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CANBERRA COLLEGE OF ADVANCED EDUCATION
UNVEILING OF FOUNDATION STONE
CANBERRA, A. C. T. 28 OCTOBER 1968
Speech by the Prime Minister, Mr. John Gorton
Mr; Chairman, Mr. Minister,-Leader of the Opposition, Distinguished
Guests, Ladies and Gentlemen:
I am delighted to be asked to unveil the plaque and I have
no doubt that in due time I'll be told precisely what string to pull in order
to do it. This is one of the most satisfying tasks that I could
imagine myself undertaking, because the unveiling of this plaque is an
indication that we are really moving in building the first Canberra
College of Advanced Education and that College represents a significant
new approach to tertiary education.
If I may say so, the occasion is of special significance to
me, and satisfaction to me, because I remember not so long ago carrying
out a function which was called turning the first sod on the site. This:
involved, not as you might imagine using a spade, but using some vast
mechanical contraption which took a sod weighing some four cubic yar ds,
if I remember rightly, and which at all times I felt was liable to get
completely out of control. But I remember that well and if I may say so,
Sir, the flies were just as bad on that occasion as they are today.
I don't claim any proprietary rights in this college. It
falls within the jurisdiction of my colleague the Minister for Education
and Science, and all the hard work and planning has been done by the
Interim Council of the college under your leadership. But it is a symbol.
It's the beginning of new things in the A. C. T. and the beginning of new
things throughout the whole of the nation.
It is worth restating, I think, on this occasion what it is
that we are starting here. We're starting an institution, one of many,;
which has flowed from the acceptance of those reports to which you
referred, Mr. Chairman. Those reports suggested that we should
tailor our tertiary education system to meet the demands of an exciting,
changing age and to meet the requirements of the tide of the future which
has caught us up and which is going to require of us new schools and new
approaches to education. I think most of us here would be familiar with the reports
of the various committees the Mextin Committee, the Wark Committee
and the Burton Committee and we will know some of the special functions
which these colleges have to carry out. But let us be fair about one thing
right from the start, * and let us make it clear right from the start, to all
those interested in education throughout Australia. These colleges will
not be second level universities. / 2
-2
Collectively they will provide an alternative system but
not an inferior system to university education. I will repeat that an
alternative system but not an inferior system to university education.
Each college of the many that will grow or have grown throughout the
nation will have its own standards, quality and its own levels of efficiency.
Each will be a tertiary institution with a strong vocational bias, as you
said, offering courses leading to professional excellence in selected
disciplines. And the colleges will aim to provide scholarship, not only
for the sake of scholarship, which was the genesis of university education,
but to meet specific needs of industry and of human endeavour in specific
specialised areas. This is where the college courses will differ from the
courses at our universities not all the courses of our universities but
very many of them. The first building here is, as you said, to be a multi-purpose
building and if all goes well, the students will be here at the beginning of
1970. 1 was glad, Sir, that you mentioned that the request of the Interim
Council of the college that it be allowed to plan for the inclusion of teacher
education has been accepted, at least in principle. When firm proposals,
which I think have not yet been made, are received, they will be studied
by us with great care and interest, and I hope and believe with the same
results as have led to the plans for the college itself.
At any rate, a school of teacher education within the
Canberra College will add to the pool of trained teachers within Australia,
for use within Australia or the Territories, and indeed provide teachers
for local schools. Liberal Studies is one of the first courses which this
college will offer. And I want to stress this, because a deliberate
infusion of the liberal arts into a system which is essentially vocational
and which many people seem to think will be extremely technical, is of
first importance. This infusion is designed to ensure that human values are
not lost in a world of machines or the classics abandoned for calculuS
and computers. I don't see at all why humanists and technologists have
to be different people or take different approaches to the problems of
their lives or of the nation. What we aim to produce here, of course,
is a new " end product" a liberally-educated technologist, or, if I may
put it another way, without upsetting my distinguished colleague, a
technologically-educated liberal.
I believe, Sir, we must develop these colleges in a way
which will give us plenty of flexibility; adapt the system to the changes
now bearing down upon us changes in environment, in social attitudes,
in the application of science and technology changes which have a
greater intensity about them now than we have experienced at any past
time in the history of this country.
If we are to reach for the stars, then we must reach for
them with trained minds and skilled hands. / 3
3-
One more thing, Sir, I would say. This college now is
being built in open country, yet within measurable time, within a short
time, there will be around it the new town of Belconnen. And I hope that
this college will stand in that town as one example of an Australian
Government's active interest and continuing interest in education. This
college is being built to meet a demand in the Capital Territory, but
that demand is reflected across the whole of this continent.
No doubt, the college will develop its own tzaditions as
the years go by. You can't merely vest tradition in new things. You
can't confer tradition like a diploma or a degree, or whatever it is you
decide to confer. You have to let it grow from the quality of its courses
and the capacity of its staff and students.
But I am certain that if the beginnings of this college are
built upon in the future with the same devotion, with the same skill, as
has been used in the past, that the tradition this college will develop will
be second to none of any tertiary institution in Australia.
Sir, here, and again in colleges like it throughout Australia,
we are going to see people being educated not merely for the 20th but for
the 21st century, which we are rapidly approaching. And I believe that
what may happen in that 21st century will largely be shaped by the products
of these colleges, of universities acting jointly to provide that which this
nation needs a liberal education, scholarship for its own sake, a searching
mind, a capacity to understand new things, a capacity to apply technology
and an insistence that technology so applied be applied for the good of all
and not for destructioh, So this is an important occasion; this is for ' me a satisfying
occasion and for all those who have given their work and their minds and
their time, I trust that it too is a highly satisfactory occasion.