Adelaide
Every year, on the anniversary of the Proclamation of “a great free colony”, we gather to renew our spirit of unity and confidence in this great free state.
More than 170 on from the brave words of our “worthy Founders”, this is a rare and important day, when our civic leaders publicly reflect on what this city of Adelaide and this state of South Australia mean to our nation and our people.
Today, our words turn to our city of Hindmarsh and Gawler and Light; of our State of dissent, innovation and achievement.
But for me, this time of year, here in Adelaide, is one of personal reflections.
This is the city where I grew up.
This is the city of my childhood memories.
This is the city my father and mother chose to be their home in 1966.
This is the city where my family will make its future.
These public and private reflections are brought together for me here at Glenelg every year on the 28th: because in his ships Hindmarsh brought more than British custom and law, more than a Government to establish; he brought men and women and their families.
In the years that followed, it was the resilience and hard work of those families that built the city and the state we are proud to call our own today.
And we recall too the suffering and the resilience of families who had lived and loved here before Hindmarsh even sailed.
So in renewing the spirit of unity and confidence in which we govern, let us equally renew our determination to govern for all our people: for the families of every shape and size who will build the city and state in the years and decades to come.
Our task as leaders is to know how family life is changing today and to make family life easier for our people as it changes.
Not only to raise living standards for families, but to meet their changing needs.
Each year when I come to Adelaide, I get to celebrate the next step my niece and nephew have taken in their adult lives - even though it feels not so long ago we talked about their favourite teachers and school friends.
Each year my parents have got older too and this year was our first without Dad.
Like so many families today, my family knows what it is to wrestle with the options and choices ahead for an ageing parent.
With the annual Christmas trek home, I have come to reflect not only on the changes that come with age but the changes that come to family life through changes in society over the years.
So as we govern for our people, these are changes we must help families navigate too.
The juggling of demands, the changes in expectation: families who will swap shifts and arrange holidays to care for the kids, but perhaps hope at most for a few days where everyone is together at once; the families who spend these days each year sharing care and negotiating where children will spend Christmas morning and Christmas afternoon, or who will be together on New Year's Eve.
So much has changed since 1836, since John Hindmarsh stood near here, as “His Excellency Governor and Commander in Chief of His Majesty's Province of South Australia” and as “a Knight of the Royal Hanoverian Guelphic Order”, to call for “order and quietness”, “industry and sobriety”.
Much has changed in the way we live even in the years I have been coming here to Glenelg to address this day.
What doesn't change is that the future of the city, the state, the country, relies on the hard work and resilience of the families who live here.
What doesn't change is that building the future requires leadership, facing up to tough decisions, optimism and unity.