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Major General Phillips and Mrs Phillips, Mr Bruce Ruxton and Mrs Ruxton, Mr Rusty Priest the President of the NSW Branch of the RSL, Senator Chris Schacht representing the Leader of the Federal Opposition, my other parliamentary colleagues and particularly a welcome to our visitors from overseas, from Indonesia, from the United Kingdom, from New Zealand and from elsewhere and also representing the Chief of the Defence Force, General Muller.
It is for me a great pleasure to address this RSL National Congress and take the opportunity on behalf of the Government, and I know on behalf of the people of Australia, to again honour the contribution to national life of your remarkable organisation over a very long period of time.
A National Congress of the RSL is an opportunity to take stock. It's an opportunity to reflect on what has happened to your organisation and what has happened to those things to which your organisation has an abiding interest over the past 12 months. It's also for me an opportunity as Prime Minister, and respecting as I should the proper bipartisan traditions of the RSL, to reflect on a number of issues I know are of great and continuing significance to your membership. The values for which the RSL stands are as relevant to Australian life now, although they may be expressed in a more contemporary and different fashion than was previously the case, they are as relevant to the Australia today as they were many years ago.
The importance of pursuing legitimate national interests, the importance of hanging on to those parts of our history that continue to be very important for future. And the importance of nurturing amongst younger generations an understanding of the sacrifice of those who gave us the peace and stability we now enjoy are as important now as they have ever been. And the good news is I think that that goal is being achieved.
Probably the most emotional experience I've had as Prime Minister of Australia was the opportunity last year on ANZAC Day on Gallipoli Peninsula to be involved with the Prime Minister of New Zealand in dedicating the new memorial and taking part in the services on that day. And the experience of mixing with quite a number of the 15 or so thousand young Australians and New Zealanders and a few from other countries was a powerful message to me of the growing relevance of our history and the growing interest of the young in the sacrifices of earlier generations. And there's increasing evidence that with so many of our young connecting with those events, connecting with those sacrifices and connecting with those deeds is increasingly a rite of passage for many of the young men and women of Australia. And how different it is from what it might have been 25 or 30 years ago. It is a reminder to all of us that you should never lose faith in the capacity of each successive generation to understand and treasure the things that are important to our communities and are important to our history.
This is also an occasion for me to reaffirm the continued commitment of the Government to the provision of generous benefits to veterans of all conflicts in which Australia has been involved. I will not weary you with a recitation of the various things that have been done but simply to remind you that many of the things that I spoke of when I last addressed the National Congress in 1998, many of those things, including the measures that were contained in the last Budget, have been implemented. And we continue as a Government to have an extensive ongoing dialogue with the RSL, particularly through my frequent contacts and that of Bruce Scott, who may I say does a remarkably fine job on behalf of the Government in connecting with the RSL and representing the interests of veterans around the Cabinet table. And our commitment to the maintenance of those benefits and the expansion and the improvement of those benefits remains firm and unswerving.
The last couple of years of course have seen a number of decisions made about the erection and of course the dedication of memorials marking particular aspects of Australia's involvement in wars. On Anzac Parade in Canberra, the Australian Service Nurses National Memorial and the Australian National Korean War Memorial were completed and dedicated in October 1999 and April 2000 respectively. And earlier this year on the eve of ANZAC Day, the memorial honouring the association between our ANZAC partner New Zealand was jointly opened by myself and the Prime Minister of New Zealand Helen Clark. And when I was in London last year for the centenary celebrations I discussed with the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Tony Blair the erection for the first time of a memorial, an Australian memorial in London to remind the British people of the enormous contribution that this country made to the defence of the United Kingdom, especially in World War II, and that, the site of that memorial has now been selected and the anticipation is that it will be ready for opening on ANZAC Day in the year 2003.
The Government has also maintained its very strong commitment to maintaining and expanding the Australian War Memorial. And very recently I opened the new ANZAC Hall at the War Memorial and the Government provided almost $12 million towards its construction as a major project of the Centenary of Federation. And produced at a cost of $5 million the 8-part documentary Australians at War was screened on ABC Television from ANZAC Day this year.
All of these things along with the maintenance and upgrading of benefits represents a proper, necessary and I believe very fully supported commitment by the Government of Australia to honouring the contribution of people who died defending this country and honouring our continuing obligations to those who survive and live amongst us. There's no group in the Australian community to which more is owed than those who put their lives on the line to defend this country. And there is no group in the Australian community more deserving of the ongoing gratitude and respect of their fellow Australians.
As time goes by we live in ever expanding hope that this country will never again be engulfed in the kind of conflict which overcame us in 1914 and again in 1939. But the League's great motto is of continuing relevance. And in recent years action taken by this country, most particularly the action taken to defend the people of East Timor, is a powerful reminder that although we live in an environment which is no longer bedevilled by great power rivalry of the kind we had before the collapse of soviet communism in the late 1980s, and although we no longer have that to bedevil us, we nonetheless live in a region which is probably more turbulent, more unsettled and therefore potentially more threatening than it might have been 25 years ago.
And we need to maintain a capacity in our defence forces to respond to small scale but nonetheless very significant regional disturbances. It's been an important element of the Defence White Paper released by the Government at the end of last year. That Defence White Paper which I'm pleased to note has brought bipartisan support, is a document which sets out in a very comprehensive way a defence strategy for the future of Australia over the next 25 years. It was prepared after widespread community consultation. The ministerial consideration of it was intensive and a consideration in which myself and the other senior members of the National Security Committee of Cabinet devoted a great deal of time. And it represents our best effort to produce an expanded investment in the future defence of Australia. Something that is defensible in terms of the contribution it makes to the first responsibility of the Government regarding the security of our nation. But it also gives us a capacity to act in regional areas as and when the circumstances require.
So it is very much an occasion ladies and gentlemen for us to reflect on the events of the past year. For me on behalf of the Government to renew our unswerving commitment to the welfare of the returned men and women who have served this country in war. To again honour the contribution of those who did not return. And to repeat on behalf of all of the people of Australia the continuing sense of debt and gratitude we feel to those who gave everything to deliver the kind of society in which we live today for which we are so eternally grateful. Thank you.
Thank you.