Sam Mostyn

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313 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Aug 2026 last heard 1 Aug

Sam Mostyn’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Full Story · Governor general Sam Mostyn on the ‘growing catastrophe’ in our democracy · 1 Aug 2026 podcast

The other group that soaks that up is those that seek citizenship, who have arrived from another part of the world and over time have chosen to become Australian citizens.

And so at citizenship ceremonies, I will see those who are taking citizenship who understand every bit of the tenet of our values, our civic system, our parliamentary democracy, our constitutional arrangements, because they've had to learn it to become a citizen, but they've also often left countries

And they've left those countries to come to a place that has the rule of law, a constitution, elected representatives, representative parliaments.

And so those two groups learn a lot.

But by the time those fifth and sixth graders are in high school, unless they've done another civics tour or they're studying legal studies, their knowledge is dropping off.

But where I see the most woeful lack of understanding of the basic understanding of the tenets of our democracy, it's in the adult population.

And it's mostly people who attack our system, who say we shouldn't have a Governor-General or who ask the Governor-General to do things that are not within my powers or criticise me for signing the bills that I must sign because they think I should have a view that clearly I do not have as Governor-General, certain things I must do under my constitutional requirements.

But we've got a growing catastrophe, I think, in a failure to understand and engage with and feel proud of the very civic underpinnings of our democracy.

And it starts with understanding why we have a constitution, how it came to be,

It's 125 years old this year.

It was built in a particular way to bring the states and territories together in order to build a sense of unity around the country.

And it sets up everything that then builds the strength of our democracy from the way I interact with the parliament, the role of representative democracy and the strengthening of the checks and balances that an office like mine brings

under our constitution to guarantee stability.

And so for that reason, I've been engaging with a lot of educators around the country and those who are deeply invested in us regaining civics education, not just in our education system, but right across educating everybody and inviting everybody into a discussion on why

we are as strong as we are, where that comes from and what we must protect to make sure we remain strong.

I'm the patron of the Constitutional Education Fund of Australia, which is chaired by former Justice Robert French of the High Court.

And he recently asked me if I would host

a major roundtable on civics education and social cohesion, which we hosted in Government House, 50 people from around the country representing 30 organisations, wanting to understand this need for us to really engage in civics, how to make civics exciting and dynamic for all the population, but also seeing increasingly the risk of losing our civics understanding and a growth in social or lack of social cohesion.

which is most evidenced by that terrible tragedy, that terrorist attack in Bondi.

So thinking about where anti-Semitism sits, where Islamophobia sits, as we try to build cohesion, one of our greatest strengths is our civics and our constitution and our opinion.

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