April 1997 TRANSCRIPT OF THE PRIME MINISTER
THE HON. JOHN HOWARD MP
SPEECH AT THE LAUNCH OF THE ALANNAH AND
MADELINE FOUNDATION, MELBOURNE
EE Thank you very much Neil, to you Walter, to Tim and Alicia O'Shane, to Jenny
Mackin who is here today as the Shadow Minister in the Federal Parliament
representing the Leader of the Opposition, Kim Beazley. Can I say that the words that
I will speak today I know have the endorsement of all three parties in Australia. This
is not a party-political occasion and might I say that whatever was possible to have
been done to make Australia a safer society after the events of the 28th April last year
would not have been possible without the support of the Australian Labor Party and
the Australian Democrats, as well as, of course, the Party that I have the privilege of
leading.
This is not only an important occasion and an inspiring occasion but it can also in a
sense be a very happy occasion because it is an opportunity for us to express again the
tremendous awe that we feel for the capacity of young children in our community to
survive terrible tragedies and to rebuild their lives with the help of the people who love
them most and we, of course, honour the establishment of a Foundation which
remembers the tragic death of Alannah and Madeline and all the other people who lost
their lives on that terrible afternoon.
But in doing so we also celebrate the miracle of the survival of children and the central
hope that they offer to the rest of us and I think Neil is right, that so often when
tragedy hits a family, where there is a loss of a parent or a sibling or whether it's a
dreadful accident or whatever the circumstances are, we sometimes, because of their
inability to express their feelings, we sometimes fail to realise the traumatic impact that
such events can have on children. And the Foundation that we honour today and the
Foundation that we launch today will make a very practical contribution towards doing
that. There are many ways in which a community, a society, can remember the victims
of a tragedy.
I said the other day on the 28th, on Monday, and I'd like to repeat it to you this
afternoon, I said that in many respects the greatest memorial we could as a nation
create to the victims of the 28th of April last year was a renewed determination within
our society to do all we could to eradicate different forms of violence in our midst
whether it's violence in a public place or whether it's violence in a family or whether
it's violence on the playing fields, whether it's violence in a pub or violence in any
other social gathering. Too often the first instinct of too many people in our
community is to solve an argument or to solve a dispute through resort to violence
whether the use of physical violence or verbal violence. And I can't think of a more
fitting memorial than a greater recognition by all Australians that violence is not an
answer to any difference of opinion, particularly violence against the more vulnerable
people in our community, including women and children.
So I am really quite touched to be here today along with, I guess, the other 18 million
Australians I admire tremendously, Walter, the great courage and the inspiration that
you have represented to people in life circumstances. It's hard to say to put it that way
but it's difficult for us who haven't been touched by such sadness and such loss to
really take on board the enormity of it and the grace, the strength and the inspiration
that you have shown and demonstrated is a tremendous example. It's a humbling
example of the, I suppose the survival of the human spirit and I remember once talking
to one of my colleagues who had lost his wife and two children in very sad
circumstances and I said to him, how was it that you were able to survive, and he said,
I survived because I knew that if I didn't keep going that that really was the end of it
all. And I thought it was a tremendously eloquent yet simple way of expressing the
human force that is inside somebody who is overtaken and overcome by such an
enormous tragedy, and I can only say on behalf of all of your fellow Australians, we
admire immensely and we are inspired greatly by people who demonstrate courage in
such great personal adversity and it affects so many people. Many we don't know
about, many we do know about and, of course, when it touches so directly as it did in
the case of Tjandamarra O'Shane a little boy set upon in a most despicable and
beastly circumstances, it does reach out and affect all of us and the spontaneous
response of so many people to what happened to Ijandamarra and it is really
something very encouraging about Australia.
We're very fond sometimes of saying how poor we are and how mean we are and how
we can never get too many things right and we get so many things wrong. I think the
public response to what happened to Tjandamarra and just the outpouring of people
who wanted to be part of saying: gee, can we help?, we are so upset about what
happened, what can we do to make that little boy's life a little easier and a little
happier? I think that's one of the sort of shining examples of the essential decency of
Australians, the essential magnanimity of the Australian spirit that I have seen for a
very, very long time.
I am delighted Neil, to be the patron of the Alannah and Madeline Foundation. I am
very happy to complement 3AW. I think many good things come out of the
boardrooms at 3AW and I wouldn't be nearly as self-effacing as that. I want to
congratulate the station for its public spirited support for this Foundation. I want to
wish it well and most of all I want to complement the simple aspiration of the
Foundation and that is to recognise the need for love and compassion and support of
children in particular who are the victims of crime and who are the victims of violence
in our community. It is, of course, a pipedream, whoever imagined it, whatever our
resolve and however well intentioned we are as a community that we can ever rid
ourselves of violence and beastly behaviour but it's not a pipedream to imagine that we
can from time to time in a community get together and make some contribution, not
only monetary but also in terms of our time and our thoughts and our prayers and our
understandings of the people who are the victims of that violence and today is a little
example of that.
You are the inspiration behind the former. Neil and his colleagues at 3AW have been
the driving force. Tjandamarra symbolises the very predicament but also the hope and
the inspiration, the hope and the encouragement of the young that the Foundation is
designed to help and designed to encourage and I am so delighted to play a very small
role in being patron of the Foundation, to convey the good wishes of all of my Federal
Parliamentary colleagues from both sides of Parliament to the Foundation, and wish it
well and to say on behalf of all Australians, there is nothing that quite touches our
hearts more than the struggle and the optimism and the laughter and the outpouring of
affection of a little child who suffered, but survived, and looks with hope in facing the
future. Thank you.