UWS Vice-Chancellor, Professor Janice Reid - Friday 1 June 2012

Prime Minister, Minister Evans, Minister Bradbury, Senator Faulkner and longstanding friends of UWS Julie Owens and Daryl Melham.

I would also like to start by thanking Aunty Sandra for her warm and gracious welcome to this country of the Darug people and to pay my respects to her, to Uncle Harry and to Darug Elders past and present.

Aunty Sandra’s welcome today is especially significant. While this grand old building may be centre stage today, it is incumbent upon us all to remember that the land on which it stands is Darug land and the stories of this place were first told tens of thousands of years before the first sod of soil was turned in constructing this Female Orphan School. Those stories must remain with us as this latest chapter is being written.

Prime Minister, this is a good day. It is a very good day in so many ways.

I hope you won’t mind me dwelling on that for just a moment for I believe it would be a gross misunderstanding for anyone to dismiss what is happening here today as ‘just another funding announcement’.

Our vision, our firm intent, is that this Female Orphan School will be an intellectual and cultural hub: a democratic space celebrating our political and social history while also being a base for researching, debating and developing creative, bold public policy; an historical landmark that is full of life; a community space where anyone – student; parent; resident; tourist; senior citizen; academic; government, corporate, union or community leader - might find a reason to come, once here will feel at home and will leave rewarded.

The restoration of this building offers us a place for sharing our stories and forging new relationships, for speaking to each other in art and song and words; a place for study and debate and for the exploration of ideas.

This day has been a long time coming.


When the University of Western Sydney assumed responsibility for this site the Female Orphan School was abandoned and scheduled for demolition. We determined from the start that that could not be allowed to happen. As others have already noted the Female Orphan School was founded just twenty-five years after European settlement of this country. It seemed inconceivable to us that a building of this significance if it were in the Rocks or Macquarie Street or Paddington would be left to rot. The fact that it was partially stripped for the restoration of the younger Hyde Park Barracks was a metaphorical slap on the face to the people of the West. Public sector vandalism if you like.

Today, Prime Minister, that blot is erased. This project has never been simply about bricks and mortar for this community. It has always been as much about pride and affirming our place in the founding of modern Australia and our place in the political, cultural and intellectual life of the nation today.

It is even more appropriate that it should become the new home of the Whitlam Institute.  Gough Whitlam wrote in The Whitlam Government 1972-1975 “Of all the objectives of my Government none had higher priority than the encouragement of the Arts [and] the preservation and enrichment of our cultural and intellectual heritage”.

We have been inching towards the full restoration of the building for over a decade: a small grant from the State Government enabled us to kick start the initial restoration of the central section of the building which opened in 2003 and a second small Heritage Grant helped in commencing work on this West Wing which we opened just last year. In both cases the University had to find the wherewithal from its own resources to add more than double those contributions and even then, though it may not be evident to the eye, we could not afford to fully complete what was required.

The very first plans that were drafted for the restoration of this building established that its future would be inextricably bound to the Whitlam Institute and its Whitlam Prime Ministerial Library. I had the pleasure of showing Gough the latest plans last week and he was delighted.

On 20 April 2000 Gough Whitlam, the then Chancellor Sir Ian Turbott and myself signed a Memorandum of Understanding that established the Whitlam Institute. After somewhat rocky start the Institute has come to life.

The Whitlam Prime Ministerial Collection, under the devoted custodianship of the University Librarian and her staff, is of national significance. It includes the original Letter of Dismissal and Gough’s so-called ‘Letter of Passion”. Written to Margaret at the time of the 1944 Referendum, it is a peculiarly Gough passion, being about the Australian Constitution; a passion that has never diminished in his more than sixty years of public life. The originals are rarely on display but they are today in the room just behind us.

The Prime Ministerial Collection is already the most comprehensive record of Gough’s education and parliamentary life. It holds many thousands of documents, speeches, books and ephemera and continues to grow.  In the last short while alone Gough has donated a further 1300 items, Graham Freudenberg has supplemented his earlier donations and former Whitlam Minister Bill Morrison has donated four wonderful Bruce Petty sketches from the 1972 campaign, and Margaret’s papers and diaries will be donated in due course.

At the founding of the Whitlam Institute Gough insisted (in his words) that it must not become a mausoleum but must always seek to have a contemporary relevance. I know that Gough has been particularly pleased as the Institute has developed what is now a substantial public policy program guided by the three goals that he adopted for his own Government:

•    to promote equality;
•    to involve the people of Australia in the decision-making processes of our land; and
•    to liberate the talents and uplift the horizons of the Australian people.

These goals resonate with the policies, funding commitment and determination your government and yourself personally to open up higher education to a much broader spectrum of people, such that UWS now has the largest number of low SES students in the nation, with over half of its number being first in their families to go to university.

The Institute’s public policy work focuses on the issues Gough himself championed; among them: education; Australia’s democratic future; human rights; an economy that serves the people.

The third pillar of the Institute’s platform is its education and public outreach program. The Institute’s What Matters essay competition for NSW and ACT school students has just broken all previous records with over 3,500 entries in 2012; its public forums attract speakers of the highest calibre are attracting growing audiences; its embryonic schools program has been limited only by space and facilities.

And how fitting it is that while Gough’s Prime Ministerial Library will be nestled in the East Wing, and most significantly the newly named Margaret Whitlam Galleries will reside here in the West Wing.  Margaret, who always provided the counterpoise, the wit and the warmth, the grace, earthy intellect and the public presence and style that ensured that statesman never overcame the man.  Margaret, whom Gough also referred to as his “best appointment”.

Prime Minister, Minister Evans - who really has championed the cause, this is not just another funding announcement, it is a matter of pride for the people of Western Sydney and an enduring gift to the nation.

To you and to the many who went in to bat for this old place – especially Senator Faulkner and our Western Sydney parliamentary representatives, the members for Parramatta and Gough’s seat of Werriwa among them - on behalf of this University of Western Sydney and the Board of the Whitlam Institute our profound thanks.