Address by the Chancellor

Good evening, everyone.

I've been asked to talk about the future of Western Australia, the future of universities and the future of education in an AI-enabled world.

And I've been given about the length of a university graduation occasional address to do it.

Now, as Chancellor of UWA, I've sat through quite a few occasional addresses. They are always seven minutes long, although some manage to feel considerably longer.

And, if we're being candid, they're often rather boring.

So I'll try not to add to the tradition.

I want to leave you with three questions. Three choices that I think will determine whether Western Australia fulfils its enormous potential over the next generation.

Because we are an extraordinarily successful State. We have vast natural resources, an enviable quality of life, remarkable technical capability and businesses that operate successfully in some of the most difficult environments in the world.

But success can be a dangerous thing.

It can persuade us that what worked yesterday will work tomorrow.

And I wonder whether the biggest risk to Western Australia's future is our satisfaction with its present.

My first question: Are we educating people to know things, or to think?

For centuries, universities have been in the business of creating, preserving and transmitting knowledge.

Then along comes artificial intelligence.

Suddenly, information is abundant. Answers are cheap. And increasingly, machines can produce work that looks remarkably like the work of a very capable graduate.

Of course, looking like the work of a capable graduate and actually being capable are two quite different things.

But the implications for universities are profound.

What does it mean to be educated when a machine can pass many of the assessments we have traditionally used to demonstrate learning?

At UWA, we've made a decision that may surprise some of you.

We will not use AI detection tools to try to catch students cheating with AI.

Now, that doesn't mean we condone cheating. We don't.

But we've acknowledged something universities have probably been reluctant to say out loud.

There has always been cheating. There are people walking around with university degrees they didn't honestly earn. We know that.

But we're not going to punish the many in an increasingly futile attempt to catch the few.

Instead, we need to rethink how we teach, how students learn and how we assess whether genuine learning has occurred.

That's a much harder task than buying another piece of software.

And it's an important one.

Because the value of a university education cannot simply be the capacity to reproduce information or generate a plausible answer.

We need graduates who can think critically, question assumptions, exercise judgement, understand complexity and know when an answer is wrong.

People who can use artificial intelligence without surrendering their own intelligence.

And this is why I am concerned when the conversation about universities becomes simply a conversation about producing job-ready graduates.

Of course employability matters. Enormously.

But the purpose of a university is not simply to prepare someone for their first job.

It is to equip them for a working life in which the jobs, the technologies and perhaps entire industries will change repeatedly.

Artificial intelligence may make answers cheaper. It will make good judgement more valuable.

And I suspect everyone in this room who has had to make a difficult business decision understands that distinction.

My second question: Are we prepared to change our institutions, or are we determined to preserve them?

UWA was established by the Western Australian Parliament in 1911.

Its purpose was to advance the welfare of the people of Western Australia.

Not to preserve a particular organisational structure.

Not to protect the interests of the people working within the institution.

And certainly not to insist that the arrangements designed more than a century ago must remain appropriate for the next century.

Our obligation is to the purpose, not necessarily to the structure.

That's why I welcome the willingness to examine whether Western Australia would be better served by a different configuration of its universities.

And let me be clear. Bigger is not automatically better.

But scale can matter enormously.

The combined research revenues of Western Australia's five universities are less than those of individual leading research universities in the eastern states.

Think about that.

We live in one of the wealthiest and most economically significant parts of Australia, yet we do not have the research scale commensurate with our economic importance or our ambition.

Imagine what we could achieve with greater research capability in mining, energy, critical minerals and advanced technologies to match what we have in agriculture and medicine.

Imagine universities that are genuine powerhouses for innovation, serving not just metropolitan Perth but the regions, and extending our influence throughout Southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean Rim.

The proposed university merger is one possible way of achieving that. It deserves serious, evidence-based evaluation.

But the underlying question is much bigger than a merger.

Are we prepared to put the long-term interests of Western Australia ahead of our attachment to the institutions we have inherited?

And before anyone thinks I'm having a go only at universities, let me say this.

We cannot credibly tell business to embrace disruption while expecting universities to be exempt from it.

Equally, governments and businesses can't demand transformation from universities while protecting their own comfortable arrangements.

Institutional courage is not something we should expect only of other people.

Which brings me to my third question: Will Western Australia remain a great resources economy, or become a great knowledge economy as well?

We are very, very good at finding things, digging them up and shipping them around the world.

And I say that with considerable affection and respect.

Our resources industry is genuinely world-class. Our engineering capability, our safety systems and our operational expertise are admired internationally.

But consider how much more value we might create if we were equally good at developing and commercialising the technologies that will shape the next generation of industries.

Why should Western Australia be content to supply the world with the materials for its future, when we could be helping invent that future?

AI offers extraordinary opportunities but technology doesn't magically deliver productivity.

People do.

People with the skills to apply it, the imagination to see new possibilities and the courage to change established ways of working.

And universities cannot deliver those people or those innovations on their own.

Business must invest. Government must create the conditions for investment and innovation. Universities must become more agile, more collaborative and more outward-looking.

And all of us need to abandon the rather quaint idea that education is something you finish in your twenties.

Many of you have MBAs.

You understand the value of education beyond a first degree. You also know that what you learned in your MBA, valuable as it was, cannot possibly be sufficient for the next twenty years of your career.

Lifelong learning is no longer an attractive aspiration.

It is an economic necessity.

We need a workforce that can learn, unlearn and relearn, repeatedly.

And we need leaders prepared to invest in that capability, rather than complain that the education system isn't delivering precisely the workers they need today.

Western Australia has every reason to be optimistic about its future.

But optimism is not a strategy.

And past success is not a guarantee.

Leaders — that's all of us in this room — must have the courage to question the very assumptions that have made us successful.

At UWA, our motto is Seek Wisdom.

I've come to think that is an especially appropriate ambition in the age of artificial intelligence.

Intelligence is becoming abundant. Wisdom is not.

The question is not whether Western Australia can have a bright future.

The question is whether we have the courage to make the choices that will deliver it.

Thank you.