It really is great to be here to help launch Defining Moments and to commemorate the bicentenary of the death of Governor Arthur Phillip.
It’s fitting that we today launch the Defining Moments Project and also mark the 200th anniversary of the death of Governor Arthur Phillip because the arrival of the First Fleet was the defining moment in the history of this continent. It was the moment this continent became part of the modern world. It determined our language, our law, and our fundamental values.
Yes, it did dispossess, and for a long time marginalise, indigenous people. As Noel Pearson frequently reminds us, modern Australia has an important indigenous and multicultural character. Still, it is British settlement that has most profoundly shaped the country that we are. It has provided the foundation for Australia to become one of the fairest and most prosperous societies on the face of the earth. So Arthur Phillip is as significant to modern Australia as George Washington is to the modern United States.
On the 26th January 1788, Governor Phillip raised the Union flag at Sydney Cove, drank to the King’s health and success to the settlement, and I quote from the official record, “With all that display of form, which on such occasions is esteemed propitious, because it enlivens the spirits and fills the imagination with pleasing presages.” He encouraged all the new settlers, including the convicts, to work hard for the benefit of the community and promised the reward of land upon emancipation. His instructions from the British Government were to build amity with the local inhabitants, and Phillip tried hard and faithfully to carry these out. Most notably, he declined to order punishment after himself being speared.
He was a man of his times. He was a man of courage, decency, moderation, and vision; characteristics which should and usually do mark the nation he helped to found. Yes, he was a man of his times, he was a man who embodied the best of his times and may this country embody the very best.
Any attempt to nominate defining moments will inevitably be contentious. For instance, I hope that the defining moments of World War One might include the capture of Jerusalem and the achievements of General Monash as well as the landing at Gallipoli.
I hope that the defining moments of 1964, for instance, might include the launch of The Australian newspaper, as well as the publication of The Lucky Country.
Australia may not be the most important country in the world, but it is the most important to us and it’s our duty to enlarge our country, not to diminish it. Actually, I rather envy those who choose the defining moments that will tell the story of our nation on these walls. After all, it’s what we choose to define ourselves by that does indeed help to define us.
But, there is a further defining moment that I hope one day will certainly have a plug here at the National Museum and that’s for the constitutional amendment recognising Aboriginal peoples that I hope will soon take place.
In any event, the Defining Moments Project will be an opportunity to popularise important episodes in our history. It will be a chance to honour our forebears and preserve what is best about us for future generations.
May it remind us that in history’s page, every single stage, should Advance Australia Fair.
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