult subject matter, and are motivated, resilient and hard working. These attributes are valuable, and valued by society, and will stand you in good stead in the future no matter what you do. Combined with the value of the education itself, you are highly employable individuals, and it is the value of education and what you might do with it that I’d like to focus on this morning.

Now learned quotes are often used to make a point in an address like this one. I know of and like two learned quotes on the value of education. One was from the nineteenth century American author, humourist and storyteller, Mark Twain. In 1894 he wrote, ‘Training is everything. The peach was once a bitter almond. Cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education.’ I incidentally did wonder how today’s graduates might feel about being likened to cabbages or cauliflowers. I sincerely hope any adverse feedback I get after this ceremony is no more than verbal. The second quotation is from an eighteenth century French utilitarian philosopher, Claude Adrian Helvetius, who once held the very lucrative sinecure of Farmer General, or tax collector for the French government. In Canberra speak, he was the Commissioner for Taxation with decided self-interest. Helvetius is better remembered as a philosopher than a tax collector. Perhaps he didn’t collect enough money. His philosophical work focused on the role of education in human development. In 1758 he wrote, ‘Education made us what we are.’ Education made us what we are. A powerful thought, and one that I’ve always taken personally to mean, education made me. And I do believe that education made me as a person, as a professional, and that without the education provided to me, or opened up to me, I would certainly not be standing here today. And I also believe that the education today’s graduates received at this great institution will shape, will mould, will channel, will influence, and will make each and every one of you cabbages turned into cauliflowers.

And that’s the first thought I’d like to leave with you today. Your achievements in your career to date are very significant. But each of you has the ability, the power, and the learning to do greater things, much greater things. Graduates in your fields will, I believe, have better opportunities than most. While I can’t imagine what you will make of those opportunities, any more than 45 years ago I could have imagined what I’d make of my own, you do have great opportunity before you. Most of you will have satisfactory and enjoyable careers. Some of you with deservedly earn high incomes. I hope that some of you will choose, at some stage, to teach at a university to pass your skills on to others. And I hope that some will choose to work in the field that I’ve found so fascinating and enjoyable for over 30 years, public policy and public service. Most importantly, all of you are able to choose what you do. Your ability, your education, the country you live in, means that you have the opportunity to choose your future. That was very rare in nineteenth century Australia. It’s rare in some countries even today. That we have the freedom to choose our own futures is often forgotten. It’s something that shouldn’t be. And I think you’ve got to make the most of it in your choices. And that’s the second thought I’d like to leave with you today. What advice can I give to help guide that choice, and to realise those bright futures? Perhaps the best advice I can give you is that there is no good advice. No book of rules. No golden pathway to take you to the top of whatever you aspire to.

Nevertheless, I do offer a few thoughts based on my own career and a distillation of those of others, and incidentally it’s always much easier to be objective about other people’s careers than your own. First, don’t be afraid to be ambitious. Australian children are, I think, all too often discouraged from ambition. Ambition is seen as a sin. Too little ambition a virtue. Yet too little ambition is as big a failing as too much. And too little ambition makes for a dull, unadventurous, unambitious Australia. Ambition mixed with the right amount of ability is a potent force in realising your opportunities. So be ambitious, for yourself and for others. Second, seek out mentors. Until now, your parents, your relatives, your teachers and your professors have guided your footsteps. Their mentoring and support has been readily available and automatic. However, as their role declines, seek new mentors. Someone whose views you respect. Someone you get along with. Someone who is close to you but not a competitor. And never think that you won’t benefit from the advice and guidance a mentor can bring. Indeed, the further your career takes you, and the more you think you know a great deal, the greater the benefit, because there will be fewer workplace colleagues that you can talk frankly to. For this reason, CEOs, who sometimes think they don’t need mentoring, often need it most of all because there is no one they can talk to. Third, build a network. Professional networks are essential for success, now more than ever. Yet some people don’t know how to start one. Start with the people you already know, and all of you know the other graduates in the room, or at least most of them, and that’s a good starting place. Then build outwards from there. Fourth, as you become leaders in your chosen field, and many if not most of you will be, remember that with leadership comes responsibility. To those you lead, and to your community. Take on community responsibility, be it to your neighbourhood, your town, your city, your country, or your religious or ethnic community. And take it seriously. After all, it provides an opportunity for you, as a member of a privileged group and as a leader, to give something in return for the support you have had, and help others enjoy the opportunities you have. And there’s another benefit. Research suggests that executives and firms who involve themselves in their communities are usually more successful than those who do not, and that executives and staff that do get involved derive great satisfaction from doing so.

Lastly, no matter how good your education achievements to date, you now need to enter the world of life-long learning. It might have just been possible for people of my generation to think that their first or second or third degree was the end of their education, that it was now all over and done with. That’s certainly not the case today. Today’s rapid technological change, the development of artificial intelligence, and the adjustments required by workers as their jobs change, mutate or disappear, requires strong and continuous connections between education and employment. Education and training itself will become more flexible in order to teach new skills quickly and efficiently. Now that doesn’t mean the end of degrees such as those you’ve received today. Nor does it mean that providers of educations such as this great university, the end of that either. Far from it. It does however mean that education is now a lifelong adventure for all of us. The idea of lifelong learning is not new. When I was thinking about this speech I remembered a quotation from the mid-nineteenth century that I think puts the point fairly well, and I’ll use it in its original form: ‘The education of the man is never completed until he dies.’ That quote was from Robert E. Lee, General of the Confederate States of America, and Commander of the Army of Virginia for most of the American Civil War. The comment’s not something you’d expect from a mid-nineteenth century General, particularly one who was sometimes very profligate with the lives of his men. Is it out of character? Perhaps. Lee lived up to his words. After the surrender of the South in 1865 Lee became president of a small and struggling Washington college in Lexington, Virginia. Today, his monument is Washington and Lee University. Not quite Ivy League, but a well-respected educational institution. So no, I don’t think the quote was unusual, coming from Lee. And he did live up to his philosophy about lifelong education.

Now let me conclude the formalities of my address by acknowledging that while parts of graduation ceremonies leave enduring memories, memories of occasional addresses tend to fade. I must confess I have little memory of the three occasional addresses I sat through as a graduate. And I expect today’s graduates will be little or no different. Yet if you remember nothing else from my address, I hope you remember the quote from Robert E. Lee, with a slight amendment: ‘The education of the man (or woman) is never complete until he (or she) dies.’ And that’s the third and most important thought I would like to leave you with today. And if you use that quotation to help shape your future then I will be delighted. After all, education is never complete. None of us should ever stop learning, nor should we ever want to stop learning. This applies to the modern world of fast-paced fundamental change even more than it did to the world 150 years ago. And finally, I would like to wish each and every one of you all the very best for the great futures I expect you will have. Thank you for listening to me today. Chancellor.

About the Speaker

Ian is currently non-executive chairman of BAE Systems Australia. He has contributed to a range of organisations through involvement in numerous boards and committees namely Smartgroup Corporation, Citigroup Pty Ltd, the Grattan Institute (University of Melbourne), O’Connell Street Associates Pty Ltd, Male Champions of Change, the National Innovation and Science Agenda Implementation Committee, the International Centre for Democratic Partnerships and the Advisory Council of the SMART Infrastructure Facility at the University of Wollongong.

Ian has had a long career as one of Australia’s most distinguished public servants, with nearly 20 years at the highest levels. He served as Minister (Economic) at the Embassy of Australia in Washington between 1991 and 1994. On his return to Australia in 1994 Ian was appointed as First Assistant Secretary of Economic Division, Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet until 1996. He was then appointed Deputy Secretary of the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet and Executive Coordinator of the Economic, Industry and Resources Policy Group until March 2001.

Ian is a Fellow of CPA Australia, Australian Institute of Management, Institute of Public Administration Australia, and Australia and New Zealand School of Government. In 2001, Ian was awarded a Centenary Medal for service as Secretary, Department of Finance and Administration.

Ian completed a Bachelor of Commerce with Honours at the University of Melbourne before joining the Australian Public Service in 1971. He commenced a cadetship with Treasury in 1973 and then went on to complete a Master of Economics at La Trobe University in 1979 and a PhD in 1987. Ian returned to Treasury in 1985 and also completed the Advanced Management Program at the Harvard Business School.