David Sinclair's final piece of advice to students at his alma mater could well have been directed at Tony Abbott and Joe Hockey, whose maiden Budget had threatened in one fell swoop all the foundations of a vibrant democracy: welfare, healthcare, public education — and the implicit promise by publically-elected leaders that they would undertake their duty in good faith.
'The last thing I want you to know is that there's nothing more important in life than to be honest,' Sinclair told students gathered before him in a nondescript school hall in Sydney's suburbia. 'Never lie, always tell the truth and people will grow to trust you and follow your lead.'
It was a striking comment that percolated up amidst an atmosphere of public fury.
Dazed and betrayed, the electorate was slowly digesting the list of election promises that Abbott had already broken just eight months into his term: the cutting of funding to education, health, the disability pension, foreign aid, the ABC and SBS; the changing of the retirement age and the GST; the towing back of asylum seeker boats to Indonesia; the failure to reduce debt and return the budget to surplus; and — most paradoxically of all — the botched assurance that governmental accountability and transparency would be restored.
For keen observers of Sinclair's address, there was also the poignant irony that such words of integrity were emerging from the mouth of a man educated in the very public system the Abbott Government and its new budget measures seemed intent on undermining.
Standing at the lectern in a school hall built in 1964 and barely altered or updated since, he told his audience that to be there speaking to them had been one of the highlights of his life so far.
The magnitude of this tribute was not lost on the students: after all, Sinclair is a professor of genetics at Harvard University and one of Time magazine's 100 most influential people in the world for 2014. He has spent his adult life researching ways in which humans might live longer, healthier lives, and had returned to Sydney to receive the 2014 Australian Society for Medical Research medal.
Amidst a whirl of media interviews and meetings, Sinclair was asked if there was anything else he would like to do while in his hometown. He didn't hesitate: I'd like to visit my old high school, he said.
Perhaps Sinclair understood implicitly that the students — schooled