E&OE...............................................................................................
Thank you very much, Randolph, can I commence my address by congratulating
you for your re-election as chairman of this organisation, and I
would like to acknowledge the presence this morning of representatives
of many organisations, most particularly jil Djekurra and Evelyn
Scott as leaders of ATSIC and the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation.
I am particularly pleased to be here this morning and have the
opportunity so soon after the Government's re-election to discuss
our approach to immigration and other policies which are very important
to the members and supporters of the various organisations that
are represented this morning.
The next three years does provide all of us with tremendous opportunities
to celebrate and showcase the Australian achievement. Our achievement
as a nation of immigrants will be central to our national celebrations
during that time. 1999 will mark the 50th anniversary
of Australian citizenship, and the year will provide the chance
to reaffirm the value of Australian citizenship and its role as
a unifying force in our culturally diverse Australian community.
The Olympic Games in the year 2000 will be an opportunity to showcase
our success as a harmonious and united nation with a commitment
to shared values, excellence and respect for each individual. And
of course most importantly, the centenary of federation in 2001
will allow us to reflect on the Australian achievement and how far
we have come as a nation and what our aspirations are for the new
century.
Above all, in observing these things and celebrating these events,
we must celebrate the values and principles that have made us such
a cohesive nation. We are a society united in the belief that each
of us should have the same opportunity to reach our full potential
and share in what this great country has to offer. Our society is
underpinned by those uniquely Australian concepts of a fair go and
practical mateship - integral features of our community and national
identity.
Ours is a resilient and optimistic community that has extended
the gift of welcome to people from every corner of the world. Whether
Australian by birth or by choice we join as one people strengthened
by a diversity of experience and cultural background.
But above all of this we share a strong set of values:
We honour the importance of family life where the hopes of our
children can be realised and where our elderly can be given the
respect that they have earned and deserved.
We dedicate ourselves to the principles of free enterprise, to
the fruits of working hard and taking risks. We revere our democratic
national institutions and respond to calls for personal responsibility
and the provision of practical help for the less fortunate. And
we are ambitious for Australia to succeed into the next century
and for all of us to share in that prosperity.
These enduring values hold important messages for all of us.
First and foremost, we are all Australians, and no Australian need
feel foreign in their own land. No-one is better or worse than any
other. There exists no qualification by birth or race, wealth or
heritage, which limits a person's pride in this nation or the
stake they hold within it.
We all belong to Australia and we all have an equal right to regard
it as our home, with all the sanctuary that a home provides. There
is no place within our community for those who would traffic, for
whatever purpose, in division based on a person's religion, their
place of birth, the colour of their skin or their ethnic makeup.
There is no place in Australia for any semblance of racial or ethnic
intolerance.
In October 1996 the Commonwealth Parliament passed a resolution
that contained a simple, direct and unambiguous statement of certain
values and principles including the commitment to maintaining a
non discriminatory immigration policy and the denunciation of racial
intolerance.
What I never want to see, and I know no person in this audience
wants to see, is an Australia where people of a particular racial
background feel unwelcome. That would be a denial of everything
that our country stands for. We have welcomed people from all around
the world and all deserve to be treated equally and with an equal
share of decency and civility. That is one of our common bonds as
Australians.
My answer to all of those who feel threatened by our immigration
programme is that they need not feel that way. I don't call
them racist. I genuinely believe, however, that there are some who
seek to prey upon community fears to encourage a sense of hostility
towards people of particular racial backgrounds.
This is something that we should all oppose very strongly and I
believe we should be reassured by the message sent by the Australian
mainstream at the election that we are in essence a great hearted
people and small minded policies will never hold sway over us.
One of the great virtues of being Australian as we come to the
close of the century is that we occupy a unique intersection of
history, geography, culture and economic circumstance.
Australia is a projection of western civilisation in this part
of the world. We have deep and enduring links with Britain and the
other nations of Europe and we share much of their great legal,
cultural and democratic political inheritance.
We have profound links with North America and we have shared many
experiences with the United States in both war and peace.
We are geographically located in the Asian-Pacific region, and
we have within the Australian community a vibrant community of people
of Asian descent who add to the strength and the vitality and the
tolerance and the great cross section of modern Australia. This
unique intersection means that we can draw strength from our diversity
and our understanding of the region. We have an opportunity to use
these unique characteristics in an effective way to achieve what
no other country can.
And having just come from a meeting of APEC in Kuala Lumpur, and
that is an organisation that brings together leaders of all of the
pacific nations, and therefore a great cross-section of that enormous
community, it was a reminder to me of just what a special intersection
of those circumstances of history, geography and culture and other
things that Australia really occupies. And we do have insights and
understandings because of that particular background and the diversity
of that background that gives us an opportunity to project a view
which is superior and more enlightened and more comprehending of
what is needed in that part of the world than that possessed by
any other country.
And it is because of that combined background, our European associations,
our long association with the nations of North America, our location
in the Asian-Pacific region and our understanding of the people
to people contact that that location gives us all of those things
combined in a very special way to give Australia a capacity to influence
events that no other country can possibly possess.
Our diversity is a source of great national strength. Particularly
since World War II, migration has made an enormous contribution
to Australia's economy, Australia's society and Australia's
culture.
There is not an example anywhere else in the world of the successful
absorption of such a diverse group of new citizens.
Multiculturalism involves the principle of mutual obligation. Within
the framework of an overriding commitment to Australia, it respects
the right of each individual to celebrate his or her particular
cultural identity in an atmosphere of tolerance, understanding and
mutual self respect.
As a Liberal Party Prime Minister I am proud to be the recipient
of the Liberal Party heritage of compassion and commonsense in relation
to our immigration programme.
In the post World War II years, both sides of politics pursued
policies which brought millions of migrants to Australia and greatly
strengthened Australia. Liberals, in particular, are grateful that
it was the Liberal Party of Australia that did away with the White
Australian Policy.
It was under the Fraser Government that Australia realised its
full humanitarian obligation by taking on a per capita basis, a
larger number of refugees from war torn Indo-China than any other
country in the world.
This tradition, which has given Australia a level of tolerance
and harmony without parallel, lives on today in our own immigration
programme which seeks to strike a proper balance between compassion
and the national interest. When the Coalition came to power in 1996,
we set about making changes to the programme to restore confidence
in it.
Any sovereign country has the right to determine how it will dispense
its compassion and determine the level, from time to time, of its
migration programme. In our view, our predecessors failed to assert
control over the programme in the national interest and overtly
politicised aspects of immigration and multicultural policies.
That is why we have now fine tuned programme levels in accordance
with Australia's economic situation. It is why we altered the skill
composition and selection criteria to better reflect future development
requirements. That is why we have not exempted this area from fiscal
consolidation and why we have cracked down on illegal immigrants
and overstayers.
During our second term we aim to build on our achievements to ensure
that the immigration programme continues to be managed with integrity
and compassion so that it enjoys the confidence of the entire Australian
community.
We will continue to run the programme in the national interest.
This means balancing economic and non-economic components of the
programme and ensuring an appropriate dispersal of our migrant intake.
We will examine the recommendations of a Commonwealth/State working
party which is due to report next year on options to increase the
number of skilled migrants in regional areas.
It is important that the immigration programme be managed in an
open and publicly accountable manner and that migrants are selected
on an objective case by case assessment of applications against
clear legal criteria.
To maintain community confidence in our programme we will curb
the number of applicants who seek to abuse the review process by
reintroducing legislation in the Senate to restrict access to judicial
review in all but exceptional circumstances.
We will also reintroduce legislation, which was delayed in the
Senate, to streamline the two-tier review process of non-refugee
visa decisions to a single review by the Migration Review Tribunal.
We will also continue to balance the humanitarian, family and economic
components of our immigration programme. The skilled proportion
of the migration programme increased from 32 per cent to 52 per
cent in the last financial year. Skills in short supply in Australia
will continue be the principal determinant of skilled migrant entry.
Employer nomination, where migrants are guaranteed employment,
will be accorded a higher priority for skilled entry. Minimum thresholds
will be established to remove anomalies in the current points test
and we will introduce factors more relevant to gaining employment
in Australia.
During the election campaign, I committed the Coalition, if re-elected,
to consult community groups, academics and others on settlement
and multicultural policies and to engage all sections of the community
in the settlement process.
The goal of our settlement programme is to allow our newest arrivals
to fully participate in our community.
Over the next term of office we will maintain the role of community
organisations in providing settlement services, support for migrant
resource centres, the community settlement services scheme and funding
for the Adult Migrant English Programme.
We will tender out the AMEP Research Centre and ensure that the
eligibility criteria for programmes are sufficiently liberal and
flexible to achieve more lasting benefits for non English speaking
migrants.
We will maintain funding to English language and literacy training
and education.
We will also provide better access to the translating and interpreting
service as well as put the operation of the service on a commercial
basis.
Australia is one of the oldest democracies in the world and democratic
principles are deeply etched in our national character. It is that
very democratic tradition, so much part of the Australian way, which
has allowed the cultural diversity produced by our immigration programme
to flourish so successfully.
Last year the government established a new National Multicultural
Advisory Council, chaired by Mr Neville Roach, to recommend policies
and an implementation framework to ensure that cultural diversity
remains a unifying influence. The Council's report is expected shortly.
As you are aware, after appropriate consultation and research we
launched the first stage of the 'Living in Harmony' campaign to
promote community harmony and the enormous benefits of cultural
diversity within Australian society.
The first stage included a $2.5 million programme of grants and
partnership projects with the Australian Cricket Board, the New
South Wales Rural Fire Service and Woolworths. We are committed
to maintaining this campaign through the allocation of an extra
$5 million which will take the overall campaign to $10 million.
We are also planning for the celebration of 50 years of Australian
citizenship in 1999. For this reason we established the Council
for Australian Citizenship to promote debate on citizenship issues.
We will report to the Parliament on the findings and recommendations
of the Citizenship Council and I look forward to next year's
celebrations.
Let me at this opportunity, Mr Chairman, pay particular tribute
to Philip Ruddock who has been the Minister for Immigration and
Multicultural Affairs since the Coalition Government took office
in March of 1996. I believe that Mr Ruddock has handled the portfolio
with great skill and compassion. He has been very professional and
evenhanded. Philip's qualities both as a Minister and as person
who has unique insights and understandings of the area for which
he has responsibility have been recognised in his promotion to Cabinet
and his new role in assisting me in relation to reconciliation issues.
I record with great thanks and admiration Philip Ruddock's
contribution in these areas.
Mr Chairman, let me conclude by saying a couple of general things.
I have every confidence as we head towards a new Australian century
that we can become even stronger and more united. I take a profoundly
optimistic and positive view about the character of Australian society.
I believe that the things that unite us as Australians will always
be more powerful and more enduring than those things that divide.
Our nation has been immensely enriched through the successive waves
of immigration over the years that have brought new people from
every corner of the world. We have succeeded better than any other
nation on earth in recognising that we are a community of many parts
and many origins. We do have a level of tolerance and understanding
that is the envy of most nations. We are essentially a united people,
but we respect the different cultural heritage of those within our
community and we recognise and support their right to celebrate
their own particular culture and their own heritage in a completely
tolerant and open fashion.
We are a nation like any, not without our blemishes. We have within
our ranks those who are intolerant, and those who would seek to
exploit differences based on race for their own particular purposes.
As a community we face the challenge of achieving an effective and
widely accepted reconciliation between the indigenous people of
this country and the rest of the Australian community. And I particularly
welcome the presence here today of Gatjil and Evelyn in that context.
But it is important that we approach these issues in a spirit of
both optimism and hope. The Australian achievement, and I believe
it is a glorious one, is quite special, it is unique. There is an
Australian way, there is an Australian character and all have made
a contribution to it. And whether you were born in this country
or your parents and grandparents were born in this country or whether
this is your country of choice, it is equally our own and we all
have a right to share in its benefits and we all have a right to
enjoy both its tolerance, its respect and its protection.
I have great confidence that the next century hold enormous prospects
for Australia. I have a great belief that the unique intersection
of which I spoke gives a capacity to leave a mark, not only on this
part of the world, but on the world generally which would be denied
to any other community.
I thank the Federation for inviting me here today. We will continue
to have as a government and at a political level as two coalition
parties we'll continue to have a constructive ongoing dialogue
with your organisation. We will agree on some things, we will disagree
on others. You will like some of the things we do, you will dislike
some of the other things we'll do. That is in the nature of
public office and public life. But I come on behalf of the Government
in goodwill, with a positive attitude to all of the organisations
and all of the different groups that are represented here today.
I thank you for inviting me, I wish you and your deliberations
well and I look forward to three years of constructive co-operation.
Thank you.