E&OE..................
Thank you very much Ian, Senator Newman, Larry Anthony, Peter Reith, my other Parliamentary colleagues, Dr. Switkowski the chief executive of Telstra, Jonathon Shier the managing director of the ABC, Scott Parker from the United Kingdom Employers' Disability Forum, and many other distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen.
This is, I think, the third or fourth award dinner that I have attended and I do so in a number of capacities and for a number of reasons. First and foremost is to demonstrate, from the highest level, the Government's commitment to the cause of employing people with disabilities throughout the public and private sectors in Australia. I also do it because I find the various programs that companies have adopted, the great variety of Government agencies, as well as private companies, that have innovative and focused schemes to provide, not only more opportunity for people with disabilities in employment, but also to harness for their own enterprises or organisations the enormous benefits of employing people with disabilities.
There's no doubt that the Paralympics were a watershed in the community's understanding of the place of people with disabilities in our community. It was a watershed because it drove home the most obvious of all realities, and that is that people with disabilities can provide not only the capabilities of valued and loyal employees, but they can also in sporting contests provide ultimate levels of excitement and keen competition.
As is known I attended a lot of Olympic events, and as is also known my wife and I attended a lot of Paralympic events. And the incredible excitement that we derived from so many of the latter really was a great demonstration to me that once those competitions started you forgot about the disabilities, it was just a great sporting contest. And to see those great wheelchair basketball contests, the wheelchair rugby, the sit down volleyball, and all of the marvellous competitions which provided tremendous exhilaration for the spectators, fierce competition for the competitors, an enormous sense of individual and national pride on the part of those who were successful. And of course can I say in the presence of Lois Appleby who did so much of the organising, what an absolutely tremendous job she did and what a huge success, what a huge success those games were. So I think it will never be the same again after the Paralympics, because that was a quantum leap forward in community understanding, a quantum leap forward in community acceptance of the absolute place within our society of people who have one or other form of disability. And in that sense it was really such a wonderful transforming experience for our country, and I do think for the world in relation to people with disabilities because we did it better than anybody had done it before, and isn't that fantastic.
I don't really want to say a lot more, tonight is a night to honour those who've made a contribution, for me on behalf of the Government to thank my many ministerial colleagues who are involved, Jocelyn Newman, Larry Anthony, Peter Reith in particular, but in different ways the heads of Government departments, and we have a very strong policy in this area. And we have a strong policy in this area not only because it meets the aspiration of the Australian fair go, but we also have a strong policy in this area because it returns a great benefit. And the quality of employees with disabilities in the Commonwealth public service is of an extremely high order.
So to all of you thank you for the contribution that you are making. These award nights are a very important national occasion, they're an important national occasion because they recognise here in the national capital that employing people with disabilities is a national priority, it's not something that you occasionally do if you've got room, it's something that you should be encouraged to do for your own benefit and it is something that is part of the matrix of national goals that this country has. So again I welcome you, I thank my colleagues and I thank all of those people who've been responsible for organising this wonderful night, and I wish all of you involved in the cause of employing people with disabilities great good fortune, further recruitment, further success and further good business dividends as a result.
Thank you.
[ends]