University of Western Sydney – Graduation Address

The Hon. Catherine Branson QC

University of Western Sydney, Parramatta

Thursday, 29 September 2011

Chancellor, Professor Peter Shergold AC, Deputy Vice-Chancellor, International and Development, Professor John Ingleson, academic staff, senior University management, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen, and importantly, graduands.

First, may I join with the Chancellor in acknowledging the peoples of the Darug nation, the traditional owners of the land upon which the University’s campuses are situated, and pay my respect to their elders past and present?

Graduands – this is your day; a special day indeed for you, your family and friends. It is a privilege to have been asked to address you on this important day. I congratulate each of you. The successful completion of your course of study is something of which you, and those family members and others who supported you while you were studying, can feel justifiably proud. During your years of study you will have called upon and developed your capacities for hard work, self-discipline and independent and critical thinking – all qualities that will be important to you in the years ahead.

I am sure that I will not be the first person to tell you that today will not mark the end of your education, even the end of your studies.  A successful career, indeed a successful life, is marked by ongoing learning, reflection and study – whether formal or informal. When I think of my work over the years, I can see that it has been based only to a limited extent on the actual subject matter of my undergraduate studies.  The types of cases that I decided as a judge were different from the types of cases generally before the courts when I was a law student and which therefore formed the subject of our legal texts. I have never formally studied human rights law which is now my daily work.  What, looking back, I see that I did take from my university studies, as I hope that you will take from yours, was a way of thinking and reasoning; an understanding, that has admittedly matured over the years, of the role of my discipline in society; and the skills necessary to learn new things both within, and to a more limited extent, outside my own discipline.  These skills have proved to be of great value to me throughout my career as I am sure that they will be for you during yours.

These are the skills that allow us to keep our minds open to new ideas and concepts.  We are born into many, if not most, of the central aspects of our lives including many of our beliefs.  We are born into our race and colour, most of us into our nationality, most of us into our religious, and aspects of our political, beliefs; and a good number of us even into our sporting allegiances. But whoever we are, where ever we come from, it is important that we keep our minds open to new ideas and concepts; maintain our empathy for all humanity; and respect the rights and needs of others – particularly of those who are vulnerable, perhaps because of advanced age or youth or because of disability, or marginalised, perhaps because they are refugees or asylum seekers or recent immigrants or because they adhere to a minority religion or culture.

As what I have just said probably makes clear, I agree strongly with the distinguished lawyer and philosopher, Martha Nussbaum, who has said that education should not primarily be about teaching students to be economically productive but rather about teaching them to think critically and become knowledgeable and empathetic citizens. She has expressed the fear that the loss of basic capacities such as the ability to distinguish a bad argument from a good one, to criticize authority and to sympathize with the marginalized and the different jeopardizes the health of democracies and the hope of a decent world.[1]  I urge you to use the capacities that you have developed during your years of study to contribute to your society not just economically but also as an engaged member of your community.

An important way in which you might want to contribute to your community is by involving your self with one, or even more, groups or organisations outside of your ordinary work.  I am thinking of organisations such as a professional organisation concerned with continuing professional education, a lobby group concerned with the rights of refugees and asylum seekers, a non-governmental organisation working for Indigenous children, people with disability or to promote interfaith dialogue; may be a community sporting organisation.

The tertiary education that you have received will make you particularly welcome in organisations of these kinds; organisations critical to a well-functioning civil society.  Looking back over my professional life, I can see how much I gained by involving myself with organisations like these.  They gave me the chance to learn from the professional skills and capacities of individuals trained in different disciplines from me; they helped me gain insight into the lives and experiences of people from backgrounds quite unlike mine and they ensured that I learned about things that I would otherwise know nothing about – and importantly through them I have made lasting friendships.

I urge you to make time in your lives to do similar things.  I am confident that if you do, you will find, as I have done, not only that they will provide you with satisfaction, but that they will enhance your capacity to do your own job well.

So let me now close by once again offering my congratulations to all graduands here today.  I wish you well in your future careers and your future lives.

[1] Martha Nussbaum Education for Democratic Citizenship (Speech delivered on the occasion of the awarding of the degree of Doctor Honoris Causa at the Institute of Social Studies, The Hague, The Netherlands, 9 March, 2006) http://iss.nl/News/Past-Events/9-March-2006.-Lecture-by-Martha-Nussbaum-Education-for-Democratic-Citizenship (viewed 29 August 2011).