E&OE.........................................................................................................................
Well thank you very much Mr Chairman, to my Parliamentary Colleagues,
Jackie Kelly, my Minister for Sport and Tourism, Janice Crosio the
Member for Prospect, Julia Irwin the Member for Fowler, other State
Parliamentary colleagues, Father and all the members of the Croatian
community. Can I say
how delighted that Janette and I are to be here this morning to share
this very special occasion with you.
I am conscious of the importance of this event to your community.
It's an opportunity to me, on behalf of your fellow Australians,
to say how much we honour the contribution of Australians of Croatian
descent to the building of the modern Australia.
The rest of us thank you for your dedication, for your loyalty to
Australia, for your hard work, for your sense of family and your sense
of community. And I think
what a wonderful thing it is here under a beautiful warm winter sunshine
here in Australia, for me the Prime Minister of Australia to be saying
thank you to all of you, to remember as I do your past, to honour
the fact that the people of Croatia fought proudly and defiantly against
communism for a very long period of time.
I think it's always important to remember the past without allowing
the past to govern the present or to govern the future.
Your present and your future is as part of the great Australian
nation. But in being
part of the great Australian nation you're not asked to forget
your heritage, your history, and what your people have been through
and therefore it is marvelous, as part of the Australian democracy
and the Australian way of life that is part of the Australian community,
you preserve just a little bit of Croatia here, not only in this village
but also in the broader Australian community.
I think today is also an opportunity to recognise the importance,
as people grow older, Australians who were not born in this country
and whose mother-tongue is not English, it is important to recognise
the value of retirement villages and nursing homes that care for them.
The Governor of Victoria, Sir James Gobbo, an Australian of
Italian descent, put it to me very well one day and I've never
forgotten his remark, when he said to me John it's a bit
unrealistic to expect an elderly Italian lady to sit around the piano
singing the Road to Gundagai.
And, of course, that is true not only in relation to people
of Italian descent, but indeed to people whose mother-tongue is other
than English. And as
one of the Directors of Nursing said to me on the way in, that she
had literally seen dementia peel away from people as they've
been able in their older years to communicate with the nursing staff
in their mother-tongue.
And as you rightly said in your introduction, as the years go by and
English becomes to so many people irrespective of their descent, their
mother-tongue the need for that will go.
But at present it is a very important element of properly caring
for the elderly within our community.
And it has been, let me say, the commitment of governments
of both political persuasion to provide continued help and support
for nursing homes and retirement villages of this kind.
And one of the measures of the humanity of a nation is the way in
which it does care for the old.
In twenty years time there will be far more Australians over
the age of 65. We will
live longer, we will be healthier as we live longer, and the need
to care for people in that age bracket will grow rather than diminish
and that has all sorts of implications for a whole range of public
policy issues, not only nursing home policy but a whole range of public
policy issues.
But today I'm here as the Prime Minister to say to you how much
we admire the contribution of your community to the building of the
Australian nation. We
are conscious of the circumstances in which many of you left your
homeland. I am very proud
of the fact that the Australian government was one of the very first
to recognise the independent Republic of Croatia only a few years
ago.
But even more importantly than that, you have come to Australia, you've
become part of the community, you've made your mark on the Australian
community, you've made your mark in business, in politics, in
sport. In so many endeavours,
the contribution of people of Croatian descent to soccer in Australia,
for example, it is quite remarkable given the proportion of the Australian
population that people of Croatian descent represent.
And in so many other fields the mark of Croatians on our country
is to be found.
But this is an occasion ladies and gentlemen not for long speeches
but for celebration. It's
an occasion to thank you for your contribution.
It's an occasion to celebrate the wonder of living in
Australia. The freest,
open, most tolerant nation on earth.
And in honour of these, the man after whom this village is named,
it's an occasion to salute the steadfastness of people of Croatian
descent to their Catholic faith, which many of them maintained in
their homeland in very, very difficult circumstances.
So can I say to all of you it's a great delight for Janette and
I to be present. It's
a great delight to share for a few moments membership of the Australian
Croatian family and the Australian Croatian community.
Thank you very much for what you have done for Australia.
[Ends]