Grace Groom Memorial Oration, Mental Health Australia, State Library of Victoria, Melbourne

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I would like to acknowledge that we all stand on the shoulders of extraordinary Australians who have fought for mental health reform – particularly those with lived experience.

It is a privilege to present the 2024 Grace Groom Oration.

To the members of Grace’s family here tonight, thank you.

For you, and all who knew and loved Grace, this annual oration is an opportunity to pause and reflect on those things that grace so passionately and effectively championed in her life. 

As you all know so well, her breakthrough reports on Australia’s mental health system – ‘Out of Hospital, Out of Mind’, and ‘Not for Service – Experiences of Injustice and Despair in Mental Health Care in Australia’ put lived experiences and personal stories at the centre of an analysis of our mental health system.

But more importantly, Grace was a fearless and relentless builder of communities – of partnerships that needed to be formed, bringing together people and organisations from all political and policy backgrounds – and all in the unapologetic interest of care and community and connection.

Without Grace’s work, the vital transformation of Medicare to cover psychological support would have been achieved as early as it was.

I know many of you worked with Grace on those powerful moments of advocacy, you know more than I can ever express what it was achieved in here time.

For those of you who knew Grace professionally, or only by reputation, these orations are an important opportunity to honour the life of a remarkable woman whose life was committed to active and engaged participation in the interest of making things better in this country. 

I am very grateful for the opportunity to be part of this now longstanding annual event and am delighted as your Governor-General to join the impressive list of previous orators.

While my remarks as Governor-General respect the limits of my position, there is a remarkable similarity between Grace Groom’s concern for care and community and my core themes for my time in this office.

In this role, I speak with the insight of listening to and celebrating the magnificent Australians I meet in communities across the country.

In my current role, I don’t have policy, politics or funding to influence change.

But I have a platform.

A platform to see, listen and understand

A platform from which I can speak.

And a rare privilege to convene.

And to support important organisations through patronages.

When I was sworn in as your Governor-General, I undertook to centre and elevate care, kindness and respect.

Care for each other, care for those who care for others, care for our extraordinary continent and its environmental beauty, care for civics and institutions, and care for the way in which we discuss and debate the issues of our time without judgement or rancour.

Care and kindness have a deep and resonant place in our Australian identity.

They were the essence of Grace Groom, they are a founding value of Mental Health Australia, and they are the pillars that support our collective endeavour to elevate the mental health and wellbeing of all Australians.

The Prime Minister also asked me to bring three other attributes to this office – modernity, visibility and optimism.

So I also made a commitment to amplify the stories of people and communities who are working with purpose to embed care, kindness and respect in the way they encounter each other and the world around them.  

And to do that with optimism and a focus on a modern Australia.

The way I think about modernity is that we have a tripartite story that we must never lose sight of.

65,000 years of unbroken relationship with this country and with practice and tradition shared so generously with us for so long that helps inform how we might live.

The British institutions of which I am now part that bring us a stable democracy, compulsory voting, independent electoral commission and understanding that we can change our governments peacefully without descending into violence and we can hold our leaders to account in a way that’s fair and open and we don’t challenge our elections because we know the independence of the process that sits behind it.

The third part of that story is more than half a century of the greatest multicultural story imaginable only to be met by the century ahead that will determine the future of this country.

And, I would like to do that here, but with a particular focus.

Reflecting on the ideas that have preoccupied so many of my conversations about mental health over the years, I realise that I return, again and again, to a dominant theme: community and connectedness as the foundation of wellbeing. 

Whether we speak about it in terms of mental, social, economic or physical health, whether we look at the challenges to social cohesion … the wellbeing of Australians is entirely bound up with the communities to which they belong. 

I first properly learned this as a commissioner on the National Mental Health Commission.

Then, during the Covid years of 2020 and 2021, it was working on the National Youth Employment Body, chairing the Foundation of Young Australians, and undertaking reviews of women’s economic equality, that gave substance to my instinctive belief in the absolute centrality of care, community and connection. 

As I volunteered with others at the Addi Road Community Organisation in Sydney’s inner west, packing food and essential supply hampers for communities throughout the city affected by the Covid lockdowns, the value of participation and place-based engagement was so clear. 

It was there – in the spirit of generosity and care for others that imbues every act of compassion at Addi Road – that community cohesion and care was most evident. 

It was a place we all needed to be – for ourselves as much as those we worked to support. 

When we were put under pressure with the pandemic, we learnt to care about each other.

Even in the isolation and devastation, we found ways to belong.

And we recognised that our wellbeing finds its first and strongest foundation in connection to something bigger, broader and more diverse than the individual. 

Our challenge, in a time of increasing disassociation from community and division from each other, when societal trends are straining people’s capacity to actively participate in community, is to ensure that connection remains a desirable, achievable and rewarding goal.

I also reflect that my deeper formative moments in mental health, particularly mental ill health was through growing up.

When suicides were never properly discussed, where strange behaviour was pushed to aside, where men coming back from difficult situations were silent, weren’t supported. 

And where the issues we should have been talking about were often seen to be too embarrassing and would require an act of vulnerability that most families weren’t prepared to enter into.

And that’s what I see now when I travel around the country – that we have moved so far from the world I grew up in where we couldn’t talk about mental health.

We know that things have changed so much since that time.

In the months since my appointment a Governor-General, I have seen it in the playful energy and mateship of the more than 25,000 Australian school children who visit Government House each year …

… in the strength of the bonds – forged in the face of disaster and devastation – of the emergency service workers and volunteers I have met across the country …

… in the exceptional First Nations women at the Jarjum Centre in Lismore who have worked for four decades to create a place to uplift the children they educate in the ways of care for country and one another …

… in the pride of the entire Mount Gambier community at their newly opened Wulanda Recreation and Convention Centre, which models best practice and inclusion …

And I saw it in October, at the Federation of Ethnic Communities’ Council of Australia conference, in Brisbane.

This extraordinary event brought together speakers, musicians, performers, market stalls, samba dancers, a slam poet and multicultural community groups from around the country.

The diversity at the gala dinner was a powerful and dynamic representation of modern, multicultural Australia – our present and our future.

Brought together for the give and take of respectful dialogue around building social cohesion by breaking barriers and building bridges, it was unity in diversity – community in pursuit of a shared goal.

The fact that these are impressions emerging from moments of encounter doesn’t mean what I saw and heard is unquantifiable.

In 2021, the Brain and Mind Centre at the University of Sydney launched the Mental Wealth Initiative to explore the ways in which the mental wealth of society can flourish in economies focused on wellbeing and communities with an unstinting focus on cohesion.

The initiative defines the mental wealth of a nation as,

‘the combined cognitive and emotional resources of all its people’.

I share the Brain and Mind Centre’s ambition to define and commit to the mental wealth of Australia.

I was first introduced to this concept by Janet Meagher AM and the late Jackie Crowe, who were my extraordinary colleagues on the Mental Health Commission and who, in Janet’ marvellously descriptive language are ‘experts by experience’.

The insight of lived experience is a repository of consumer perspectives and wise expertise that is a gift beyond measure.

Ian Hickie, co-director of the Brain and Mind Centre and inaugural Grace Groom orator in 2007, asserts, more than a measure of wellbeing, mental wealth links directly to real economic and social benefits.

The concept of mental wealth can be measured, monitored and forecast through rigorous research and the application of new theories and technologies. 

To me, this framing represents the ‘hard’ edge of care in practice.

It demonstrates that care, rather than being a simple act of humanity, is in fact a complex lever for good in society. 

Care is not a ‘soft’ option.  

It is not above scrutiny or beyond calculation. 

It doesn’t flinch from failure or resile from responsibility. 

And it makes a powerful and recognisable contribution to the economic and social prosperity and security of our nation. 

In February, the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare presented statistics showing that just under 5 million Australians filled a mental-health related prescription in 2022-23, and one in five Australians experienced a mental health disorder in the previous 12 months.

You know who those Australians are.

We all know who they are.

Because they are us.

They are our family and friends, colleagues and co-workers, the person we trust to dry clean our clothes and the celebrity chef whose recipes are failsafe …

… they are our partners and parents, and our children.

And they are also occupying positions, performing roles and undertaking work that we don’t always consider as vulnerable when we discuss mental wealth.

In her recent speech to the Mind Counts Foundation, High Court Justice Jacqueline Gleeson addressed self-doubt as a pervasive and debilitating experience to a sense of self and authority.

Doubt is not always a traitor, and a questioning disposition is critical to getting to the truth. 

As Justice Gleeson said, 

‘Doubts generate the intellectual inquiry and rigour that lies at the heart of legal reasoning.’

Doubt is so intrinsically linked to doing good legal work.

But doubt that leads to self-doubt – to an imposter syndrome – sets up an opposition between reality and our mental narrative, undermines our sense of self, and breeds anxiety.

In the legal profession, where power and authority are elevated, and a sense of responsibility to the practice of law is paramount, strength prevails over vulnerability and the consequent impacts on mental health are damaging but, too often, hidden.

Justice Gleeson identifies a point of reflection for us all – that mental health can be under strain in places even where we least expect to find the fractures and fissures of mental anguish.

Our efforts to grow the mental wealth of our nation must encompass every field of endeavour, every vocation, every place and every person.

In the four months since my swearing-in as your Governor-General on 1 July, it has been my privilege to encounter this connectedness and care in ways that were previously inaccessible to me. 

Apart from Western Australia, where I will travel tomorrow, I have been to every state and territory. 

I have visited cities and visited many of the regions across the country. 

In town halls and school halls … 

… at social enterprises … 

… at childcare centres and community centres … 

…at women’s shelters and aged care centres … 

… universities and research laboratories … 

… with emergency services personnel and members of the Australian Defence Force … 

… with parents and carers, academics and scientists, chief executives and small business owners, young adults and the elderly … 

… and, of course, in places where flood and fire has left communities striving for recovery …

… I have seen the place of connection and the role of local communities in providing the social fabric from which we derive our sense of wellbeing. 

And I have learned that often we are best able to measure and embed wellbeing when we ask not only ‘how am I?’ or ‘how are you?’, but ‘how are we?’. 

Those questions find their most impactful and insightful answers in communities. 

The places throughout the country where Australians meet, connect and care for each other. 

In early November, I visited the tiny town of Woodburn in northern New South Wales to dedicate the new buildings of St Joseph’s Primary School. 

The school sits on the banks of the magnificent Richmond River, which feeds the lush green of the landscape. 

The floods of 2022 inundated the town and destroyed St Joseph’s. 

Rebuilding has taken a tremendous effort and commitment to place and people. 

At the opening assembly, Principal Jeanette Wilkins wept as she thanked the people of Woodburn for their kindness. 

She said it was the foundation on which they rebuilt the school. 

The emotion of homecoming and pride in achieving a shared goal. 

The outpouring of care, compassion and belonging. 

The sense of wellbeing that lit up every child’s face. 

It was a living example of the transcendent power of community. 

And just as it shaped my life before July, it will continue to influence my program of engagement with Australians long into the future. 

Released a fortnight ago, the report from the inquiry into Australia’s response to Covid-19 refers to the long tail of the pandemic. 

The inquiry’s remit was to review what happened during the pandemic as a guide to future actions – not to apportion blame for failings or mistakes, but to learn from them.

But the report recognises that the fallout of decisions made during the pandemic continues to have an impact on communities across the country. 

Especially in mental health issues stemming from prolonged isolation, lack of social contact and diminished trust in government. 

The report suggests that future responses to similar emergencies will be improved if governments enhance their understanding of community needs by engaging directly with community representatives. 

As Australians are telling me, if they are not heard at the big systems level, communities cannot see themselves in policy decisions. 

Especially decisions that directly impact the strength and stability of community and connectedness. 

When Australians – at every level, from government and bureaucracy to business and employers and town councils and schools – neglect to ask ‘how are we’, we risk the integrity and strength of individual wellbeing. 

Framing this simply as a Covid learning arising in response to a particular set of circumstances is short-sighted. 

Rather, by elevating the human need for community and connection as a universal, enduring and measurable truth, we establish it as prerequisite for the mental wealth that underpins our economic prosperity and social wellbeing. 

On every level – the practical, social and emotional – it is a pathway to meeting and exceeding our potential as a healthy, modern and optimistic nation. 

In presenting the results of her research, Grace Groom had great precision and clarity of expression.

She wrote in 2003 that,

‘The growing burden of mental illness in Australia has a significant economic cost to the community … services should aim to assist individuals back into active participation in community life, and assist them to regain their independence, autonomy, and ambitions.’

In simple language, and placing a primacy on the dignity of the individual and the centrality of community, Grace encapsulated the goal we all share.

We were truly fortunate to have had Grace’s clear-sighted vision and compassion in life.

And I am grateful to have had the opportunity to join some of my preoccupations to hers and to share them with you.

Thank you.