E&OE...
Thank you very much Luke, Mr Neil Smith, Senator David Johnston, my fellow Australians. I am very happy indeed to be at this community gathering, to look around at this wonderful roll up of people and when I look around I think of the great volunteer community spirit and community effort that holds our nation together. Earlier this morning I was down at Scarborough Beach honouring the contribution, I wished I could have been having a swim actually, but I had to, sort of, remain in my suit for subsequent events, but honouring the contribution of the surf lifesaving movement to our nation. If there is anything that's as Australian as the gum tree, it is the Surf Life Saving movement. It's one of those organisations that brings together all the enthusiasm, the love of the outdoors, sport, volunteer community effort and also a commitment to one's fellow Australians. And I look around this room and I am reminded of the many community organisations, I am reminded of the community contribution made by the churches of our nation and I thank our host for the contribution that they make not only to the spiritual wellbeing of Australia but also to looking after the less fortunate in our community.
I am actually here amongst other things to say a word or two in praise of the man who has just been good enough to introduce me. Luke is a person who represents the ideal of service, as well. He served in the Australian Federal Police, he served in the Australian Defence Forces, he has a very deep community involvement. He has raised or is in the process of raising a family, he in other words is very much part of the mainstream of this community. And it's a community of volunteers, it's a community which is steeped in the great Australian tradition of helping one another to build a better community. And this country, as it enters the early stages of the 21st Century, has an enormous amount to be pleased about. We are admired around the world, we are admired because of what we have achieved and we are also admired because of who we are. We are a freedom loving country. You can count on the fingers of both hands the number of nations in the world that have remained continuously democratic over the last 100 years. Surf Life Saving in Australia is 100 years old this year. During that 100 years Australia has been one of only, arguably, six or seven countries that have been continuously democratic through the whole of that period. We don't think about that very much, we take it for granted, we don't talk about it enough but we really should. When I hear people bagging Australia I get annoyed, I get very annoyed and I think of the fact that we've been a beacon of freedom and hope (inaudible) people around the world; that we attract people from the four corners of the world, why? Because they want to live in Australia and adopt Australians ways, that's why they wanted to come to this country.
We've got good people from everywhere, this is a country that runs a non-discriminatory immigration policy. All we ask of people who come to this country is that they give their first and top love to this country's values and its aspiration. We don't ask people who come from another land to lose a place in their heart for the country in which they were born, that is only human and to expect that of anybody is to be unfair and unreasonable. I think most people who come to this country want it the way I describe it. They come here because they want to be an Australian they don't come here to remain somebody else. But they would like to keep an affection and a connection with their own culture and that's exactly as it should be and that has been the great success of this country. So we are a nation that ought to be very proud not only of what we have achieved, but we ought to be very proud of who we are. And when you go around the world as I do a lot, we are seen as energetic, we are seen as people who love sport and we are seen as people who will have a go, we are seen as people who stick by their friends even when the going gets tough because that's what friendship and mateship is all about. And we are also a group of people who are remarkably self-reliant and resilient. And we are also a nation that has a great sense of balance, we don't go over the top. We often have debates in other countries about whether something should be run by the government or whether it should be entirely run by the private sector and in Australia we seem to get the thing pretty well balanced. Those things that the Government ought to do, we let the Government do and those things that private citizens and business ought to do, we let private citizens and business do. And in some areas like health and education we have a mix of the two and we get the balance right and that's where I think we are better anybody else and I can safely say that here because I am not going to get anybody to disagree.
You grope in this political life to find something to say that everybody supports. Sometimes it gets a bit difficult I can assure you, you know, once or twice, a few years it gets a bit difficult (inaudible). But my friends we do have that sense of balance. I mean, in education, and I was reminded of as I came in here this morning, I met children from public schools, government schools and I met children from independents schools. That represents the freedom of choice that this country is good at and the balance that this country is good at. I went to a government school, my whole education was at a government school in Sydney; government schools in Sydney and I am (inaudible) and I am forever grateful to the New South Wales education system for the experience I had there. I believe that parents should have the right to choose the school their children go to. I think it's a fundamental, sacred right of Australian parents. If they want to send their children to a government school that's good, if they want to send their children to an independent school, that is equally good. So we have a sense of balance and we support both of them. We make sure we underpin it with a strong public education system, but we make sure we have a balance, we provide well for all the (inaudible) schools.
It's the same with our health system, we have a system called Medicare which I think works very well; very, very well indeed. I tell you what if you're battling, don't get sick in any country other than Australia. It really is a better country with its health system than any that I can think of. I often look at the comparison between Europe and America, I mean there is a lot of things about America I admire, there's a lot of things about America I don't admire and I don't admire the fact that they seem to have a pretty mean social security safety net. People fall through the cracks and they have too many people in jail, they have large prison populations. I think part of that is due to the fact that their social security system is not as good as it should be but then on the other hand, some countries in Europe have a social security system that encourages people to believe that the state owes them a living from cradle to grave and I think that's equally bad, equally bad. Because people who get locked into welfare and welfare-dependency all of their lives, they have no initiative to get out and look after themselves and they pass it down from generation to generation to generation.
Now the genius of this country is the sense of balance that it has been able to achieve and balance is a very good thing. It sort of, you know, keeps you out of trouble in all sorts of circumstances, having a sense of balance and it can be very useful in certain sports and it can also be very, very useful in politics and we are people who look for balance, we don't like fanatics in this country. When people come along with some fanatical solution I always, sort of, go like this and say to myself I better be careful of what this bloke's talking about because we don't like fanaticism in Australia. But we do like a sense of balance and that is one of the great things about our nation. And what keeps our community together is that we have the Government doing things that it can do well, we have the volunteer organisations doing the things that it can do well and we have the business community playing a very major role. And one of the programs that I'm very, very proud of, that I've been particularly interested in and responsible for over the last 10 years, was the Federal Government's Tough on Drugs Strategy. And I took the view about... back 1997 that the Federal Government had to do more about fighting the scourge of drugs in our community. And we have to provide more money to our law enforcement agencies, both the federal police and the state police, who do a wonderful job in catching people who traffic in misery and death, for their fellow citizens. The full force of the law should be brought to bear on them. And we also had to do more to educate people against the horrors of drug taking and drug abuse and we also had to provide more rehabilitation and help for people who wanted to break the habit but couldn't find the support services to help them do so. So we've invested well over $1 billion in that program over the past years and we're actually seeing some results. We've actually seen a significant decline in the number of deaths from heroin overdoses. And the other fascinating thing is that we have seen a turnaround in the attitude of the public towards the use marijuana. I can remember in 1998 I said that we should have a zero tolerance attitude towards marijuana and I was derided. Even some people in my own political party said he's an old fuddy-duddy, he doesn't understand. The community understands and a survey indicated that the young of this country increasingly understand that marijuana abuse....marijuana use, not abuse, use, use, leads to depression, schizophrenia, to all sorts of disabling conditions and often extreme violence, and ultimately death and a great deal of sorrow amongst families.
Now I mention these thing because once again in that program we have a sense of balance. We balance the community concern, we marshal the commitment of the law enforcement agencies, we work very closely with the state governments. Didn't matter what political persuasion the state government was, we reached agreement, we have this diversionary program where somebody as a result of drug taking had their first contact with the law, the court, the system actually said well look make you've got a choice, you either take a rehabilitation course or we'll put you towards the jail, slammer, whatever euphemism you want to use for it and that program has worked extremely well. And I just think it's another example of the great sense of balance that this country has been able to achieve and I'm fascinated to see that over a period of time the community's attitude towards marijuana use and so forth that has altered and altered for the good. But when I'm talking about drugs, and I'll finish talking about it on this point, we still have a long way to go. The challenge represented by ice and by amphetamines is the new drug challenge and the new drug scourge. And I think it's a campaign that we should never tire of waging. You only stop the fight, you only exit the field when you've won it and we are still a long way from that but I think we are making progress.
The last thing I want to say to you my friends is that we have a lot of debate in this country, some of it gets a little complicated, important though it is, we have a lot of debate about economic policy. And economic policy is very important because it's what keeps the nation going, it provides the taxes that people and companies pay which gives the Government the wherewithal to provide the services that we all want. But we've got to have some kind of human individual measurement of good economic policy and the best one that I can think of, and the best measure of whether the policy is working or not, is how successful we are in providing jobs to all of the people who want them. And right at the moment we have the lowest unemployment rate in this country for 32 years. 32 years; and yesterday I had a look at some figures....no the day before yesterday, I had a look at some figures about the long term unemployed. Now these are people who have been out of work for one, two, three sometimes four years and what the information I looked at showed was that the long term unemployment level in Australia, now, is the lowest it has been since separate figures for long term unemployed began to be compiled and published in the 1980s. And last year the number of long term unemployed people in Australia declined by no less than 24.7 per cent. It was almost a one quarter reduction, and what that means is that we are really eating in to the hardcore of unemployed in this country. I think that's wonderful because in the end there's no better measure, you can have all the fancy speeches, and graphs and statistics and so forth but good economic policy is not an end in itself, it's only a good thing if it produces a good result and if it produces the good result of everybody who wants a job being able to get one, I think we're making progress. And indeed Western Australia is remarkable, it's an amazing place (inaudible) carrying the rest of the country, I understand all of that and, you know, this is the fourth day of my current visit to Perth and I know exactly how you all feel, and you've got right to feel that way because you are making a massive contribution to our national welfare. And, of course, since I've been here the amazing (inaudible) I have about employment is that people kind of can't find enough people to employ. And, I mean, in a way it's a problem for some businesses, but gee, it's a great problem for a nation to have and it is infinitely better then the reverse where you can't find enough jobs for the people who want them.
So if you think that's a plug for the good economic policies of the Howard Government, you're right. It's is a plug for the good economic policies of the Howard Government, I think I've got some right to put in that plug because in the end that is what it's all about, it's providing some jobs, and hope, and family security and family stability for people. Now jobs aren't everything, money isn't everything, I accept all of that. Life is more than just economics but it's very hard, particularly for families, if the sense of job insecurity is there all the time and it can be so corrosive of the unity, and the stability and the affection within a family. So that's why I think that link and that dividend is so absolutely wonderful.
I've said enough, my friends it's great to be here, I do, of course, very warmly commend Luke to you, he's a very fine man, he brings a lot of experience, he brings a lot of commitment and he brings a lot of understanding of this community and I think he'll make a wonderful political parliamentary representative for you, if that is something that you are inclined to support. I'll just put it in a very gentle and polite way such as that and, I know, a bipartisan community gathering, but he really is a first class person. I warmly commend him to you and I thank you very, very much for coming along.
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