Speech CEW Bean Foundation Dinner
Good evening.
As Greg has acknowledge that today we gather on the lands of the traditional custodians— the Ngunnawal — and recognise any other people or families with connection to the lands of the ACT and surrounding regions.
I pay my respects to their elders, past and present and to any other people or families with connections to the lands and the surrounding regions.
And I would particularly like to acknowledge in this place, just as my predecessors – particularly Sir Peter Cosgrove AK CVO MC and General Hurley – the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who have served, and fallen, in defence of our country and for whom this museum, this place has sought to reflect and commemorate in the very best of ways.
- Major General Greg Melick AO RFD (Retd), in so many roles tonight Greg, both as Chair of the CEW Bean Foundation and president of the RSL and many other hats that you are wearing;
- Mr Patrick Walters,Vice Chair, CEW Bean Foundation and all the members of the board joining us tonight;
- Mr Matt Anderson PSM, who I am getting to know very, very well, Director of this wonderful Australian War Memorial;
- Brigadier Philip Winter AM CSC ADC, National Chief Executive Officer, RSL Australia; and the many representatives from national and regional RSLs, it’s wonderful to see so many of you here tonight;
- Ms Anne Carroll and Mr Ian Carroll, the family of Charles Bean;
- Members of the Australian Defence Force; Veterans; members of the Australian media;
- And all of you as distinguished guests
Thank you for this very generous invitation to join you tonight.
Greg, you said it’s a very casual evening, but I have decided to treat this with a great deal of seriousness given the talent in the audience.
I have given some thought to my remarks which I am hoping you will enjoy or at least have a response to.
It is particularly an honour for me because I understand I am the first Australian Governor-General to deliver the Annual Bean Oration.
I am delighted, and I hope it starts a tradition of Governors-General doing that often and into the future.
I am also very proud to be the first Canberra-born Governor-General of Australia, so for those Canberrans for whom that is important, that is a nice historic touch too.
It’s particularly important to me to be in the company of so many important aspects, representatives and those of you who have been part of the Bean Foundation for a long time, and for everything the Bean foundation stands for.
It is an honour to be celebrating Charles Bean in the presence of his family members, and those of you who have worked so hard for so many years, and contributed to the work of the Foundation.
I am also delighted to be here with so many significant journalists, who are a contemporary reminder of why journalism still matters and why, in a time of conflicts around the world, we should pause to commemorate Australian war correspondents.
Since my swearing-in, I have had the great pleasure and rare privilege of attending several historic moments at this remarkable war memorial.
Simeon and I were honoured to spend time here with their Majesties King Charles and Queen Camilla here in quiet contemplation during their very successful Royal Visit. And it would have been unbelievable to think that they would visit Canberra without spending time at the War Memorial.
And just last week I was deeply moved by the solemnity and ceremony of the Remembrance Day service, returned once again and appropriately to the Parade Ground.
The welcome presence of school students as they placed poppies in tribute – while ‘In Flanders Field’ was sung so sweetly by Corporal Angie Currington – was very special.
It was a fitting modern touch which clearly meant so much to those young Australians and reminded us of the timelessness of remembrance and reflection across generations.
I was also deeply privileged, on behalf of all Australians, to announce the award of the VC for Australia to the late Private Richard Nordern.
This rare honour represents our ceaseless commitment as a nation to honour the courage and selflessness of veterans, and the bravery of generations of our service personnel.
Matt Anderson and the team here at the war Memorial have so warmly welcomed me into my role as Governor-General and Commander-in-Chief, and have offered the full resources of the War Memorial as I navigate the somewhat unique path of fulfilling my responsibilities in a modern, visible and optimistic way.
Now, like most of my family, I am a voracious consumer of news – I suspect I approach journalism with the same interest as the women and men who scanned Charles Bean’s report on the Emden–Sydney fight on page 1 of the Ballarat Star on 30 December 1914 …
… the friends and families who anxiously turned to page 3 of the Townsville Daily Bulletin on 29 May 1915 to read his telling of an Australian infantry charge at Gallipoli …
… and the Australians across the country who followed his accounts of the last days of the Great War in every major daily, and all the regional weeklies.
I am very grateful to the generations of journalists – embedded or independent, deliberate and accidental – who have contributed to the stock of human knowledge of conflict and its catalysts, of war and its outcomes, of peace and its essential beauty.
I also have a personal family connection to journalism – my sister, Suzanne Mostyn, and brother-in-law, Mark Riley, are both longstanding journalists across all platforms of the profession, and it is lovely that they are joining me here tonight.
While I inherited a family interest in consuming news, it is my extraordinary sister, Suzanne, who carries the family journalism gene.
Although my father, who I am delighted is here with us tonight, my father who served this country for 40 years and has been so pleased and proud of my new position, his grandfather, Robert Porter Mostyn was a sports journalist, and long-time sports editor for the Sydney Daily Telegraph, writing in the 1920s and 1930s.
As a family, we have often reflected on Suzanne’s antecedents, as she has always been the one with an exquisite talent for words, both written and spoken.
And, unsurprisingly, she was drawn to another journalist – they met quiet young in a press gallery, she met her husband, Mark Riley, who is well known to you all, but especially this evening as a Board member of the Bean Foundation, something I know you are very proud of Mark, with your advocacy.
As I have privately with Mark, I congratulate the board, patrons, benefactors and friends of the CEW Bean Foundation for your long-standing work to honour the Australian war correspondents of the past, and those who continue to bestow their skill and insight on the profession today, many of whom are here tonight
As many of you will know, in February this year, the Australian War Memorial invited members of the public to transcribe digitised handwritten material from the National Collection into a publicly available resource.
Perhaps some of you participated in the transcription, so far, of close to 30% of Charles Bean’s 286 volumes of personal material.
Or the more than 40% of Sir John Monash’s papers.
Or the collection of three letters from Lance Corporal Charles Tednee Blackman, one of the earliest known Indigenous men to enlist as a soldier in the AIF, who wrote home to say,
‘this is not half what I could tell you about the Battle in France what a soldier do[es]n[‘]t know it[‘s] not worth know[i]n[g]’ii
His confidence in the authority of his knowledge asserts the legitimacy of his account of war – that what he saw and experienced was truth.
And it is a telling counterpoint to Bean’s lament that,
‘One has had no opportunity of checking from other sources some of the details of the fight …’
Bean’s honest account of the limitations of his craft are a salutary reminder of truth as an accretion of facts, insights and impressions over time, rather than the revelation of a moment.
It is in the pairing of his observations with Charles Blackman’s insights, and the insights of the many thousands of the publicly available documents in the War Memorial’s collection, that we add to the store of knowledge bequeathed to us by Bean and other ‘official’ sources.
This is the origin of new perspectives, a greater depth of understanding and a more rewarding richness of detail that, over time, are rightly embedded in what we hold to be true.
Because fact without nuance and truth without lived experience is indeed a blunt and brutal instrument.
On Remembrance Day, at dinner in this very room with the Council of the Australian War Memorial, I celebrated the growing collaboration between my office and the War Memorial to borrow some of its magnificent art collection to hang on the walls of Government House and potentially Admiralty House in Sydney.
It is part of a larger collaboration with national cultural institutions to ensure that everyone who visits the Official Residences can see some of their story somewhere in the House. Something that would not be possible at the moment.
This initiative is born out of the belief that Simeon and I share in the power of storytelling and using every asset we have to tell stories – where all forms of that craft are vital, including the arts, and the sensibility and curiosity of the artist, also recognised by the Bean Foundation.
And those stories must always include Australian chapters of war and peace. So, I look forward to sharing with all of you those houses once they have been reimagined and more recent images of current Defence Force deployments are also around the walls.
I am looking forward to working with Matt and his team to help us do that.
Tonight, I thought I’d share with you some thoughts on modernity, and the link to Bean’s views on truth and perspective.
When the Prime Minister asked me to serve as your 28th Governor-General and only the second woman, he indicated that he wanted a visible, modern and optimistic person in the role.
In accepting, together with Simeon and our daughter Lotte, I have thought deeply about what those characteristics mean for both the Office of the Governor-General, and the Commander-in-Chief of the Australian Defence Force.
And, as I indicated in my address in the Senate on my swearing-in, I believe that modern high office holders must have a centre of gravity, a purpose and guiding idea – from which the work and connection with all Australians, including our defence personnel must and can be framed.
For me that is care.
Care, kindness and respect.
Care is the gentle thought and the outstretched hand that Australians have always been ready to share when great challenges present themselves. We know that to be the case here at the Australian War Memorial.
And when I discuss care, particularly out in the public, I always speak of it in its various forms which I think are vital for the future …
… care for each other, care for those who care for others, care for our extraordinary continent and its environmental beauty – so care for country, care for civics and institutions and care in the way in which we discuss and debate the issues of our time without judgement or rancour or violence.
And, I am discovering that wherever I now travel as Governor-General, people everywhere in this country are yearning for the words and actions that speak to care …
… care for them, their families and communities …
… care for the generations that will be future leaders of this country …
… deep care for our national strengths and advantages.
And many come up to me and comment, sometimes quiet randomly, that have heard what I have said about care for the way that we discuss matters, they wish for us to return to habits of disagreeing well – respecting and listening to those whose views we may not agree with, particularly those we have never met and can attack from afar.
It’s an old-fashioned concept perhaps, but reflective of our modern demands and needs of the Australian community.
But for me, the engagement with care by the leaders of our ADF that have struck me as absolutely modern and contemporary.
In long, personal conversations with the Chief of the Defence Force, Service Chiefs and the Chief of Joint Operations, Vice Admiral Justin Jones, who I am so delighted is here tonight and gave me permission to discuss this, it is clear that care is the centrepiece of the culture of our modern defence force, and it must be.
Justin took me just outside Bungendore just before my term, and I was able to witness just what a modern, caring workforce looks like for the modern Australian Defence Force, and it’s truly outstanding.
I don’t think we understand quiet what has been happening with the current leadership of our defence personnel, and how important their focus on care has been for kindness to be extended to those who have selected a life in service.
As a modern, optimistic and outward-looking Governor-General and Commander-in-Chief, I believe my role is to focus intently on the potential to contribute to the critical dialogue that elevates the Australian Defence Force’s continuing drive to move to modernity, including:
- building a culture of wellbeing to allow personnel to serve, live and age well
- fostering the trust of the Australian people as a pillar of service
- providing careers that sustain, inspire and fulfil, particularly a generation who may never have thought of defence as their future
- and establishing a force that reflects the remarkable multicultural story of our nation and the rich diversity that is so deeply entwined with the strength of our identity.
I hear that reflected in the hopes of my Aides-De-Comp, it’s wonderful that one of them is here tonight, who confirmed to me as we arrived here that that is exactly what she believes.
And whether they are young or mid-career, the people I meet that are the very best of our modern defence force, they want that modernity and care at the centre of the leadership and cultures within which they are working.
I have seen in Darwin at Pitch Black, in Tindle, at Holsworthy, at Base East, and I’ll see it next week at Creswell.
I am spending a lot of time at our defence engagements, and I see this craving for care and the delight at which the current leadership is exemplifying that and giving hope to so many including veterans.
I’d like to now turn to storytelling in its modern form, and its reliance more on art and curiosity and wonder, rather than just pure fact.
We are so often told that the oil of journalism doesn’t readily combine with the water of art.
That the presentation of facts leading to an evidence-based conclusion must clash with the creative license and impressionistic freedoms of art.
But it is in fact truth-telling that is at the heart of both forms storytelling.
It is strong in Hilda Rix Nicholas’ sketches of her beloved husband, killed on the Western Front, and her paintings of diggers returned from the First World War.vi
And in Kat Rae’s Napier Waller Art Prize, which I would implore you all to pay attention to, winning work called Deathmin, representing the administrative burden carried by those left behind after veteran suicide, a tribute to the war memorial from that incredible, innovative prize.
And in Torres Strait artist Kapua Gutchen’s drawings depicting the influence of Second World War aircraft on the cultural iconography of Erub and the eastern Torres Strait.
These, and the many, many artists whose works have been collected by the Australian War Memorial, are complex objects of truth and meaning.
Whether documentary, like Damien Parer’s powerful footage from Kokoda, or strikingly abstract, like the granite, stone and grass of the War Correspondents Memorial in the War Memorial’s extraordinary Sculpture Garden, the documents, art and artefacts of war and peace serve to complete the historical narrative and illuminate the events of today.
And that is part of why I am so delighted the Australian War Memorial is opening that incredible collection to us, to help us tell that story through the Office of the Governor-General.
Last week I visited Western Australia – fulfilling a promise to travel to all states and territories early in my term.
The visit was bookended with military ceremony.
Beginning with my attendance at the reconsecration parade at RAAF Base Pearce of the Governor-General’s Banner of No 2 Flying Training School, which was awarded to 2FTS in 1990.
And then concluding with a visit to the National Anzac Centre in Albany at dusk last Friday evening, it was extraordinary, where I was able to reflect on the more than 40,000 Australians and New Zealanders who sailed out of King George Sound into that great southern ocean for Egypt in 1914.
The images of Charles Bean at work in the Middle East, and in Australia surrounded by the folio pages of his official history, and the tools of his trade overseas and at home – his seabag, his fountain pen and stamp, and his makeshift periscope that sit inside that wonderful memorial in Albany – were a striking reminder of his peerless contribution to journalism, history and our nation’s story.
The photographs taken during the Reconsecration Parade at RAAF Base Pearce recount the historic moment of the original colour’s retirement and the consecration of a new banner.
But they are also a glorious visual depiction of Western Australia -- in the brilliant blue of the sky, the iridescent green of a stand of gums, the shimmering heat rising off the parade ground’s gravel, the ranks of service women and men standing at ease.
While we are left to imagine the call of Uncle Barry Winmar’s didgeridoo during his Welcome to Country, the plaintive cries of the black cockatoo and the rumble of approaching jets that travelled over our heads in an incredible act of synchronicity … these images are a telling story of a new history from the frontline and of the present.
In the words of English photojournalist Paul Lowe, who documented the war in Yugoslavia in the 1990s, they ‘can be used as tools with which to think and analyse’.
And they depict what we recognise today as a modern Australian Defence Force.
One that, in upholding its commitment to integrity, transparency and responsibility, is increasingly equipped to record, scrutinise and consider the processes by which it maintains national security, engages with conflict, and preserves peace. Always the peace.
This modernity in storytelling was so apparent at the Anzac Centre in Albany where, with content developed by the Australian War Memorial and the Western Australian Museum, we were offered the story of war through a deeply personal and immersive experience. I encourage you all to visit if you haven’t already, because you’re invited to take on the identity of one of 32 service women or men who served in World War One, we followed very personally their journey from recruitment to the end of the war and beyond. …
The use of technology combined with the gripping reality of archival material to bring a contemporary audience into the presence of the past was powerfully effective in conveying the reality of human experience.
So, too, was my conversation this morning with Her Excellency Ms Caroline Kennedy, where Simeon and I had the great honour to farewell her as Ambassador of the United States of America to Australia.
Her Excellency reminded me of her visit to the Solomon Islands in August 2023 to mark the 80th anniversary of President Kennedy’s, her father, his rescue during the Second World War.
Travelling to the Solomon Islands with her son, Jack, Ambassador Kennedy recreated part of the President’s swim between Naru and Olsana Islands and met with the families of two Solomon Scouts who rescued him.
This act of commemoration was shared widely on social media, and receive extensive positive press coverage. A thoroughly modern way of telling an important story of the region that we are in and actors that we know, it was a beautiful story to recreate.
Throughout her term in Australia, Ambassador Kennedy I believe has set the highest standard of modern storytelling and this is a striking example of her perceptive use of history, stories and commemoration to build and sustain the relationships of today. I hope I can achieve a similar standard in the kind of retelling we hope to do from Government House in the year ahead.
The artefacts that materialise – whether they are accounts of a war correspondent or the reflective, creative response of a witness – are our historical narrative …
… and they represent the pillars of our mighty Australian story:
… 65,000 years of the world’s longest continuous culture, shared with us so generously by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people …
… joined to the strong and free democratic institutions we celebrate and work so hard to preserve …
… and Australia’s modern chapter of optimism, of belonging and of progress, underpinned by remarkable multiculturalism. 50% of our country today born somewhere else, or having parents born somewhere else, an extraordinary feat.
The imperative to record, preserve and publish moments of humanity emerges forcefully as the modern ADF operates on land, at sea and in the sky, in theatres of war and in zones for peacekeeping, in protecting our border and working in support of the safety and progress of our nation and our region.
And that is happening during a time of increasing conflict …
… when we face crises of confidence in the veracity of news
… and the space for reportage diminishes as the impact of AI and the influence of algorithms grows …
Just as our defence force amplifies care as an essential aspect of its operations, I believe there is also an important role for care in journalism.
Whether for war correspondents, or those reporting on the issues of our time here at home, in any form.
Tonight I’ve shared with you the story of how and why I have chosen to put care and kindness and respect as the core tenants of my term. And I was able to share that story with Rob Harris who will be known to some of you, the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age European correspondent when he joined us on our trip to Villers-Bretonneux in September.
He quietly observed our discussions with the team at the John Monash Centre there, and then he just watched the interactions we had with the many Australians that were at Villers, who were completing that extraordinary pilgrimage that so many Australians take to the Western Front.
Our discussion ranged from my reaction to being at Villers-Bretonneux, and my thoughts about the place of commemoration in Australian life, my history as an army brat growing up in a family of service, to my intentions and plan for my term as Governor-General.
He listened, but questioned. He challenged, but wanted to know more. He probed me and tested me, on those goals for the office, always fairly and kindly, but doing his job as a journalist which I very much appreciated as his act of care.
I very much look forward to meeting the journalists in this room, many of whom I have not had the opportunity to meet personally, and have those kinds of conversations.
I want to understand whether you think the focus on care and kindness and respect defines the modernity of the Governor-General and the Commander-in-Chief.
I want to show how the modernity in high office, and tell you how I think it represents the how and why of my engagement with all Australians, without any question, all Australians as your Governor-General.
So I look forward to doing that, and tonight was a bit of a provocation to suggest that we can have those conversations and do that with a dose of mutual respect, even if we don’t agree with each other all the time. That goes back to disagreeing well.
And perhaps that is what Charles Bean would have expected of someone in higher office, given his commitment to truth and perspective.
We look to the chroniclers of today – war correspondents, photographers and artists all of them – to turn the same steady gaze onto us. All of us in whatever role we play. And through their stories, they show us to ourselves.
I want to thank all the correspondents, all the journalists, everyone involved in the way in which things are commemorated by the Bean Foundation, for everything that you have always done to bring that story to us. Whether from overseas or at home.
I want to thank all of you who give your own skill, intellect, creativity, compassion and insight to enrich, preserve and share the enduring stories of Australia at war and peace.
And I want to particularly thank the Bean Foundation for working so hard over so many years to ensure that is what we all continue to do and that Charles Bean’s commemoration inspires everyone, including a generation that might not have been as attached to that history to learn and understand and care.