ContextGraduation address to the class of 2026 at the University of New England in Armidale, by the Governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia, the central bank in charge of inflation and full employment.
Why it mattersA central bank governor speaks outside monetary policy and describes the personal qualities she sees as decisive in a career shaped by change and uncertainty.
- Graduates face a period of rapid technological change.
- The years ahead bring uncertainty as well as opportunity.
- Society's problems need people willing to engage with them.
- Keep a sense of purpose rather than a fixed plan.
- Value judgement, integrity, adaptability and collaboration.
- Stay open to opportunities and bring diverse perspectives.
Read the speech summary
1. The occasion
The Governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia returned to the University of New England in Armidale, the regional town where she grew up, to receive an alumni award and an honorary doctorate. She used the ceremony to speak to new graduates about careers rather than about interest rates. Her father once ran the university's mainframe data processing, which gave the visit a family dimension.
2. A career that was never planned
She recalled hesitating at seventeen between a place in medicine in Sydney and economics at home. A conversation with the head of the economics faculty, who told her that university economics relied heavily on mathematics, tipped the balance. A summer cadetship at the central bank in her third year then led to an honours year and, in 1985, a permanent job as a graduate economist. Her advice is to accept interesting offers even when their destination is unclear.
3. Purpose
Central banking looks like a world of figures: prices, jobs, forecasts and rate decisions. She argued that its real subject is people, since Parliament asks the bank to serve the prosperity and welfare of Australians. Knowing how one's work feeds into something bigger is, in her view, what keeps a person going through difficult periods, whatever the profession.
4. Perspective
Graduates from science, farming, business and law will meet colleagues with very different backgrounds. She sees this variety as a strength: the members of the bank's monetary policy board come from contrasting careers, which improves debate and decisions. Her regional upbringing makes her attentive to differences between parts of the country. The bank's liaison program with firms and communities, and a visit she once made to a national debt counselling service, showed her realities that aggregate statistics hide. She wants economics to attract people from a wider range of communities.
5. Change and technology
Automation and artificial intelligence are reshaping work, and nobody can yet say how. She noted that this has happened before: the bank's large typing pool vanished within a few years of her arrival, while new skills became essential. Because the most useful skills are hard to foresee, she put the emphasis on lasting human qualities: sound judgement, honesty, flexibility, teamwork and good working relationships, which technology can assist but not replace.
6. Closing message
Having a precise plan or not having one are both acceptable, since the openings that shape a career are often invisible at the start. She encouraged graduates to keep a clear purpose, listen to people unlike themselves and treat change as a source of opportunity, and she invited some of them to apply to the central bank one day.