Dame Quentin Bryce AD CVO is Australia’s 25th Governor-General and a lifelong champion of human rights and gender equality. Her career spans law, education, public administration and decades of quiet, practical philanthropy.
My earliest reflections take me back to my childhood in the 1940s when I would go to church and put money in the collection plate so the missionaries could carry out their work in African countries. There were many Sunday sermons about children living in dire, deprived conditions on the other side of the world. And then later, when I was at boarding school, “charity” for Africa was also a constant focus. Each week, we had to give some of our pocket money, which was about 2 shillings, towards the missions in African countries, which had completely different names because they were part of the British Empire. And this focus on Africa stayed with me through my involvement with Plan International and a hospital in Ethiopia set up by Catherine Hamlin, an Australian gynaecologist.
But when I look back to my early giving, I think the big influence came from living in a small country town. The women were always knitting, sewing or cooking while the men worked together to build things or create infrastructure - because in a town of 300 people, everyone depends on each other. So, I grew up with a very practical sense of giving – it was about seeing a problem and then doing something about it. And this ethic, of doing things for community is what my life’s been about ever since.
My giving really began in my neighbourhood in Brisbane - where I matured as a young woman at university and then later returned to after living overseas and built a house and formed enduring friendships. We all connected and worked together to create the things we wanted for our families. If we needed childcare, we’d have to do the groundwork, find a property and then persuade the university to offer it as a service. It involved a lot of social reform and working together to make sure we had these services that are thriving enterprises today.
In those days, nobody thought of asking for money - and none of us had any. We had to do things ourselves, on tight budgets, acquiring the skills as we went. But I think that created a resourcefulness which became a driver for a lot of women’s movements. We’d hold cake stalls to fundraise for different projects, and we’d all make the cakes, sell the cakes, and then buy the cakes. That’s the story of the women’s movement: it was about empowerment, but also practicality and incredible generosity. And doing these things in our neighbourhood is what pushed some of us into reform. My focus was on children in hospital and changing the rules so parents could visit their kids on a Sunday. Until then, children weren’t allowed visitors because they cried so much when their mothers left that hospitals thought it was better if they didn’t come.
That became part of a big national and international movement - the Association for the Welfare of Children in Hospital - inspired by the Tavistock Clinic in London and its work on separation theory. It was also the period when suicide prevention and mental health were coming onto the agenda and there was a wonderful organisation called Mind Care, formed by a group of doctors. The Child Abuse Trust also emerged around the same time which was the start of the work to keep children safe from abuse. These were all small beginnings, but now they’re enormous, successful organisations providing brilliant services. And I think it’s important to talk about this history because it inspires people to keep going, rather than simply waiting for government funding.” Of course, government plays an important role, but often I’ve preferred getting financial support from philanthropists and people who I knew would back the work.
This is how giving grew: through commitment, skill, and building things together. It’s a universal story, not just my story. Much of what we did back then was voluntary, but we were very effective - and it wasn’t all cake stalls. We used to do fundraising at my house because I had a big courtyard. I’d prepare all the food, and my kids would be the waiters, and I remember the thrill of raising $1,000 for the Women’s Legal Service, which the former QLD premier, Anna Bligh was involved in. Back then, none of us had any money to give, so we gave our time and our goods. You’d buy ordinary wine, make sandwiches, and build community.
I love supporting the arts because I benefit so much from all these wonderful people who bring such enjoyment and enrichment to my life through what they do. I still hold small concerts to show my support because when you do it at home, you don’t have the huge costs of those big entertaining spaces. It’s such a fabulous sector, but things are very tough and live performance is going through a terribly difficult time. The rate of technological change is a huge challenge for creative people. And I point this out to my grandchildren when I take them to events: all the work opportunities there are for talented people, but also how much it costs - why opera tickets are so expensive, what it takes to put on a musical.
And of course, the wonderful thing about being Governor and Governor-General was having the opportunity to bring people together. I remember having Indigenous women from Lockhart River - a community of about 500 people - come down to Admiralty House to talk about what they were doing. I’ve always found that bringing women together is a very powerful thing - a lot of giving, at all levels, happens around the kitchen table or on the back steps, especially in Queensland.
I also sit on a board in Melbourne where people give enormous amounts of money for children’s medical research and I do a lot of public speaking. I don’t like talking about myself, but people love storytelling because it makes us feel part of something bigger than ourselves. So, I spend a lot of my time in my office preparing speeches and doing research.
One of the things I really like doing, because of the opportunities I’ve had and the people I’ve worked with, is thanking people for what they give. Many say they want to be anonymous or don’t want anything said at a meeting, but everybody likes to be thanked – and if you don’t thank some people, you’ll be sorry. Often, if a significant person hasn’t been thanked, I’ll put my hand up and say, “Could I say a couple of words?” And I’ll stand and give a little vote of thanks because I believe acknowledgement is terribly important.
Giving is about taking the time for the things that matter – it’s the most precious thing you can give. [AR2] And by the time you’re in your eighties, like I am, you’ve distilled what those things are. I think it’s important to keep having conversations with our young ones because if there’s one thing that bonds women around the world, it’s that our top priority is the future of our grandchildren.
I talk to my grandchildren a lot about giving because they’re growing up in a very materialistic society, where the individual is emphasised and many of those traditional things like cake stalls and the Girl Guides have almost disappeared simply because people won’t take their turn - everyone says they’re “too busy” and I can’t stand that. I think the technological revolution is a big part of that – it’s created this sense of being constantly pressed.
To keep going. I worry that the era of promoting and protecting human rights is passing, and that’s at the heart of the challenges that we face around giving.I've been talking quite a bit at the church I go to down the road, where there are two women priests. There are so many empty churches, and yet this one is absolutely filled with giving and community spirit as is the one across the bridge, which has been the main community centre for refugees for a long time.
But I see a wonderful opportunity for other churches that now sit empty to take on, in a contemporary sense, what they traditionally did: be community centres. They already have halls, spaces and different facilities – so there’s a potential for them to become places to bring people together or run a service or provide support for something like domestic violence.
And that’s what happens in the church I go to. These two fantastic women have created a space for people to gather and for other organisations to connect with the community. They set up lovely things for children: grandparents teaching carpentry on the footpath, or little flower-making activities and I watch people from all walks of life and backgrounds, pour in simply because it’s there - a place that’s visible and welcoming. I know it sounds old-fashioned, but I think these places matter – we need to give everyone an opportunity and a space to play their part.
Dame Quentin Bryce, Australia's 25th Governor-General, has led an exceptional career spanning academia and Australian public service.
Dame Quentin was one of the earliest women to be admitted to the Queensland bar having graduated from the University of Queensland with Bachelor of Laws and Bachelor of Arts degrees in 1965. In 1968 she became the first female appointment at the T. C. Beirne School of Law at the University of Queensland from 1968 to 1983, when she served as a lecturer in law.
In parallel she gained prominence in a variety of quasi-public sector roles. The first of which, an appointment to the National Women’s Advisory Council, highlighted what would become a career long advocacy for gender equity at all levels of government and public sector leadership. She would eventually convene the Council in 1982. Through the mid-1980s and early 1990s she was variously the first Director of the Queensland Women's Information Service, the women's representative on the National Committee on Discrimination in Employment and Occupation, the Queensland Director of the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, as well as the Federal Sex Discrimination Commissioner.
In 1993 Dame Quentin became the founding chairperson and CEO of the National Childcare Accreditation Council, where she led efforts to ensure and improve the quality of child-care services in Australia. She later served as the Principal and CEO of the Women’s College at the University of Sydney from 1997 to 2003.
In 2003 she was appointed Governor of Queensland, the second woman to hold the role, and that same year she was made a Companion of the Order of Australia.
In 2008 Dame Quentin was appointed the first female Governor-General of Australia, a position which she held until 2014. As Governor-General, Dame Quentin devoted much of her attention to social justice and human rights issues, placing special emphasis on promoting and protecting the rights of the country’s Indigenous peoples. She delivered the 2013 Boyer Lecture series speaking to the importance of human rights in building neighborhood, community and citizenship.
Dame Quentin has supported a variety of charitable and community organisations throughout her career, including as President of Women’s Cricket Australia, Chair of the National Breast Cancer Advisory Council and as Patron of the Indigenous Literacy Foundation.
