Thank you very much Kym for those very kind and generous words of introduction, to my other parliamentary colleagues who are here today, Senator Grant Chapman and Senator Cory Bernardi, to the Principal, Jenny Sommer, of the Wirreanda High School, thank you very much for making the premises of the school available for this gathering, and I'm so very pleased that there are representatives of all of the schools of this district gathered here today because I am a very, very strong believer in diversity in education. I am a fortunate beneficiary of the public education system of New South Wales and I owe the public education system of New South Wales a great deal for the education that it gave me. But I also believe that it is the inalienable right of the parents of Australia to choose the type of education that best suits their children in their judgement. And what we need in this country are strong, good, growing, successful government schools and strong, good, growing, successful independent schools. We should aspire to uplift all of them and not perpetuate any of the rivalries of the past which I hope have been long since buried.
But I do thank the school very warmly and I pay tribute to the public education system of this state for the job that it is doing in educating the young men and women of South Australia into the future.
I'm delighted that you've chosen to honour Meals on Wheels. It's one of those great volunteer organisations that helps hold our nation together. We are a great volunteer nation. I've often wondered why it is that we have this instinct for volunteerism beyond that of many other countries. Maybe it was because in the early days of European settlement we were so isolated in such a vast country that we had to, in fending for ourselves, rely heavily on each other. And we developed that instinct for caring for each other and for responding together in times of great crisis.
And when, I use the word mateship, and I do use it a lot, and I think it's one of those proud unapologetic Australian words that we should never tire of using. We shouldn't typecast it in some kind of narrow male sense, we should see it certainly in that sense, and there's nothing wrong about that, and we shouldn't apologise about that, but we should also see it in the sense of working together to challenge a common, and to meet, common adversity and a common threat. And when I went to Innisfail in Far North Queensland a few months ago in the wake of the cyclone, and I talked to the people a couple of days after the cyclone, and did what I could and in cooperation with the State Premier and others to help people, and to reassure them that they would have assistance from the Government, I felt a great sense of mateship because everybody was working together. The differences of any petty local rivalries had all dissolved and everybody was willing to work together. And we Australians can do that better than most other countries, and I think one of the reasons we do it is that we've always had that instinct for helping each other, particularly in times of great adversity.
Now Kym was kind enough to talk about the prosperity of this country and what contribution I may have made to that and of course governments, you know, don't like to hide their light under a bushel when it comes to a little bit of success that may have come along. I'm certainly very proud of the fact that over the last 10 or 15 years this country has enjoyed a long period of economic growth and economic expansion. We do have the lowest unemployment now for about 30 years and we've seen growing wages and we've seen, generally speaking, very good economic conditions. And the challenge that my Government has, the challenge the whole community has is to keep that going. But we should never lose sight of the fact that no matter how well we may be doing as a nation, and no matter how well the majority of people maybe doing, there are still some in our midst who through no fault of their own have fallen between the cracks and they do need help. And that is where volunteer organisations are so tremendously important.
And amidst all of this prosperity we should not lose sight of our mission, as a nation, to assist those who are less fortunate. And we should not lose sight of the social challenges that we have as a country. And there are a number of things that my Government has focussed on that I think are very important to the social fabric of Australia. About seven or eight years ago I became very concerned that we weren't, at a national level, doing enough about the challenge of illicit drugs and I decided that the Federal Government should commit hundreds of millions of dollars, over and above that being committed by state governments, to fight the scourge of drugs. And I built the tough on drugs campaign around three things. Firstly, an uncompromising attack on people who peddle drugs, because they are, to use that earthy express, they are the scum of the earth, people who peddle drugs and traffic in the misery of their fellow human beings. That's the first thing. The second thing is to build it around the importance of educating people about the dangers of engaging in drug abuse and the use of drugs and starting drugs, in other words to communicate a zero tolerance message towards the use of drugs in the first place. And finally, we built it around a programme of trying to assist people who were hooked on drugs to break the habit. And I found as I went around the country, and I listened on talkback radio everywhere I went, people ringing up in despair and saying my daughter has had an heroin addiction for a number of years, she wants to get off it but there aren't enough rehabilitation services, there aren't enough services around the country where she can go to and get some help. So over the years we've poured more resources into that and I'm very happy to say, largely with the cooperation of state Governments across political lines of division and it's been very successful. The problem is still with us but I think we're making some progress. We're beginning to see a significant fall in the number of heroin related deaths. There's been a very significant decline in those over the years.
We're also seeing a great recognition of the link between marijuana abuse and depression and suicide and mental illness. For a long time the more trendy in our communities said there was no such linkage. I can remember seven years ago when I started on this, people ridiculing me, including some people in my own party saying, he's out of date, he's old fashioned, he's locked in 1950s, he's behind a white picket fence and he doesn't understand what the real world is all about. Well I may have been thumping the table in a way that people might have thumped the table on other occasions but I think that as time has gone by people have understood the link between depression and mental illness. And mental illness is now regarded as one of the great challenges of health in our modern society. And the link between current levels of mental illness and depression and marijuana abuse has now been established beyond argument. And I think there's a greater recognition of that, and it's reinforced the zero tolerance message that I believe we must communicate throughout the entire community.
So that's an important thing that we have to continue, amidst all of the prosperity we have, we can't lose sight of these social-ills that will gnaw away at the fabric of our community. And the other issue that we've tried to tackle in recent years is to find a better way of helping people when their families break-up, they have divorce, or their relationships breakdown. And we've introduced the notion of Family Relationship Centres and 65 of them are being established throughout Australia, whereby people who break-up, if they can't agree on arrangements for custody and support of their children before they can go to court and have a wasteful, you know, argument and bitter argument in court which squanders thousands of dollars to the benefit only of the legal system, and I've got nothing against the legal system, I was a lawyer myself once, I think they're a great lot, I've got nothing against them, but the reality, let me say that immediately, but reality is that these breakdowns, if they end up in court, they're bitter, they're acrimonious, they're expensive and they can leave permanent scars on people and we have to find a better way of helping people. And these relationship centres which are in effect being contracted out by the Government to be run by organisations, community organisations, church organisations that have an expertise in helping people at the coal face, to tackle their problems and to try and reach an amicable settlement, I hope that it will provide as the years ago a better way of dealing with the bitterness that inevitably flows from the breakdown of families and the breakdown of relationships because no matter how good we maybe doing economically, we'll always have some of these social challenges. And we have an obligation, hand in hand with keeping the economy running well, we also have an obligation to see that we can help people who need assistance, at particularly difficult times in their lives.
There's one other great passion of mine that, and I have a lot of passions, but I won't talk about cricket today because that will take me far too long, but there's one other great passion of mine that I want to say something about, and that is the importance of teaching our young a lot more, in a more rigorous fashion, about the history of this country. I believe, very, very strongly that we have over the years not adequately taught people the history of Australia. Now when I talk about the history of Australia I don't have in mind a particular version of Australian history and anybody who thinks that I am trying to hand down the John Howard version of Australian history, forget it, there's no such thing. But what I am trying to argue for is that unless we have a proper understanding of the narrative and the Australian story. Unless we understand the contribution that so many different tributaries have made to the great river of the modern Australia, unless we understand those things, we can't properly appreciate where we are in Australian society, where we are in the world at the present time. And I think over the years we have, with varying degrees around the country, the rigorous and proper teaching of history has been neglected. And I heard an interview on the radio a few weeks ago which seemed to me to be a metaphor. An otherwise very intelligent sounding young woman was asked if she could name the date of federation, and she couldn't, if she could name the first Prime Minister of Australia and she couldn't, if she could name the date of the Gallipoli landing and she couldn't. And some of you may say, well that's just rote learning. I think it's more than that, I think you need to have some understanding of the narrative, the sequence of events. Of course you can debate very, very passionately, the meaning of particular events, and we'll always have arguments about who was responsible for what. And I mentioned at a gathering similar to this yesterday afternoon, that I'd heard on the radio yesterday morning that some historian in England was now arguing that it wasn't the Royal Air Force that saved Britain in the battle for Britain, it was Royal Navy, and whilst I don't want know want to get into that argument, but I just mention it as an illustration of just how you can have arguments about history, but you can't really make sense of those arguments unless you have in the case of that particular dispute, you have an understanding of the place for the battle for Britain in returning points of World War II and you understand the historical sequence of all of these events. So ladies and gentlemen, I thought that as I was at a school I would take the liberty of expressing the great passion that I have for an understanding of the history of this country. When you talk about the history of this country, you've got to talk about the bad things as well as the good things, and like any other nation we've made our share of mistakes and we exhibited intolerance and we've made errors. We didn't treat indigenous people well and we have to in an understanding of our history, understand the contribution of indigenous history and the indigenous people to the development and the psychology and the identity of this country. But I do think we need to re-embrace everything that this country has meant to people over a long period of time and I think an understanding of Australian history is enormously important.
There is just two other things that I want to say to you, and that is as I move around Australia and I talk to a lot of people, I get a lot of advice, I get criticism, I get occasionally, you know, the odd pat on the back, but overwhelmingly what I find the most engaging about moving around Australia and meeting on a daily basis, hundreds, indeed thousands of Australians, is that people do have a sense optimism and a sense of hope about this country's future. But in expressing that sense of optimism and hope, there are two great challenges that we face of a natural resources kind. And one of those is the great problem of the growing shortage of water, and the other of course is the impact of the world wide shortage of energy, and the great opportunities this opens up for Australia.
We are as a nation, a very thirsty, dry, continent and for generations we wasted water, we assumed that it was a limitless resource, that would always be free, and that we could always use it. And now of course we are all suffering all over the country a very rude awakening that that is no longer the case, and in different ways we all have to try and do our bit. Some people mistakenly believe that the solution to the water problem in this country is a big bang project. People come up come up to me and say John what you've got to do is to build one giant pipe line from up there in the northern part of Australia where there is an enormous amount of water, and you've got to pipe it down and you've got to have spurs going out, one going out to Adelaide, one going out to Sydney, one going out to Melbourne and so on. Now it sounds terrific and they say if only you do that, spend all the billions you've got, spend it on that and it will solve the problem. Now I know that that is a well intentioned view, but of course when you analyse the problem and the nature of Australia and you recognise where the water is, and where the water should be, and why where the water should be is so dry and short of water, you realise that that big bang solution is not quite the answer. And what we need is a whole lot of what I might call little bang solutions all around the country. And I did one of those out at Tea Tree Gully this morning. I announced that the Federal Government in cooperation with the State Government and the three local councils I think, three of the local councils in that area; and this is a programme that a number of my colleagues had been pushing very hard on me, and we committed ourselves to it in theory at the time of the last election. And what it will do is to capture stormwater, and it will capture about 17 gigalitres of stormwater that would otherwise go out into the Spencer Gulf and bring it back and cleanse it through the wetlands and then it would be put into the water system of northern Adelaide.
Now that project, along with another project that we're funding; and you put all of the money in together it's going to cost the State Government, the Federal Government and the local governments and the private sector organisations combined about $115 million, which is quite a lot of money. But it will give a very much needed boost to the water system of northern Adelaide. And the point I make is that we need a whole lot of those all over Australia, and if as communities we can combine to make those things work all over Australia, it will be tremendous. And the other issue of course is energy. We all hate the high petrol prices that we have at the present time. I think the whole country, wherever I go, people talk to me about high petrol prices and I understand the impact they're having on a lot of families. Now I can't stand here honestly and look you in the eye and say I can bring the price of petrol down by 20 cents and keep it down. I can't, because the price of petrol is dictated by the price of crude oil. And when the price of crude oil falls, the petrol price will come down and when the price of crude oil goes up, the petrol price will go up.
There are some things we can do at the margin. We can help people convert their cars to LPG, and the latest report I had from Ausindustry hotline this morning, and I get one every morning, indicates that there are thousands of people who are making inquiries and many thousand are already doing that. And they're the sort of things that we can do at the margin. But one of the things we should remember about fuel at the present time is that one of the major reasons why petrol is so dear, in fact the major reason why petrol is so dear, is that the demand for fuel around the world is running ahead of the supply. And as all of you who studied economics, as a matter of commonsense, you would all know that when demand exceeds supply, the price of the commodity rises. And the main cause of the excess demand is the extraordinary economic growth of China. And the point I'd want to make out of that is that unlike most other countries, Australia is benefiting greatly from the economic growth of China because we have a lot of resources that China wants to buy. And although we don't like the high petrol prices that are coming out of that excess demand from China, we are unlike a lot of countries, we are benefiting very greatly from that. And I think one of the things as a nation we have to do because providence has given us enormous reserves of energy, we have this vast uranium reserve and I think...I am a great believer in examining all the options in relation to uranium, I think we should sensibly look at whether we should enrich it, and whether eventually this country might examine the desirability or otherwise of having nuclear power. I don't think we can shut our minds to that because it's a cleaner energy source than many of the energy sources we have at the present time. And I think we, as a nation, should be mature enough to have a sensible debate about this. And I think its fascinating to see some of the leading environmentalists, including one of the founders of Greenpeace actually arguing that we should look as a community and as a world at the possibility of using nuclear power as one of the ways of tackling our energy problem.
But anyway, that's long enough for me. Finally, can I say what a terrific bloke I think you have in your local Member Kym Richardson. Can I say to all you of; yes let's give him a round of applause. Kym joined us in 2004 and he's been an absolutely indefatigable worker for this area. He's badgered me about all sorts of things. This Australian Technical College, and I went and had a look at it, let's give the Technical College a bit of a clap too. Kym took me out to show me the site on the way here, it was a little bit of a diversion, but he took me over there to see the site, and can I say there has been no more energetic advocate of an individual project anywhere around Australia than has Kym Richardson been in relation to that particular college and a whole lot of other things that are very important to this area and this part of Adelaide.
He's a great representative, as you might expect, he's one of my mob and naturally I very warmly commend him to, but you know I mean it, you know, he really is a genuine article. He's sincere, he's committed, he's hardworking and he'll help anybody who seeks their assistance and I hope you continue to help him in the way that is most practical in Australian politics and Australian public life. But my friends, my fellow Australians, thank you very, very much for coming along this morning, I hope to meet as many of you as possible. This is a wonderful country and it's great for me to have the opportunity of talking to so many of you, and particularly and finally, to the young who are here, I hope those of you who are doing your final exams at the end of this year, I wish you well and everything you hope for yourselves in relation to technical or university education or any other career you want, and I can promise you I'll continue to do everything I can to maintain an economy that gives you maximum available opportunity to get the job you want when you leave school because that's the foundation of so much stability and happiness in later life.
Thank you very much.
[ends]