E&OE...................
Thank you very much Chris. To his worship the Mayor, to my ministerial colleague,
Nick Minchin, to Shane Stone the Federal President of the Liberal Party,
other distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen.
Last night we were all delayed a little bit waiting for some legislation
to go through the Senate to finally resolve the question to be put to the
Australian public on the 6th of November in relation to the two
issues of our Constitutional arrangements and the preamble.
And I offered a lift on the VIP to Robert Hill and to Chris Gallus and to
Alexander Downer. And we had a very, very pleasant discussion on the way
over about a whole range of things. And about half an hour after we'd been
up in the air Chris said: what are you doing for dinner tonight? And I said:
well, eating. And she then said: well, why don't you join Alex and I in
a restaurant in Glenelg. So we decided to do that and I had a very delightful
evening last night in what is obviously a marvellous restaurant and soaked
up some of the local ambience and experienced the great prosperity under
the Howard Government here in the city of Adelaide.
But I am particularly delighted to be here today. And when you have been
in politics for a year or two you are always captured and enthralled by
the ironies of politics. I mean, it really tickles my political fancy that
a seat like Hindmarsh which for so many years was held by the Australian
Labor Party is now in Liberal party hands. That intrigues me greatly.
But I know this is a non-political occasion and it's an occasion to declare
open a new electorate office. It's an occasion for me as Prime Minister
and as Leader of the Federal Parliamentary Liberal Party to congratulate
Christine Gallus on the tremendous work that she has done in the years that
she has been in Parliament since 1990. She won a very difficult seat. It
was not easy, it's never been easy to retain it.
And over the years South Australia has delivered to, may I very proudly
say, my Government has delivered to us as very large number of seats. A
disproportionately large number of seats but a happily disproportionately
large number of seats. And if I may be gender selective for a moment one
of the reasons for that is that here in the State of South Australia we
have been very lucky to have a large number of extremely skilful female
members of Parliament who have brought particular campaigning skills. And
indeed of all of the States of Australia we have a larger percentage in
our ranks of women representing the people of Australia in the Federal Parliament
than in any other part of the country. And that is a particularly important
thing and Christine's own campaign skills have been very, very considerable
and much admired. Her electorate's boundaries have changed, bits have come
in that weren't expected and other bits have gone out that were lamented.
But overall she's managed to project the stance of somebody who is involved
with and concerned about her local community.
The late Speaker of the American House of Representatives, Tip O'Neil, coined
that now fairly well known phrase that all politics was local. And it is.
And any of us who lose sight of the fact that politics is local and any
of us who lose sight of the fact that you need to retain contract with your
local community will very quickly find yourself either out of office or
out of a seat. And as I look around today I can see that Chris Gallus has
retained contact with her local community in a very impressive and a very
representative way. And that that is the foundation of high quality representation
in either the State Parliament or in the national Parliament.
It is a time where it's very easy for us as Australians to feel hopeful
and optimistic about our future. We've had a lot of news this week. But
in many ways the best news of all came yesterday when we learnt that the
rate of youth unemployment in this country had fallen by 5.8 percentage
points since March of 1996. And I think that is. Because in the end what
the responsibility of any government is to provide hope and optimism and
enthusiasm for the young in our community. And we still have a long way
to go because we still have an unemployment rate which is too high, but
it is a lot lower than what it was three years ago. And that is coming off
the back of an economy which has given to this country, not only a rate
of economic growth, but a sense of national pride and achievement that we
haven't had for a long time.
One of the best feelings I had when I went overseas a few weeks ago was
that I was going over as the Leader of a country that had outperformed just
about every other country in the world economically. I was going as the
Prime Minister of a nation that was seen as the economic strongman of the
Asian Pacific region. I was going as the Prime Minister of a country whose
political stability and economic strength was widely respected all around
the world.
I had a meeting last Sunday in Sydney with, with Paul Volker, the former
Chairman of the US Federal Reserve, the man who preceded Dr Alan Greenspan.
And he knows a little bit about the worlds economies and he was out here
for an economic conference with the Reserve Bank. And he spoke to me then
of the admiration he felt for what the Australian economy had done over
the last few years and I got a copy of the latest edition of the Fortune
magazine which has a major spread on the performance of the Australian economy.
Recently the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times and the Economist
have all spoken of our economic achievement. Now this has been no accident.
You make your own luck in government and in politics as you do in life.
Not all of it's luck, some of it's luck, some of it's luck but most of it
is at the end of the hard work of the government, our commitment to pursuing
policies that were a bit unpopular and a bit risky at the beginning, but
they are now starting to bear fruit. And we are all starting to enjoy the
benefit of them.
But we haven't focussed just on economics. We don't just live to borrow
that famous biblical injunction, by bread alone. We are interested in things
that go the quality of life in our community. We have tried to develop in
this community over the last three years what I call a social coalition,
where you get together the government, the welfare organisations, the business
communities and the energy of individuals to solve challenges. And I am
going to have the great privilege at the lunch I'm addressing in Adelaide
later today to announce a remarkable act of corporate philanthropy on behalf
of a very well known South Australian resource company in relation to activities
at the university here in Adelaide. And I will have the opportunity then
to go into some more detail about that.
But it is an example of the spirit of cooperation between governments, communities,
individuals which is so important. And we have involved the great welfare
organisations of this community not only in looking after the needy which
is their historic capacity and mission, but we have also involved them in
policy making and in a number of areas such as drugs and other areas I have
directly involved in an executive policy making capacity organisations such
as the City Missions and the Salvation Army and the Society of St Vincent
de Paul, because they not only bring human compassion to the solution of
problems but they also bring a great skill and a great policy making capacity.
But, it's a bit cool here, I don't want to delay you with a long speech.
I want to thank you. I want to thank Christine Gallus. I want to thank her
and her campaign team and all of the people of the electorate of Hindmarsh
for the community that you represent. Federal Members are here to serve
all people. They are not only here to serve the people that voted for them,
they are here to serve the people that voted against them. And when we become
Members of Parliament we have an obligation to look after and serve and
represent and put forward the views and the concerns of all sections of
the Australian community. And Chris has done that very well. She's not (inaudible)
she's carried the Liberal banner very passionately, but she has also carried
the Hindmarsh banner and the community banner very passionately and that
is tremendously important. And in the long run that's what makes a high
quality government and high quality parliamentary representatives, representation.
So, ladies and gentlemen, congratulations to you Christine. And now, I've
got to cut a ribbon. Thank you very much.
[ends]