Your Royal Highness and Ladies and Gentlemen:
This is not really my day. This is the Treasurer's day. The Treasurer has had all the travail of bringing into existence simultaneously a Mint and a near system of currency, and if anybody thinks that is easy, he should have been with us at any time over the last two or three years. And so this is the Treasurer's day and I don't want to steal any portion of it from him.
My one simple and very pleasant task is to welcome His Royal Highness here. You have already made it, of course, quite clear to him how welcome he is in this country at any time, but it is particularly appropriate that he should be here today to perform this opening because this is something rather special if you come to think about it.
Here is a relatively new country. Here is a relatively new city. Here is a brand new Mint. Here is a brand new system of currency coming up. There is a tremendous amount of novelty concentrated in today modern novelty, up-to-date novelty, and therefore it is very appropriate, if I may say so, Sir, that you, the most modern and up-to-date Prince in the wrorld should be here to perform this opening. (Applause) ,
We, in Australia, frequently have occasion to think about you and to take pride in the fact that although some of us are a bit long in the tooth - is that the expression? - and grey in the hair, you represent, in your own person the talent and enthusiasm and understanding and spirit of adventure of the second part of the twentieth century. It is a matter of immense pleasure to all of us and great pride that you should be here
today to perform this opening.
And now, Sir, having said this all too inadequately, I will hand it back to the Treasurer whose day it is and who will I shrewdly suspect, make a speech to us about the Mint.