Thank you very much Vice Chancellor Ian Chubb. To the Chancellor elect of the Australian National University Kim Beazley, good to have you here again Kim at my old university. To Mrs Mary Bull it's an honour to have you with us and to members of your family because Hedley for those of us who never knew him personally is just an outstanding name in the disciplines of international relations and strategic studies.
To the various other representatives of the university, to Bob McMullen my parliamentary colleague and Parliamentary Secretary for International Development Assistance and Michael L'Estrange the Secretary of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.
Members of the Defence Force, Members of the Diplomatic core and dare I say it most importantly you the students and scholars of the future because in your hands more than you probably estimate lies the future. How we shape this discussion this debate about international relations, about strategic studies, very much impacts the reality. And those engaged in the academic pursuit of these disciplines never ever underestimate your impact on what the practitioners then take from that and how you shape the reality out there in Australia's engagement with the world.
I have a prepared speech from which I will now depart.
Can I say something about Hedley Bull who I never met. But if there was an Olympic Games in international relations and in strategic studies Hedley Bull would be without doubt a gold medallist, an absolute gold medallist.
This is an extraordinary contribution from the extraordinary scholar. If you travel the world Hedley Bull's name is known across these core disciplines and we should honour him proudly as one of our own, as an Australian born and bred, as a product in large part of this university. But most importantly as Australia's gift to the scholarship of the world in these critical disciplines.
A pre-eminent scholar, a pre-eminent Australian and a pre-eminent contributor to the important discipline of international relations.
If I could address my remarks in just two or three ways.
The first is as I've looked at the description of how you propose to do things here Vice Chancellor, I think it's a very good thing. Namely this is by its very definition an interdisciplinary centre, you are bringing together the disciplines.
And let me step back a bit in terms of why I think that is a good thing. If you look at the emergence of the academic discipline of international relations which goes back to the end of the First World War, E. H. Carr and the rest. And the legitimate emergence of international relations theory and strategic studies as separate academic pursuits. This was a good thing because it brought focus and attention and analysis and data to what is a critical element of scholarship and policy.
In the period since the last War and most particularly in the last decade or two, something different has been emerging. Now what the international relations scholars would describe as the collapse of the great divide namely between that which is exclusively international relations and that which is, let's call it, intrinsically national matters.
The collapse of the divide between the foreign and the domestic, the internal, the external, the international and the national. That's called globalisation and it is happening a pace and complexity which affects not just those of us who are practitioners in public policy but its happening at a pace and level of complexity which also affects how the academy organises itself.
Which brings me back to I think the great achievement which is reflected in this Hedley Bull Centre. And that is your bringing together the great disciplines of international relations, of strategic studies, of defence studies, of diplomatic studies in history. Also of political science and also of social change. Because guess what the reality which we practitioners, I speak here as someone who use to work in the Department of Foreign Affairs when I used to have a real job back then, constantly deal with which is this highly interrelated reality.
There's not just this box of things over there called strategic studies, a box of things over here called diplomacy, a box of things over here called international economics and a box of things over here called domestic politics and social change. We are dealing with a constant interrelated nature of the above.
And where I think this centre has a great potential contribution to make to the scholarship of the world and certainly a contribution to public policy making in Australia is doing it here. Because you have the strategic studies, strategic and defence studies centre, the department of international relations, the department of political and social change and the Asia Pacific school of diplomacy all contributing to the combined efforts of this centre.
That is a very good thing because it actually reflects the reality which those of us who are practitioners, political and diplomatic level, have to deal with.
The second point I'd make flows directly from the first and that is that the critical role which specialists in these fields have to play in providing advice to Government.
If there is an inherent spark of genius in the idea of the Australian National University, and the imaginings of the likes of Chifley and Curtin way back when which gave birth to this university not long after the Second World War. it was in locating an Australian National University here is Canberra which would provide a ready platform for advice and engagement with those of us who are public policy practitioners.
Whether its economics, whether it's in social policy but most critically given the concentration of our international diplomatic efforts in the area of foreign policy and security policy. Therefore it is a doubly good thing that the Hedley Bull centre is here. It is a doubly good thing that it is here at the heart of the Australian National University because from our point of view the challenge for the future in having a fully engaged academic faculty with not just tens but I hope hundreds of scholars engaged right across the breadth of our international engagements is of fundamental importance. And it is a good thing that you now have a place, an integrated place to call home.
The third thing I would say is this, right now we are engaged in great challenges in terms of how we shape and reshape the international order. The Australian Government has launched a debate about the future shape of the Asia Pacific region.
We put forward an idea for an Asia Pacific Community by 2020 and that is a debate which will unfold and ebb and flow over the years ahead. But I am simply of the view that unless we begin to initiate debate about the future shape of our region, the future institutional shape of our region, then the alternative is simply drift into another future. I'd much rather that we in this country were actively engaged in debate about what the future shape of our region should look like and that very much lies at the heart of our proposal for an Asia Pacific Community.
Another proposal we have out forward out there where we would again invite the contributions of this institution is our proposal embodied in the combined establishment of an international commission on non proliferation and disarmament.
This area of work of course was something which lay near and dear to Hedley's heart if I look at the work he undertook in the British Foreign Office in the mid-sixties when he headed the office, I recall, of Arms Control and Disarmament in the FCO 65, 67 or thereabouts. I apologise Mrs Bull if I have got those dates slightly wrong but thereabouts.
And that 40 years later remains completely unfinished business. This is a complex and difficult area of work in strategic studies, arms control and disarmament and international relations.
The reason we have put forward the idea of an international commission is because we need to provide a public vehicle for engendering a genuine international debate among politicians and with specialists on how we actually breathe life back into the non proliferation and disarmament agenda.
If we look around the world today over the last decade this is very much a debate which has drifted into the sand. Yet we look around the world at the same time we continue to see the evidence of nuclear weapons proliferation. This is a challenge for us all.
It is a complex challenge, it is difficult, we fully are ceased of that, but that should not be an excuse for inertia. It should instead be an encouragement to action.
So this international commission which will be co-charred by the effervescent Gareth Evans, always like phosphorus on water our Gareth, will be up and out there engendering new friends and occasional frictions in the international community as we seek to push this agenda forward.
But it is a necessary agenda and I say about this what I just said about the debate on the Asia Pacific Community.
It is a far better thing for Australia and the world that we are intelligently debating these propositions about how to shape the world's future and our regions future and its institutional dimensions then simply sitting back and waiting for events to unfold.
That is not in my nature, it is not in the nature of this Government and is certainly not evidenced in our decision to establish an international commission which will be co-chaired by Gareth Evans. And also importantly supported in my most recent discussions in Tokyo with the Government of Japan.
Therefore to conclude my remarks where I began which is the future role of this Centre.
I can think of no better place from which the ideas that will shape our country's future in our engagement with the world could be developed from than this great Hedley Bull Centre.
You have remarkable opportunities here, the world literally lies at your feet. There is a great tradition of scholarship in this institution and you now have great facilities to support it.
Some years ago I was an undergraduate here, studying just over the road there at the faculty of Asian studies. And occasionally would lurch into the doors of the Coombs Building to speak with eminent scholars and that's how I would run into the likes of Des Ball and I'd run into the likes of Ross Babbage and others. And in fact spent some time studying part time here in the 1980's, in the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre before lurching off into Queensland and steadily working my way into the political sphere.
But this institution from my personal experience of it and these institutions which in part form the Hedley Bull Centre are great institutions. Those of you who are part of them should be proud of them. They have done great things in the past. I am confident that they will do great things in the future.
And with those remarks it gives me enormous pleasure to declare open this Hedley Bull Centre.