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Graduation Speech to the Faculties of Humanities and Social Sciences and Law

Chancellor, Vice Chancellor, members of the Faculties of Humanities and Social Sciences and Law, graduands, and parents and friends of graduands.

It is a great honour to be asked to speak at the graduation ceremony of the faculties where I spent a number of years studying in the late 1970s and early 1980s. I have to confess that while my time since graduating has been spent in the practice of the law, my heart is still in the humanities faculty. I welcome this opportunity publicly to say again how grateful I am to the University, but particularly to the Departments of Modern Languages and Classics, for all they have given me. They are great departments with wonderful personalities who truly care about their students. I will always recall the very happy occasions in the Department of Classics led by that outstanding professor, Chris Dearden, and the wonderful personalities in that department; the witty Alex Scobie, the kind and generous John Davidson and the delightful Dorothea Turner who, at the age of 79, started studying her PhD in Greek as I was finishing my BA in Latin. I am sure those who have studied in those departments will understand my nostalgia for my years studying Latin and French at Victoria.

A few days ago, Tony Blair’s education secretary, Charles Clark, announced his view that the state should not be funding university departments of medieval history, since they are purely ornamental rather than useful. That joylessly utilitarian approach to education must be rejected and all of us must make sure that those views never become fashionable in New Zealand. Investment in the humanities is essential to New Zealand’s future; the $33m currently earmarked for support of a boat race would be much better spent in the humanities faculties of our universities.

As I speak to you, I am very conscious of how you must be feeling at this time because I felt the same when I was waiting to graduate. Essentially I wanted the speeches over with as quickly as possible so that the conferral of degrees could take place and I could go to dinner. With that in mind, I promise I shall be brief. Indeed there are only two things I want to say to graduands tonight as they receive their degrees and embark on their careers.

First; be generous to yourself. That is not a licence to be selfish. But you cannot and should not look to others to protect your interests; you must protect these yourselves.

Many of you will have recently had interviews for positions in law firms, accountancy firms, corporations or government organisations. When you interview with these places, you must never passively accept everything that is said. For example, every big law firm says it is different. It denies it is a sweatshop. It insists that, although its lawyers work hard, they lead balanced lives. This is almost always false and it has to be. There is no free lunch. Someone has to pay for your starting salary. Someone has to pay for the office space in the prestigious buildings. A firm that tells you otherwise is not telling the truth.

So you must look after yourselves:

- All that stuff about the need to work long hours is wrong. In my experience, the longer people work the less efficient they become. When you are at work, work, but don’t stay in the office too much.

- Be brutal about staying fit and ensuring that you have plenty of time for exercise.

- Ensure you have lots of recreation time. You cannot expect to enjoy life if all you do is work. And I always think it is wise to do something in your recreation time that is totally impractical. Some years ago I decided to take a sabbatical from my law firm to go to Rome to study more Latin. On one level a totally useless thing to do. But an old friend of mine, Mary Hannah, the aunt of one of the graduands here tonight, reminded me of that wonderful statement of Katherine Mansfield about “the delicious and always novel pleasure of a useless occupation”.

So make sure that you are generous to yourselves in the years ahead.

Secondly; be generous to others. Obviously generosity to others takes many forms and I could talk all night about that topic. But, given the New Zealand of today, I want to dwell on one aspect of generosity, and that is generosity of spirit, particularly when we are discussing issues of the day. In this country too many seem to forget that civilised and educated people do not begin to debate major questions with personal abuse. Let me give you two examples:

- The Chief Censor, Bill Hastings, is a former Deputy Dean of the Law Faculty. He is an exceptional lawyer and a good person. Some years ago he left the Law Faculty to accept appointment as Deputy Chief Censor and he was subsequently made Chief Censor. As you would imagine, this is not an easy job. He has had a number of difficult decisions to make, for example, last year with a film called Baise Moi. When Mr Hastings released his classification of the film, he was viciously attacked by some people not only for his decision, but also for his sexuality. This criticism has continued and is totally unacceptable.

- This country is debating the merits of whether or not to stop appeals to the Privy Council. The debate is always timely; indeed it has been since that great Victorian, Sir Robert Stout, first started talking about the topic in 1904. However, it is howthe issue is being debated that worries me. There are arguments for and against and one is able to have a principled debate on the topic without descending to personalities. I think, for example, that personal attacks on Court of Appeal judges are unfair and ultimately harmful to New Zealand.

The general acceptance of judicial decisions, by citizens and by governments, which is essential for the good government of the state, rests not upon coercion but upon public confidence. Judges are not above criticism as you law students will recognise but there is fair and unfair criticism. To conduct a debate about retention of the Privy Council by insulting our Court of Appeal judges and saying they are not up to the job is unfair criticism and ultimately undermines public confidence in the judiciary.

I hope that the law students who are graduating tonight will help raise the debate on these and other important issues. It is not a question of being toadies of the judges, but recognising that the judiciary cannot be expected to respond to the sort of rubbish which is peddled in the National Business Review and other publications and looks to the legal profession for support.

As the former president of the Czech Republic, Vaclav Havel said in his 1992 News Year’s Address to his country:

“we must face difficulties and people of ill will with a wise and united perseverance. In an atmosphere of decency, creativity, tolerance and quiet resolution, we shall bear far more easily the trials we have yet to experience, and resolve all the large problems we must yet face.”

So by all means debate the issues but please do so with a generosity of spirit which is so often lacking in this country.

That’s enough of me. Congratulations to all of you on your achievements. I am very proud of the students whom I taught in the law faculty. I know you are going to be great lawyers and I know too that all of you will make a real contribution to the country we love.

And please note, by that I mean New Zealand not Australia or the UK. Do try to make your futures in New Zealand. I know that studies and OE will take you overseas in the years to come, but this is a great country and it needs all of you living here and investing in its future.