OPENING OF THE A. P. I. AA ITA IAN/ AUSTRALIAN 65/ 0
S PORTS ASSOCIATION) CLUB
LEICHHARDT, N. S. W. 14TH APRIL,, 196~
Speech by the Prime, Minister? the Rt, Hon. Sir Robejpt Menzies
Mr, Chairman, Your Excellencies and Iedies and Gentlemen
I must say that having looked at this magnificent
room which is the only part of the enterprise that I have yet
looked at, I think all the newspapermen ought to be compelled
to come here to have a look at it and then when, in due course,
we build a modest new Parliament House at Canberra, they will
have no complaints whatever. ( Iaughter)
I just want to mention two facts before I engage in
a little excursion of my own interesting facts. I obtained
them and I was tremendously struck by them. I have been around,
as many of you know, for some time. I have been by good
luck oxr good management, probably good luck Prime Minister
for a long time, and when I began I claim no credit for this,
I may say there were 35 000 Italians in Australia, and now
, with all the movement thai has occurred, there are 265,0006
In other words, an increase by almost eight times. Now that
is a very remarkable thing. This represents, vationally
, peaking, the second largest movement into Australia. the
largest being from Great Britain, This is the second largest.
We have heard occasionally that people come here and
after a while they get tired of us, they don't fancy us very
much and they leave. We hear a good deal about that, and
therefore, I said, I would like to know what happened to the
Italians who came here. The answer is that the return rate
for Italians is one per cent. The average overall rate is
six per cent. Now all that demonstrates that this country has proved
vastly attractive to members of the Italian community the
Italian nation and that having come here, they do fit into the
Pattern of Auszralian life so well that they donft want to go.
Now this to me is something of tremendous significance, it
demonstrates the value of the kind of work that this club has
been doing to integrate into the Australian habits and customs
a number ol people, thousands of people who come from a
different kind of country, who have in many cases a different
kind of background and might therefore feel strange and in many
cases rather homesick for the country they have left, Therefore
t want to congratulate the Club and I want to express the
immense pleasure that I feel at the figures that I have just
been reciting to you.
Now having said that, I wonder if I might say something
of a general kind. The people of Italy I will describe them
in that way have had an immense capacity for moving out,
right through history. This is no modern novelty, Indeed I
want to remind those of you who are Italians that your ancestors
2,000 years ago invaded Britain, and it was a long way away
from Rome in those days invaded Britain and held it for some
centuries and left a lot of names behind and a lot of fine,
straight roads, Roman roads, all over the island. That argued
the questing spirit of the ancient Romans under great leadership.
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I would also like to remind you that your language
derives directly from a language which has made its imprint not
only all over Western Eruope but over a great part of the
civilised world, because although very few people today can speak
Latin, or for that matter understand Latin very consecutively,
the truth is that all the Romance languages Italian itself,
French, Spanish, all these Romance languages as we call them,
have spread around the world. They are the whole basis of our
own speech which is very very much affected in the long run by
the ancient speech of Italy, as is that of the United States and
all round what we are pleased to call the English-speaking world
or the French-speaking wurld or the Italian-speaking world or
whatever it may be. So don't think that you have done something
rather peculiar by coming here in the last few years, You are
acting in the highest tradition of your country the highiest
tradition of the ancient Romans, and the Latin iongue and the
Latin writing. When I was a university student, I took a su~ bject
cciled Roman Law, which served to remind me very much indeed that
there is a definite line of indebtedness to the ancient home of
Roman Law over a considerable section of the world, You see
what I am getting at? Your language you have exported. -You have
taken it in one form or another all round the seven seas. Your
literature in one form or another ha s moved and tfound its place
all round the world. The legal systems which were devised in
Rome are not the common basis of the English system of law, the
English Common Law, though it has had its influence here and there,
but it has had a very big mark on the legal systems of Germany, of
Scotland and so on, so that in point of speech, in poinit of
literature in point of law, the people of your country I am now
speaking directly to the Italians who are here have been great
carriers of wisdom and of culture all round the world. They have,
so to speak, made it migrate to other countries and in this
cqntury, as we have seen in Australia we have had a great wave
of migration of human beings from Italy to Australia, No~ w this
is something that is good for us I hope and believe good for
you. This enriches our own life,
You know, if I might make a quiet, ccnfidential
admission to you, we native-born Australians are occasionally a
little narrow-minded about our own ideas and our own way of living.
We say, " Well, who are these fellows to tell us?" This is the
best proof that we have a lot to learn. And you corle along, and
many others from some other country but I am talking patticularly
to you who have come along here, and if you haven't shown. us the
error of our ways, at least you have shown us new ways in which to
walk, new ways to understand, and I venture to say that in one
hundred years' time somebody writing what I will call -' to use
ti~ at abominable word the cultural history of Australia, will be
able to trace in it the influence of your people who have come
here and settled here and contributed to the country a lot of
faculties a lot of ideas, a lot of standards that came in almost
as new things. This will be fascinating someday to trace the
pattern of what will then be described as our civilisation, the
pattern of Australian civilisation,
Now I have indicated very very briefly to you that
this is not the first time, nor is it the first country in which
people of your race have made this contribution. They have done
it all round the world. They have every right to be proud of
having done it and you have every right to be proud of the
contribution that you are making, * 0ee 0 / 3
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Now the one other thing I want to say is that it
is a little simple, a little tempting to retain a special narrow
sense of' community and to say, " Well, we ItaJians stick together,
just as in the case of my own ancestry, ". 4e Scotsmen must stick
together." Well between ourselves we do quite a bit, you know,
We get on well with each other, We have a Scottish Society here
or there but what we have done by way of compensation for this
is to marry into people of other and not such fortunate races
like the & ihglish and having married and intermarried and
identified ourselves in the community, then as you have not
failed to observe we are not unwilling to take charge of the
country and run ( Laughter)
Now this is an interesting parallel, isn't it? Very
interesting. Don't be exclusive. Don't get off but get in
get into the community, get mixed up with the community. Let~
everybody have the benefit of what you can contribute and you
get the benefit of what they can contribute, an integr'ated
Australian society. This is what we want and it is because you
have seen that with brilliant clarity that you have established
this organisation. This is the thing to do, and now that you
have such splendid premises, I am sure that the work will go on
afoot indeed, I rather think that if you are not careful,
there will be such a majority of native-born Australians coming
here to enjoy it that you may be a little squeezed, but'in that
case, extend it.
Good luck to you. Bless youb