E&OE.....................................................................................................
Thank you very much, Headmaster, to Angela, the School Captain, to
my colleagues, Teresa Gambaro, the Member for Petrie, and Rod Henshaw,
the candidate for Dickson, ladies and gentlemen.
It is for me a real privilege to spend a few moments with the senior
students of St Pauls and also with some of the parent body of this
school. I have some of the sense of what it is like to be a parent
of a child completing his or her final examinations. My own younger
son is sitting for the higher school certificate in New South Wales
this year, so I am not entirely unfamiliar with the atmosphere in
households in the lead-up to the final examination. And having had
two before him, I am particularly familiar and my felicitations, understanding,
sympathy and empathy go very, very directly to the parents and to
the students. Because when you come to the end of your school career,
it is a significant occasion in your life and it's an occasion
that I remember when I left school in, must I confess it, but I will,
1956, and the Australia that I lived in in 1956 was a wonderful country.
But it was a different country from the Australia that you will leave
school to enter in a more adult way at the end of 1998. And in sharing
those recollections and those comparisons it's important to understand
that there are some things about our country that don't change,
and shouldn't change, and we should fight hard to stop changing.
But there are other things about our country that do change, and must
change, and we should promote the change because it is good for the
future of our society.
There are certain enduring Australian values that I still identify
and are still as strong and as worthy and as valuable to us as Australians
as they were when I left Canterbury Boys High School in Sydney in
1956. And those are the traditions of mateship, the tradition of treating
people fairly on the basis of their contribution to society. And it's
very important in the context of some debates that are occurring in
Australia at the present time, to emphasise the fact that we have
always been a society that treats people according to their worth
and to their contribution and to their values to Australian society.
We are a society now that has welcomed into our family as a nation
people from one hundred and forty countries. Tolerance of people,
acceptance of people, irrespective of their race, their religion,
their national background or their political belief, is a cornerstone
of a fair Australia. And it's something that needs to be emphasised
and it needs to be practised.
Australia is in a special, indeed a unique, position in the world.
We are the only nation in the world that is simultaneously a country
that has inherited the great treasures of western civilisation, has
very strong links with the nations of North America, but is located
within the Asian Pacific Region. And that gives us a special opportunity.
We have insights and understanding of the Asian Pacific Region that
our friends in North America and Europe do not have. And because of
that inheritance of ours and those associations of ours we can bring
and make a contribution to our region that no other country can. In
the years ahead I see Australia as being a magnet to those who want
stability, who want tolerance, who want legal security and who want
economic prosperity. Translating that into more practical terms, I
see no reason why our country should not become, in the next century,
the largest financial centre in the Asian Pacific Region after Tokyo.
And it is already well along the way to doing that. Because we have
enormous advantages. We simultaneously speak the English language,
provide a banking and financial system of great integrity and great
stability, and we also provide a legal system that offers great stability
and great reassurance.
We have, as Australians, people of so many different racial and ethnic
backgrounds, many of whom have links into the Asia Pacific Region
through their families, through their businesses, through their educational
associations. But I find as I travel around the Asia Pacific Region
that one of the strongest resonances between our country and the countries
of the Region are the experiences that young people from Singapore,
from India, from China, from Indonesia, from Malaysia, the experiences
that those people, as young people, had in attending Australian universities.
And they remember and carry with them an affection for Australia well
into their adult and older lives. And it's a very important link
that we should work very hard to preserve. And it's a link that
I know St Paul's is making a contribution towards and is nurturing
in a very special way, as I had the opportunity with the Headmaster
a few moments ago, to observe.
So, there are some similarities between Australia of 1956 and Australia
of 1998. There is that continuity, that golden thread of Australian
values that hasn't changed. But there are many things that have
changed and many of those for the better and many of those are inevitable.
I had a wonderful reminder of our inheritance as an Australian nation
two weeks ago. You no doubt would have seen on television the stories
of those four wonderful World War I veterans who returned to the old
battlefields of northern France to celebrate the end or to remember,
not celebrate, but to remember, the end of World War I. And my wife
a I had those four wonderful men to morning tea at Kirribilli House.
And the sheer joy of talking to four people, all of whom are between
98 and 102, to hear their stories to experience the reality that the
older you get the more vivid your recollection is of years long past,
perhaps not always of year immediately passed, but of years long passed.
And to hear their stories and to recognise in them a strain and a
character and an attitude to life that was unmistakably Australian
and something that all of us in different ways share and hang onto.
And if I've got any message to you, the young people of St Pauls,
who will either leave this year or next year, it is that the values
that bind us together as Australians are special. This is a special
country. It is like no other country in the world and that gives it
a very, very special character. And it is an immense privilege to
live in Australia and to be part of the Australian family. And it's
not a privilege any of us should ever take for granted. We are very
fortunate indeed to be Australians. But we should all of us work very
hard and observe the principles of tolerance and understanding in
working hard to build a better Australia as we go into the 21st
century.
We have political debate in this country. We are an open democracy.
We should practice and we should encourage free speech. But we should
also practice and encourage the tolerance and understanding of different
points of view. I lead a Party and I lead a Government which is very
committed to the notions of private enterprise and individual liberty.
My greatest goal in life is to create an Australia where every single
man and woman can realise his or her talents to the fullest extent,
where people do have an equality of opportunity, where the measure
of your success and the role that you carve out in society is something
that is determined by your own values and your own contribution. But
not according to the family you were born into, the race from which
you came, the school you attended or the political party to which
you belong. But the contribution that you can make as an individual
member of Australian society.
And that kind of society needs a lot of things. It needs competition.
You see in the independent school system of Australia, a great demonstration
of competition within the education sector. I myself was wholly educated
in the government sector of the school system in Sydney. I have sent
my children at a secondary level to independent schools. I value that
choice. And I want that kind of choice to be extended to all Australians.
And that's one of the reasons why the Government changed the
new schools policy in relation to independent schools to make it possible
for more low fee paying independent schools to be opened in Australia.
I want a diversity a plurality of education. I don't want a monopoly
of education in the hands of the Government, nor do I want independent
school education to be the preserve of people who can afford to pay
a certain level of fees. If you do believe in freedom of choice, you
must provide equality of opportunity so that all within the Australian
community can exercise that freedom of choice.
Always remember the contribution that your school life has given you.
Always remember the values that you have imbibed from your school,
the Christian principles of St Paul's are, of course, at the
centre of the values that you have imbibed during your education here.
And always have goals in life. The most important thing is always
to have another set of goals ahead of you. I have another set of goals
ahead of me. You don't have any prizes for one of those goals
might be. But I do have some very strong and very purposeful goals
ahead of me. They are goals that I believe are good for Australia.
The goals of changing and reforming, for example, our taxation system.
I won't give you a long lecture on that. But I think it is very
important that we have, and I direct this particularly to the economic
students. It is very important that we have a fairer, different taxation
system. Because it will enable us to trade a lot better in the Asian
Pacific Region and in the rest of the world. I want to see some of
the communications gaps between the city and the country dissolved.
And over the course of yesterday and today and the weeks ahead, the
Government will be making a number of announcements that will underline
our determination to achieve that. But in your own lives, having goals
and striving towards them is the stuff of renewal and reinvigoration
and it is the driving force that keeps all of us going. Once we lose
goals, we lose a sense of direction and a sense of purpose.
So the messages if I have for you are to maintain the values that
you have imbibed at your school and to always in your lives ahead,
always strive to achieve particular goals. And if you do that you
can have a very fulfilling and a very, very rewarding life. And the
Australia that you will inherit when you leave school and go to university,
or wherever you choose to go, will be a very different Australia from
what young Australians in the 50s and 60s inherited. And in turn the
Australia that your children will inherit when they leave school will
also be different. But there will be a continuity, there will be a
golden thread of basic Australian values that will be there. Whatever
form our Constitution may have, whatever may be the political complexion
of the government at the time, it will still be as I recognise those
Australian values in those four wonderful diggers of average age of
100, in fifty years time people will still be able to recognise a
continuity of certain values and certain beliefs.
To you, Mr Headmaster, thank you very, very much for having me here
this morning. It is always a privilege to talk to young Australians
and I thank you most warmly for the welcome you have given me. Thank
you.
[ENDS]