Sunday, 24 August 2025
Government House
Her Excellency the Honourable Margaret Beazley AC KV

We have a tradition of welcoming guests here at Government House, which sits on Gadigal Ngura—Gadigal land—in the language of the Traditional Owners,

Bujari Gamarruwa

Diyn Babana, Gamarada

In doing so, I pay my respects to Gadigal Elders past, present, and future, and extend that respect to the Elders of all lands from which you travel.

What a delight it is to have you here this afternoon on the occasion of the International Public Works Conference 2025, which opens tomorrow evening.^[1]

There are familiar faces… David,^[2] who, prior to his role as CEO of the NSW and ACT Division of the Institute of Public Works Engineers Australasia, has been here to Government House on many occasions in his former capacity as a Minister in the NSW Government, overseeing, amongst other portfolios, Transport.

Also, Grant,^[3] the NSW Institute President, and other members of the NSW and ACT Board, many of whom I met at last year’s Annual Conference in the Hunter, which, as newly minted-Patron, I had the privilege of opening.

To our interstate and international visitors, including the Institute’s Australasian President,^[4] Board,^[5] and Emeritus Members,^[6] as well as delegate representatives from the Global Forum on Maintenance & Asset Management (GFMAM), a particularly warm welcome.^[7]

This year’s Conference theme—Shaping Tomorrow’s World—is, in many ways, the logical corollary of James Kip Finch’s famous quote, “The engineer has been, and is, a maker of history”^[8]—an observation that is as prescient today as when he wrote it in 1960. As engineering professionals in the public works sphere, you literally anchor the vision of how our built environment meets the needs of communities not only today, but also into the future.

In speaking of history, public works, and vision, and with your conference being held here in Sydney, it would be remiss of me not to mention Major-General^[9] Lachlan Macquarie, 5^th Governor of NSW.

Over the twelve years of his term, beginning on New Year’s Day 1810, Macquarie oversaw a suite of public works projects—tallied (by him) at 265—foundational to, and often still definitional of, our city’s urban landscape.

He directed the layout and widening of streets; commissioned many of our first public amenities, including the Rum Hospital, Sydney’s first public-private enterprise; ordered the paving of the muddy track from the city to Parramatta, funded by our first tollway; and built the first road through the previously-thought-impassable Blue Mountains, a project completed in an astonishing six months.

Of course, in all of this, Macquarie had the benefit of a resource unavailable to today’s engineers, convict chain gangs.

Here, I might note a circle-of-history moment. One of our guests today, Emeritus member Geoff Fowler OAM,^[10] is descended from one of those convicts who helped build the bridges on the Blue Mountains crossing.^[11]

Macquarie’s ambition often clashed with authorities in Britain; a conflict rooted, in a difference of vision.

For the British, New South Wales was but a penal colony, with all the austere utilitarianism that implied.

Macquarie, for his part, quickly gauged that New South Wales was becoming a resourceful and growing community that both needed, as well as deserved, an infrastructure to meet its needs.

There was also the matter of cost.

For all his spirit of innovation and public service, Macquarie was not a public works engineer, and, as such, often forgot—or deliberately ignored—an important public works step: securing funding approval before beginning construction.

He was also absent another characteristic quality of the engineer, modesty. People liked naming things after Macquarie almost as much as he liked naming things after himself.

That was a convention that lay silent for too long, intersected perhaps only by the recognition of John Bradfield responsible, among other things, for Sydney’s most iconic piece of infrastructure, the Harbour Bridge, as well as the city’s underground rail network.

Bradfield was, in many senses, as visionary as Macquarie. As Jack Lang, Premier of NSW at the time of the Harbour Bridge’s opening said: “He was always thinking of the future. He was probably the first man to plan for Sydney as a city of two million people”^[12], double its size at the time.

Australia’s shortest highway the Bradfield Highway at 2.1 km (for our visitors, the road across the Harbour Bridge) is of course named after him and this Friday you will visit Bradfield City,^[13] some 60 km to Sydney’s west, one of Australia’s largest urban development projects and the first major city built in Australia in over a century.^[14]

It is in this spirit of looking to the future; of collaborative sharing of knowledge; in seeking better means of designing, constructing, and maintaining our built infrastructure; in embracing and adapting new technologies and approaches; of ensuring sustainability;^[15] I wish you all the very best over the coming days of your Conference.

[1] IPWC25 Program for Monday, 25^th August, available here

[2] The Hon. David Elliot, CEO, IPWEA (NSW and ACT), former Minister for Transport, Minister for Veterans, Minister for Western Sydney, Minister for Police and Emergency Services, Minister for Counter-Terrorism, Minister for Corrections, Parliament of NSW.

[3] Mr Grant Baker, President, IPWEA NSW and ACT

[4] Mr Ian Daniels, President, IPWEA

[5] Mr Ben Clark, Vice President, IPWEA

[6] including Mr David Andrews; Mr Chris Champion; Mr Paul Di Iulio; Mr Geoff Fowler OAM; Mr Mick Savage; Mr Warren Sharpe OAM (immediate past President, IPWEA NSW and ACT); Mr Christopher Watson OAM; Mr Bill Woodcock

[7] including Ursula Bryan, IAM (UK); Johannes Coetzee, Martec (South Africa); Naoki Takesue, Japan Association of Asset Management; Gary Porteus, Āpōpō (New Zealand) Anfrej Androjna, EFNMS (Europe) 

[8] James Kip Finch, The Story of Engineering, Doubleday, 1960, p. xxvii.

[9] Macquarie was sworn in as Governor in 1810 with the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel; while Governor, he was successively promoted to Colonel in July 1811, Brigadier-General in November 1811, and then, finally, Major-General in 1813: M.D. McLachlan, ‘Lachlan Macquarie’, Australian Dictionary of Biography online, available here

[10] Mr Fowler received his OAM for services to engineering and was invested by the Governor during the Autumn 2019 Investiture Ceremonies at Government House. He also attended the garden party celebrating the 50^th anniversary of the Australian Honours System earlier this year: Governor of NSW Facebook post, 18 February 2025, available here

[11] For his efforts, Mr Fowler’s ancestor received a pardon and a plot of land: conversations with Mr Fowler on 14 February 2025.

[12] Peter Spearitt, ‘John Job Crew Bradfield’, Australian Dictionary of Biography online, available here.

[13] IPWC25 Program for Friday, 29^th August, available here. From the Conference program: “The Bradfield Development Authority was established in 2018 by the previous Coalition Government to coordinate government, business and communities in the establishment of the new city of Bradfield and assist in its role to compliment the new Western Sydney Airport. This tour will begin with a brief in the new city’s Visitor Centre before we tour the new city centre, world–class infrastructure and employment lands which will eventually become the home to 20,000 jobs and 10,000 new homes. This $25 billion project is set to set a new benchmark in planning right across the globe”

[14] ‘Delivering Bradfield City Centre’, NSW Government website, available here

[15] The non-plenary sessions are divided into 4 streams: Asset Management; Public Works; Technology; Sustainability.