Archbishop of Sydney

Response to the Prime Minister’s Announcement of Federal Government Support for a Sydney Campus of the University of Notre Dame Australia

By + Cardinal George Pell
Archbishop of Sydney
1 August 2004

Prime Minister, Professor Tannock, Distinguished Guests.

The Prime Minister’s announcement today of significant Federal Government support for the new Sydney Campus of the University of Notre Dame Australia is good news. On behalf of the Archdiocese of Sydney I want to express my deep appreciation to you, Prime Minister, for the decision of your government, and to thank you also for your strong personal support for this initiative. We are particularly grateful too for support of the Minister for Education, Dr Nelson.

In the United States there are approximately 230 Catholic universities or tertiary colleges. The Catholic population here is much smaller, of course; about one-eleventh the size of the Catholic population in the United States. Proportionately that means we could have 20 Catholic universities in Australia. At the moment we only have two. This means there is plenty of room for growth in the Catholic tertiary education sector, and this new campus of the University of Notre Dame in Sydney is a further step in responding to this challenge, complementing the good work of the two small campuses of Australian Catholic University in Sydney.

There is nothing unusual about the Church’s interest in tertiary education. The university is a Christian invention, born as Pope John Paul II has said from the heart of the Church in the thirteenth century. The Church is dedicated, like the university, to the service of truth. A Catholic university pursues knowledge and understanding, not just as an exercise of reason or freedom alone, but to serve and defend the indivisible unity of freedom, reason and love that makes us human and provides the basis of human dignity.

The Archdiocese of Sydney provides significant support to Catholic tertiary education in this city and this will continue. We are pleased to be able to extend this support to the University of Notre Dame Australia, and I am delighted to have them as our partner in this particular venture.

Notre Dame has a distinguished record in providing Catholic university education in Western Australia in law, teaching, nursing, business, communications and the humanities. It will bring to Sydney its well-earned reputation for successful innovation in educating students for these professions. It has secured a strong position in the prestige-end of the university market in the West, based on Catholic values, high standards, and superb teaching. Another important reason for its success is its approach to students which ensures a personalised and community experience of university life.

The campus of Notre Dame will be based here at Broadway. When it opens in 2006 there will be courses in law, teaching, nursing and business. In 2007 or 2008 it will also offer courses in medicine. It will be a private university and from the beginning most of its funding will come from private sources. But the priority-HECS places in nursing, teaching and medicine which the Prime Minister has announced today, together with the Federal Government’s contributions towards capital funding, provide an enormous boost to getting the campus underway sooner and on a sounder footing than might have been otherwise possible. There is no doubt that the policy settings currently in place in tertiary education make it significantly easier to open new universities, and I am very grateful for the opportunities that have been created in this crucial area.

There has never been a Catholic law school or a Catholic medical school in Eastern Australia. The law school which was established in the West at Notre Dame in the 1990s was the first Catholic law school in Australia, and this is also true for Notre Dame’s medical school which will open in Fremantle next year. Law and medicine are vitally important professions, and like all professions they need to be taught well and guided by sound values. In the diverse and complex society of modern Australia students should have available in these professions-and in other important professions like teaching, nursing and business-the options that a Catholic university like Notre Dame provides. I support choice and diversity in primary and secondary education, and I also support it in tertiary education. This personal commitment of mine reflects the Church’s wider commitment to making an excellent education with a religious dimension available to all Australian students of every religious tradition and no religious tradition.

The campus that will be developed on this site, and the campus that we hope to develop for the medical school in Darlinghurst in conjunction with St Vincent’s Hospital, will not just be for Sydney or for the Sydney Archdiocese. The nursing and medical schools in particular are intended to serve Catholic hospitals and nursing homes throughout eastern Australia, particularly in regional areas. Although it is still early days, I hope that it might be possible for up to 75 per cent of our student doctors to do their clinical training in hospitals outside Sydney.

The development of alternatives is one important contribution that a Catholic medical school will make to our society, and for the better. One example I am very keen to explore is the development of a speciality in indigenous health. Notre Dame has strong links with the indigenous community in Western Australia through its Broome campus. I hope this expertise can be brought to its campus in Sydney and be put to the service of indigenous people in the immediate area here at Broadway and in the regions of eastern Australia.

In closing I would like to pay tribute to the vision of those who have helped us to this important initial stage. Once again I would like to thank you, Prime Minister, for the enthusiastic way in which you and your government responded to the proposal for a Sydney campus of Notre Dame. You understand what we are trying to do here and how it will benefit the wider Australian community. Your backing and generosity have been very important, as was the strong support of Dr Nelson.

I would also like to thank Professor Peter Tannock, the Vice-Chancellor of Notre Dame and his University Council for their support and for the way Professor Tannock has progressed this proposal for a Sydney campus. My thanks also go to St Vincent’s Hospital in Darlinghurst for their sympathy towards a Catholic medical school, and to the Archbishops of Melbourne and Brisbane, who have also expressed their enthusiasm for a Catholic medical school in Sydney, and their willingness to support clinical practice in their hospitals.

Thank you all for coming today. I look forward to welcoming you back to Broadway for the official opening of the Sydney campus of the University of Notre Dame Australia in 2006.