Mr. Commissioner General your Excellencies, distinguished guests, Ladies and Gentlemen, Mesdames et Messieurs :
It is a great honour and privilege for the head of an Australian Government to respond to the words of welcome in which you have referred to Australia as a member of the family, that family of nations of which Canada and Australia have long been members in the Commonwealth of Nations, and a larger family represented at the United Nations itself.
Today as most of the world finds itself dismayed and disturbed by the sombre events in the Middle East, as I stand here and see before me fluttering in all their colourful splendour the flags of more than sixty nations, I take this as a reminder as indeed Expo itself is a glittering symbol that man can demonstrate his capacity to collaborate for peaceful and constructive purposes, and perhaps this is the lesson which we can derive with most advantage from what we see around us in this spectacular Expo 67.
Australia has been proud to join with others in projecting its on national image through this great exposition and on this, the day which you have kindly set aside for our special national identification. We hope to demonstrate to you some features of Australian life as in the Australian Pavilion we illustrate to you some of the things which we feel mark ourselves for special recognition around the world, some of the features of Australian life and scenery which are unique to us or which have marked us out for note by other countries. You will see our corals, our apples, our gum trees and our kangaroos. You have referred to our sportsmen and in tennis where we have managed to demonstrate an international supremacy for many years now, it is fitting that there should be today an exhibition of our tennis capacity by some of our leading players. but from all of this, we take satisfaction that we are but one country joining with many others helping to mark this historic centennial of the story of Canada; a country which, with limited population contending with difficult climate has yet managed to build a national identity respected by all and regarded with affection by most countries around the world and we in Australia look hopefully to a future in which our two democracies growing in economic and national strength together, and with an international influence growing as we grow in that strength, the truth of our friendship, we should be able to make an increasing contribution to the eace, the progress and the prosperity of mankind. In that spirit, Mr. Commissioner General I thank you again for the warm thin ss you have said of my country and its people, I thank you particularly for our well—merited tribute to Sir Valston Hancock and those of the Australian staff who have contributed toward. making our participation here such a success.
It is gratifying indeed to know that we have already exceeded nearly fourfold the anticipated percentaje of attendance at the Australian Pavilion and all of this is a mark of the success of the Exposition as a whole, but it also I believe, indicates that the Australian Pavilion has developed its own attraction for those who visit Expo 67. May the success which is already brought you, I understand, just on tin million visitors to Expto, continue throughout the eriod of its existence and may an Australian success, through our own Pavilion, go hand in hand with that of the successful Exposition as a whole.
Our congratulations finally to the enterprising people of Montreal who have the courage and the vision to stage in this magnificent highly imaginative and decoratively satisfying fashion an Exposition which will express the hopes of mankind, the achievements of mankind, and the scope that remains in this world, and we hope will longer bide for the peaceful collaooration of the nations of the world. Our final felicitations to your Commissioner General for all that you have contributed to the success of your Exposition and may this be for you an enduring testimony to your own dedication and the skills and capacities of the people you so agreeably represent.