Thank you very much Mark, Foreign Minister, Attorney General, other parliamentary colleagues, ladies and gentlemen.
That was, Mark, a very gracious and a very generous introduction. I am particularly delighted to be here tonight for a number of reasons. First and foremost what the partners and the employees and the clients of Arnold Bloch Leibler celebrate tonight is 50 years of living out what I can loosely call the Australian dream. And that is the capacity of a small number of people to start an enterprise and build it from nothing and in a lifetime in the space of two generations which is 50 years to build a very impressive business and a very professional firm. And to build it at a time of enormous competition, at a time when the legal profession has transformed itself from what it was in the early 1950s.
So the most important thing to me about tonight is to marvel at and remark upon the capacity of people to start with nothing and in an impressively short period of time build it into a remarkably successful organisation.
I've known Mark Leibler, as he reminded you, for more than 20 years. I don't think in my life I've met a person with a keener intellect, a sharper sense of advocacy for the causes in which he believes. But also a great capacity to generously see another point of view. He reminded you of the fact that we have in common the many things, but one in particular that we served articles to a Jewish solicitor. Myer Rosenblum, whom he mentioned, I'm very happy to acknowledge remains one of the most remarkable people that I've met in my life. Not only did he have to spend three years trying to teach me the law, which was very trying, if I have any capacity to digest departmental briefs now it is due almost entirely to a lesson that I was taught by Myer back in 1960. Quite properly as a raw article clerk he would never be so foolish as to allow me to sign my own mail and I presented a letter to him that had a spelling mistake it in. And the letter came rather hastily out of his office and he reminded me that he was my master solicitor, he was not a proof reader. And it's a lesson that I have to say at the age of, whatever it was, 20 then, a lesson that impressed itself upon me and something that I've never forgotten. But he was a remarkable man, he taught me a lot about the law, he was also an astonishingly talented Australian representing his nation in sports as diverse as rugby union, hammer throwing and then Empire Games hurdles.
But you remember from your early days in your vocation, as Mark was recounting his experiences with Arnold Bloch, you remember the lessons that you were taught by your tutors at that time.
Mark has of course been very strongly identified and proudly identified with the causes that are dear to Australian Jews. And I have had a long association with the Jewish community of Australia, of which I am unapologetically very proud. And in that time I've found Mark a good counsellor, we haven't always agreed, we won't always agree in the future. But what I think we do agree and so many Australians, and not only those gathered here tonight, is our intense admiration for the contribution that the Jewish community has made to our nation and also our great admiration for the stoic way in which Israel has defended itself against constant attack and constant harassment.
Can I take this opportunity in the wake of the events that have occurred in Iraq to say as a great and staunch friend of Israel that we do have, I believe, the world has an historic opportunity to try and convert some of the events that have occurred in the Middle East to the achievement of some kind of lasting settlement.
A couple of weeks ago I met the former Prime Minister of Israel Ehud Barak when he visited Australia and I could only but reflect with sadness on the fact that some three years ago things seemed bright and the star of a peace settlement seemed to blaze quite brightly in the sky at that particular time. And I remember my personal experience of going to Ramallah at the behest of the Israel Government and accompanied by several people who are in this room tonight. And it looked as though the courage of that man Barak had bought us close to some kind of settlement. Sadly his courage was not reciprocated and the rest is well known, the suicide bombings, the mistrust and so forth. But we must try again, and the road map enunciated by the President of the United States and supported by the Russians and the European Union and the United Nations, and that road map must be persevered with. And it will require courage and leadership on both sides. And I welcome the fact that there has been a Prime Minister appointed by the Palestinian Council - the key test will be whether that person is given serious negotiating authority.
But all of us long for a settlement, all of us will defend always the right of Israel to exist without harassment behind secure, internationally recognised and defensible boundaries. But it's also a policy of my government to work towards the development of an independent Palestinian state. We must, all of us, take opportunities that are available to encourage the achievement of a just and lasting settlement, I think that is the prayer and the hope of so many people, not only here in Australia but around the world.
But can I say Mark that tonight must be a very proud occasion for you and it must be a very proud occasion for all of your partners because in just 50 years you have impressively built a very fine firm, a firm that boosts a rich variety of clients, a firm that has made its mark not only here in Melbourne but also throughout the entire Australian nation and within the legal profession. And you pass through a period of time where the legal profession has adjusted to change and you have adjusted with it. But you have maintained some of those fundamental principles that you learnt from your master solicitor of good client service, of honest advice, of industrious preparation of your arguments and meticulous attention to detail.
One of the things that I believe I learnt from 12 years of practice as a solicitor was some capacity to apply myself to the detail of arguments and the detail of intricate differences of view and intricate propositions. And I hope in some way that has served me well in my current pursuits.
Finally can I thank you Mark and through you your firm to the contribution that you have made to Australia. We are all more than anything else united by that great bond of affection for a very remarkable country. This nation of ours of just under 20 million people is a remarkable success story. It is a nation that has welcomed people from many lands, it is a nation that has the capacity to punch above its weight in so many areas. It's a nation which over the past few weeks through its armed forces acting in Iraq has again demonstrated the extraordinary ability and tenacity and toughness, but also the fundamental decency and civility of its people.
I'm very proud of the fact that just as our forces have performed magnificently in a military sense, so it was that within 36 hours of the government deciding on Saturday morning that we should send a consignment of medical supplies to assist the hospitals in Baghdad, those supplies should have arrived and should have been an inspiration for other countries to do likewise. The capacity of our forces to be peacekeepers and conciliators as well as soldiers, sailors and airmen is something of which our country should be proud.
But ladies and gentlemen, may I on your behalf congratulate the firm, thank it for its contribution to the legal profession in Australia, thank it for its contribution to living out the great Australian dream of starting with nothing and building in your lifetime something really worthwhile and something really enduring. While ever it is possible to do that in Australia it will be the Australia that all of known and love so very much.
Thank you.
[ends]