Friday, 4 April 2025
Government House
Her Excellency the Honourable Margaret Beazley AC KC

In greeting you in the language of the Gadigal, Traditional Owners of the land on which Government House stands, I pay my respects to their Elders past, present, and emerging. I extend that respect to the Elders of all parts from which you have travelled.

Commissioner^[1], Churchill Fellows; Winston Churchill Memorial Trust executive staff, members, and supporters; guests, family, and, most importantly, recipients of Churchill Fellowship Medallions,

Prior to Sir Winston’s Churchill’s death on the 24^th of January 1965, a Commonwealth-wide scholarship scheme in his name was already in an advanced stage of development at the instance of the English-Speaking Unions of the Commonwealth and of the United States (Churchill’s mother was American).^[2]

The great man himself had given his imprimatur to a memorial scholarship. When asked by the then Duke of Edinburgh, Prince Philip, in 1962, how he would best like to be remembered, “Sir Winston [had] suggested something like the Rhodes Scholarships, but available to all people and on a much wider basis.”^[3]

On the 1^st of February 1965, two days after the State Funeral of the great Sir Winston Churchill, Australia’s Prime Minister Sir Robert Menzies announced the formation of an Australian branch of the Winston Churchill Memorial Trust and the launch of a nationwide appeal to raise funds to provide people “selected from all walks of life […with] opportunities to travel overseas to improve their knowledge and experience”.^[4]

This included a doorknock across Australia organised by the RSL on Churchill Memorial Appeal Day—Sunday 28 February 1965—that broke all records for a single day fundraising effort in this country.^[5]

Today, 60 years later, the spirit of inclusion and opportunity, empowered by the generosity of everyday people and the Churchill Memorial Trust continues. More than 4,700^[6] Australians have received Churchill Fellowships and been given opportunities to pursue their passion for innovation, change-making, and societal betterment; to travel overseas to research, to seek out best practice, to network and to collaborate, and, most importantly, to apply the knowledge they had gained for the betterment of our communities.

This afternoon, it is my honour and privilege to present 18 NSW Churchill Fellows with their Churchill Fellowship Medallions. As you will hear shortly, through the titles of their projects, their efforts span an impressive gamut of fields, all embracing the possibility of better futures.

All are bonded by the same inspiring impulse, captured in Sir Winston Churchill’s exhortation, “What is the use of living, if it be not to strive for noble causes and to make this muddled world a better place […]?”^[7] 

To our Medallion recipients today:

Your research in your time overseas undoubtedly provided you with insights, challenges and experiences, deepening your knowledge and understanding of your individual fields of study.

Now, with your reports complete, you are on the next stage of your journey—the application of what you have learned. This is where, in a very real sense, the rubber hits the road.

Your endeavours, like the many Churchill Fellows before you, have already contributed to our nation’s knowledge, and success. I have no doubt that as a result of your study tours your impact will only grow. Your work—no matter the field of inquiry—will enrich us all.

I offer the warmest and most heartfelt congratulations to each of you, as well as the very best wishes for the future.

[1] Commissioner Jeremy Fewtrell, Fire & Rescue NSW

[2] Winston Churchill Trust website, available here

[3] Winston Churchill Trust website, available here

[4] ‘Speech by the Prime Minister the Rt. Hon. Sir Robert Menzies at the English Speaking Union, London, on the Occasion of the Launching of the Winston Churchill Memorial Trust Appeal’, 1 February 1965, available here. The Prime Minister was in London at the time, having acted as pallbearer during Churchill’s funeral and delivering a eulogy from the crypt of St Paul’s following the service. Churchill died on 24 January 1965, his funeral was held 6 days later on 30 January: J R Nethercote, ’50 Years On: Australia’s Reaction to Winston Churchill’s Death’, Sydney Morning Herald online, 25 January 2015, available here. Mr John McEwen, Acting Prime Minister, ‘Commendation of Winston Churchill Memorial Trust by the Acting Prime Minister, Mr John, McEwen’, media release, 1 February 1965, available here.

[5] The doorknock raised £911,000. By the time the contributions and pledges from the Commonwealth and State Governments, Australian companies and institutions, and individuals had been collected, the Appeal target had more than doubled: information provided by Churchill Memorial Trust.

[6] ‘Churchill Trust Celebrates Another Year of Bold Change-Makers’, Winston Churchill Trust website, 13 September 2024, available here

[7] Sir Winston Churchill, ‘Unemployment’, speech at Kinnaird Hall, Dundee, Scotland, October 10, 1908, in Liberalism and the Social Problem (1909), Hodden and Stoughton, 1959, p.210, available here. The full quote is “What is the use of living, if it be not to strive for noble causes and to make this muddled world a better place for those who will live in it after we are gone? How else can we put ourselves in harmonious relation with the great verities and consolations of the infinite and the eternal? And I avow my faith that we are marching towards better days. Humanity will not be cast down. We are going on swinging bravely forward along the grand high road and already behind the distant mountains is the promise of the sun.”