Subjects: Hotel Industry
E&OE................................
Thank you very much Tim. Graham Edwards, Kim Beazley, the Leader of the Opposition, Meg Lees, Leader of the Australian Democrats, Richard Mulcahy, my parliamentary colleagues, ladies and gentlemen.
I want to thank the Association for the idea of making this contribution to the celebration of the Centenary of Federation. That great Australian and great historian, Geoffrey Blainey will say some things later on tonight about the place of hotels, of pubs in the culture and the history of Australia.
All of us in some way of course have been touched by hotel experiences. Those of my age will remember the enormous social changes that occurred in 1955. I grew up in Sydney when six o'clock closing was abolished, I can still, at the age of 16 living about three streets away from the Earlwood Hotel, I can still recall the enormous cheer that went up at five past six, that sort of echoed from the corner on which the hotel was built to our home in William St Earlwood.
I remember that the very first law case in which I was involved as an articled clerk was in fact a dispute between a hotel broker and a publican and I still vividly remember that the name of the plaintiff was James Francis McMahon and the name of the defendant was Manus Patrick Heffernan. And because there's a little bit of a reminder that there is a, you might call a narrow stream of the Irish-Australian heritage running through into the hotel business and I recognise the presence of the His Excellency the Irish Ambassador.
The importance of the hotel industry in Australia's history is well understood and known but of course in recent times as Richard mentioned in his remarks, the hotel industry has become part and parcel of the burgeoning of the recreation, tourism and entertainment industry of this country. And in the process it has changed quite dramatically and the social ambience of hotels have changed enormously over the years. I was remarking to Richard and his colleagues over drinks before the dinner commenced tonight that in the early 1960s when I went to England on a twelve month working holiday I experienced for the very first time what would have been an unusual thing to do and that was to take a woman into a public bar of a hotel because in the early '60s in Australia it was still a relatively uncommon thing to occur. But of course over the years their social place has changed enormously and the industry has changed in the process.
It's a huge employer. I acknowledge as a former treasurer, as a current prime minister, the contribution that the industry makes to revenue. That's been the case down through the years and I acknowledge the various views that have been put by the industry over the years to the Government in relation to that.
Tonight is not only a night to celebrate the important contemporary contribution of the hotel industry to our nation but it's also an occasion of course to in indulge in a bit of nostalgia. All of us have our recollections of the famous Australian country hotel. I've not forgotten a night I spent at the Railway Hotel in Gladstone Road, Calliope. Calliope is a town in Queensland I think about thirteen miles or so out of Gladstone. We, a mate and I had driven there to go for a holiday in Heron Island and we arrived at Gladstone, couldn't find any accommodation there, we did what a lot of people used to do then and perhaps still do and that was go to the local police station and ask if they knew where there was any accommodation and I don't know if it was our appearance or not, but the police officer seemed fairly anxious to move us on from Gladstone. And he said 'oh well you could drive out to Calliope and Bert, and I've forgotten his surname, runs the Railway Hotel out there'. And we went out there and it was everything that one could recollect as epitomising a country hotel - the galvanised iron roof, the name Railway Hotel was painted on the roof, the you know you had to walk down the hall at night of course, and it was a very, very, very representative Australian country pub. It's a 105 years old, it's still in existence. My office rang up and checked about its current standing and prosperity and it seemed to be going extremely well. My friend and I still remember that hotel with very great affection as being an experience of that particular aspect of Australian country life.
This is a year in which we celebrate all different aspects of the Australian nation and the Australian achievement. And one of the things we celebrate of course are the circumstances in which Australians have congregated together, congregating in a pub, in a public bar, in a beer garden, in all sorts of other perhaps more elaborate surroundings under the general rubric of gathering at a hotel, they've all been part and parcel of Australian life. And the people who run those hotels and the people who've made a contribution to those hotels understand that very well.
There's always of course been in the Australian community a variety of attitudes towards the consumption of alcohol. Enjoying drinking in civilised circumstances and in fact the expression 'civilised drinking' was the catchcry in the movement in the 1950s that led to the abolition of six o'clock closing. And down through the years I think we have become a far more civilised people in our drinking habits, we've learnt to enjoy the pleasure of drinking whilst making our different contributions to the curbing of its excesses. And I think the hotel industry has been extremely responsible in recognising that although it is a wonderful lubricant of social exchange and pleasure and enjoyment it does carry, if it's abused its negative connotations and I want to congratulate the industry for the sense of responsibility that it's displayed. And most importantly to thank everybody in the hotel industry for being such a rich and important part of Australian life over the last one hundred years and a very rich and important part of Australian culture during that time.
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