E&OE...
Well thank you very much Brigadier and the CDF, Ambassador, my fellow Australians and our New Zealand friends and those from other parts of the world who may be gathered here. Can I start by paying a very warm tribute to Brigadier Rerden for the wonderful leadership that he has given to the forces here over recent months. He really has done an outstanding job. His tour of duty ends on the 31st of July and he has really brought great credit to the Australian Defence Forces, he has brought credit to his own service and he has brought most importantly of all great credit to the name of Australia and the cause of the International Stabilisation Force. So I want to thank you Brigadier and wish you well in the next stage of your military career in Australia.
I have just come here today to express my gratitude and admiration to all of the men and women of the three services of the Australian Defence Force, the Australian Federal Police which are in turn composed of men and women of the AFP and men and women of the various police forces of the individual Australian states.
I want to welcome our friends from New Zealand. I have already done penance and congratulated them on their retaining the Bledisloe Cup but we'll sort of pass over that very, very rapidly. But it's great to have our friends from New Zealand present.
I do want to pay tribute to the work of the Ambassador, the way in which she has related not only with the Government here but also with the International Stabilisation Force has been first class. And it's a great example, if I can put it this way, of Team Australia doing a wonderful job, contributions from the Army, the Navy, the Air Force, the police and from the civilian side of our Government.
Australia's association with East Timor goes back a long way. There are many older Australians, those of World War II vintage who remember with enormous affection the comfort and support they received from the people of Timor during the war against Japan. And those memories have never faded from those older Diggers and they were amongst many sections of the Australian population that in 1999 said something had to be done to help the people of East Timor. And that something was done and it began the modern association, in a vastly different form, the modern association between Australia and East Timor. And the way in which all of you have put the name of Australia very high on the pedestal, the name of Australia in this part of the world is something of which I am deeply grateful as Prime Minister and something of which all Australians are immensely proud.
And I said to the CDF coming up in the aircraft that the story of our engagement with East Timor in modern times reflects great credit on the Australian Defence Forces. But importantly the Defence Force has done it in partnership with the police. In these kind of operations you need both soldiers and police. If you try and do it with one without the other it doesn't work. And the way in which the two have blended together has been terrific and the way in which the Australians have worked together with their friends from New Zealand and other countries and of course the association with the United Nations has been very important because we are here with the support and the sanction of the United Nations.
All of you have gone overseas in the name of your country, in most cases Australia, and in the case of our Kiwi friends, New Zealand. You have all brought great credit to those two countries. And I want to thank you. I hope you find the experience here stimulating, I hope it adds to your experience not only of life but also your service careers or your police careers because overseas service is an increasingly important component of those careers. And these kinds of operations are not going to disappear quickly. We are not going to be leaving East Timor tomorrow because the job is not completed but we work for the day when we can hand over to the people of this country which is, I hope, one that has a brighter future than the immediate past. It has got quite a lot going for it. It has got some oil and gas revenues that a lot of developing countries don't have and properly helped, properly advised, properly supported but also properly required to accept their share of responsibility, it can have a bright future.
But to all of you, thank you for what you are doing for Australia and I can say to all of the New Zealanders here, thank you for what you are doing for your country but importantly both of you are doing wonderful things for the future of a tiny country for whom many millions of Australians have a very deep affection. Thank you very much.
[ends]