Never dull in life of Lockie
PROFESSOR STEWART LOCKIE TAKES PRIDE IN HIS ROLE AT THE CAIRNS INSTITUTE AND THE GREAT WEALTH OF EXPERTISE THAT IT BRINGS TOGETHER,
The Cairns Institute’s director Distinguished Professor Stewart Lockie (above) is acutely aware of his privilege. White, male, Australian, university educated, married with two kids and a frequent international flyer, Mr Lockie is at pains to point out how uninteresting he is. “I think you’re genuinely privileged when you get to say ‘I’m not a terribly interesting person but I get to have an interesting life’,” he said. “Because of the sort of work I do I get to go to a lot of interesting places to meet people from very diverse backgrounds and do interesting stuff. My background itself is not particularly interesting.”
THE Cairns Institute’s director Distinguished Professor Stewart Lockie is acutely aware of his privilege.
White, male, Australian, university educated, married with two kids and a frequent international flyer, Mr Lockie is at pains to point out how uninteresting he is.
“I think you’re genuinely privileged when you get to say ‘I’m not a terribly interesting person but I get to have an interesting life’,” he said.
“Because of the sort of work I do I get to go to a lot of interesting places to meet people from very diverse backgrounds and do interesting stuff. My background itself is not particularly interesting.”
The only boy among three siblings brought up in Sydney’s northern suburbs, Mr Lockie went on to study agriculture at the University of Western Sydney’s Hawkesbury campus after high school.
A research career investigating the evolution and impacts of environmental policy in agriculture took the cycling fanatic to universities all over Australia before the opportunity at James Cook University’s new think tank came up in Cairns.
“My family was keen to move back to Queensland, north Queensland in particular,” Mr Lockie said.
“Not that my wife and the kids didn’t like the ACT, but they were always sick.
“The lack of humidity didn’t agree with them.
“Professionally, I wanted to work at a university that had a stronger sense of its responsibility to its regional community.”
While Cairns has been home since being appointed to Cairns Institute’s top job in 2014, the route from home to the city’s international airport is a well-worn track.
Mr Lockie’s position as president of the International Sociological Association’s Research Committee on Environment and Society and as a member of the International Council for Science’s Commit- tee for Scientific Planning and Review meant earlier this week he was in Paris.
Soon, he will be heading to China to advise on other social matters.
But Mr Lockie draws the biggest pride from the benefits the Cairns Institute, which brings together the expertise and intellectual resources of more than 20 disciplines in the humanities and social sciences for research, capacity building and public debate in the tropics, provides its external partners.
A program between JCU, Papua New Guinea universi-
MR LOCKIE WENT ON TO STUDY AGRICULTURE AT THE UNIVERSITY OF WESTERN SYDNEY’S HAWKESBURY CAMPUS AFTER HIGH SCHOOL
ties and the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade aims to build the higher education sector in our nearest neighbour.
“Just a couple of weeks ago we graduated 20 people from Papua New Guinea, all lecturing staff at the University of PNG, who we were able to put through JCU’s graduate certificate in higher education practice,” Mr Lockie said.
“Realistically, building up their higher education sector is the thing we can do. We work with the local institutions to help PNG build into a prosperous society on their own terms.
“PNG is the most linguistically and culturally diverse place on earth, it’s the coral reef of people, there’s nowhere more interesting to do social science. Nowhere.
“We’re about involving them in what we do and equipping them in what we do as equal partners.”
When it comes to actual coral reefs, Mr Lockie compares the attitude change towards the one on the city’s doorstep, hopefully facilitated by the Cairns Institute’s Hack the Reef event later this month and the Citizens of the Great Barrier Reef project, to the change in thinking which occurred among pastoralists toward soil erosion after Landcare was formed in the 1980s.
“These things are both problems are too big for gov- ernment or any single actor to solve by themselves but they’re also not easily defined problems. They raise issues about what we value and where we’re willing to invest our resources to protect what we value,” he said. “The Reef is going to change ... just putting a fence around it and hoping for the best isn’t going to work.
“The real value I see in things like Hack the Reef is the opportunity they create to get people involved and create conversations about what we value ... which challenges the very polemic discourse we see in the political sphere.”
PROFESSIONALLY, I WANTED TO WORK AT A UNIVERSITY THAT HAD A STRONGER SENSE OF ITS RESPONSIBILITY TO ITS REGIONAL COMMUNITY STEWART LOCKIE