EMBARGOED AGAINST DELIVERY ( 1O. 3OAM, 11 MARCH 1992)
ADDRESS BY THE PRIME MINISTER, THE HON P J KEATING, MP
LAUNCH OF " LET'S GO AUSTRALIA" LIFE BE IN IT CAMPAIGN
MELBOURNE, 11 MARCH 1992
Ladies and gentlemen,
I'm more than pleased to have the opportunity to launch this
Life Be In It Campaign, which has the entirely appropriate
slogan " Let's Go, Australia!".
It's appropriate not just because we need to get going, but
because we can get going.
The opportunities' are there for us to make sure that the
great qualities of our society are preserved within a
dynamic new Australia.
We have natural advantages that most other countries can
only dream of.
Think of them: the ones that nature provides mineral
resources, wilderness, space those things which are at a
premium in virtually every other advanced country.
And think of the ones that Australians made a robust
democracy, freedoms unsurpassed in the world, highly
developed social ' services, a tolerant multicultural society
with, by any measure, one of the highest standards of living
in the world.
These things were made by Australians with bold ideas,
courage and E-nergy.
They didn't drop from the sky they were imagined, worked
for, made to happen.
Just as our resources have been developed and our land
farmed by the enterprise of men and women, it is Australians
who have made a good society.
And we can make a better one.
I take the view that if we can achieve these things, we can
achieve much more.
If we can make one of the world's most free and democratic
societies, we can make a more dynamic one.
If we can make a society as fair and tolerant as this, we
can go much further towards eliminating injustice and
intolerance, and engaging more and more people in the life
of the nation.
If we can create one of the highest standards of living in
the world, we can make it higher, and we can do the things
which are necessary to guarantee the future.
And if we are able to develop our resources, and farm our
land as efficiently as we do then we are able, surely, to
manufacture and grow new products and export them to the
world. I have no doubt that we can do these things because I have
seen so much. done in recent years.
In 1992 we are much better at working together than we have
ever been.
We are much more competitive than we were a decade ago, by
far.
We are much more aware of the need to develop our strengths,
to become a nation of entirely independent mind, to make our
own destiny. I
We know much more about the things that we have to do, and
the figures show that we are much better at doing them.
The fact is that the progress we have made can be the basis
for recovery from this recession, and more than that for
building a great Australian society in the nineties.
To do it we need the whole-hearted effort of Australians.
Our recovery and growth must come as our past achievements
have come from the efforts of Australians, for the benefit
of Australians.
It must be a recovery in which all Australians share.
As a government we want to open ways for Australians to play
their part.
Our plans are calculated to include them, and we want to
develop new plans, new programs, new ways of calling on the
energy, ambition and imagination of all Australians.
That is why I am so pleased to support Life Be In It this
year's program called " Let's Go, Australia!", hits the mark
perfectly. As I said, we have these great natural advantages, we have
this fantastic country but the trouble with a country so
well-endowed is that it tends to make us complacent.
It has given us a tendency to cruise, and watch the world
pass by.
Now we know that we can't cruise that was the message of
the eighties.
The message of this decade is that we can look to the future
with confidence: as we engage the gears of recovery we
should remind ourselves that our great achievements did not
fall to us by chance.
We got this far by calling on the greatest of all our
natural resources our people. Ourselves. Our ambitions,
our abilities, our energy, our care, our faith in each
other and in ourselves, our love for this country.
That is what: we ' must call on now our whole-hearted belief
in this enterprise of Australia.
I congratulate everyone involved in this " Life Be In It"
campaign. Your efforts are calculated to give inspiration, confidence
and pride, at a time when Australia needs those things.
On behalf of the government, I thank you.
And thank you for having me here today.
ENDS