Subjects: Internet Assistance Programme; Federation; information technology; teachers.
E&OE..................
Thank you very much Maureen for that lovely introduction, Fran Bailey my Parliamentary colleague and Member for McEwen who has invited me to her electorate today, Monsignor Brigadier and my Ministerial colleague Richard Alston, Mr Mayor, ladies and gentlemen and students of St Mary's and other schools in the Seymour district.
That was a great performance of the Federation Rap. It really was. As I've gone around Australia over the last year I've enjoyed many different presentations of the Federation story and that was different, I haven't heard that one before and I haven't heard one done quite like that before and it really was very entertaining and I think it's a demonstration of what a wonderful opportunity Federation has been for all of us to rediscover our passion for Australia and all of us to rediscover in our own way the enormous things that our nation has achieved over the last 100 years.
And the really good thing about the Federation celebrations are the small ceremonies that it's given people an opportunity to have in small parts of Australia. It's not just the a big parade through the streets of Melbourne or the re-enactment of the opening of Parliament at the Exhibition Building, or the big celebrations in Sydney on the first of January and the other great celebrations in different states, but I think the way in which it's been possible for local communities to connect with the history of our country. And I remember the day when we had the re-enactment of Parliament on the 9th of May I went out to a tiny primary school in one of the suburbs of Melbourne and had the opportunity with the local member Phil Barresi of presenting the Federation medallions to the children and it was a wonderful ceremony and it reminded me a bit of having been presented with a 50 year medallion when I was at the Earlwood Primary School in Sydney back in 1951.
But ladies and gentlemen I'm delighted to be amongst you this afternoon, this is a group of people who represent the volunteer community spirit of Seymour. It's a group of people who bring together the educational and civic leaders of the district. It's an opportunity for me because this is not only the year of Federation celebrations, it's also the year that we celebrate the wonderful contribution of volunteers to our community, it's an opportunity for me to say thank you to all of the volunteers who make our community so much happier and so much more cohesive.
Australia is the greatest volunteer society in the world, I think it's because when we began there was so much distance and so few people that we all had to club together to get things done. And out of that grew that great natural spontaneous volunteer spirit and when you put on top of that the fact that we are not a class driven society in the way that other societies are and we mix easily with each you have the perfect conditions to create a genuine volunteer tradition. And I know as a parent, my children have now grown up, the youngest is 21 and we celebrated his 21st birthday with some joy last Sunday, and I know that in our younger days when our children were your age everybody volunteered in relation to our local schools and that's always been the Australian way. And it is an opportunity though for me to say thank you to all of those wonderful people who work together and cooperate to make our local community function all that more effectively.
The other thing that I'm reminded of course of today and I was down at Ocean Grove this morning on the other side of Melbourne and I attended a not dissimilar gathering to this, I'm reminded of course as I move around Australia and particularly when I go out of the metropolitan area of the tremendous importance to communities, the further you get away from the big metropolitan centres, the tremendous importance of having effective communication. I had the opportunity before I came into this hall to meet some of the children who were constructing their own website on their computers. And I marvelled. One little girl told me she was eight and she had made her own webpage and I asked her how long she'd been doing it, I said did you start when you were six? And she said no. And I said did you start when you were seven? She said no. I said when did you start? She said I started this year. And I thought to myself gee you're a long way ahead of a few people I know who are roughly around my age and a little bit older indeed even a few years younger. And it just is a reminder of how the world has changed.
I'm reminded of how the communications have transformed everything. I had the opportunity when I was back in the 1960's, when I was in my middle 20's to go overseas and have a working holiday in London and sort of the big communications event of my being away for a year was to ring my mother once on the phone, reverse charges I have to confess, and to say hello and that happened once. And I have a son overseas at the moment on a similar working holiday about the same age and of course we communicate very very regularly and easily on the mobile telephone. And of course it's a different world, you don't write as much now as people used to then and the whole things changed.
And isn't it a fantastic experience and what the information age and information technology and the speed of communications has done, it's bought people together, its demolished distance, it's tackled the tyranny of distance that Geoffrey Blaimey so eloquently described as being one of the great challenges facing Australia historically. And I think that's a great experience and I think it's a great opportunity to bring people together. And that's one of the reasons why the Government has put a lot of emphasis on trying to ensure that people who don't live in the city have the same opportunities to access the Internet and they have the same opportunity to share in the information technology revolution as people who live in the big cities.
So Richard Alston who's my sort of resident ministerial guru when it comes to information technology, anything to do with communications or culture or film he's your man. He is really very good and this afternoon Richard and I are announcing a $50 million programme called The Internet Assistance Programme as the next stage of our programme to respond to the recommendations of an inquiry into the communications needs of country Australia chaired by Mr Tim Beasley. And this IAP, the Internet Assistance Programme, is a $50 million joint initiative with Telstra to improve Internet data speeds to achieve the equivalent of at least 19.2 kilobits per second across Australia. And the idea is that if you think you're under speed you can find out what your speed is and then you can get advice on how to get up to speed so that we will have right across Australia a minimum Internet speed of 19.2 kilobits per second. Now there are many parts of country Australia that don't have that speed at the moment and what we're doing with this programme is allowing people to find out where they are and also get advice and information as to how they can get their speed, their Internet speed up to that minimum standard. Now it might sound very technical but really it's not. This is a major step to ensuring that Internet access is as accessible, available and as instantaneous as it is in the major population centres of Australia. And we certainly don't want a community in this country where the advantages of the Internet and the advantages of information technology are only fully available to people who live in Melbourne or Sydney or Brisbane and the other large population centres of our nation.
So I thought it would be appropriate Fran, if I took the opportunity here in Seymour, particularly in a, in the hall of a school that has placed, as all schools in Australia do, such enormous store on teaching the young information technology and computer skills at a very early age. And Richard I know will be available to talk to others later on about the details of that very important initiative.
But there are just two other things I would like to say and I particularly want to address some remarks to the school students who are here today and to say something about the important role in your lives that teachers occupy. Teachers have a very responsible and important job. There will be occasions in your school life when you will think that you don't necessarily want to take the advice of your teachers you'll wonder on occasions whether the things they're telling you to do are the right thing. Can I say that as you get older you'll look back with great affection and respect on what your teachers have done for you and the way in which they've given you guidance during your life. Teachers have very big responsibilities, I think they have pastoral care responsibilities now of an order that 30 or 40 years ago they didn't have. And what they teach you, the values they try and impart to you are very important and they are values that stay with you as you get older. And I've found as I've got older I've thought more about the contribution that certain teachers have made to my life, I've never forgotten the contribution that a teacher of my 6A class at Earlwood Primary School made to my life and I've never forgotten the contribution that somebody who tried, with some degree of success, not spectacular success to teach me Latin and he taught me sufficiently to enable me to succeed it in the Leaving Certificate. But I remember those two people who at various important stages of my life were very very significant influences and I think all of you will go through that same kind of experience.
Ladies and Gentlemen, again can I say how much I appreciate the opportunity as Prime Minister of coming to civic gatherings like this. When Parliament is sitting one of my regular things almost every day is to have a school group come around to the quadrangle outside my office and I go outside and have a photograph taken with the children and then they come in and they sit around the desk and I've got an old desk that was built in 1927 and it was the desk that John Curtain sat on when he was Prime Minister and the desk that Sir Robert Menzies used and it's a desk that a whole lot of Prime Ministers before me have used. And we sit around and they ask me questions and one question I always get asked by the school children, no matter where they come from they say what is the best thing about being Prime Minister? And I say the best thing about being Prime Minister is the opportunity to move around the country and to meet different groups of Australians in their own local community environment. And every group is different. You never ever get tired, you never ever don't get a buzz out of meeting a different group of people in their local community. And this afternoon is an example. This is a wonderful little gathering, the school students are here the civic leaders are here, we're reminded of the connection of this district with the Puckapuntal military establishment, we are reminded of the importance of good quality rural and regional policies for an area such as Seymour and it's just a reminder to me of the special character of this part of country Victoria.
So Ladies and Gentlemen it is a great pleasure for me to be here and finally can I say to all of you what an absolutely fantastic local Federal Member you have in Fran Bailey. I really do think she's absolutely wonderful. She is a dogged advocate for the interests and the concerns of her electorate and grown Ministers have been known to run for cover when Fran approaches them with a new demand for the interests of the people of McEwen. And she does it very very effectively and she has been a wonderful representative and if at any time over the next few months you have the opportunity of deciding whether you want her to remain as a wonderful representative please take my advice and stick with her, she's a great lady for McEwen. Thankyou.
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