Townsville Leadership in the Tropics

The John Allwright Memorial Address was delivered by Professor Sandra Harding, Vice Chancellor James Cook University on Friday 16 September 2011 in Townsville as part of the Australian Rural Leadership Program's graduation.

Sandra Harding 

Thank you for the opportunity to present the John Allwright Memorial Address for 2011. 

I suppose I did what most would do when invited to deliver an address named after a distinguished Australian. I looked to John’s example. I learnt about his commitment to rural Australia. I could easily admire his determination to ensure that Australia was served well through his own rural leadership and his support of others’. John Allwright was a great Australian and it is appropriate that we honor his memory through an occasion such as this.

Of course, my next challenge was to consider what I might say to you. Many of you will have had a very much longer and deeper experience with rural, regional and remote Australia than I have. You will have well-formed views about the challenges and opportunities, the possibilities and the potentials, the risks and the irrelevancies for regional Australia. 

Now, I'm originally a Melbourne girl who left Melbourne at age 17 to study at the Australian National University in Canberra. From there I went to Brisbane, from Brisbane to the United States, from United States - with time undertaking research in Europe from that base, back to Brisbane and from Brisbane to Townsville and Cairns. You would be quite correct to conclude that my regional leadership credentials, if I have any at all, feature wet paint - though rapidly drying, I'd like to think. 

That said, here we are and all I can do is share with you my views, such as they are. 

I will first tell you a little about James Cook University, positioning this personally, to make the case for high quality, regionally based, higher education. I realize that, on this, I am probably speaking to the converted, but there is a tendency in the general debate to imagine that world class education and research can somehow only reside in capital cities – a notion peculiar to Australia – think about elite colleges and universities in the US, with the vast majority located in regional towns. With our peculiar Australian assumption, we risk setting a low bar for regional education and research and this puts the future of regional Australia at risk.

Then I will speak of a related challenge for us - about what it will take to achieve the development of 21^st century regional economies.

My views on these things have been forged here in northern Queensland, but I hope they may be relevant beyond this particular geography. 

Finally, I have an announcement to make that I hope you will see as confirmation of the seriousness with which my University embraces the regional agenda in this country. 

Through all this, I suspect you will be able to discern something of my take on leadership – that mystifying and variegated notion and practice. And perhaps you may also come to understand why someone who has been a city girl by any measure would aspire to live in regional Australia and aspire to lead a university like James Cook University - and revel in both. 

First, James Cook University and idea of regional education and research. A personal tale. 

When the previous Vice Chancellor announced in April 2006 that he was to leave James Cook University, I was interested. I knew a little about the university. In particular I knew about its research credentials, its educational mission focused on the north and its focus on tropical and marine biology. It struck me then that JCU is arguably the most distinctive university in the country. In the way of these things, after a soft shoe shuffle with the search consultant, I applied for the position and as you can tell, ultimately, was successful in that application. 

Since taking up my appointment I can tell you that everything that I thought about the distinctive nature of the University has been confirmed in spades. While not an historian, I consider myself a student of history. I set out to understand why and how the University came into being in order to more fully understand the power of its place. 

James Cook University is the second oldest university in Queensland. From 1960 to 1970 it was a university college of The University of Queensland. But of course as these things do, the University story started well before that. There was significant local advocacy by the Townsville University Society aimed at ensuring that a university was established to fuel the professions in the north and to encourage young people to stay. 

In that post-World War II period there was also an acute understanding of the strategic significance of Northern Queensland. Further, with the demands of a growing population looming, there was an understanding of the need to increase access to higher education in Australia and there was a will in Governments, both Federal and State, to expand the number of Australian universities. When these points intersected, northern Queensland was the obvious place for a new university. 

Sir Leslie Martin, then the president of the Australian Universities Commission, wrote that in addition to providing educational opportunity in the north, this new university, the second university in Queensland, should have a special focus. He wrote that it should become Australia's University for the Tropics. 

It is this place – our regional place - that defines James Cook University. 

Our university was established to focus on the tropical world and in our legislation we are charged with undertaking education and research on issues of importance to the people of the tropics. This is a local role. It is a national role. It is also a role of growing international significance. 

It is the power of this mission, inscribed in our legislation, that gives great meaning and even greater importance to what we do. 

The tropics of the world comprises more than 40% of the world’s population, 80% of its biodiversity, 20% of Gross World Product and some of the most critical issues of our time are playing out in the tropical world. These are issues of health and disease, of environmental management, of the development of government structures and judicial structures, of economic and social development. Australia is the developed country with the largest tropical land-mass – and that tropical land mass is regional. We are standing on it. 

In no small way, it is both distance from Australia's capital cities and the closeness, in geography - and through significant commonalities with tropical communities to our north, east and west - that defines us. It is often comes as a surprise that Adelaide is closer to Sydney than Brisbane is to Townsville. That Brisbane is closer to Melbourne than it is to Cairns. That our nearest capital city is Pt Moresby. Distance defines us. 

The significant indigenous population in the north, both Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander, also defines us. This is another critical dimension of our understanding of our place. As an institution, we are determined to embrace the deep meaning of our place, recognising 50,000 years of history of indigenous communities in the north. Our University’s close connection to Eddie Koiki Mabo and the Mabo decision, and with traditional owners in Townsville, Cairns, and the Torres Strait, makes this personal. The high proportion of indigenous students in our programs, including our elite programs in medicine and dentistry, our attention to reconciliation, curriculum innovation and relevant research, even the naming of our creeks with names chosen by traditional owners, all make our intense commitment to place real again. We will not let this go. 

So, decisions made by past Governments have ensured that we have major scientific assets located in the north. It is no coincidence that we have a large population base in northern Queensland. Nor is it a coincidence that we have large and diversified economies fueled by local access to higher education, research and innovation, in the broader north. 

So here we are, in regional Australia, established, as our contemporary statement of strategic intent describes, to deliver a brighter future for life in the tropics worldwide through graduates and discoveries that make a difference. 

Place is indeed powerful for us. And this focus on place makes my job easy. Our location is our laboratory. The potency and authenticity of everything we do rests here, with our peoples, and with the peoples of the tropics worldwide. 

I believe there is great understanding of our mission and of our distinctiveness in both Federal and State Governments. We are a research intensive regionally headquartered university with a clear, distinctive and powerful mission that matters not only within Australia and to Australia, but that matters in the world. 

Furthermore, as a University firmly placed in the top 400 in the world based on research excellence, we are the test-bed, the demonstration, the proof if you like, that a University located in regional Australia can aspire to be - and indeed can achieve - world standing in areas of its distinctive capability and competence. 

Why is this demonstration important? I will tell you. 

Regional Australia deserves access to high quality university education, research and innovation and, contrary to the usual assumption, James Cook University’s example means that this is possible. 

Indeed, we must have the capacity in regional Australia to create and access terrific talent applied to leadership in our places. 

Universities as well as skills training are important here. So is the Program that some of you have just completed - and with which everyone else in the room is associated in one way or another. 

Of course, there are cost implications of our desire to better serve regional Australia through higher education. Access can be achieved through the type of 50 year and more investment in a more traditional research and teaching university like JCU, but it can also be attended to in a shorter timeframe by thinking laterally. 

It just isn't possible to have a JCU in every town - not in the short or medium term anyway. But to have access to excellent higher education locally, in some form or another, a form that engages research as well as education, is a necessary condition for the vibrant future of regional Australia, in my view. 

Another necessary condition, and these are not independent, is local connectedness. 

As anyone who has lived in regional Australia knows, there is an intensity in local relationships. This has been both a revelation and a joy to me. I am involved in the local economic development agencies based in Townsville and Cairns. Through this, and a range of other roles, including as a Director on the Board of the NQ Cowboys Rugby League, not to mention my role as Vice Chancellor, I am involved in a deal of what happens here. 

While this intense connectedness is a feature of the local, we need greater connectivity nationally across this immense land of ours, and internationally too so that distance becomes an irrelevance. 

The digital economy is upon us. This holds in prospect one of the greatest opportunities for rural and regional renewal and transformation that our country has ever seen. We are on the cusp of a fundamental redefinition of ‘place’, of what can be done where, by whom and when. 

This is an opportunity that will not be without dislocation: it will involve significant structural adjustment given the human scale of rural and regional communities. Some may not wish it here, but this will happen. It will happen with our active guidance or without it. And there are new opportunities here for rural and regional Australia. Opportunities to add business and professional diversity and depth to regions. My view is that we must engage with this sooner rather than later to craft the types of regional economies we want and that Australia needs. 

In Townsville, the impetus for this better connectedness comes in the form of the National Broadband Network. 

We may debate the cost and the politics are pointed. But here, it has been switched on. The further roll out is happening, we are well beyond the theoretical, largely Sydney or Melbourne (or any big city with good broadband speeds) centric arguments. 

Access to this technology, promises to breathe new life into regional Australia and holds in prospect just what we need: 21^st century regional economies. Without it, we risk merely replaying the 20^th century at a time when urban Australia has moved on from that. 

So, there is an enlivened future, a vibrant future ahead. How do we achieve that future? 

It is hard to resist some sort of exhortation here, so I won’t. In my view, we need three things. First, confidence to aspire to the sort of social and economic vitality that rural and regional Australia deserves. Second, commitment to drive hard to achieve this, bringing a steely resolve to its realization and, third, courage to evince a new idea of regional Australia when most people do not live here. 

None of these three is simple. None without cost. None without great trial, but also the possibly, but far from certainty, of great triumph. 

But it is these three – confidence, commitment and courage - that, in my humble opinion, defines what it is to be OF rural and regional Australia. 

I am keenly optimistic about this future. Why? Because I know it is possible. History has shown me.  

I reflect on the example of those who advocated the implausible - a research and teaching University of international standing in northern Queensland that would take on the issues of an important part of Australia and, in time, a critical part of the world. 

I think about John Allwright and his example, his deeply personal and enduring commitment to advance rural Australia. 

And I think of you, Fellows of the Foundation, recent and past, and those around you. I think of your determination to prepare yourselves, and to prepare others - to prepare us - to build something quite extraordinary. To build our capacity as Australians to advance rural and regional Australia in a world that will be fundamentally changed from that we have known. 

Finally, I promised an announcement. 

Our University recognizes the significant mission of your Program, creating leaders attuned to the needs of rural and regional Australia. We want to help.  

Accordingly, I am delighted to announce that the Australian Rural Leadership Program and James Cook University have joined ranks to provide the opportunity for future Fellows to take the value and the credit from their study into a recognized higher education qualification – a Graduate Certificate in Australian Rural Leadership accredited by James Cook University. 

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for doing me the honour of addressing you this evening. It has been my great pleasure to share this occasion with you.

I look to you now - and to the vibrant regional Australia that your leadership will help to build.Thank you.