REVIEW
The GU AGM Dinner Thursday, 26th May
We were honoured to welcome distinguished Australian lawyer, businessman and philanthropist, Peter McMullin who was the guest speaker for The Graduate Union AGM dinner. Here are some salient points from Peter’s presentation on The University, Human Rights and Philanthropy. At the outset Peter made the point that it all began here at The University of Melbourne, an institution for which he has a great affection. He expressed his strong belief in what the university is able to do and will continue to do in the future. Rather than speaking of ‘giving’, he prefers to use the expression ‘giving back’. Peter stressed the importance of philanthropic support for this and other universities which, he suggested, are under threat, having been neglected by government for too long. Peter offered a personal reflection on the recent inauguration of an old friend, President José RamosHorta in Timor Leste, who has been elected for a second time. They first met in Melbourne in 1974 when José was advocating for his people, and Peter subsequently saw him at the United Nations where he was the sole voice for East Timor in the international arena, becoming East Timor’s de facto ambassador to the United Nations. José spoke out against human rights violations by the occupying Indonesian military forces and promoted a peace plan to end the violence in his country. During that time he struggled to get others to believe, but he demonstrated the power of persistence. To have seen José Ramos-Horta at
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his second inauguration as President of his beautiful country was really moving, said Peter, who stated that stories like this inspire him to keep going. Peter’s work with refugees has led him to advocate strongly for stateless people — who live in all parts of the world, including Australia, and are often denied basic human rights due to their lack of legal status. As a consequence, in 2018, Peter McMullin and his wife Ruth established the Peter McMullin Centre on Statelessness within the Melbourne Law School through a generous philanthropic donation – one of the most significant gifts in the history of the Law School. The couple’s generosity resulted in the world’s only academic research centre dedicated to the issue of statelessness. It reflected their great humanitarian concern. With the guidance of international refugee and statelessness law expert, Professor Michelle Foster, the Centre has undertaken research, teaching and engagement activities aimed at reducing statelessness and protecting the rights of stateless people in Australia and the Asia Pacific region. The Stateless Children Legal Clinic, established in 2021, is a proud partnership between the Peter McMullin Centre on Statelessness, the Refugee Advice Casework Service and the Melbourne Law School Clinics at The University of Melbourne. This offers a unique service providing legal education and aid to eligible stateless children in their application for Australian citizenship. There are an estimated 10–15 million stateless people in the world, approximately one third of whom are
