Queensland Overseas Foundation Award Ceremony

Queensland Overseas Foundation Chair, Mr Geoff Favell and the Board of Governors; industry partners and sponsors; scholarship and bursary awardees, your family and friends; distinguished guests.

I acknowledge the Original Custodians of the lands around Brisbane, the Turrbul and Jagera people, and pay my respects to Elders past, present and emerging and to all First Nations people here this morning.

Good morning, everyone — and thank you for such a warm welcome.

As both Governor of Queensland and Patron of the Queensland Overseas Foundation, I was delighted to accept the invitation to present the 2026 Scholarships and Global Connections bursaries today.

This will be the fourth time I have had this pleasure and I am particularly pleased that this year’s ceremony gives me the opportunity to congratulate the Foundation on its Golden Anniversary––50 years of creating unique pathways to overseas experience for young Queenslanders working in the trades.

When the founders made the decision to establish this organisation in 1976, it was partly to bolster the supply of skilled tradespeople in an era of burgeoning industrial growth, but it was also in response to one of the defining events in the history of technical education in this country––the release of the Kangan Report.

Until this landmark report, technical education in Australia had been consistently under-valued and under-resourced, but the substantial investment that followed the release of the report helped produce a shift in attitudes. Instead of viewing training only as a means of learning and improving technical skills, it was seen, for the first time, as a vital contribution to the education and development of the whole individual.

The Foundation scholarships, since their inception, have embraced this ethos, focusing as much attention on broadening the world view and expanding the cultural horizons of young Queenslanders as on improving their technical knowledge and skills.

The history of the Scholarships, and of the Bursaries introduced in 2014, reveals just how extensive their impact has been. Whether the winners were from Cairns or Caloundra, Moura or Mount Isa, Tully or Taroom, they have all taken up the extraordinary opportunity offered by the Foundation’s scholarship to grow and learn, not just refine their skills.

To cite just one example, in 2002, a young carpenter from Yeppoon, Luke Hinton, used his scholarship to travel to both Indonesia and Peru. Travelling to just one of those countries when you don’t know or understand the language means that even a simple, everyday act like making a phone call or catching a bus can be daunting, but research has supported what we know instinctively––living in a different culture for an extended period boosts creativity, improves problem solving, and makes people more tolerant, open, confident and ultimately more successful.

 

Those cross-cultural encounters and the benefits they bring all lie ahead for tonight’s scholarship and bursary recipients, and I wish them well as they set off on their learning adventures.

 

 

 

They are a credit to their families and to the trainers and mentors who have brought them to this point in their careers and tonight, they join a select group of people who have received these awards over the past 50 years.

 

When they return to Queensland, it will be with more than improved technical skills and a suitcase of souvenirs; they will also bring back a better understanding of the world and fresh insights that will benefit not only their trades and the industries they work in, but their families, friends, colleagues, and the communities in which they live.

 

That is a powerful gift to Australian society and I thank the Board of the Foundation, the Queensland Government and the industry partners and donors for their ongoing belief in the value of these awards and for their commitment to providing the support that makes them possible.