Your Excellency, Mrs Marlena Jeffery, Brendan Nelson, the Defence Minister, Robert McClelland, the Shadow Minister for Defence representing the Leader of the Opposition, Air Chief Marshal Angus Houston and Mrs Liz Houston, General Peter Leahy and Mrs Lee Leahy, officers, NCOs, ladies and gentlemen and very importantly our two very brave and gallant servicemen who have just been given those well deserved gallantry awards. And I would like to associate myself with the warm remarks of the Governor-General regarding the magnificent contribution of both of those men to our military effort in Afghanistan.
An occasion like this for me is an opportunity on behalf of the Government, and as the person ultimately responsible for sending Australian men and women overseas and putting them in danger, to say to them and to their family and other loved ones, how very conscious I am, every day, of the risks involved in military service on behalf of our country.
Serving in Afghanistan is a very challenging task. There is no easy end to that conflict. Afghanistan has demonstrated over the centuries a remarkable inhospitality to the rest of the world, and whether they've been Australians, Americans, or British, or Soviet, or whatever, it's a very nasty place and not much is yielded without a tremendous fight. And that makes the achievement of the Australian task group, the achievement of the men and women of the Australian Defence Force all the more remarkable.
And I do on behalf of the Government and the Australian people express to all of you my admiration, my gratitude. I am very conscious of what is involved. I want to say to the loved ones that we feel for you. We pay a special tribute to the wives and the husbands and the children and the mothers and fathers and brothers and sweethearts for what they go through when those nearest and dearest to them are overseas and I don't want that opportunity to go by without saying that.
I read a few months ago a report of a survey that had been conducted by a Queensland university about the attitude of Australians towards different institutions and it showed that in a period of 11 years from 1995 to 2006, the one major Australian institution that had enjoyed a significant rise in popularity and public esteem was the Australian Defence Force. And that didn't surprise me because I have found in the time I've been Prime Minister that the quality of the men and women, the quality of the leadership of the Australian Defence Force has been quite remarkable.
Australian soldiers, sailors and airmen do appear to be able to combine military skill and gallantry with a sensitivity towards the local populations with whom they interact and that is just so enormously important in modern warfare. You have to win, to use that clich‚, you have to win the hearts and minds as well as winning the battle and Australians do that better than anybody else. I know I won't get any argument about that this morning, but I really do mean it. We do do it better than anybody else and that is a great tribute to our military tradition. But it's also a tribute to the leaders of our military and I pay tribute to a number of them who are here today, of course, the CDF and the Chief of the Army.
But to all of you, thank you. You have the admiration and respect and the gratitude of the Australian people. The work you are doing is hard. It will go on for some time. There's no immediate end in sight to the struggle in Afghanistan because we are dealing with a new type of enemy. The old battles were when armies crossed borders and declared war, this is a shadowy conflict of an entirely different kind. It requires an entirely different and a new skill, but once again Australians are demonstrating themselves as very adequate to the task.
So for myself and I know all the members of my Government, and I know my colleague Brendan Nelson, the Defence Minister, I express our great gratitude, our great respect and our very good wishes for all of you and your loved ones for Christmas and in the time ahead.
Thank you very much.
[ends]