Thank you very much Leigh, Your Grace, the Archbishop of Sydney, Bishops, retired Archbishop Harry Goodhew, ladies and gentlemen. Something in Leigh's introduction earlier tonight caught, with great approval, my attention when he said ANGLICARE had a good head and also a good heart. Now being, as all of us tend to be when we occupy political positions, particularly positions of some authority as Prime Minister, we tend to be a little self-obsessed about how we conduct ourselves, I thought to myself what a perfectly fine description of what the Government has set out to do over the last 10 years. And I thought heavens above, this man, you know, has a real future and I thought it was a very, very good description not only of what an organisation such as ANGLICARE should seek to do but also, partisan politics aside, what a government should seek to do. No government in the modern world can govern without a good head. The days when governments could spend as if money were going out of fashion are long gone. We live in what's called by the sometimes criticised econocrats, we live in a relentlessly globalised world and if governments don't run their affairs correctly and if nations don't run their affairs correctly, international financial markets exact their vengeance and that is felt in the living standards of the public and is felt very directly by all of the people.
And it's also the case that electorates these days are a lot more attuned and far more cynical, and properly so, about governments or oppositions for that matter who promise the earth. And it's also the case, of course, that governments, must, as well as governing with a good head, they must govern with a good heart. And there is a great deal more to what governments do in the modern world and that's certainly been my experience over the last 10 years, a great deal more than simply worrying about balancing the budget and making sure that taxation is not too high and making sure that, economically, the country is in very good shape. And what I have tried to do, and what the Government has tried to do over the last 10 years, is to achieve a blend of a good head and a good heart, and I hope not immodestly we can point to some things that have been very successful in delivering on the commitment to have a good heart.
We are all, as a community, properly and I hope consistently concerned about the less fortunate in our midst. It's become almost a clich‚ to say that we are living in very prosperous times, we are. Nationally this country is doing very well. We have the lowest unemployment in 30 years, we have a very strong budget position, we still have relatively low interest rates, we have very strong, optimistic businesses, we are in the middle of the longest, sustained period of economic growth in the nation's history and we are the recipients of, from providence, of great mineral resources, which are bringing great wealth to our country. But amidst, in the middle of all of that, and no organisation would be more conscious of it than ANGLICARE, in the middle of all of that there are still many in our midst who through no fault of their own, sometimes individual fault makes a contribution, but overwhelmingly there is still within our community a core of people who have seen prosperity pass them by.
And I know a couple of days ago Mission Australia put out an analysis of the unemployed in our community and it made the rather arresting finding that something in the order of 40 to 50 per cent of the hard core unemployed in our community are aged between 18 and 26, and that particular group I know is a concern of ANGLICARE and I know that you have a particular program based around Parramatta that seeks to deal with the problem of youth homelessness. And what the Mission Australia analysis found, and I am sure ANGLICARE would make the same finding and indeed all of the great welfare organisations in our community would all reach the same conclusion, that for many people the inability to find a job is really the end product of a life that has been severely deprived emotionally, a life that has been lived without the sort of affection that most of us have been fortunate enough to have and has involved in it's wake, it's involved homelessness often, but not always abuse, and all of the things that come together in the daily experience of your counsellors and of your outreach. One of the ways in which we have endeavoured to translate the good head into the good heart is, of course, to recognise that it's not enough to have a strong economy because there will be some people who through a combination of the circumstances I mentioned simply don't benefit from the strong economy.
We have tried to build what I call a social coalition. Now this is a concept or a doctrine, a political doctrine, that I started enunciating some years ago and what it seeks to do is to involve organisations like ANGLICARE and the Salvation Army and the Society of St Vincent de Paul to involve them in the policy making process of the delivery of welfare services, not because I believe that they are the only repositories of good advice in relation to those things, but because I believe that their experience has given them an understanding and a capacity to give good policy advice. And in time through things like the Job Network and the Family Relationship Centres, the latter of which represents one of the most fundamental changes to the way in which our family law system works in this country since the introduction of the current Family Law Act in 1975; what it seeks to do is to blend the financial resources of governments, both Commonwealth and state, the personal commitment of motivated, dedicated individuals and the daily life's experience of organisations such as ANGLICARE. And in many cases, to actually outsource, if I can use that rather dry economic expression, outsource to these organisations, the actual job and responsibility of finding work for people. In the case of the Family Relationship Centres providing the initial shock absorber when a marriage or relationship has broken down and the parents of children have been unable to reach agreement on future arrangements for their custody and their welfare.
And under the new provisions of this law, it is a requirement that people go through the Family Relationship Centre process and are obliged to be involved in, and counselled by the programs of those relationship centres before they can litigate any differences they have. And we believe, over time, this will, of course, not abolish divorce or break-down of relationships or marriages, but it will over time, we believe, lead to fewer acrimonious court cases involving custody and the division of assets. Now the development of this system like the development of the Job Network, would not have been possible without a philosophy which said that looking after the less fortunate in our community is no longer defined by the Government simply writing the cheques and independent, wonderful organisations operating at the coal face to provide support and counselling and emergency assistance. Both of those functions will still go on, and do still go on because the Government continues to write the cheques and the organisations continue to provide this wonderful support.
But I think what we have done in so many areas over the past few years has been to bring those two activities together. And I have certainly found as Prime Minister and successive ministers of social security or family and community services as we now call it, successive ministers have over the years worked constantly and closely with organisations such as ANGLICARE in the development of policy and the implementation of policy. And I can well remember that within a couple of weeks of becoming Prime Minister back in 1996, one of the very first meetings I had was with a group of people including a representative of the Anglican church, a representative of the Catholic Church and also a representative of the Salvation Army to nut out a program to tackle as best we could and as best we saw it at that time, the daunting and continuing problem of youth homelessness. Now we haven't solved that problem, collectively we continue to tackle it and ANGLICARE has done wonderful work in this department, but progress has been made.
Another field where the Government and the great organisations that care for the less fortunate, have worked together is the campaign against drugs. About six or eight years ago, the Government decided that at a Commonwealth level we had to do more to fight drug abuse in our community. I adopted at that time, in the eyes of some, the rather unpopular view that there had to be an uncompromising attitude towards illicit drugs. I did not at that time and I still don't adhere to the wisdom I think which is less conventional now than it was six or eight years ago, that somehow or other harm minimisation was an adequate response to drug abuse and that there probably might not have been too much harm in the use of what were rather euphemistically called recreational drugs. Now it's interesting how community attitudes on recreational drugs, particularly marijuana have changed over the last six to eight years and those people who back in the late 1990's sought to draw a sharp distinction between marijuana and heroin and obviously there are differences, but those differences are far less frequently drawn attention to now because there is a widely accepted view in the community that marijuana use has contributed mightily to the appallingly high level of mental illness within our community.
Now once again in this area, the Government in shaping its policies was greatly aided by the advice and counsel of the voluntary welfare sector, particularly those associated with the Christian churches. And for many years Major Brian Watters, somebody who I know will be familiar to many of you in this room, chaired my national advisory committee on drug abuse, and I am very happy to say that we have seen a significant decline in the number of deaths from heroin. We have seen the beginnings of a decline in marijuana use and we have seen within the community a greater recognition of the dimension and the nature of the problem. And whilst I don't put it all down to the social coalition I do believe that it is part of the explanation for some of the improvements that have taken place because the government and the organisations, the churches and other organisations that do such good work in this area have not just talked to each other, they have actually treated each other as partners in a community-wide response to social problems. And I think the community has benefited enormously from that partnership, from that coalition and I therefore, my friends, see this very much as being the working out of the good head and the good heart. You do need in the modern world to have a good head in running a nation. You can't be profligate, you do have to put something away for a rainy day, you do have to balance the books, I know it sounds dull and dreary and unexciting but gee it's fundamentally important, not only to a government but to all of us in our lives. And we, of course, all of us with a commitment to Christian social justice must have a good heart to those less fortunate within our community.
I'm delighted to be here tonight. I have long admired the work of ANGLICARE, it's one of the great Christian organisations in the Australian community. It takes its place alongside another, quite a number of others that all have a very honoured role in caring for the less fortunate and demonstrating the humanity and the care and the compassion of the Christian message. And I know that your organisation is particularly celebrating tonight the 150th anniversary of its formation and I know that you have a particular project in relation to homeless young people in Parramatta and the western suburbs of Sydney and I'm very happy to indicate that the Government will support that particular project with a contribution of $100,000 and I do hope that you in the course of your work through the year, you are very successful.
But finally can I say that I'm often asked why is it that Australia has been so successful over the last 10 years and my very genuine response is that it's been the hard work and the commitment of the men and women, the whole 20 million of them, of our nation over that period of time and right at the top of that list I do put the people, so many of them in this room, who work out of a sense of Christian conviction and faith, work very hard to help their fellow Australians, those less fortunate, those who through no fault of their own have fallen through the cracks and haven't had quite the same experiences and happiness in life that most of us had. And I take this opportunity as well as for Janette and me, in wishing you all a merry Christmas, of thanking all of you in ANGLICARE and the wider Anglican community here in Sydney for the tremendous things that you have done for your fellow Australians and the contribution that all of you have made to the strength and the decency and the compassion of the modern Australian community. Thank you.
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