Memorandum of understanding remarks by Professor Denise Bradley AC
Vice Chancellor and President, University of South Australia
Remarks on the occasion of the signing of the Memorandum of Understanding
between the Hon R J L Hawke AC and the University of
South Australia to establish the Bob Hawke Prime Ministerial Centre, 9
December 1997
Thank you Chancellor, Governor of South Australia Sir Eric Neal, former
Prime Minister Mr Hawke and distinguished guests, I would also like to
extend a warm welcome to you on this special day. It’s an important day for
the University of course but it’s also Bob’s birthday and we wish you a
Happy Birthday. We are very grateful that you have decided to spend it with
us, in your home state.
I think we can say two things about birthdays. First we usually take the
opportunity to think about the past. We remember our achievements, the
obstacles we’ve faced on the way to where we are and often the major
external events that have helped to shape us. They are also a time to think
about the future. These two themes - remembrance of times past and visions
for the future, are significant here today in this ceremony.
When I looked around this space earlier today and observed the photographs
and memorabilia, it occurred to me, Bob, that we have fulfilled the first
part of the birthday ritual for you. On show here are some mementos from
your past and it’s obvious how rich and diverse that past has been.
Today we see the beginnings of a collection of materials which the
University knows will grow to be a significant record of an influential
life, a life which has been placed at the centre of great events and great
changes. Indeed we could argue that the 1970s and 80s, when your public
influence was greatest, were as important to shaping Australia’s identify as
the 1890s.
There are few people in Australia’s history whom we think we know as well -
few lives whose public and personal challenges have been more exhaustively
chronicled. I think that tells us that Bob Hawke’s has been to some degree a
shared journey. To look at the photographs and to tell the tale of Bob
Hawke’s life is to open a window on Australia’s recent history and social
changes. It is obvious that this particular personal journey has reflected,
and been about, the changes in all of us.
There is no doubt that this will be an important aspect of the Bob Hawke
Prime Ministerial Library. The library will be a remembrance of one life and
at the same time a collection of information about events of that period
which influenced many lives.
The second thing we do on our birthdays is look forward. We make new
promises and new plans. So it is today. We are looking forward today to the
valuable academic work that will be done by the Hawke Institute.
If we think of those issues which underpinned Bob Hawke’s public life and
the period of his government we soon recognise that the challenges inherent
in them are still there. In the 1980s Australia began to open itself to the
world, to explore how to balance economic development and social cohesion.
The issues of the time - the nature of citizenship, Australia’s place
internationally, the relationship between employees and employers,
immigration, the place of our indigenous people in modern Australia, the
environment, the role of women - are all still important and some newly
contested as we all know to our national shame. During that decade Bob Hawke
was someone who contributed to our capacity to confront these issues and
develop significant and progressive responses. His achievements are a matter
of record.
But the nature of our current political environment and the tenor of the
current debate, is a vivid reminder to us that - to use the somewhat
outdated words of another time - the struggle never ends.
Bob Hawke has a genuine commitment to the concept of the common good and I
know it exists, too, among those researchers who will form the foundation of
the Hawke Institute. We look forward therefore to the new research
approaches that the Institute will bring to bear on the issues Australia
confronts now and in the future.
It’s appropriate that such an Institute will be associated with a University
like the University of South Australia. First, the University is a product
of the Hawke Government’s higher education reforms. Its success since
establishment and the rapidity with which it, and a number of its sister
institutions, have begun to carve a new role for universities in Australia
are evidence of the integrity of the vision of that period, a vision of a
university system less privileged, less cloistered and more competitive.
And, second, this University believes in the application of knowledge to
contemporary problems; we are a University with a mission to work with
industry and the community to find shared solutions. Indeed, central to the
legislation which established the University are responsibilities to support
not only economic development, but also social justice through our teaching,
research and community service.
It is also timely that now, when the role of Universities is being debated,
and when the nature of higher education is again in transition, we are
reminded through this event of the central responsibility of Universities to
help us make sense of our past and to prepare us for the future.
Finally, if birthdays have about them something of the past and something of
the future I might say, in closing, that we should not forget they are also
about celebrations with friends. Bob, I would like to welcome you formally
into the community of the University of South Australia today. We thank you
for embarking with us on this significant and important venture and we look
forward to sharing many other celebrations with you in the future.