It was a perfect graduation morning at the University of New England. Blue skies, trees were in full bloom, and a clean 16 degrees offered the first real taste of spring in Armidale.
The new graduates mingled with family and friends in the garden outside Lazenby Hall. Nerves and pride had intermingled to offer an air of a positive future. You could see that these young, focused graduates were ready to take on the world and show their predecessors a new, more progressive way for New England and Australia.
The UNE is celebrating 70 years as one of Australia’s leading universities, and the Winter Graduate cohort are proof that the future of the country and leadership is in good hands.
Chancellor James Harris has decided that after 30 years with the UNE, it’s time to call it quits. This will be his last Winter Graduation.
“Very few people get to help thousands of graduates celebrate…it really has been an honour and a privilege,” he said.
Through the pomp and circumstance, there were moments when the graduates, full of pride and vim, still had a look of innocence. Children becoming adults.
The university has produced so many leaders and creative minds over its 70-year history. The UNE is rightly proud of its alumni. From entertainers and scientists to authors and politicians, the UNE has been a fertile ground and instrumental in producing our leaders.
With every graduation ceremony at the UNE comes a brief history of where the university came from. In this case UNE was originally an annex of Sydney University. That grew to the standalone university it is today.
With every graduation ceremony, there are speeches and usually a special guest speaker, and usually that speaker is an alumnus, a former student that has found his or her way into their chosen field and has excelled.
Politics, politics and politics
This year that alumnus was the Premier of New South Wales, Chris Minns. He holds a Bachelor of Arts from UNE.
Becoming Premier is quite an achievement for any politician, and his story and memories of his time at UNE should have been inspiring for the young graduates hear. It should have been the story of how a young Western Sydney lad made his way through the education system to emerge as a leading light and a progressive thinker. It should have been a story of how, thanks to his time at UNE, he went on to Princeton University in the USA to complete his Masters in Public Policy. It should have left the hundreds of people, students, teachers and parents in the audience filled with pride that they, like the Premier were connected to the UNE.
But that was not the speech they heard.
The Premier walked to the lectern, in full university gown and regalia, looked down at his speech and began reading. This speech was about the threat of artificial intelligence (AI), the likelihood that many would not have a job. The mood in the room swooped lower than a magpie in breeding season, and the air felt like it had been sucked out of the auditorium.
The Premier continued to talk about a bleak future, and how he had ordered all public servants back to the office and the end of remote work. At this point, even the crying baby at the back of the auditorium fell silent.
The Premier spoke of how this wasn’t pressure from any groups that may own the offices that the state government lease. No one was pressuring anyone. He quoted round figures from a survey that says people want to be back in the office. He then spoke about how, if everyone is back in the office this was an effective way to meet people and learn from them.
“We need people in the workplace to lean on and to buck us up and get us back on our feet,” he said. This edict was handed to 450,000 NSW public servants, who don’t seem to be “bucked up”. The outcome of this directive is yet to be seen.
“No one likes a long speech” Minns continued, as he seemed in a hurry to exit his speech. “There’s no one who says, ‘I wish that speech had gone on for another 10 minutes’”. He thanked the audience before heading back to his seat.
The applause for his speech was polite. The baby in the back row began to cry again. The hundreds of people in the Lazenby Hall were there to see their children and brother’s and sister’s graduate. They were there as part of a 70-year tradition, a dignified ceremony that respected and cherished the new graduates.
What they met was a politician justifying a decision he made and then throwing that justification at a captured audience. Today, Chris Minns used a hallowed ceremony as a political media conference. The only difference to his usual media conference is that was wearing a UNE graduate gown and mortarboard.
Onward and upward
Congratulations to the graduates at this years Winter Graduation, and the 30 Aboriginal graduates who received their recognition at the Indigenous Sashing Ceremony at the Oorala Aboriginal Centre.
The future looks bright, and we are in good hands with this cohort of graduates.
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