.1
PRIME MINISTER
TRANSCRIPT OF THE PRIME MINISTER, THE HON P J KEATING MP
SPEECH AT THE YOUNG AUSTRALIAN OF THE YEAR AWARDS,
DARLING HARBOUR, SYDNEY, 25 JANUARY 1996
E& OE PROOF COPY
I think it is a wonderful thing that once a year we take time out to celebrate
our young Australians and what more appropriate day than for Australia Day
as we celebrate it by naming an Australian of the Year and a Young
Australian of. the Year. And it is always a good occasion too because I am
always a sug Ier for a bit of entertainment.
I thought those Tap Brothers were just terrific. I remember seeing the
Tap Dogs, but hairy legs and working boots are not quite the same as those
knee tights and spats. And I saw in some of the routines, being an old
Fred Astaire fan, some of the work of his great choreographer, Hermes Pann
and there is a name for you. Of course his mother and father were Mr and
Mrs Pann and they just loved Hermes. But he was the best choreographer in
the business and obviously some of it has rubbed off and, of course, the
spats you know, the white tops on the black shoes give you all the
movement.
And, of course, in the twenties, spats were all the go with the well-to-do.
I mean one of my predecessors, Stanley Melbourne Bruce, always had them
on. But what I worry about is if the Tap Brothers get very famous, half the
Coalition will put them back on again. I mean if they look anything like
becoming a fad, they will slip them on so quickly I mean half of that front
bench. But I will tell you this, they might have them on but one thing they
won't do is tap or dance I can tell you that. There is certainly no rhythm in it.
And, of course, John Williamson. Isn't he a star at getting that ethos and
sense of Australia out there. And James Morrison I mean the one authentic
form of American music, of course, is jazz and I don't know that we have ever
had a better exponent of it here than James Morrison.
So apart from the essential importance of our function today. It was good to
come just to be entertained. If you know that old video
' That's Entertainment", I have rearranged all the magnetic particles on that
over the years because it does you good, it warms you up.
Well, I think, that one of the things worth saying about young people is that
I don't think any experience I have had as a Minister, or as a Member of
Parliament, or as Prime Minister with young Australians hasn't been
positive.
Always you get from them the hope, the expectations, the up-lifting spirits
they have, the belief, the hope and the faith they have scepticism but not
cynicism, interested, keen, and it is our duty to, I think, understand what a
great joy it is to have them around us, what a great strength they provide our
country and to invest in them.
In the last couple of days I have been thinking about that and I did this
morning in thinking about this question of, it's called, inter-generational trust,
or the inter-generational inheritance. And this morning I met the Canberra
Commission on the Elimination of Nuclear Weapons. Without a doubt,
I think, the most distinguished group of people in the world saying of how the
world would be a better and safer place if those 50,000 nuclear warheads
laying around, arsenals, were taken away. And, I tell you what, it almost
brings a tear to the eye to hear the Strategic Air Commander of the
United Statds just three years ago say there is no place for nuclear weapons
today, that they have no military use, that essentially they are a dead weight
on the world and they are making the world an unsafer place.
Or to hear similar views expressed by the former Prime Minister of France, or
the Nobel Prize Winner Joseph Rotblat or any of the other distinguished
people there. And if we Australians can be just that much influential in being
the first government to take this issue up and start moving against the view
that in the post-Cold War world we need a stock of nuclear weapons to keep
it safe, then we will have done something for our children that, I think, we can
be proud of.
And we won't be leaving them with the inheritance we have lived with, all of
us, through our young years, the tyranny of knowing that the world could be
annihilated at any moment by accident, or by design. And so that is one thing
that in this last 24 hours I have been thinking about in terms of
inter-generational trust.
The other is the environment and yesterday the government announced a
very large package of measures to deal with some of the real environmental
problems of this country land degradation, dry land salinity, destruction of
bio-diversity, developing a National Reserves System. And you might recall
before Christmas where the government announced a big policy of putting
6 million hectares of Australian forests away for posterity into deferred forest
areas. And looking at the commitment we are getting now from Landcare, where we
hoped in 1989 when we started it we would have 1,000 Landcare groups.
We have now got 2,500 Landcare groups and we are going on. The big
commitment of that is coming from young Australians. They are the ones who
are interested in the environment. They know that we don't have to spoil the
place to have a good life. And yet we know that if we don't manage it well, by
the time our generation is no longer managing this country's fortunes we
will have left them a degraded place, a place that they can't be proud of.
So in just these two things, in the environment where we have got this great
inheritance of this old continent of ours and where we have a chance to hold
some of its pristine quality and repair the damage of 200 years since
European settlement. These are things that, I think, we must think about in
terms of the inter-generational inheritance, or cleaning the world up of
nuclear weapons, making life safer and better.
There are things that we can do, all of us, I think both with and for our young
people and our question of who we are and our identity; the fact that we are
now an open, modem economy trading into the world; the fact that we have
made the linkages with Asia. I mean I know, as you know from just a week
ago, the people who manage Malaysia, and Singapore, or Indonesia.
But I didn't know them when I was young and young Australians will know
them and they will know their counterparts in these countries. They will have
that interest and excitement and opportunity that we didn't have.
And I notice this debate in the press about now, you know, the pundits sitting
back saying well you haven't jumped the TER hurdle. It is sitting up there in
so many universities having not filled up their places, this is shocking. Well
we want to see the places filled up. In fact the government just about
doubted, in fact we have added 70 per cent of places, to universities taking
them through from 300,000 to 560,000 places. So there are more places and
that is why it is taking more time, perhaps, to fill them.
But the fact of the matter is, eight youn g people in ten now complete a
secondary education. Ten years ago, it was three in ten and now they have a
secondary education we want to invest in them the confidence of knowing
that we are interested in them, that we will take their education further, that
we offer them the promise of an interesting and secure life in a country that is
nice to live in, in an international society that is sane.
Now, I think, these are some of the things that we have to think about.
And on this occasion we have these awards to acknowledge the contribution
of some young Australians, so that when we honour them we honour all
young Australians and to say that we love them, that we are interested in
them, that we will put our arm around them and that we celebrate their
victories and their successes and their joys.
That is what today is about and a nation that cares about its young people, is
a nation with a soul, it is a nation that has got its values properly fixed and
that is what we are doing here today.
So it is my very pleasant duty to announce the Young Australian of the Year
in 1996. And I suppose what makes it, for me, a double pleasure is to dwell
on the point I made earlier about entertainment and to celebrate the
successes of our young people who can perform the way those Tap Brothers
performed earlier, or the other artists today.
And the winner, at 20 years of age, is already one of Australia's busiest
concert pianists. She has won numerous awards and is currently studying for
her Masters Degree at the Manhattan School of Music and about to make her
debut with the New York Symphony Orchestra. It is, of course,
Rebecca Chambers and Poppy King will escort her to the stage.
ends -j'; R