Thank you David, Madam Mayor, my parliamentary colleagues, Senator Alan Ferguson and Senator Corey Bernardi, other parliamentary colleagues, ladies and gentlemen. It's great to be back in the electorate of Wakefield and can I say immediately what a very good choice you made at the last election to send David Fawcett to Canberra. You might say "well he would say that wouldn't he?" because he's one of my mob, but he's more than just one of my mob, he is a very genuine, sincere, committed representative. And you meet a lot of representatives, and most of them come in with the very best of intentions, and they try to do a good job. And there are genuine men and women in Parliament on both sides of politics, let me make that clear, but there's something about David, there's a quiet sincerity and an attention to detail which really has, in a short space of time, had a great impact on me and a great impact on all of his colleagues. And I am therefore especially pleased to be in his electorate.
I want to say to all of you who are gathered here this afternoon, who may be involved in different volunteer activities within our community, that you are owed a very big thank you by your fellow Australians. We are a great volunteer society, we Australians. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that we were in the early days of European settlement, we were left to our own devices, in isolation, and we had to rely on the volunteer efforts of others to keep us going. And from that early beginning we've handed down a tradition of volunteering. We really are wonderful volunteers and it so important, no matter how prosperous our society is, it is tremendously important that we acknowledge the role of those in our society who day in, day out, year in, year out, do nothing other than serve their fellow citizens and try and give some help to those, who through no fault of their own, have fallen between the cracks.
It is true that this country is going through a period of great prosperity. We're now in the 15th year of unbroken economic expansion. But I wouldn't want any of you to think that the only thing that this Government is interested in is the economic growth and the economic expansion of the nation. Because important though that is and important though it is to our future that we continue to have a strong economy, there are a lot of non-economic issues that the Government has focussed on very, very heavily and very emphatically.
We have in the time that we have been in office, we have tried to address some of the social challenges that our society has. We all believe very strongly in the importance of strong, united families. I've often said that not only do strong families provide individuals with a moral compass and a secure emotional environment, but strong and united families are also the most effective welfare system that mankind has ever devised. And when families fall apart and relationships break up, there's not only an enormous emotional cost but there's an enormous economic cost.
And whilst no Prime Minister, however much he or she may wish it were otherwise, can ever keep all relationships intact or keep all families together, what I think we can do is to try and find better ways than we've had in the past of helping people whose relationships do break apart, helping them to solve their differences in a more amicable fashion.
And one of the initiatives that we've recently launched, involves some changes to the Family Law Act and the introduction of Family Relationship Centres. And there are 65 of them being opened around the country. And the idea is that people who can't, when they break up and they've got children, they can't immediately agree on how all of those matters should be managed, they will be invited and expected, before they go to court, to visit these Family Relationship Centres and to get some advice and to see if they can't begin to sort out their problems in a less expensive and a less litigious way. Because the process of going to acrimonious litigation in a divorce court is ruinous financially and very destructive emotionally. And these relationship centres, that have now been operating for a while, they're opening around the country, and the early indications are that they are beginning to provide people in these difficult and sad situations with some help that was not previously available.
Now I mention that, not because it's the only initiative in the social welfare field that we have introduced, but it is one of the most recent, and it's an indication that good government is not just about making sure that unemployment is low, making sure that people are investing in business and providing a strong business and economic climate; that good government is also about tackling some of the more difficult, social problems that our society has.
And of course in an area like drugs, about seven or eight years ago I felt the Federal Government had to do more in the fight against drugs. And I've set aside, up to a billion dollars over a period of years, for a 'Tough on Drugs' campaign. And it has three elements. The first element is an uncompromising zero tolerance attack on people who traffic in drugs and a zero tolerance approach to drug use in our community. I never embraced the trendy notion that there was a level to which you could happily agree that people should take drugs and all you had to do was embrace this odd notion of harm minimisation. It's always seemed to me, to be a contradiction in terms, if something is harmful you ought to try avoid it altogether, you don't just sort of settle for 50 per cent harm or 75 per cent harm, you actually try and avoid it altogether.
And for a period of time I was derided. I can remember having some arguments with, even some of my own state colleagues in various parts of Australia, who said that we should legalise marijuana, we should adopt a more progressive approach. People said get with it John, you're out of date, you're old fashioned. Now it's very interesting with the passage of time and more understanding of the impact of marijuana use on the mind and the link between suicide and marijuana, the link between depression and marijuana use, there is now a much more realistic approach to drug use and a much more solid support for the zero tolerance approach.
So the first thing was to have that zero tolerance approach. The second was to recognise that behind any good drug policy, lay education. And that if people were advised very early in life in particular, or even later in life if it were necessary, that the impact of drugs on the system, and the impact of drugs on people's lives, then a lot would be gained; and the third thing was to recognise that we didn't have enough rehabilitation services in the community. There were many people who are struggling with a drug problem but there weren't enough skilled counsellors and others to help them beat the habit.
And as a result of that we have seen some progress. I am not saying all of this progress is due to everything the Government has done but we have seen some progress. We have seen a sharp decline in the number of deaths from heroin overdoses. We have even seen a pleasing decline in the level of youth suicide. In the late 1990s Australia had one of the highest youth suicide rates in rural areas, particularly amongst young men, of any country in the world. Now there has been a turnaround in that and I think it's a very welcome turnaround. So they're a couple of the things in the non-economic area, in case any of you think that the only thing my Government is interested in is keeping unemployment low but that's very important, keeping inflation low and having a strong economy because those things are tremendously important. And one of the things that is very important in Australia at the present time is that we don't have enough skilled tradesmen. We are desperately short of qualified tradesmen. I was in Elizabeth this morning at the Holden plant and they have just had an enormous new investment and they are releasing one of their new models, the new Statesman and the new Calais today, and I shook hands with a young man and I said "what do you do?" And he said "I am an apprentice electrician." And I said "mate, your blood is worth bottling because we really do badly need apprentice electricians." We need apprentice carpenters, apprentice plumbers and we need apprenticeships in all of these traditional areas. And I want to build an Australian society where having a high grade technical qualification is as prized as a university degree. And for too long in Australia we had this silly notion that the only pathway to a successful career was to go to university. Now I think going to university is a wonderful privilege and I want all Australians who want to go to university and are able to do so to have that opportunity. I went to university and it was of great assistance to me. But there are many who don't and the great majority of people who leave school don't go to university and for a generation or more we denigrated the value of technical training and we have moved away in our education system from recognising that there were many people who didn't want to go to university, they wanted to become tradesmen, they wanted to be electricians or carpenters and plumbers. And of course, you don't do too badly, particularly if you have your own business. I mean, you know, I know a lot of plumbers who do quite well and I know a lot of carpenters who've become small businessman and so forth, there's nothing wrong with that. And I think we need to change our attitudes. We are beginning to.
There's a very important event here in this local community. The Australian Technical College that my colleague David campaigned for so vigorously and won for this part of Adelaide, it is having its first public information night. And I know a lot of local businessmen and women have worked very, very hard to support it. And I know one of them, and I met him on the way in, Mr Kevin Weekes has agreed to take some 30 apprentices coming out of this Australia Technical College. We're building 25 of them around Australia and 23 have been announced already. And their idea is to lift the status of apprenticeships, to lift the status of technical qualifications and trade qualifications to the sort of level that we need, because we do desperately need more skilled men and women in trades. Whenever I visit business establishments, whether they're big or small around Australia, people don't complain to me about problems with their staff, they only complain to me that they can't get enough people, they can't get enough skilled people. And that is a shortfall that we have to address.
I guess the only other thing that I would like to say ladies and gentlemen, and then I will keep quiet and come around and meet as many of you as possible, and that is this; I think one of the big mistakes that we have made over the past few years, probably more than a few years, it's about 20 or 30 years, in our education system is that we have stopped teaching people in a proper fashion about the history of this country. Now you can criticise as a lot of people do, the Americans. And I don't always agree with them and there are aspects of American life that are not my cup of tea, but you have got to give it to them, they are unashamedly proud of the history of their country and they're unashamedly willing to see that their children get a proper narrative of that history when they go to school.
And that is why the Federal Government has said that it is determined to restore the place and the role of the teaching of the history in this county in all of the schools in Australia. Not a particular version of history, I mean people will always debate history. I heard on the radio this morning as many of you did that there's some historian bloke in England who's saying it was really the Royal Navy and not the Royal Air Force that won the Battle of Britain. Now I don't think he'll win that argument, no disrespect to the Royal Navy, but I think he's battling to win that argument. But the point simply is that people are always trying to have a different version of history. But you can't even begin, if I could take that as an example, unless you knew when the Battle of Britain occurred, unless you knew where it fell and how critical it was in the course of World War II and how pivotal it was in stopping the German onslaught in World War II, you wouldn't even begin to understand what the debate was all about. And that's the whole point of having a chronological, narrative version of history.
I mean for the last generation we've taught issues when it comes to history. We say 'oh let's have a debate about race, let's have a debate and this or that, the environment, or gender balance, or power balances.' Whatever they sometimes mean, I don't know. But the point I simply make, is that unless you have some idea of the sequence in which things, events took place, then you don't really have a proper understanding of what a debate is about. So no, I am not trying to impose an authorised version of history, I can assure you of that, but I do want people to have a proper understanding of some basic events, the order in which they occurred and the broad historical context in which those events occurred.
So I've mentioned those things ladies and gentlemen to make the point that I lead a Government that is not just interested in economics, important though that is. But I am very proud of the economic strength of this country, I am very proud of the fact that we now have the lowest unemployment level in 30 years. We paid off our debt, we are in a very strong and a very, very prosperous position. We've got to work hard to keep it that way.
And I am delighted to have the opportunity of talking to so many of you and to thank again the volunteers of Wakefield for their contribution to our society. And finally again to commend to you David, who's been a wonderful representative and I hope he continues to be so. Thank you very much.
[ends]