VISIT TO AUSTRALIA BY THE PRESIDENT OF
ITALY, SIGNOR GIUSEPFPE SARAGAT
SPEECH OF WELCOME BY THE PRIME MINISTER, MR HAROLD
HOLT AT PARLIAMENTARY LUNCHEON,
CANBERRA, A. C. T. 26TH SEPTEMBER, 1 67
President Saragat, the President of the Senate, the Speaker, Ministerial
Colleagues, Your Excellencies, Leader of the Opposition, Senators, Members
and other Distinguished Guests, Ladies and Gentlemen
It gives me very great pleasure, as I am sure it does all of
you, to be able to join in this welcome here today to the President of the
Republic of Italy. This is a notable occasion in the life of this Parliament and
indeed it is an historic occasion for the Australian people. This is the first
time that we have been visited by a European Head of State. I don't, of
course, exclude Her Majesty The Queen because I ustralia is part of her
home, and so we don't regard that as an official visit of this sort. But this
is, I repeat, the first time that the Head of State of a European country has
visited us, and it is particularly felicitous that this visit should be made by
the Head of State of a country with which Australia has such warm, friendly
relations and which is of so much significance to us in relation to the building
of our nation and in the trade from the Commonwealth to the rest of the world.
President Saragat is one of the great figures of post-war Europe.
Being President of the Republic of Italy is a signif. cant and eminent
achievement in itself, but we honour him because as we study his record over
the years we find an outstanding degree of courage and of wisdom, of tolerance
and of adherence to democraic principles. Whoever holds the office of
President of the Republic of Italy has a considerable influence extending beyond
the formal limits of his political power, and the President's political record
suggests that he will use his undoubted influence for the benefit of Italian
democracy, for the cause of international co-operation, for peace and
international co-operation for economic progress.
V. e welcome also Signor Fanfani who would have achieved
distinction in his own right if he had not done anything else in the world
but be an outstanding scholar. But in the company of Parliamentarians,
perhaps what will strike us as even more impressive is that on no less than
four occasions he has held the office of Prime Minister of his country.
I question whether we could match that in the life of our Federation here in
Australia. I may say, Mr Fresident, that studying the arrangements which
apply in your Parliament, I found many things to envy, although one or two
which I am glad we have avoided. I envy the fact that you have in your
Parliament a five-year term for Members. The Australian electorate will
not give us this period of grace, and I notice in New Zealand there has
recently been a referendum which has destroyed any prospect of an extended
term in that country. But they also have a provision in Italy that you are not eligible to
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enter the Parliament until you have attained the age of twenty-five years.
I pointed this disability out to Andrew Jones a little earlier in the day'
On the other hand I gather that the Mfiister of the Government doesn', t
merely have to explain his bills to one House of the Parliament he must
explain it in person to both Houses of the Parliament, and that is an
amendment -which we wouldn't adopt in a hurry in this country.
Our welcome extends also. Senator Oliva and other members
of the President's party.
Italy has for this country a very special significance in a
variety of directions. There is the contribution made through the
centuries to civilisation by the peoples of Italy. Eternal Rome means
eternal Rome not only in Italy itself Rome the Eternal City is Rome the
Eternal City all around the world where men and women are sufficiently
educated to know something of its significance. A~ nd it has a great
significance for us.
There were C'C people last year who visited Italy from
Australia. They weren't all Italians who had settled here returning home
for a visit to the land of their birth. Many of them were Australians,
attracted by the beauty, the cultural feritage, the richness of Rome and
of Italy itself, and we are in your debt for the contribution you have made to
civilisation, Viestern civilisation in particular and to the way of life we enjoy
in our country. But we don't speak of these things in terms of the grandeur
of the past because over modern times the people of Italy have demonstrated
vigorously a lively, inventive, enterprising, innovating spirit which still
burns brightly within them. And you have contributed in these ways in
modern times what we eat, what we wear, what we look at, what we
drive in, what we fly in so many of the asi~ ects of modern, civilised
existence. Perhaps in a parliamentary setting we should acknowledge
the very early recognition given by the Italian people to the importance of
Parliament. I think that the initial SPQR oSenatus Populus Que Romanus
the Senate and the Roman p~ eople which dates right back to the earliest
roeriod of Roman and Italian history, suggests the recognition of the
importance of democratic institutions and the place that the people played
in the life of the government.
The President will be welcome to all Australians because we
feel out own sense of gratitude for the arrival here of some 30C, CCC settlers
from your country since 1'> 45, and I am glad to say that they have produced,
Mr President, between them some 16G, CA" C children since that time!
After the British inflow, Italian migration is actually the
largest migratory movement in the history of this country. It didn't begin
just after the war. It began abott 120 years ago, and many of the Italian
people came to us from the Southern part of Italy and from Sicily. They
found Australia as do the migrant settlers of today a land of opportunity,
with political and economic stability conducive to rapid national development.
They find an envIronment in which they can breathe freely, where their
freedom is assured to them and where there is ample scope for their own
initiative.
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Australia's Italian settlers and their children now number
and this may interest our Italian visitors about the same as the citizens of
Florence, Bologna or Venice, which range from Italy's seventh to ninth
cities. The Italians who have come here have settled, prospered and become
part of our way of life. They are making valuable contributions across the
entire continent to industry, trade and development the food we eat, the
clothes we wear, and to our community and cultural life.
It is evident, as you will have gathered from the warmt: h of
the welcome you received yesterday that they preserve a deep affection for
Italy, a pride in Australia and its achievements. They love the land of their
birth and they have an affection for the land of their adoption, and it is
fortunate and certainly felicitous that the new Agreement on Migration will
be announced in the course of your visit, and we are able to report the
establishment, as evidence of our growing relationship of a new consulate
in Milan. But it is not only because of the personal ties that I refer to that
we have warm links with Italy. Both countries rank high among the trading
nations of the world. You in Italy rank eighth, we in Australia twelfth.
Our exports to your country have increased rapidly over recent years. Our
purchases from Italy have trebled over the past ten years from $ 18 million
to $ 53 million. And I have already mentioned the number of Australians who
have visited you in the course of the year and who find Italy a strongly
attractive country from the point of view of their interests.
Our Governments consult at the United Nations on matters of
common interest to the free world. You are a member of the European
Launcher Development Organisation for which we have the privilege of
conducting the operations at our own range at W7oomera.
Your journey, Mr President, has taken you to three countries
already which have derived their democratic institutions from British
Parliamentary democracy, countries which nourish the principles of national
liberty and personal freedom. You will be able to assess for yourself the
value of the contribution which Canada, the United States and Australia are
making to a better world order, the cause of peace and the growth of
international trade. Our people, you will have observed, are primarily of European
extraction, but we have in A; ustralia a special significance for the free world
from our geographical position, and our growing relationships with the countries
of Acia. Even putting it in the material terms of trade, this has grown since
the 1550' s from 15 to 4L per cent. of our total trade.
But the success of our immigration programme is not to be
measured by numbers alone or the additions that are made to our country's
work force. We measure it, as I think you would wish us to measure it, by
the happiness, the prosperity, the progress that our migrants find here in
Australia, and in this as in other ways, we believe Italian settlement has
been among the most successful of all the nationalities to whom we have
given a welcome to this country, and there are more than forty countries
represented in Australia.
Your stay, Mr President, will be brief in Australia. You will
be visiting Melbourne and Sydney before you leave us on Sunday, and as you fly
over much of the country during your journey, you will be able to appreciate for
yourself the vastness of the country, the sparse population and the desirability
on our part of encouraging continuing settlement from good people such as
those that we welcome from your own country.
It is not possible, unfortunately, for anything more than a
fraction of Australia's Italian settlers to see you for themselves, excect
on the television screen, but on behalf of them, and all Australians, all
here wish you a happy and not too strenuous visit and a safe return home.
Your visit will focus an interest on Australia amongst your
countrymen which we believe will be of mutual benefit, of value to the
relationship between us. It cannot fail to add warmth and interest to that
relationship and your presence here itself is a contribution to a deepening
of the warmth and friendliness of the ties that link our two countries.
We hope that italian/ A. ustralian friendship will long endure, and
as it persists, it will go on i. n warmth and strength to the growing mutual
benefit of our two countries.
And now I am going to ask the Leader of Her Majesty's Opposition,
Mr 7,' hitlam, to support me in these words of welcome to you, and this is
one matter at least on which we can find no room for disagreement and can
join in a common vote of sulport and applause.
i,