Afternoon Tea for the Presentation of the 2016 Winston Churchill Fellowship Awards

Guests, distinguished as are you all, welcome to Government House.

It has been a great pleasure to present each new Churchill Fellow with his or her award over the past few years, and I do so today with no small amount of pride.

This year fifteen exceptional Queenslanders enter the august ranks of Churchill Fellows.  

I congratulate each and every one of you on the quality of your ideas, and the commitment with which you are exploring them. 

I have been very impressed by your proposals. Rearing irukandji jellyfish, analysing evacuations from high-rise buildings, enhancing Outback paleotourism ... each of the fifteen projects has exciting potential for the betterment of Australia. 

Each project is very different, but as a group you all share two very significant qualities with the man in whose honour the Memorial Trust was set up over fifty years ago, though I shall leave it up to you to determine how accurately those qualities were portrayed in the recent Netflix series The Crown, which Kaye and I recently watched at the suggestion of the Premier in preparation for our forthcoming meeting with The Queen this month at Buckingham Palace. 

The first quality which you share with Sir Winston Churchill is an understanding of how foreign travel is a remarkable catalyst for the acquisition and dissemination of knowledge. 

Churchill was an inveterate traveller. He travelled widely as a youth, and became arguably the most travelled politician of his generation.

Secondly, like the statesman, leader, orator, you have an unquenchable thirst for knowledge.

Churchill was known best for his achievements in politics and leadership, of course, but he also had a great and abiding interest in science.

Only a few weeks ago an unpublished essay written by Winston Churchill was rediscovered in a museum in Fulton, Missouri.

In it he wrote of his belief that given the size of the universe it is most probable that some form of extra-terrestrial life exists.

This was written fifty years before the first planet was discovered outside our solar system, so it was quite a remarkable idea.

It is even more remarkable when you consider that it was only last week that scientists discovered seven new planets that may contain water and life!

So, as a Churchill Fellow great things are expected of you. I am excited to think of the knowledge you will bring back from your travels, and the purposes to which that knowledge will be put.

Your lives will be unquestionably altered by the experiences you are about to undertake and I wish you all the very best in your journey… as we also do for our long-standing Queensland Secretary Mr Barry Muche (pron. Mookie), who I am told is retiring this year after a long and distinguished association with the Memorial Trust. Kaye and I thank you for your service.

I look forward now to the privilege of presenting our 2016 Fellows with their certificates and badges.