Thank you very much Mr Russell Balding, the Managing Director of the ABC, Tim Collard, thank you very much for that very generous traditional welcome, my Parliamentary colleagues, ladies and gentlemen. Can I pick up the theme that the Chairman just addressed. And that is the great importance of this new centre here in Western Australia, in East Perth, as a demonstration that although the Australian Broadcasting Corporation is in every sense of the word a great national institution and its responsibility is very much to the totality of the Australian population, it is important that it does have the capacity to provide local perspectives, it does have the capacity to emphasise the great variety, not only geographically, but in other respects, that is represented by the modern Australian. And I congratulate the ABC Management and the ABC Board on the investment that has been made in this centre.
I've had but one opportunity this morning with Liam Bartlett to sample the new studios. They're magnificent, they're very spacious. The focus of the interview was just as intense might I say. Nobody was seduced by the pleasant surroundings, and that is the nature of the enterprise in which we are embarked. All of us have our connections with the ABC. This is an opportunity for me to reaffirm the very strong commitment of the Government to public broadcasting. That's often been debated, it's often been questioned and no doubt it will be in the future.
It seems to be a characteristic of public life in this country that there is a certain creative tension between the Government of the day and the ABC. Let me say that the ABC over the years, the 80 years of its existence has made a great and ongoing contribution to the development of the Australian personality and the explanation of Australia to Australians. And more recently, the explanation of Australia to the world, particularly our part of the world.
My first experiences with the ABC were of course of ABC Radio. Of news broadcasts, of cricket broadcasts, of Parliamentary broadcasts. And through the years, the contribution the ABC's made to an understanding of Australian sport, the contribution it's made to music, its support spawning of the Symphony Orchestras and of course the ongoing contribution it makes to an analysis of public affairs and political debate in this country is well known. And that contribution is ongoing. Sometimes and properly so, controversial. But absolutely indispensable. We do need diverse media. We need the diversity of which the Chairman spoke. We also need diversity of ownership; we need diversity between public and private.
I'm often asked to comment on the things that Australians do well. I believe we do a lot of things better than most other countries. One of the things we do well in this country is that we balance the public and private provision of ongoing human services better than most. We do that in health, we do it in education and may I say in this context we do it very well in the media. The balance between the provision by the public broadcaster, the competition that that provides, the competition that exists between the commercial providers and the competition amongst all of them is one of the underlying strengths of the media in this country.
In the 31 years that I've been in public life I've found an enormous change, not only in the nature of media coverage of public affairs but also the intensity of it. When I think of the relatively sparse media coverage, relatively speaking only not in absolute terms, of political events in the early 1970s compared with the 24 hour intensity of it today, I think of the contribution that the ABC has made through the innovation of new current affairs programmes. Most recently of course, Insiders. I think of the contribution that news radio has made to an ongoing coverage of news and events as well as of course the ongoing role of Parliamentary broadcasts. So in every way the ABC has played a very, very important role.
Can I take this opportunity of thanking the Board of the ABC and thanking you Donald as Chairman of the ABC for the contribution and the public spirited way in which you have all made that contribution. And I know today is the last Board meeting of Leith Boully. I'd like to thank her for her contribution as a member of the ABC Board over the last five years.
But most importantly at a gathering such as this, it's important to acknowledge the role and the contribution of the staff of the ABC. Like any great organisation there are people who have been loyal servants and followers and employees of the ABC all of their working lives. There are some who have come and gone and returned, there are some that have come and gone and perhaps lamented that they have gone. But in so many different ways the ABC has left a mark on all of them.
I'd like to congratulate you Eoin on winning the latest opinion poll and I know that you'll follow the next series of ratings with great interest. But your own experience is a demonstration of the lasting mark that the ABC as a great broadcaster leaves on people.
Ladies and gentlemen, I wish ABC Perth and the ABC in Western Australia great good fortune. I thank it very warmly for its distinctive contribution to Western Australian life, its distinctive contribution to interpreting to Australians in Western Australia the nuances, the differences, the variety of attitudes in this State as part of its role as a great national broadcaster. And in responding to the Chairman's invitation, I have great pleasure in declaring this centre officially open. Long may it be a great demonstration to the people of Western Australia of the contribution of the ABC to Australian national life. Thank you.
[ends]