EQUINE | SAEVA 2020 Speech
- No
- “Well, it will be a quick speech because you don’t know anything about anything else. What are you talking about?”
- “l’ve been asked to talk about climate change”
- “But you don’t know anything about climate change!” [Actually she said that “you know fuck all about climate
change’” but as she is not here I didn’t want to paint her in a bad light or use bad language at dinner, I changed the
words a little for effect! Artistic license!!
That doesn’t matter, I said. I am an academic. I will do some research on the topic. So, I went to the library....
As it turns out, there is quite a lot in the scientific literature on climate change, and quite a lot more in the print
and broadcast media on whether or not it is human induced. I read widely and researched deeply on subjects such
as the Southern Oscillation lndex, El Nino/La Lina, the lndian Ocean Dipole, Walker convections and the Southern
Annular Mode.
Fascinating stuff!! [the lntergovernmental Panel’s report on climate change was a real page turner - some
recommended bedtime reading]. And the more I researched and the wider I read on the subject, the more
convinced I became that, in addition to Climate Change being an existential threat to the survival of humanity on
planet Earth, there was no doubt in my mind that Climate Change was a shit-boring topic to talk about after dinner.
So, bearing in mind that change is the only constant in Iife, and we should try to embrace change and not fear it - I
changed the topic. So I thought I would talk about change...
Change is actually the only, 100% rock-solid constant in all of our lives, and you can run from it, ignore it (as
politicians around the world are currently doing with regard to Climate Change), you can rage against it, but
ultimately the only things you can rely on in the world are death, taxes, the fact that people can be relied upon to do
stupid things and the certainty that, if you wait long enough, everything will change.
I think we need to be open to embracing change, but to do that we need to recognise that the change is occurring
and find the value in the change. When I graduated from Sydney in 1994 my year was one of the first graduating
cohorts where the number of women exceeded the number of men. The attitude among employers in 1995 was
that part-time employees represented a part-time commitment - and we only want fully committed vets in our
practice.
Thankfully this attitude is changing. Along with the increased number of women in the profession the number part-
time positions has increased to accommodate family responsibilities (although vets have always had families - they
perhaps just didn’t do much of the child delivery and raising!). I joined the EVA executive committee in 2001 and
when I became EVA president in 2007 one of the things that I was proudest of was a comment from a senior female
colleague who congratulated me on turning an old boy’s club into a young woman’s club (and they let me keep my
membership!!). The attitudes of employers that “l had to do XX as a new grad, so you should too” are hopefully
becoming more a relic of the past. Times change and the attitudes and expectations of employees change too.
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