Subjects: The role of community organisations; social coalition.
E&OE................................
Thank you very much Mal, well it's good to be back in Queensland. I've got to say aren't you all tremendously proud of what Matthew Hayden has done for Australia and for Queensland. If that betrays a small partiality of mine, you'll understand it but this state has produced some of the great Australian sportsmen and women over the years.
Ladies and gentleman this little gathering is an opportunity for me and for all of the members of my Cabinet to listen to you. We set out when we travel around Australia to have community gatherings. This is not a $200 a plate gathering, this is a gathering of people who are the backbone of the community this is a gathering of people who care about their fellow Australians and this is a gathering of great volunteer organisations.
I've talked about a lot of things in the five years that I've been prime minister. Some of them you probably agree with, some of them I'm sure you don't. But I hope that one of the things that you will agree with me on is that we always get the best results in Australia when we pull together. That giving ourselves goals in life and setting out to work together as a community to achieve them, with each part of our community doing what it does best, always produces the best results. And I've talked a lot in the time that I've been prime minister about the social coalition. That's not a political description, it's a description of Australians working together to achieve common objectives. There are things that the government can always do that others can't do. We have the capacity to provide a social security safety net of providing pensions and benefits and everything else to provide people with the wherewithal to live. We're the only part of society that can do that and it's our responsibility always to go on doing that.
But there are things that organisations that touch people's lives that are represented here today, can do in a way that no government and no bureaucracy could ever dream of doing. And in the half an hour that I've been here I've been touched by the personal stories of people who are here - of sadness, of struggle, of desperation, of despair but also a sense of hope that there is a lot of humanity in our community and a lot of people in our society who want to help their fellow citizens. And your organisations really represent the flesh and blood of human compassion and practical Christianity if I can be allowed at a civic gathering to use that expression because I'm the sort of bloke that, when I talk about something like that it seems to me to be the best way of describing it. It's not meant offensively to people of other faiths, it's just my way, according to my upbringing of describing what I mean. And I think your organisations do provide a well of support for people. You need our help, you need our understanding, many of you receive, not all of you receive, as I've found out today, government funding. Those who receive government funding want some more. Those who don't want some at least. And those who have got quite a bit naturally say they are entitled to every part of it, and I'm sure that's correct. So somehow or other in the middle we've got to make some sensible decisions about all of those things. It's not easy, and we never please everybody.
But what I see before me are a group of men and women who are dedicated to helping their fellow Australians. We want to work with you, we want to cooperate with you and I've tried over the last five years to build the idea of a social coalition. The Government doing what it does best, of the welfare sector doing what it does best. Always using the efforts and the talents of volunteers and also encouraging the business community to make a greater contribution. I never say to the business community that business should give more, I always say that more businesses should give. Because there are a lot of businesses that give generously but there are a lot that don't give at all. And when I talk about mutual obligation I don't only talk about the people who are on unemployment benefits, if they're able to do so, to do some work in return, I also talk about corporates who've done very well out of a strong economy to contribute something back to help their fellow Australians.
So ladies and gentlemen I don't want to say much more than that except to say to all of you that part of the job, part of the life of a prime minister is to move around the country to meet people. We talk a lot about making sure the economy works efficiently and that's important. But even more importantly of course is to make sure that our society works effectively, that our society works in a caring and compassionate fashion. There's no one of us, there is no one group of us that can deliver a society that is harmonious and compassionate and decent. We can only deliver it together. We in the Government have a role to play, you in the volunteer sector have a role to play, people representing business represent a sector that has a role to play and all of us as individuals, inspired in different ways, also have a role to play. And that's what I have in mind when I talk about the social coalition, it's about all of us pulling together to get the right results.
And when I think of Australia I think of a number of concepts, I think of mateship, I think of the fair-go, I think of resilience and I also think of pulling together. We're at our best when we pull together, it's normally when we face some kind of disaster or common enemy, but often pulling together in a local community is confronting the common enemy of loneliness for the elderly, the common enemy of drug abuse which wreaks such tremendous havoc on the lives of people, and I've been touched by some of the stories that I've been told in the last half an hour about that. And these are enemies of society that all of us have to pull together to fight. And if today's gathering has given me an opportunity of communicating my commitment and my dedication to that pulling together I'm deeply grateful and we're very pleased to have you as our guests and I hope I can meet as many of you as possible.
Thank you.
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