29 September 1999
E&OE……………………………………………………………………………………
Well thank you very much Kylie. To my Ministerial colleague David Kemp, ladies and gentlemen. I’d like to thank David and all of those on his staff and in his department for the work they’ve put in to hosting and organising this youth roundtable. It’s a new approach to communicating with young people in Australia. It’s not designed to impose the Government’s point of view on people. It’s designed to provide a useful way of the views of the people who belong to the roundtable, hopefully representative on many issues of the views of their age cohort within the community, to tell the Government how they think and how their fellow young Australians think about certain issues.
I’ve listened to the summaries today. Predictably there are a lot of things that I’ve heard that I agree with. Quite a lot. I’m particularly impressed with the remarks, some of the remarks that have been made in relation to employment and education issues. The right of people to have educational opportunities. The concept that people should have equality of opportunity is a very important concept which has always been at the core of the value system of the Liberal Party, to which I belong. And that’s a very important principle because unless people have equality of opportunity they are being denied things that are very important to them along life’s way.
I think I was also struck by the importance placed upon some of the social challenges, not only for young people, but which particularly affect young people such as substance abuse. We need solutions to those problems which involve an input from all generations within the Australian community.
I’ve frequently said that we now live in Australia in a less tribal political environment. What that means is that you don’t have quite as many people whose political allegiance is automatic, and rusted on to one or other side. There aren’t as many people now who automatically follow the political views of their parents. There are many people now who change their political views from election to election. They look around for quality policies. They assess, come election time, which ever side is likely to respond more directly to the concerns that they have.
Young people today are probably the most option laden generation that the world has ever seen. People under the age of 25 now have more options than any similar age group in previous generations. And that of course gives them tremendous opportunities and tremendous potential. The idea of starting in a job and staying in it for the rest of your life is more the exception than the rule compared with what it was a generation or two ago.
Unemployment in Australia is still a challenge, although it’s lower than it was. And it’s important for us to understand that unemployment is very regional. There are some parts of Australia that for all practical purposes do have full employment. There are other parts of Australia where unemployment is quite chronic and is the source of considerable social and personal distress.
But the whole purpose of this roundtable has been to enable us to listen to your views. Governments from the Prime Minister down must always be willing to listen. I think we owe the young people of Australia the courtesy of our time, the civility of our attention, but also the honesty of our response. There’s nothing to be gained by Prime Minister’s and Ministers agreeing with everything that they’re told by any section of the Australian community. That is patronising in the extreme. And I try in the various groups that I deal with to observe those three rules. I try and listen to them, I try and absorb what’s being put to me, and I try and give a candid response. And so I can assure you will be our approach to the young people of Australia.
We are of course on the cusp of a most exciting time in our history. We’ll be celebrating 100 years of Australian federation in the year 2001. We’ll have the Olympic Games next year. Right at the present time we are facing foreign policy and defence challenges in a position of leadership, the like of which we haven’t faced before in our history. What is happening in East Timor at the present time represents the first occasion in the history of this nation in which we have the leadership of a multinational force involved in a significant peacekeeping operation. And that imposes very particular challenges for Australia, and it imposes very special responsibilities on the men and women who’ll be there.
We have to come to terms with the failures of our past. We have to recognise the blemishes of Australian history. And amongst those were of course our treatment of indigenous people in earlier years. We endeavoured to do that I think very effectively in the Parliament recently with a motion. And I hope the Australian people will vote in favour of the preamble which we’re putting up. As you know I don’t agree with the views of a lot of people in this room on the republic. I said that I would be candid in my response and I’m being so, but that’s another matter. You all have a vote. So do I. And it’s the great thing about a democracy in this country that we can all express with civility and courtesy and respect our differing views. But I do hope that you’ll support the preamble because I think it would be nice as we celebrate our second century as a nation, it would be nice to be able to put into our Constitution a statement of some of the fundamental truths about the Australian way. And one of those is of course to recognise the immense contribution of the indigenous people to this country, and the acknowledgement as the first Australians.
But I hope that whatever our political views are, whatever views we have on all of these things, and however we end up in resolving these issues over the next year or so, that when we come to the year 2001 we’ll be able, very genuinely, but with a proper sense of national humility, to celebrate what Australia has achieved over the last 100 years. The Australian achievement has been an immense thing. The scale of it dwarfs the achievements of so many other nations. We are a very tolerant open harmonious society and we have a lot to be proud of, and not least of that of course has been the contribution of young Australians at every point in every generation of the Australian story.
So thank you very much for coming here. I hope that you have found it valuable. I know that the Government has found it valuable. It’s an important way of communicating, I have to say respectful way of communicating with the young of Australia. We derive value and benefit from it and I hope that you do also. And thank you very much.
[Ends]