15 May 2026, University of Southern California, California, USA
It’s an honour to be invited to this great American University, and to this great American School of Public Policy, to deliver the Commencement Address for 2026.
It’s also an honour to be the first person to have served as Prime Minister of Australia to do so.
We in Australia see you in California as our natural American neighbours and cousins, just across that largish pond which lies to our east, and your west, which some call the Pacific.
That said, you’ll be pleased to know that we in Australia have decided, in absolute solidarity with the Canadians, to shelve, at least for the time being, our long-held ambition of annexing California as Australia’s next state. So, Californians, relax — you can remain American for now.
How many of you have spent time in Australia? After all, it’s just over there! That’s not nearly enough!
So Trojans, one and all, I now want you to spend your next summer Down Under. Do I hear a yes?
On the condition, of course, that there is no drinking, no partying and no fraternisation with the locals, given that we Australians are, like you Californians and you Americans, such a shy and retiring people.
By the way, when you’re down there, watch out for the sharks, the snakes, the spiders, the things that bite you — not to mention a few crocs — because they regard Americans as a particular delicacy.
If you are in any way like I was on the day I graduated, you’ll be experiencing a number of emotions.
You’ll be excited. You’ll want to celebrate. You’ll want to party, party, party. And you’ll want to thank your families, friends and faculty who have supported you all the way through.
At the same time, you may also feel anxious about what comes next — about where you will work, what type of work that might be, or whether there will be any work at all.
You may also feel fear in the pit of your stomach as you run through the impacts of the AI revolution that is now sweeping the world — of which the Dean just spoke.
In the face of all these emotions — a mix of excitement, anxiety and even fear — and yes, I felt all of them the day I graduated a little while ago, my message to you today is simple:
At the dawn of this second quarter of the 21st century, as President Roosevelt reminded America nearly a hundred years ago: “There is nothing to fear but fear itself.” And that remains true for the future.
And because America chose not to be afraid, America came through the great global depression, it came through a global war, it came through the threat of global nuclear annihilation, and delivered an end to the Cold War peacefully.
And Americans then set about making this country the greatest country on Earth. Not just for the 20th century. But also, my friends, for the 21st. Because despite all your challenges, Americans by instinct are not a fearful people.
Fear is not in your national DNA. Nor is it in ours. Fear is not in your national mindset. It is simply not who you are as Americans.
Although there are now some in the world who say that your time is now past, seeking to persuade others in the world that freedom has had its day, and that the light on the hill will soon be extinguished — I do not agree.
For there is now, across the world, just below the surface, and not yet fully declared, a raging battle for the world’s hearts and minds, its imagination and its soul, as others now seek to take America’s place.
But as President Lincoln reminded us: “America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will only be because we destroyed ourselves.”
If it is helpful, let me share with you a little of my own life in the hope that it might resonate, at least in part, with your own — to reflect on some of life’s enduring principles that I have oftentimes experienced, sometimes applied, and sometimes ignored to my peril along life’s journey.
Fifty years ago this year, as a shy, slightly acneous kid from a farm in rural Australia — where yes, there were indeed many things that could bite and kill you — I began my studies at the Australian National University.
Neither of my parents had been to high school.
Our local elementary school had three chickens, four teachers and five cows.
My father, having died in an accident when I was 11, left my mother to retrain as a nurse and raise me as a single parent against the often bleak charity of the time.
At our local country high school, I was blessed because some of my teachers took an active interest in me as a kid who had a natural curiosity for the world that lay beyond our little town and beyond our nation’s shores.
They said I should go to something called a university to pursue my abiding interest in the wider world — although I had no idea what a university actually was.
And so I enrolled in a five-year course in modern Chinese language, classical Chinese and Chinese history, because half a century ago I thought that China might loom large in the world’s future.
That was the year that Mao died, when the Cultural Revolution was still raging, and when China was at daggers drawn with America and the West.
When I graduated, however, I found myself to be largely unemployable because China had yet to capture the world’s attention.
But to my great surprise I was accepted as a young diplomat in the Australian Foreign Service, without having the faintest idea what a foreign service actually was.
I was posted to our embassy in Beijing, and later found myself in Tiananmen Square in 1989 where thousands of young Chinese students were shot protesting for freedom.
I became disillusioned with the foreign service, because I became tired of writing elegant essays about the state of the world, while being impotent to do anything about the state of the world — and so I went into politics.
I then lost my first election to parliament and in my mind my world had collapsed.
Three years later I won. Seven years after that I became leader of my party. And the following year I was elected as Australia’s 26th Prime Minister.
But this came at the dawn of the global financial crisis which destroyed banks, jobs, economies and therefore governments around the world. They fell like ninepins.
I worked closely with President Bush and then President Obama, as well as Chinese leaders, to help prevent the global financial crisis becoming a total economic collapse. It worked. We worked together.
Meanwhile back in Australia we acted decisively to prevent a recession; I began Australia’s climate change transition to a renewable energy future; and I delivered a formal apology to Aboriginal Australians after more than 200 years of abuse by white Australians. We can change the way things are.
I then lost the Prime Ministership, was appointed Foreign Minister, before returning once again as Prime Minister, before losing the subsequent election.
After that I left Australian politics and went to Harvard to research and write on the future of US-China relations, because I thought that was the most pressing challenge of our times — as I still do.
Realising that I needed to understand more about China’s leadership, even though I had met most of them in my previous job, at the tender age of 60 I went to Oxford to do a PhD on Xi Jinping’s ideology. This was a little humbling when my fellow students, although with some affection, routinely called me Grandpa.
My own government then asked me three years ago to go to Washington as Ambassador, first to the Biden Administration and then the Trump Administration.
And last month I returned to New York as the global head of an American think tank called the Asia Society.
So why have I told you all this? It’s simply to say, young people, those of you graduating: life is never smooth.
Life is rarely linear, moving neatly from being promoted from one position to the next on an ever-upward, halcyon trajectory. In fact, in my own career it has been the exact reverse, given that my most recent record of the last decade has been one not of systematic promotion, but of systematic demotion.
I’ve done it all in reverse: first Prime Minister, then Foreign Minister, then Ambassador, now head of a think tank. Maybe my next job will be back in Beijing as First Secretary in the embassy where I began 40 years ago.
But if I’ve learnt one thing in life, it is the central importance of human resilience in navigating life’s many shoals.
So what is this thing called “resilience”?
And what does it mean for America at large?
Because we cannot have a resilient nation unless we are a resilient people.
When I was at Harvard, I taught a course called “Politics and Purpose”. It had about 50 students from across Harvard College. Being Harvard, they all wanted to become President of the United States — over there — including the 25 or so foreigners who also happened to be in the class. They wanted to be President of the United States too.
It was my melancholy duty to remind them of certain provisions of the US Constitution which might make that a little difficult.
But rather than regale the class with political war stories from the trenches of democratic electoral politics, I simply outlined five core principles for life.
First, understand what you believe. What is your philosophy? Do you have a theology? What is the intersection of these twin engines of the Enlightenment — both faith and reason — in working out a purpose-driven life?
Second, having worked out what you believe, it is equally important to understand why you believe it — what the philosophers call epistemology, or how you know these beliefs to be true, so that they can withstand the first gust of wind which comes along and doesn’t blow you away, or the first brick wall you happen to run into and fall over.
Third, think through carefully what values these beliefs give rise to — both personal values and social values.
Because values are the best predictor of character. And character, not just your talents, will define you for the rest of your life.
I realise that talk of values is out of fashion these days but, let me tell you, you can already see that they’re making a comeback.
Basic values such as honesty, loyalty, the importance of family and of friendship, respect for others even when those others may be strangers, compassion, curiosity, aspiration, self-discipline, persistence and yes, good old-fashioned hard work.
Then there are wider societal values such as liberty, equality, justice, sustainability, peace, as well as the importance we attach to reason, evidence, knowledge, wisdom and, yes, truth, as we seek to apply these animating principles to the changing circumstances of our public — not just our private — lives.
Each of these values becomes the headwaters of the streams and then the rivers that will flow through the decisions you take throughout your life.
That is why it is important to be conscious of them, rather than simply relying upon some Jungian subconscious, in the hope that they will somehow spontaneously bubble to the surface when you need them.
Fourth, having worked out what you believe as well as the values that flow from these beliefs, work out what you are deeply and passionately interested in. What is it that lights up your soul?
Because as Therese, my wife of 44 years, who is a psychologist, tells me: whatever gives you the most joy in life, that is what you are going to be best at. And we are all wired differently.
You are at an age now where you can readily change course.
A guiding principle worth thinking about, and one I seek to live by, is this: “Never die wondering.”
Finally, draw your beliefs, your values and your interests together and craft a future course for your lives which embraces all three. In other words, not just what job might interest you. But what is your vocation.
And as I said to that Harvard class all those years ago: if politics still happens to be your calling in life, what the hell are you doing in my class? Because you should be out there organising for the next election.
After all, politics should be much more than just Hollywood for ugly people.
As I said in my own first speech to the Australian Parliament nearly 30 years ago: “Politics is about power. It is about the power of the state. And whether that power is used for the many or the few.”
These then are my five principles for personal resilience. They’re not perfect. But I’ve found them to be helpful. And don’t worry if you haven’t done the foundational work yet. You’re young. But get to it soon.
As President Lincoln said more than 150 years ago: “The best way to predict your future is to create it.”
Or as the Chinese philosopher Confucius wrote nearly 2,500 years ago: “移山者始于搬起小石子” — “The man who moves a mountain begins by carrying away small stones.”
It seems the sages of both East and West are in raging agreement.
And finally, what of America’s future?
I said before that a resilient people is a necessary precondition for a resilient nation. And so too for America.
I have now lived in your great country for the last decade.
In that time I have travelled the length and breadth of this still imperfect union.
From Abyssinian Baptist in New York’s Harlem, to Montgomery, Alabama.
From Silicon Valley, to that other valley called the Shenandoah.
From the Oval Office in Washington, D.C. — with presidents of both political persuasions — to the Governor’s office in Sacramento, to the Mayor’s office in Atlanta, Georgia.
What I have seen is this.
America is a good country, and it remains so.
The American people are a good people, and they remain so.
America, despite its loud, extreme and partisan rancour, remains a free country.
America, despite its inequalities, remains the most dynamic, innovative and entrepreneurial economy in the world.
America, notwithstanding its division and debate, remains a free society, because I have lived in societies which are not free, and I know the difference.
In America, both Catholic and Protestant, Muslim and Jew, Hindu and Buddhist, believer and non-believer, despite sectarian difference, manage to live in remarkable harmony with one another.
And in America, you remain blessed by the courage, professionalism and integrity of your millions of men and women in uniform, whom you rightly venerate as the ultimate custodians of this nation’s and your allies’ security.
America is not without its problems. Nor is Australia. On this, I’m no Pollyanna.
But as a nation, after 250 years, you have proven to be remarkably resilient. As a people, you have proven to be remarkably resilient.
You’ve come a long way since those first shots were fired on Lexington Green in 1775.
America’s historical resilience, grounded in its citizenry, nurtured by its institutions, represents the cumulative efforts of each generation.
From Washington’s through Lincoln’s.
Through the Roosevelts’, both Teddy and FDR.
Then JFK’s generation, LBJ’s and Reagan’s, through to this day.
And now it falls to your generation. To respond once again to the call to public service — public service in whatever form that public service takes.
So, as the prophets of old would say to the peoples of old when confronting the existential challenges of their time:
Be not afraid, for there is no room for fear. Remember what FDR said — instead, be strong and of a good courage.
For this graduating class from this great American university, build resilience into your souls in the quietness of the evening and through the morning’s light, to be that same resilient people the world has come to know since the trials of Valley Forge.
And on those sturdy foundations — foundations of rock rather than sand — continue to build this nation’s resilience as well.
For now, more than ever before, the world needs a resilient America.
So, friends, graduating students: may God bless you as you embark on the great voyage of life.
And may God bless these United States of America.