E&OE....................................................................................................
Well, I'd like to thank my colleague David Kemp for that introduction.
To my other ministerial and parliamentary colleagues, and to the members
of the Youth Roundtable.
I simply want as Prime Minister to welcome you and to thank you for
participating in what is really a first as far as the national Government
is concerned. We decided on a roundtable as a method of distilling
some of the views of young Australians. I guess those members of the
roundtable here today have discovered what we Members of Parliament
discovered when we first came to this and the predecessor building
and that is that our strongly held views on particular issues must
be mixed with the equally strongly held views of our parliamentary
colleagues.
We will find out of the roundtable the great opportunity and stimulus
of hearing the varied views of young Australians. We are not looking,
nor are we expecting, a single voice from you on each and every important
issue. Rather, we recognise that you have been drawn from different
sections of the Australian community to reflect the tremendous diversity
of our nation. You gather, of course, at an increasingly exciting
time in Australia's history. You are fortunate, and we as Members
of Parliament are fortunate, that we have the opportunity to reflect
upon the past history of our country and also contemplate future opportunities
for our nation on an occasion where we are about to end one millennium
and start another. And where importantly for the Australian community
we are about to celebrate 100 years of the federation of Australia.
And as the months ahead of us go by all Australians both young and
old will increasingly feel a sense of history and a sense of participating
in some very memorable moments and some very memorable occasions.
Every generation of Australians, of course, is different. Every generation
of Australians is born into different circumstances and the current
generation of young Australians is no different in that sense. You
are born into a society which in so many ways is infinitely superior
to the society in which earlier generations were born. But also you
are born into a society which in other ways is very different and
in some respects less stable than earlier societies.
I am very much on the side of the optimists both about current generations
of Australians and about their future prospects. You almost uniquely
of the generations of this century are growing up, and have grown
up, reaching full adulthood at a time when there is a markedly less
ideological divide both throughout the world and within the Australian
community than used to be the case. You are, of course, the first
generation of Australians to benefit fully from the wonders of information
technology. And you will participate like no other Australian generation
as the years go by in the flow through benefits of that remarkable
epoch in the history and the experience of the world. You are also,
of course, participating in a world that has long since put behind
it issues related to nuclear annihilation . I perhaps even wonder
whether the issue has even come up in any of your discussions over
the last couple of days. Yet 15 years ago, indeed 10 years ago it
would have been almost inconceivable that a youth round table could
have taken place without that issue perhaps dominating all of the
discussions like no other. That is an example of some of the different
challenges that are faced. Today's young people of course are
very different from young people of earlier generations. Yet as in
all things there is a continuity.
There is a continuity of certain values. The importance we all place
on our families, the importance we place on our personal relationships,
the importance we place on job security, the importance we place on
a sense of fairness and a sense of decency and a sense of justice.
And as Australians we seek to find that in our different ways. We
approach it in different perspectives and you will have had displayed
before you over the last few days the different perspectives of both
the Government parties and the opposition parties.
But despite some of our different perspectives we do share a lot in
common. We do want a society of greater opportunity and greater hope.
I think young people are looking for believable solutions to problems.
I don't think any of us imagined that any government of any ideology,
or pattern of belief or thought has all of the answers to all of the
world's problems. I think our expectations about what governments
can realistically achieve are in better dimension now then perhaps
they were a generation ago. And increasingly I find young Australians
looking for believable, understandable solutions to tangible problems
and tangible challenges.
The young of Australia today of course are not the compulsive of joiners
of institutions and organisations that was the wont of their forebears.
And political parties are no different than other organisations in
having to work harder to attract active recruits. It is a challenge
faced by all organisations throughout Australia and I guess throughout
the western world.
Today's young Australians are also a group of people who delightfully
can keep their options open to the very last moment in a way that
earlier generations of Australians found far more difficult. And as
somebody who co-habitates with three young Australians who occupy
the age cohort represented by the members of the round table today,
none of the more remarkable of the experiences that I have on a daily
basis is the capacity of people in that age group to keep their options
on virtually anything open until the very last moment. And it is something
that I very greatly envy and I think members of older age cohorts
of Australians greatly envy.
Can I welcome all of you to the national capital. Can I express to
all of you as representatives of young Australia a simple pride in
my country and your country, a simple belief that Australia remains
without question the greatest country in the world in which to live.
A nation that has not been without its blemishes and a nation that
has not been without its grievous errors and its grievous mistakes.
But a nation that nonetheless is fairer, freer, more egalitarian,
more open hearted, and more fundamentally dec
ent, than any nation on Earth, and a nation which I know we are all
very proud to call our own. Thank you.
[ends]