Thank you David. And to all my parliamentary and ministerial colleagues and Dick Adams, Julie Collins, Duncan Kerr, Carol Brown. Others from the State parliament, friends one and all.
It's great to be here in Tasmania, in the lead-up to Australia Day.
I'm doing something a little different this year, which hasn't been done in past years. And that is as we move to Australia Day itself, to get around to each of the State capitals and to participate in celebrations with local people.
I'll be in Melbourne this afternoon, I was in Adelaide the day before and I was in Sydney the day before that. I'll be getting around, including Brisbane, where I come from and then over to Perth.
Because you know something? This nation of ours is bigger than the nation's capital. It's writ large and it's writ deep and it's writ broad in the lives and the experiences of Australians across this vast continent. That's why it's so good to be here.
I'd like to thank David for his inspiring oration. I notice that baby Sophie then went to sleep.
I think that was in anticipation of my speech. She's a sweetheart.
And for the other proud parents of young bubs, the half a million Tasmanians, that's a great league to be in. This will be a time when they look back at the bub photographs on their 21st birthday and say I was there at an important point of this State's history and its future.
It's also good to be here in Australia's oldest backyard. I was given a potted history of where we are as I walked in. These Commissariat Stores behind me were built in 1808, the oldest, I'm advised, public building, the oldest building, the oldest remaining building in any capital city in Australia. It's extraordinary, just extraordinary.
And as David rightly reminds us Australia Day involves other reflections as well. And I begin my remarks by acknowledging the first Australians on whose land we meet and whose cultures we celebrate as the oldest continuing cultures in human history.
The great thing about Australia Day is we reflect on our strengths as a people, as a society, as a nation. Where we've come from and where we hope to take our nation to.
And if you look across this vast land of ours and begin to reflect for a moment on its absolute diversity in terms of where we've all come from, the parts of the world from which we've come, the backgrounds from which we've come and yet together we've forged a nation for a continent; a continent for a nation. This is an extraordinary achievement for peoples who have come from every part of God's earth.
My own forebears are almost 100 per cent convict. We didn't make it to Port Arthur but obviously came from straitened circumstances when they landed here. And if we reflect on the convict history of Australia, whether it is at Sydney Cover or Port Arthur or our other convict settlements around the country, these were harsh and bleak times. Harsh and bleak times also for indigenous Australians. Harsh and bleak times for those who tried to craft the continent out of the bare earth.
But it says something about the resilience of Australians that we did it. We came through this; we built this great nation which is the envy of the world.
There is a tolerance and a decency about this country which we rarely find in other parts of the world. There is a strength, there is an individualism, there is a determination, there is a character about this country which is something of which we should be collectively proud.
We don't simply rely upon others to do things for us; we get out there and do things for ourselves. But at the same time, alive in our hearts and alive in our history, alive in our personality as a people is also this character on which says, ‘if my neighbour is in strife, let me do something to help my neighbour'.
In other words what we call giving every person a fair go. Giving everyone a hand up. Helping when our fellow Australians are in need.
David said before and he is right, that as we embark upon this year 2009, we're embarking upon what may be one of the most troubled years of our age.
As we look around the world and we the unfolding events of the global economic crisis, these are grave, these are broad, these are deep forces. The crisis which began in the mortgage markets of America, which now have spread to every economy, every society and virtually every community across the world.
And this will test us. Every one of us. It will test governments, national and state. It will test our businesses, it will test our unions, it will test our communities, it will test our basic sense of solidarity.
So that when someone loses their job - and they have, and they will - our job is not just to, our responsibility is not just to see that person as a statistic. Our responsibility is to reach out and help. At the level of Government, at the level of community and at the level of being someone's neighbour.
That's what being Australian is about. The job we have as a nation, as we confront this global economic crisis in a nutshell is this. As the private economy goes through a period of contraction and withdrawal across the world, the job of Government is to do everything humanly possible to fill that gap, to fill that space, in the economic activity of our nation. That is the challenge.
You see in recent times the private economy has not been served well by the unregulated nature of global financial markets. You had extreme capitalism, you had market fundamentalism and we had extreme greed and excess.
And we've seen what has happened with all of that as it's washed down from Wall Street in the United States across the entire globe. And it's an ugly thing to see. It's a very ugly thing to see.
So Governments' charge and challenge is to step into the breach and that is the charge and challenge we have as leaders of Government. This will not be easy. It will not be easy for anybody.
But as we reflect on the challenges we face and the concerns and the anxiety and the fear which people experience and feel right now, let us equally reflect on the course of actions that will see Australia through.
Let us equally reflect on the strengths we have as an economy, as a community, as a society, as a nation. Because our reality today is made up of all these things, there are things that are going wrong.
I intend to be on this day as I have been last year and throughout the year ahead, upfront and direct with the Australian people about how difficult the challenges will be but equally upfront and direct about the course of action that we intend to prosecute as a Government, to see this nation through. And we will.
One part of that challenge is this. How do you stabilise credit markets? Our actions to provide guarantees for bank deposits, our actions to guarantee inter-bank lending of our principal banks, so that they have sufficient flow of credit themselves to on-lend to Australian businesses.
It has been and remains a core part of the challenge to unblock the flow of the blood through the arteries of the economy and that is the provision of credit. And we have more to do.
But also to looks at the rules that govern financial markets for the future and to change them and to say that the days of casino capitalism have gone. We need to have a decent set of rules for the future so that this sort of crisis is not visited on people again. That's the second part of our strategy.
And the third is this. Through the agency of Government and what we do to provide a helping hand to families who need it and to invest in the infrastructure that we need as a nation for the 21st century to step into the breach.
We've begun that. From last year to now the national Government has announced some $36 billion worth of additional measures. $36 billion worth of additional measures.
A $10.4 billion stimulus package, a $6 billion new car plan, a $5 billion infrastructure plan for roads, for infrastructure, for rail and for our universities and for our TAFEs. And a $15 billion new partnership of additional investment with the States, to invest in our teachers, to invest in our nurses, to invest in other critical service areas. $300 million direct investment to our local authorities to assist them in doing the job which they have been elected as well.
I say to you as my fellow Australians, this is the beginning. We have more to do.
There are two courses of action, you know, available at a time like this. For Government to stand to one side as the free market fundamentalists would have us believe and wash our hands and say ‘not for me, don't have a job to do, let the market sort it out'.
There is another approach which says that active Government is the way through this. It won't be easy, it will be ugly from time to time. But we have a course of action to see Australia through.
That is made more possible be an extraordinary event we witnessed yesterday. The inauguration of Barack Obama as the 44th President of the United States. What an extraordinary event for the world.
But with Barack Obama's election we also see this, the rebirth of American global leadership.
Because what we do in Australia for us and our economy and our communities and the challenge of joblessness which is there, staring us in the face, what we do as a Government and as a community is important. It is critical. It is stepping into the breach.
But unless that is harnessed by the combined agency of Governments around the world, then we cannot finally prevail. And that's where this new American President and his message of hope for the global economy and the global community is of such strong resonance and importance to us all.
I look forward to working with this President. America's global leadership is now more important than it has been for a generation and more. And with him in the White House, understanding full well the depths of the challenge which he has inherited and understanding that this is not just a challenge of the American domestic economy but a challenge which as a consequence of failures in the American economy is now for us a challenge for the economy of the world..
I have confidence that in him we're going to have leadership, policy and execution which will enable the world to come through this crisis as well.
So times will be tough, challenges ahead but my message also to each of you here today as we begin to think about the celebration of our National Day, is this. Be mindful of the pressures we face, be mindful of the strengths we have but beyond all that never ever allow our spirits to be crushed.
Confidence in ourselves, confidence in our community, confidence in our State, confidence in our nation, confidence in our businesses, this is critical to preserve. As important for the future as the objective things which governments themselves do.
So David, thanks for having me here to your barbie. Thanks for having me here at your archaeological site for your barbie. Thank you for all the proud mums and dads of these new additions to your fair State. Each of them one and all prospective taxpayers. So look after them mate. Nurture them well.
But I say to you all as members of the great Tasmanian family and therefore members of the Great Australian family, let's go forth with confidence this year, weather the challenges together because we are all in this together.