Thank you, Aunty Agnes, for that wonderful and warm welcome to your country, and I also begin by acknowledging the First Australians on whose land we meet and whose cultures we celebrate across Australia today as among the oldest continuing cultures in human history.
This Australia Day, the 222nd in our settled history, I'd to tell you the story of three young Australians. I'd like to do that because I think their stories speak directly to the great spirit that is Australia, the spirit that's animated so much of our nation's history, and the spirit that inspires us as together we build the nation's future, and that spirit is Australia.
Last night I spoke with Jessica Watson. It was morning in the pitching seas off South Georgia, somewhere in the South Atlantic. She had just rounded Cape Horn, as you do, her boat's main mast had hit the water four times the day before, and the day before that her parents told me they lived through the anxiety of being phoned by search and rescue because Jessica's emergency beacon had gone off.
Jessica Watson is no ordinary young Australian. She is an extraordinary young Australian, and some 5,000 nautical miles west of Cape Town she wanted me today to wish you all a very happy Australia Day.
I asked young Jess if there was any message she wanted to pass on to the nation. Her message was simple. Her message was live your dream - live your dream. But before we see a squadron of 16 year olds set sail around the world, let me also add what she also said was important for her - other practical ambitions, including finishing school, getting a driver's licence, very useful, I would have thought, in the Southern Atlantic, and - wait for it - getting a skipper's certificate, which I thought you might have needed before you went to the South Atlantic, but not for our young Jess. Jess Watson is a remarkable young Australian.
The second story I'd like to tell you about is a young Australian barely half Jessica's age. This is a story of little Bailey Lackas, 8 years old. I went and saw Bailey at his home just outside Wandong last week. Bailey lives there with his mum Sandra in a home they've made out of the back part of an industrial shed on their 20-acre farm on which they breed Welsh mountain ponies. Bailey showed me his cubby house, his guinea pig Dale - Hi, Dale - and his favourite horses and foals, including his own little pony, Silk.
Bailey, like Jess on the high seas, is a little battler. He refuses to be bowed by the violent forces of nature. One year ago, Bailey lost his dad, and Sandra her husband, on Black Saturday, as Steve tried valiantly to defend the family home.
One year later, little Bailey is a mile a minute about all the things he wants now to do with his life. Leaping on horses 10 times his size, his arm in a sling from a fall that he'd had the day before, this pint-sized little Australian hero, his passion is to ride like the wind and nothing will stand in his way. And for the record - Bailey also says that he'd like either to be a mad scientist or Prime Minister. One may be a precondition for the other, but I digress.
The third story is about a young Australian I met for the first time last year. He's with us today. This is the story of Trooper Mark Donaldson. A boy from country New South Wales, Mark new a lot of family tragedy in his early life, but supported by Legacy and by family and friends, Mark decided to make his career the Army, and what a career he has made. When I read his citation for gallantry the Christmas before last, I had to read it again and again, and then ask Therese to come in and read it to me for a third time. It was and is and remains and will forever be the stuff of legend.
Let me paraphrase: with total disregard for his own safety in a 2-hour long engagement between his own detachment and a significantly larger and well-armed Taliban force, he took the initiative, deliberately drawing fire from the enemy to enable his nine wounded mates to be taken to safety, and if that was not enough in a day's work, he then returned across 80m of exposed ground, again attracting the most intense and accurate of enemy fire in order to rescue the company's Afghan interpreter and carried him back to safety.
We have read of Simpson and his donkey at Anzac. This, too, is the stuff of modern legend, and so Trooper Donaldson became Australia's first winner of the Victoria Cross since Vietnam, and yesterday was named Young Australian of the Year.
Well done, mate.
You know something? These are great young Australian stories, when often our young people get an unfair rap. But what brings these stories together?
What brings these stories together is what they say about the spirit of Australia: a spirit of adventure; of imagination; of individual achievement; a spirit that acknowledges adversity; that wrestles with adversity; and that triumphs over adversity; a spirit that looks after your mates, your neighbours, and even those you do not know.
This is the Australian spirit, the spirit of the can-do country; the spirit of the country of the fair go; this great spirit that is Australia; the spirit of Australia that says there nothing irreconcilable in a country and a culture that celebrates equally the outstanding achievements of individuals and the extraordinary acts of selflessness from this land of the fair go. That is the magic that is Australia.
It is this great Australian spirit that enables us to build the great nation that is the envy of the world. This is not the luck country. It's not the lucky country. This is a country that has been built brick by brick, one generation building on the foundations of those who came before us, and being built through blood, sweat and tears; a country fashioned by clear vision; a country of steely pragmatism about what must be done next; and a country with the courage to take the big decisions, the big, the long-term decisions to break with the past when necessary to secure our future; the country that gave women the vote before practically any other country on Earth had given women the vote; the country - thank you - the country that in 1967, by an overwhelming majority, decided to eliminate the racial distinctions that had previously existed in our constitution; a country that had the courage and the imagination to embark on the great post-war migration to build our future; the country that had the imagination to build the great, nation-building projects of the post-war years, including the Snowy Mountains Scheme; a nation that half a century later abandoned the protectionism of the past and had the courage to build the modern economy of the future; a country which in just the last year alone has bonded together to confront the single greatest crisis faced by this economy since the global depression of 1929-32. That is the country of imagination, of courage, and of determination and of spirit.
And it is this attitude, this spirit, this preparedness to take the big decisions when big decisions are needed, it is this spirit which must shape our future as well, and the big challenges which lie ahead for us all, the huge challenges which lie ahead for us all, and the huge challenges which lie ahead for the planet itself.
This, my fellow Australians, is not the lucky country. This is the country which we have built together, which our forebears have built together, with imagination, with passion, with vision, and with compassion.
And you today join this family of Australians, and you today join this nation of Australians, those of you who become citizens today.
As Prime Minister of the country I welcome each and every one of you to our national fold, to our national family. You are a welcome addition to our number. You enliven us. You enrich us. You expand our imagination. You challenge our complacency. You add to our diversity. You are so much our future, building on the great traditions that have built this country over generations. You are part of our future.
And together with the 16,500 like you right across Australia today, as Prime Minister of Australia I welcome each and every one of you to become members of this Australian family.
When I think of 16,500 Australians, that's bigger than the town of Nambour. That's where I grew up in Queensland. So we're adding one whole new, big, Nambour-plus today, and can I say, long may it continue.
Today, as we celebrate this, our national day, let us be inspired by the great stories of inspiration of our young Australians - the stories of Jess Watson, of young Bailey Lackas, 8 years old, and of Trooper Mark Donaldson.
Long live this great country, Australia.