Professor Toni Makkai's speech at the ANIP 21st anniversary dinner

This speech was given by College of Arts and Social Sciences Dean Professor Toni Makkai at the Australian National Internship Program's 21^st anniversary dinner at Parliament House, 17 March 2015. 

Thank you Dr Lithander.

I also wish to acknowledge the traditional owners and custodians of land on which we meet today - the Ngunnawal and Ngambri peoples, and I pay my respects to their elders both past and present.

• The Honorable Bronwyn Bishop MP Speaker of the House of Representatives
• Senator the Honorable Stephen Parry, President of the Senate
• members and senators,
• members of the diplomatic corps,
• Vice Chancellor, the PVC student experience and PVC international and outreach,
• my colleagues from the university,
• ladies and gentlemen.

Tonight is about celebrating our interns – past and present – and the many people who have given up time and resources to host an intern over the past 21 years.

Hosting an intern is no small task – somebody has to care about the intern and their project, guide them in their research and from time to time provide them with some real world ‘advice’ about the expectations of what it is to be an ANIP research scholar.

There are many internship programs in universities across the country, but ANIP is special. It is special for two reasons: one is the unique funding to ANU that helps to support this program, and the second is that it is located in Canberra, the national capital.

We care deeply about our unique relationship with the Australian Parliament and are committed to educating graduates who will have the research skills to be great contributors and leaders in our community. ANIP provides students with an unparalleled opportunity to work in the national parliament and see it action, and that is an honour and a privilege.

As the Vice Chancellor has noted ANIP is not just available to ANU students – students from other universities across the country and internationally can apply to be a research scholar in the ANIP program.

Also of importance are the government departments that provide social and policy advice to Ministers – departments like DFAT, Health, Defence, Finance, Treasury and so on. And there are the national cultural institutions who also take interns like the War Memorial. These departments with their specific roles and responsibilities are unique in Australia and as a result ANIP provides a cohort of students every year with a unique experience that is not available anywhere else in the country.

Australia is a great success story in terms of its stable democracy, the relatively low levels of corruption in its public institutions, social cohesion of its diverse ethnic groups and a relatively effective welfare system in terms of heath, education and social security. This has been the legacy of a strong and well-educated public service; and CASS has been a significant contributor to that workforce. Our graduates are more likely than graduates from other universities to have jobs within 6 months, and are disproportionately more likely to go into public service of one sort or another.

Another unique aspect to this program is that we have been building strong links to the diplomatic community and I would like to thank them for their ongoing support to host interns. The first embassy to provide an internship was Embassy of Argentina in 2002 (which I suspect reflects the very strong relationship we have between our Australian National Centre for Latin American Studies and the embassies) and this semester we have 11 embassies hosting interns. In a global world building relationships with people from diverse cultures is critical to our long-term security. We know that personal relationships matter and ANIP produces cohorts of individuals who have built those essential personal networks that will enhance their careers and leadership aspirations. As a result ANIP is also a long-term investment in the future leadership of our country.

Then there are the NGOs who are located here as part of their close links to the Parliament and the business of national government. There is a cohort of ANU students that have a strong commitment to social justice and this is reflected in their aspirations for their own careers and the kind of society they want to be part of and lead.

ANIP in my view symbolises the original mission that the founding senior public servants and political leaders had for ANU. That was to produce graduates with the capabilities, analytic skills, and oral and written abilities to adapt and innovate in a changing environment.

The original drafting of the ANU legislation was farsighted – those public servants and politicians had the vision to see that ANU needed to focus not just on medical and physical sciences but to also focus on the social sciences and our place in the region if we were to be a strong, vibrant and socially and physically healthy and adaptable society.

To build and maintain such a society requires graduates in both the STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) and the HASS (humanities, arts and social sciences) disciplines. Although some of our most pressing problems may have changed, other intractable issues remain, and the application of social sciences and humanities is critical to many solutions. Indigenous disadvantage will not be solved through medical and technological fixes alone – as we know it is a far more complex issue that involves, history, law, sociology of families, the anthropology of kinship networks, linguistics and languages, cultural studies, economics and business, criminology, and environmental studies.

It goes without saying that the future of work and the economic basis of our society is in transformation to a knowledge based economy. Our lives have already be transformed through digitisation, that most disruptive of technologies. Individuals can secure their own work globally, choose when and how they work, and are no longer constrained by governments, employers nor unions in the way that they were even 20 years ago. A brave new global world has arrived.

Thus we are training graduates for not one job with one set of skills. In fact we have no idea what some of those jobs will be. We produce graduates who are innovative, creative, responsive and adaptive to our constantly changing world. ANIP takes students out of their comfort zone, asks them to work on intractable problems and encourages them to be agile in their thinking and their responses to the issue – graduates with these formative experiences and attributes are an important part of our nation’s future prosperity.

The next step for ANIP will be to offer internships outside of Canberra; in non-Australian government organisations internationally such as in Australian corporations with offices overseas and working in the public service of other nations to help build those critical personal links.

Work has already commenced on expanding the reach of our internships. Five students will have the chance to intern in the Taiwanese Public Service in 2016, an opportunity funded under the New Colombo Plan.

This year we will also establish the ANIP Advisory Board to assist in building the program’s networks and driving the program’s long term strategy. I would like to acknowledge David Pearce, a former ANIP graduate and CEO of Centre for International Economics who has agreed to be the inaugural chair of the board.

The University’s block grant is critical to ensuring that we can run this ‘high-cost’ program and we are grateful for the special funding that we receive to support the program via the block grant.

However, expanding the program in the way we envisage will add further expense for students due to the cost of airfares, visas and accommodation for up to six weeks away from their home base. Students can secure loans to support them, but those from less well-off backgrounds, are at a significant disadvantage.

For this reason, I’m pleased to announce the establishment of the Australia National Internship Endowment which will provide support to interns to take up these places.

I am pleased to announce the ANU School of Politics and International Relations will make the first donation of $10,000 to the fund. I would like to thank the School Executive for their generosity and recognition of the importance of such a fund.

ANIP is a great success story in terms of the experiences and quality of the graduates, and as a result I am announcing tonight that the College will provide from its scarce reserves $100,000 to the endowment.

Along with the ANIP booklets, on your table you will see a postcard outlining where you can get more information about the Endowment fund and how you can contribute if you wish to.

I would like acknowledge the hard work of the administrative staff here in the Parliament and at the university who have put together tonight’s event. Administrator support staff are the glue that hold our institutions together and we should never lose sight of them in our constant drive for efficiencies.

Finally, let me end by thanking you all for your support – support that has been shown in many ways. Whether you worked in developing the program, were an intern, or hosted an intern – thank you for shaping this truly unique program. You make the program what it is and I hope you will all be back here in another 21 years to celebrate ANIPs continued success.

Thank you.