PRIM MUTAIAISTER
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SPEECH BY THE PRIME MINISTER
CH2RISTIAN BROTHERS HIGH SCHOOL, LEWISHAM
CENTENARY YEAR ANNUAL PRIZE GIVING
AND CONCERT
SYDNEY 25 SEPTEMBER 1991
Brother Peter Hester
Distinguished guests
Ladies and gentlemen
Students of -the School
In a country as young as ours there are not many
institutions as old as Christian Brothers High School,
Lewisham. 100 years young and still going strong that bears great
witness to the dedication and commitment of the Christian
Brothers to ' the service of the young on the western side of
Sydney, beginning at a time when it was not very fashionable
to move west.
Why, in those days Lewisham was like Penrith!
Christian Brothers, Lewisham has seen some 14,000 students
through its classrooms in those 100 years.
They have distinguished themselves in every walk of life in
this great c: Lty and throughout our great country. There
have been a remarkable number, perhaps some would say a
disproportionate number, of politicians.
But tonight, I want to single out one as an example and I am
sure that not: one of the 14,000 would begrudge me doing so.
I refer to ViLctor Chang, who was a student here from 1953 to
1955. Dr Chang was a great Australian not only because he had
special skills which literally gave life to so many of his
fellow Australians and to others beyond our shores, but
because he was a fully participating citizen of this country
of ours. I am sure he learned much of that here at this
school.
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In a few minutes I will be honoured to present the first
Victor Chang memorial award for chemistry. This award will
keep alive the memory of a remarkable Australian in future
generations of students in a way he would have thought
appropriate, and I congratulate the school for commemorating
his tragically too short life in this way.
1891 the year of the founding of your school also saw the
first constitutional convention in Sydney. This was the
beginning of a tortuous process of writing the Australian
constitution. It took another ten years to make Federation
a reality.
Australia has a decade to go before it achieves its
centenary. But the events of the past few years have shown
us that the ideas and impulse of country and nation often
run older and deeper than the arbitrary timing of political
leaders.
The idea of one nation in one island continent always had
the appeal of commonsense. Never forgetting the fact that
the Aborigines had created their own remarkable culture here
over the preceding 40 or 50,000 years, each of the colonies
had been founded and settled by people from Great Britain
though I don't suppose the Irish parents of the early pupils
at Christian Brothers, Lewisham were too keen on the
description. But commonsense very nearly did not prevail in the
referendums that eventually brought about the one
Commonwealth of Australia. It took two rounds to convince a
sufficient number of the people in the colony of New South
Wales to join, and the colony of West Australia did not come
aboard until the very last minute.
It was not pre-ordained that we should become one nation; it
is one of our great strokes of good fortune that we became
one. But, of course, it wasn't just good luck. It happened
because we had men of vision and purpose like Parkes,
Griffith, Deakin, Barton, Reid, Watson, Higgins and
Kingston. And, in the final analysis, it happened because
of the determination of the men and women of Australia
themselves. Between the idea and the reality the idea of 1891, the
reality of 1991, was to lie generations of hard work,
dedication and sacrifice. And five generations of Christian
Brothers pupils have been part of it all.
As we look forward to 2001, and the centenary of the
Australian Federation, it is worth taking a quick look back
at what else was happening in 1891.
In 1891 were laid the foundations of this school, the
Australian Labor Party, and Australia itself. Not a bad
trifecta.
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Ahead of Australians then were two depressions, one just
around the corner in the 1890s, and the Great Depression of
the 1930s; two world wars, the rise and fall of f ascism and
communism, unprecedented technological change which has
served as an instrument of both good and evil, and here in
Australia the building of an independent, tolerant, educated
and democratic society.
Let me take -each of those words independent, tolerant,
educated, demiocratic to measure the change we have
experienced over these 100 years.
1zndep~ ndent: from six colonies relying on distance and the
strength of the royal navy for its security, we have become
a truly independent nation, self-reliant in defence, a
nation whose voice is heard and respected in the world.
The protection we asked and expected from Britain 100 years
ago was based upon our fear of living isolated in the Asia-
Pacific region. Now we proudly identify ourselves as an
integral part of this most dynamic region, co-operating with
our neighbours and enmeshing our destiny with theirs.
Tolerant: that deep seated fear of our neighbours itself
produced a singularly restrictive immigration policy.
We cannot disgui -se the fact that this policy carried deep
undertones of racial superiority directed not just against
Asians, but, in fact, the majority of the European peoples.
Now we have become one of the most diverse peoples on Earth,
and we are all the richer and the better for it. We need
not run away from the facts of the past. Rather, we can
take pride in the victory of tolerance and intelligence,
over mindless prejudice.
However, we should not ignore the fact that we still,
unfortunately, hear in our society some voices echoing that
mindless racial intolerance of the past. The very name of
Victor Chang an immortal Australian should still those
voices forever.
And I will deal with an aspect of our progress towards an
Pdntpd, Australia in the context of intolerance.
Because, when this school was founded in 1891, Catholic
schools were denied all rights to community assistance
' state aid' as it used to be called.
It is one of the great transformations of the Australian
society in my lifetime that the rampant sectarianism which
divided and disfigured our community for well over a century
has been consigned to where it has always belonged to the
dustbin of discredited history.
The real victims of that sectarianism were the children, the
children of government schools as much as Catholic schools,
because as long as it dominated the education debate, the
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quality of all education and the standards of All schools
suffered. When I became Prime Minister in 1983, we still
suffered from the overhang of the State Aid debate. I
committed myself to eradicating it as an issue once and for
all. We have achieved that.
And here I pay tribute to the Christian Brothers, whose
dedication, in the old days of denial, kept great schools
like this going so splendidly.
And finally, I described the Australia of today as a great
damnrany. We are all now living through some of the most momentous
times in modern history.
And the powerhouse of this great revolution in human affairs
is the yearning of men and women all over the world to be
free, to have the democratic institutions which Australia
has, all too easily, all too often, seemed to take for
granted. I am sure that none of your generation, if you think
seriously about the tremendous events you see literally
unfolding before you on television, will ever take for
granted your inheritance of an independent, tolerant,
educated and above all, democratic Australia.
I salute this great institution Christian Brothers High
School, Lewisham for the signal role it has played in
fashioning that inheritance for which we are, all, the
richer.