E&OE..................
[Tape Starts]
As a ten year old pupil of the Earlwood Primary School in Sydney in 1949,
by courtesy of the ABC booming school broadcasts into our classroom, I remember
the occasion of the inauguration of the Snowy Scheme, and that distinctive
voice of one my predecessors, Ben Chifley, announcing in October 1949 along
with the then Governor General Sir William McKell, and Sir William Hudson,
the inauguration of this great Snowy Mountains Scheme. I don't think it's
any exaggeration to say that of all the great national development projects
that our nation has experienced, none has gone anywhere near capturing the
imagination as has the Snowy. Not only did it capture the imagination of
a post war Australian community anxious to throw off the drudgery of war
time controls and restrictions, keen to embrace new citizens from different
parts of the world, but beyond that it enabled us to demonstrate to ourselves
and to demonstrate to the world our superb engineering skills, our technical
capacities, and as Mr Charlton said in his speech, the great capacity, the
can-do character, of the Australian nation.
It remains 50 years on an astonishing engineering achievement rightly recognised
around the world as such. It was as we have been reminded, a dangerous undertaking.
And the deaths of 121 people are recorded during the years of the construction
of the various elements of the Snowy Scheme.
It is of course very much part of the history and the fabric of post war
Australia that the Snowy River Scheme enabled us to see for the first time
perhaps as an entire nation, the advantage of people of different backgrounds,
of different ethnicities, of different cultures, of different nationalities
working together. So many of them have recently been devastated and uprooted
by war in Europe. Many former enemies, enemies only a few years earlier
forgot old animosities and worked together within the embrace and within
the environment of a new nation. And in the process they made an enormous
contribution to shaping and defining the modern Australia which is a beacon
of tolerance and understanding to the rest of the world.
100,000 people worked on the scheme from 30 different nations. It was finished
on or just below budget, it was finished on time, and it was an incredible
demonstration of what this country can do and what this country can achieve.
And tonight is an occasion to acknowledge the contribution first and foremost
of the men and women who toiled and made this possible, of the great engineering
skills of some of the people that have already been mentioned, the dedication
and leadership of Sir William Hudson. And can I also as the Prime Minister
of Australia on this 50th anniversary celebration, can I acknowledge
the contribution and the dedication of two of my predecessors as Prime Minister,
in particular Ben Chifley, the Prime Minister of Australia when the scheme
was launched. And of course who was part of the Government that oversaw
the establishment of the Snowy Mountains Authority in the 1940s. And then
through the 1950s and '60s, the leadership of Sir Robert Menzies and the
late Senator Sir William Spooner who for many years as Minister for National
Development, in partnership with Sir William Hudson, played a major role
in giving political guidance to the development of the scheme.
We honour the men and women of the Snowy. Not only for their great engineering
achievement, not only for the fact that it underpins now in 1999 the power
generation of our nation, but also the provision of much needed water to
so many of our citizens and many of our farmers who are well represented
here tonight, and a constant reminder that in a vast dry continent such
as Australia, the nurturing and the preservation of our precious resource
water continues as one of our great national priorities. But we also honour
most importantly what the Snowy Scheme represents to us 50 years on, of
the aspirational character of the Australian people. It was inaugurated
at a time when we had just come out of a war. It was inaugurated at a time
when we were about to begin one of the great periods of economic growth
and expansion that our nation has experienced. It was also inaugurated at
the beginning of our first real comprehensive contact with building a nation
of many backgrounds, and of many cultures and of many peoples, and many
countries and many nationalities.
And the important thing for us to recognise today is that in each of those
respects the Snowy has been a resounding success. It told us that we had
engineers the equal of any in the world. It told us that we had people of
vision and commitment to national development the equal of any in the world.
It told us that we could bring people of different nationalities in an environment
of cooperation and tolerance, in putting aside older animosities which have
become a model to the rest of the world, and it is a reminder to us in 1999
that there is nothing that the Australian people can't do. There's nothing
that the Australian people can't aspire to achieve if they make the commitment,
they display the vision, and they have the determination. And that is the
great legacy of the Snowy, and it is the thing that binds all of us together
in saluting those who played a part in bringing it to fruition, and we honour
their contribution on this very delightful occasion, in this most remarkable
setting. Thank you.
[Ends]