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Farewell to Queensland

By Wendy McCarthy AO - posted Thursday, 31 July 2008


Graham Freudenberg has lamented the near death of the Australian public meeting (in the foreword to Men and Women of Australia - Our Greatest Modern Speeches, edited by Michael Fullilove). Justice Michael Kirby persists however in the belief that great ideas, when reduced to words, can still move human beings to strive for a fairer nation and a better world (in foreword to Stirring Australian Speeches - The definitive collection from Botany to Bali, edited by Michael Cathcart and Kate Darian-Smith). On Tuesday July, 29, a great Australian and gracious veteran of the public meeting concluded her term as Governor of Queensland. These are Quentin Bryce’s parting words to her beloved home state delivered to an audience of 300 members of the Queensland community last week at the Gallery of Modern Art in Brisbane.

Accompanied to the stage by Queensland’s first female Premier and with Picasso’s name big and bold on the spectacular glass backdrop, Australia’s soon-to-be first female Governor-General spoke of the essence of the vice-regal role and signaled her thoughts for a fairer nation and a better world. I was fortunate to be there. Perhaps it is timely now to consider this preface to her significant national role.

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I acknowledge the Turrbal clan, the traditional keepers of this magnificent land at river’s edge - Kurilpa, place of the water rat.

My friends, welcome to this gorgeous place and thank you for sharing this special occasion with me.

From where I stand you are a glimpse of Queensland; an honest measure of our vast depth and reach; a gauge of our progress and our work still to be done; an inspiration for future good, a reason to feel hopeful. Individually, you are, you stand for, our most prominent achievers, our powerful drivers, our quiet leaders, our sung and unsung, our most vulnerable and disadvantaged.

Your energies and efforts fill up whole sectors and flow into others - community, government, indigenous, creative, artistic, corporate, disability, ecumenical, sporting, rural and regional - collectively, the fabric and lining of contemporary Queensland. The greatest motivation to me in my role as Governor.

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David Malouf has said that in choosing only what is significant, we can easily miss what is most humanly valuable; we deprive ourselves of what is dense with ordinary life and living, like our own.

Rather, we must give the ordinary its due, allow ourselves to see its value in our ordinary lives, treat the commonplace as remarkable, and the remarkable as commonplace.

Like this place - this ample precinct of colour, freedom, insight and light, of simple joys - buildings I often come to: to sit on a bench to follow the brush strokes on a wall, to cradle a fragile manuscript, to connect with lost lives seeping through ageing cracks, to be spellbound by indigenous dreaming and dance, and warmed by the march of prams and parents whose trails touch every pathway here.

These things put us in our place, not in a confining or controlling way, but in a way that helps us to see the continuity, the richness and diversity of daily life, its part in our past, the present, and future. They give us some sense of the patterns and the departures, the letting go of the old and the taking up of the new. They instruct us on how we’ve grown and where our branches are taking us. They can make us feel proud, they can make us feel ashamed. They are our signals and our touchstones.

Oodgeroo was looking for some sense when she wrote her poem, Civilisation, in the 60s, a poem that she said got her into a lot of trouble. Part of it goes like this:

We could not understand
Your strange cult of uniformity
This mass obedience to clocks, timetables …
… all the new wonders,
Stocks and shares … sales and investments.
… Suddenly caught up in white man’s ways
Gladly and gratefully we accept,
For this is necessity.
But remember, white man,
If life is for happiness,
You too, surely, have much to change.

Oodgeroo didn’t say what she thought “happiness” is, but perhaps she was suggesting that it is derived from something outside our transactional economy, away from the commodities we trade: the stuff that fuels our spirit, that allows us to be open and generous, to see what matters and to take care of it, to restore whole communities, not something we acquire and spend, rather, a gift that endures and replenishes.

When we choose to see happiness in this way - not insular or indulgent or smug - it becomes a fine and wonderful instrument of change.

My friends, in my time as Governor I have seen a great deal of happiness at work.

In our women’s shelters, youth services, hospitals, churches, universities, kindergartens and classrooms.

As the dawn breaks on Anzac Day.

In our courtrooms, shire chambers and parliament.

As elders gather under paper barks on distant banks.

In our respite houses whose only resources are human toil and love.

At our international conferences.

In our regional towns struck and torn by disaster.

In art and music and performance, salutes and ceremony.

Bridging our cities and far-flung communities.

In the boardrooms of our biggest companies.

And, indeed, I can see it now.

As I have witnessed this gift at work, I too have been its privileged beneficiary.

Pablo Neruda grew up in Temuco, a frontier town in southern Chile, in the early 1900s. It was rainy, mountainous and remote. His father worked on the railway; their house was primitive and transient.

As an adult, he wrote an essay called Childhood and Poetry in which he explored links between his upbringing and his writing.

Pablo tells the story of a mysterious gift he received one day from a boy unknown to him - an old toy sheep - a gesture he returned with a treasured pine cone. He remarked that this exchange settled deep inside him like a sedimentary deposit:

I have been a lucky man. To feel the intimacy of brothers is a marvellous thing in life. To feel the love of people whom we love is a fire that feeds our life. But to feel the affection that comes from those whom we do not know, from those unknown to us, who are watching over our sleep and solitude, over our dangers and weaknesses - that is something still greater and more beautiful because it widens out the boundaries of our being, and unites all living things.

Like Pablo, I feel lucky. He gave something that was resiny, earthy and fragrant, much like the human experience. I think of conversations in this way too - as an exchange of gifts, and as the most basic ingredients of our humaness and our togetherness.

My experience of the last five years in office has been, in the main, as a voice and ear in tens of thousands of conversations resonating across a landscape that, like the words themselves, is rich and meandering, uncomfortable and testing, uplifting and enduring.

Each time, there is a responsibility to listen carefully, speak gently and choose my words well; to acknowledge, support and celebrate; to engage; to reflect; to say things differently; to see what has been overlooked; to be silent.

These exchanges are the precursors to action, change, and empowerment. They are the foundation of our relationships, our communities, our public roles, our democracy, and our civilised society. They are the treasured pine cones and old toy sheep we offer one another, and hope will make a difference.

When I started in this role, I thought about my own offerings gathered and exchanged over the years, how I could share them, what I was hoping to be for you.

I returned to my experiences of leaders I’d admired and tried hard to emulate. I thought of the values that underpinned their leadership, and dug deep to find them in myself.

Integrity, forgiveness, empathy, freedom, restraint, generosity, courage, and faith.

I soon discovered that their most abundant reservoir is in the community I was appointed to serve; that I had as much to learn as I had to offer.

Ladies and gentlemen, our State Constitution and constitutional conventions certainly bring structure and prescription to the vice-regal role. But it is those other duties - the ceremonial and public - that are largely without instruction: that are left to the incumbent to decide upon their shape and presence, their energy and direction.

When we become entitled by office to work and reside in one of our State’s finest and most cherished public buildings, our first duty is to you, its custodians: to open its doors wide and often, so that you may enjoy its beauty and observe its place in our passage; so that you may have a forum in which to bring light to your community effort; so that you may build relationships with colleagues and friends across familiar and strange ground; so that you may find solutions, break new ground; so that you may have the opportunity, as I have, to witness the workings of our community, and the threads that bind us.

Each footprint and voice brings fresh layers to the building’s heritage, and to our understanding of one another.

A few years ago, Karuna Hospice asked me to help them celebrate the restoration of their heritage home at Windsor. When I spoke, I offered the words of one of their volunteers, Susan Addison, author of the profoundly touching Mother Lode.

I think of those words again now when I express my wish for Government House:

May this house be a home
Where moods are mellow
Where laughter refreshes
Where friendships are nurtured
Where forbearance tempers anger
Where wisdom balances wit …
A dreaming place
A place of plenty
A haven of peace
A repository of memories
A maker of moments
A cocoon of contentment
A sanctuary.

The essence of all of these things, we can carry with us, into our separate and collective lives. They are a template for living and working and giving. They dispense with distinctions that serve only to divide. They make room for collaboration that produces the very best of commerce and philanthropy, volunteerism and professionalism, community engagement and rebuilding. Simple gifts exchanged.

They are our genuine response to Oodgeroo’s urging for change. And they are the foundation of a maturing Queensland.

As our population grows, shifts and ages, as families and households change, as economies prosper and falter, and while disability and disease, poverty, homelessness, discrimination, conflict and natural devastation remain as much a part of human civilisation as the generation of profit, we are returning to the values and principles that will help us to adapt our thinking, to open our minds to better solutions, and to ensure the future health and sustainability of a fair and just Queensland society.

These are challenging issues. We are, today, a sophisticated, highly tuned society - and I think all Queenslanders have a strong sense of that - but we know too of our responsibility to use and share our bounty carefully and well.

There are many, many people who have helped to bring me to this point, one week from the end of my term as Queensland’s 24th Governor.

Their contributions are as diverse and far reaching as the State itself - they sit before me and elsewhere - and deserve more than the fleeting acknowledgement I can offer them here this evening.

Please believe me when I say that at some stage over the last five years I have let each of them know the deep sense of gratitude and indebtedness I feel for the support they have given me.

Tonight, I stand on their shoulders.

And, always, I remain in the safe and loving embrace of my husband, Michael, our children and grandchildren, my siblings and extended family, my dear friends. They are the heart and soul of me.

Ladies and gentlemen, there is another job for me to soon begin. Another privilege of the highest order. A challenge that Sir Zelman Cowan said “intellectually stretched him - his knowledge, experience and capacity constantly called on and tested.”

Once more, I have as much to learn as I have to offer.

And now, my friends, I must take time to prepare. Thank you.

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This is an edited version of Quentin Bryce's farewell speech at the Gallery of Modern Art, Queensland, on Sunday, July 20, 2008.



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About the Author

Wendy McCarthy AO began her career as a secondary school teacher and remains passionate about the power of education. For four decades she has been a teacher, educator and change agent in Australian public life.

In 2005 she was nominated by the Sydney Morning Herald as one of Australia’s Top 100 Public Intellectuals. She has worked with government, corporations and community based organisations in education, women’s issues, public health, heritage, media and waste management and she has held national leadership roles in all of these areas. It is this eclectic combination that gives her a unique profile and network nationally and internationally. She has represented Australia at conferences on women’s health and leadership, education, broadcasting, conservation and heritage and for four years was Chair of the Advisory Committee of WHO Kobe Centre, Japan.

In 2005 Wendy completed a decade as Chancellor of the University of Canberra. Wendy was a founding member of the Australian Chancellors’ Conference. Her corporate advisory practice, McCarthy Mentoring, specialises in providing mentors to major corporations and the public sector.

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