E&OE..........................................................................................................................
Mr Sinclair, Mr Jones, fellow delegates and guests. I suppose, in
a sense, we are all speeched out and we have another eight or nine
days of debate and discussion ahead of us. But I thought as we reminisced,
many of us who'd sat in the famous old chamber in which we met
today, we reminisced about the events that took place there and my
mind and my experience of that chamber goes back to the election of
May of 1974. And of course, that experience encumbered some of the
dramatic and traumatic, for some, for most, events of recent Australian
political history. I must say, the very impressive parliamentary main
of Gough Whitlam who was Prime Minister when I first came into parliament:
the confrontations that followed between he and Malcolm Fraser; the
removal in rather unexpected, spectacular terms of Jim Cope, the Speaker.
And then, of course, the dramatic events of November of 1975.
As I wandered along the corridors of the old building I thought of
the odd Liberal Party ballot that had taken place in the Opposition
Party Room. And, of course, the real reason why, ladies and gentlemen,
we are having this convention in the Old Parliament House is that
for long years I coveted the Prime Minister's office in the corner
of this building and, of course, unfortunately, we had moved to a
new place before I finally aspired to the office. So I thought some
kind of occupation by surrogacy through this convention was probably
not a bad idea.
And I think of the tremendous parliamentary battles that I had with
Bill Hayden. And, I guess, as I looked around at the gathering of
current and former members of parliament of two on opposite sides,
I guess of those that are here as delegates, Bill and I would have
probably faced each other more, and more intensely and more passionately
on different issues, he as Opposition Leader and I, as Treasurer,
between 1977 and 1982.
But, of course, it is not only the house that has great memories.
It is also this dining room which was the scene of many a parliamentary
gathering. My first experience was a farewell dinner to the former
Governor-General, the late Paul Hasluck. I had reason to reflect later
that perhaps some might have wanted that farewell dinner to be have
been delayed by four or five years.
But, I also think back to another of the very early dinners I attended
here. It wasn't quite his last ride but it was a dinner attended
in honour of the visiting Tsar of Iran in 1974. But I have to say
that probably the last official luncheon or dinner that I attended
here was a most extraordinary one. Believe it or not it was tendered,
I hasten to say, by the Hawke Government of course, in honour of the
late but not lamented President and dictator of Romania, Nicolae Ceausescu.
It does seem strange but it happened. He came. I have got to say that
Bob in his inimitable style said: "oh well, it was arranged by
one of my predecessors and you know, John, I had to sort of pick up
the hospitality".
But I will never forget that lunch. I came around and I was Opposition
Leader and Bob Hawke was Prime Minister and he said: "I don't
know what we are doing with this bloke here". And he said: "How
are we going to get through it". And I said: ‘Well look,
let's see if we can sort of do a bit of a double, let's
see if each of us can avoid mentioning him'. And it was a most
extraordinary performance. It has to be the first time in the history
of Australian parliamentary hospitality that we actually, the Prime
Minister and Opposition Leader, actually went through a lunch without
mentioning the guest of honour, or his wife for that matter.
Jones, I am indebted for your interjection. Or his wife. And how did
we do it? Well, Bob Hawke, to his great credit told a story about
a great Labor figure whose anglicised name was E.G. Theodore. I thought
that was pretty impressive and he talked about, you know, this and
that inquiry and he talked about this and that contribution to fiscal
policy and this or that contribution to the Queensland Labor Party
and it was a marvellous little story. And at the end, he sat down,
everybody clapped and I thought what-on-earth am I going to do because
I had to support his remarks and I didn't know as much about
E.G. Theodore as Bob Hawke. So I spotted Lang Hancock in the audience.
And Lang, of course was well known for entering into a bit of barter
with those in Romania. So I spoke, I think, eloquently about the economic
virtues of barter, about how it was really a tremendous substitute
for economic rationalism.
So the lunch ended and Bob said: "Gee, that wasn't bad".
I thought we had made a very good unity ticket on that particular
occasion. So it was a very memorable last luncheon and certainly the
last one that I remember in this marvellous old dining room, which
I must say is rather spunkier than it was now on many occasions when
we dined in it before. But it carries very great memories for a lot
of us, in a personal sense but it also carries great memories in a
collective, national sense.
There is something rather special about today and tonight. It is an
extraordinary gathering of Australians, an extraordinary gathering
of humanity and whatever may be our views there is immense good will.
And I am now going to invite you, and I assure you this will cause
nobody any embarrassment. I am going to invite you to join me in an
utterly uncontroversial toast. So I invite you all to charge your
glasses and be upstanding and I invite you...No, it is utterly uncontroversial.
Now, do you think for a moment that I would let any of you down? I
invite all of you to join me in a toast to the land we love, Australia.
Thank you very much.
[Ends]