Well thank you very much Mrs Hyde, Mr Browning, your Grace, my parliamentary colleagues, ladies and gentlemen.
This is a very memorable occasion. It celebrates two very important things, it celebrates the remarkable success in a very short period of time of the Burgmann Anglican School, opened with a very small pupil base in 1999, it has fulfilled the expectation and the hopes of many, not least the Australian Government, that there was a place in the Australian community for the growth of new independent schools with a Christian base, but offering places at very affordable fees. And long may the cause of that category of schools expand and extend, not only here in the ACT but throughout Australia.
The other important feature of this gathering is of course that it honours and celebrates a very important cultural, historical and people-to-people relationship and that is the relationship between Australia and Indonesia. I want to congratulate the school on giving such pride of place to that relationship. The more we can in so many different ways reach out to the people of Indonesia, count them as, treat them as and deal with them as our friends and our neighbours forever in this part of the world the better it will be for both countries and the better prospects there will be for harmony and stability in our region.
It is also very important that this cultural and language centre is being opened at an Anglican school because it provides an opportunity for Christianity and Islam to reach out to each other, for each of those religions to remind their respective adherents, that at their respective cores lies a commitment to peace, a commitment to the brotherhood of man and a rejection of violence and terrorism and hate and racial discrimination. Those values are as important to the Islamic faith and to the people of Indonesia as they are important to the people of Christian faith and to the people of Australia.
It is very touching that in this part of Australia, on the border of the Australian Capital Territory, we should have established this wonderful metaphor for the desire and the intention and the determination of the people of Australia and the children of Australia to treat the Indonesian people as their friends and their neighbours.
I congratulate Mrs Nichols, I congratulate the school principal, I congratulate all associated with this project. It';s a wonderful example to other school communities around Australia, I hope it will, as I declare it officially open, be a permanent reminder and a permanent inspiration to all children who are educated here in future of the ongoing importance of our relationship with Indonesia, but even more than that the need for tolerance and understanding and co-operation across religious and racial divides within our part of the world because our future stability will be forever tied up with the achievements of those goals and Burgmann Anglican School is making a mighty contribution to it.
Thank you.
[ends]