6 OCTOBER 1991
Thank you for your welcome, Vice Chancellor.
May I at the outset express, on behalf of the Government and people of Australia, our gratitude for the enthusiasm you and your colleagues at Curtin University have brought to this project and for your foundational work towards making it a reality.
Ladies and gentlemen
It is altogether fitting that we should come here today to inaugurate the Appeal for this unique Australian project the John Curtin Centre.
The time, the place, the purpose these are things which make our presence here today trebly appropriate.
First, the time.
Fifty years tomorrow John Curtin became Prime Minister of Australia. John Curtin would have been the last person to see himself as a man of destiny. But certainly, for Australia, his call to office was a turning point in our destiny.
In the two years during which Australia had already been at war with the Axis Powers, this quintessential man of peace had prepared himself -indeed, I believe it could be said, had steeled himself -for the highest responsibilities of war-time leadership.
When it came, as a result of an unprecedented crisis in the Australian Parliament, he was ready not just to take over the reins of office, but to take Australia through its supreme ordeal which was to begin with Pearl Harbour two
months later.
So the timing of this occasion, fifty years on, is singularly appropriate.
Then, the place - this University which bears his name.
John Curtin loved Western Australia and Perth not just
because it had been his home since 1917; not just because
this was where his family were, his children growing up; and
not just because the electors of Fremantle had given him the
opportunity for a parliamentary career. Perth had given him
a home and a haven at a dark period in his personal life.
And he found here, among the people of Western Australia, a
special simplicity and generosity of spirit. He often spoke
of that. He responded to it. He was always grateful for
it.
I come to the third and most important reason for our
presence the purpose of the John Curtin Centre.
Professor Maloney will later give you a brief outline of the
multi-faceted nature of the project the repository of the
Curtin and related archives, a library, a gallery, an audiovisual
theatrette, and an international study centre. This
special combination of facilities will make the Centre
unique in Australia, and, I should imagine, unique in the
region.
But the concept goes beyond these important practical purposes.
It will stand as a national tribute and an international
symbol not only a tribute to the life and work of John
Curtin but as a symbol of the friendship and cooperation in
war and peace between Australia and the United States of
America. That is why President George Bush has already expressed his
warm support for this project.
And I emphasise here the completely bi-partisan or rather,
the non-partisan nature of the project and what it
represents.
That fact is attested by your representative presence here
today, and, if I might mention just one name, the very
welcome presence of Sir Charles Court, who, with Dr Carmen
Lawrence, Premier of Western Australia and the Leader of the
Federal opposition, Dr John Hewson, joins me as a Patron of
this appeal.
Ladies and gentlemen
Last night I had the honour of delivering the John Curtin Memorial Lecture at this University.
I pointed out that Curtin had foreseen the need for an Australian-American partnership as early as 1936, in times
when such a concept had none of the acceptability it
acquired through the supreme necessities of Australia's
fight for survival during the war.
Indeed, when he said, in the House of Representatives in
November 1936, that Australia should work for closer
relations with the United States his words were " a degree
of fraternity" he was thinking not only in terms of an
armed partnership in war, but of a partnership to maintain
peace in the Pacific and Indian Ocean regions.
It was a proposal of extraordinary vision for its times,
for, as history has unfolded, it was nothing less than a
charter for the next half century.
Not the least remarkable aspect of his vision, as expressed
in that speech of November 1936, was that he acknowledged
that the relation between Australia and the United States
would sometimes involve differences, in trade matters for
example, for all the overriding community of interest and
common bonds.
Curtin was a visionary, but he was also a realist.
It will be fifty years in December since Curtin made his
famous call to-America.
That will be at the end of a year which has seen the real
meaning of the Australian-American partnership illustrated
with greater force and clarity than in any year since the
Second World War.
It began with our two countries again allied in a war but
this time, as a result of the United Nations accepting the
role and responsibilities envisaged for it by men like
Curtin and the great Franklin Delano Roosevelt both of
whom did not live to see the final victory for the cause for
which they had sacrificed so much.
It has been a year which has seen the triumph of the spirit
of democracy over totalitarianism the issue at the very
heart of the Alliance formed fifty years ago.
Above all, in the same week in which we are recalling the
formation of the first Curtin Government, the President of
the United States has taken his mighty step forward in the
supreme cause of human civilisation the removal of the
threat of the nuclear holocaust.
And we can now see that this moment of hope for humanity
could never have occurred, had it not been for the long
vigilance of the United States and its allies, over these
agonising years through which we have passed together.
4.
Ladies and gentlemen
If we consider the John Curtin Centre against the background
of these events, the launch of this appeal could hardly
occur under more auspicious circumstances.
I commend it most wholeheartedly to all my fellow-
Australians, not just as a tribute to the past, but as a
symbol of hope for our deepest aspirations for peace and
democracy.