In 1941, as Japanese forces advanced south toward Australia, Prime Minister John Curtin famously declared that ‘Australia looks to America, free of any pangs as to our traditional links or kinship with Britain’. According to Emeritus Professor Tom Griffiths, the ecological crisis facing the world today requires an Australian leader who can make an equally bold pivot away from coal, oil and gas so that Australia can ‘grasp its opportunity as a renewable energy superpower’.
Delivered on 24 October at Curtin University’s Tim Winton Lecture Theatre in Perth, Western Australia, Professor Griffiths 2023 John Curtin Prime Ministerial Library (JCPML) Anniversary Lecture was a courageous call to action, worthy of its namesake. Professor Griffiths was formerly W K Hancock Professor of History in the Research School of Social Sciences and was the founding Director of the Centre for Environmental History at the Australian National University. He is Chair of the Editorial Board of the Australian Dictionary of Biography. In a lecture entitled ‘The World After John Curtin: Geopolitics and the Planet’, Professor Griffiths constructed a careful picture of the disruptions to our old understanding of an unchanging planet since John Curtin’s death in 1945 and the urgency of the current situation. He explained three powerful historical metaphors for the present ecological crisis – the Sixth Extinction, the Anthropocene and the Pyrocene – concepts ‘that require us to travel in geological and biological time across hundreds of millions of years and then to arrive back at the present with a sense not of continuity but of discontinuity, of profound rupture in our own time’. Acknowledging that the existential threat Australia and the world faces is quite different to the one that Curtin faced, Professor Griffiths proposed that it is appropriate in a mining state like Western Australia with John Curtin as one of its heroes to ask, ‘What would constitute a Curtinesque act of visionary leadership now?’. For him, ‘The pathway to electrification has been laid down clearly. The technologies are there or fast developing, as is the business momentum. But the free market can’t move fast enough and government must lead.’
The lecture was delivered against the backdrop of the recent failed Voice referendum, a context addressed not only by Professor Griffiths but also by Whadjuk / Balladong Elder Aunty Freda Ogilvie in her welcome to country, and Honourable Kim Beazley AC, JCPML patron, in his vote of thanks. Professor Harlene Hayne CNZM, Vice-Chancellor of Curtin University, introduced Professor Griffiths. The master of ceremonies was Dr David Wells, Deputy Director at the University Library, filling in for the director of JCPML, University Librarian Kylie Percival, who was unable to attend. Among the many special guests in attendance were John Curtin’s descendants Barbara and Gary Davidson and Beverley Lane; federal member for Swan, Honourable Zaneta Mascarenhas; Tom Griffiths’ wife, Professor Libby Robin; and JCPML’s foundation archivist, Kandy-Jane Henderson and Graeme Henderson.
The John Curtin Prime Ministerial Library celebrates its 25th anniversary since opening to the public this year, and a slideshow presented a celebration of its history and achievements. The JCPML Anniversary Lectures have been delivered almost every year since the Library opened in 1998, with the first given by former Prime Minister Gough Whitlam. Since then, audiences have heard from a range of politicians including former Prime Ministers Paul Keating, Malcolm Fraser and Julia Gillard, prominent Australians Honourable Chief Justice Robert French and Professor Larissa Behrendt, and media figures such as Stan Grant and Sally Warhaft, amongst others. Along with most of the past lectures, Professor Griffiths’ lecture is now available online at Anniversary lectures | Curtin University, Perth, Australia.
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Written by Nathan Hobby, Special Collections Librarian/Archivist
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