Subjects: Centenary of Federation
E&OE................................
FLYNN:
Prime Minister good morning and thank you for joining us on this Australia's 100th birthday.
PRIME MINISTER:
Very nice to be with you Julie.
FLYNN:
How important is this centenary of our nation's federation?
PRIME MINISTER:
It's important historically. It's also important that this time in Australia's history, where for a whole combination of reasons Australians are feeling very positive about their country and about its place in the world, and as a result most Australians will celebrate this centenary in different ways in a very confident and optimistic mood. There is a greater interest in Australian history, there's a greater sense of our special identity and I find the level of cohesion in Australian society and the level of positive thought about what we have achieved quite exceptional and I think it's going to be a very good year for us. I think it's going to be a very good year for our sense of self worth as a community.
FLYNN:
I suspect a lot of Australians don't actually know the history of federation and until now have probably been unaware of the significance of January 1. Is this an appropriate time to change that?
PRIME MINISTER:
I think this is a good time to change it. I don't think there'll be a better time, certainly not in our lifetime. You're not going to have another celebration like this. One of the reasons of course we don't know a lot about it is that it was so uncontroversial. I mean we achieved our nationhood without shedding blood. We didn't even have to fight a reluctant colonial master. The British were very accommodating about federation. They didn't try and stand in the way. We only really argued over one thing of any consequence and that was the circumstances under which appeals would lie to the Privy Council from the High Court of Australia on a limited number of constitutional matters. That was the only real point of discord and it is quite remarkable when you think of the constitutional struggles of other countries just how accommodating the British were at that time.
FLYNN:
Well of course we mark Australia Day on the 26th of January marking the first white settlement and that has caused some controversy. Would January 1 be a more appropriate day?
PRIME MINISTER:
I don't think so. The 26th of January is there. There would be a large number of people who would resist it being shifted. Some people would applaud it being shifted. The 1st of January for most people in normal years is New Years Day. That's the other reason why you don't shift it and I don't think Australians like blending holidays. They like to sort of stretch them out a bit don't they?
FLYNN:
They do indeed and in fact the holiday's not over until Australia Day long weekend is it?
PRIME MINISTER:
Exactly. So I just think that's a non-starter. I understand the sensitivities of Aboriginal Australians but there are other ways in which their quite understandable concerns can be met and acknowledged. And we have come a long way over the last 12 months with reconciliation. I think the country feels a lot more reconciled now than it has been ever and that's a very good think. I think people have begun to accept that there are different ways of expressing your sense of reconciliation one with the other, and I don't think we're fighting as much over which is the more reconciled past.
FLYNN:
Well we saw the pride that Australians, all Australians felt for our country during the Olympics and indeed in the Paralympics. Is the time right now for us to celebrate our own history more publicly? Are we ready for that?
PRIME MINISTER:
I think we're doing it already. The most moving day I had as Prime Minister of this country, probably the most moving day I've had as Prime Minister of this country last year was ANZAC Day which I didn't spend in Australia, I spent on the shores of Gallipoli and there were 15,000 young Australians who'd come there like pilgrims to a place that was very important to them, although for most of them it was grandfathers and great grandfathers who would have been there. And the sense of pride in their country and one of the great although very tragic events that had shaped the history of this country, that sense of pride was overwhelming. So we are beginning to celebrate our history. We're beginning to realise how many things we got right. But there are a lot of things we've got to learn. I don't know there are too many Australians for example who would know that women in parts of Australia had the vote years ahead of women in Britain and America.
FLYNN:
That's right.
PRIME MINISTER:
And Aboriginal women in South Australia had the vote 20 years or so, or around about that, ahead of women in other parts of the world. There are a lot of things we don't know about this country's history and we all have an obligation to bring it forth.
FLYNN:
In fact should we be looking in our schools at making this part of our history a compulsory part of the curriculum? Isn't that part of the problem?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well it is part of the problem but I think there's a broader problem. The methodology of teaching history that has overtaken so many schools in the last generation where we tend to teach issues and personalities more so than events and chronological sequence. You can't learn history in my opinion without there being some chronological sense.
FLYNN:
Absolutely.
PRIME MINISTER:
I mean you can't really start the story of Australia without...I mean you obviously have to start with the indigenous people, you have to start with the coming of European settlement, you've got to go through the 18th century..19th century, and then into federation. But you also have to understand where our culture came from. You've got to understand British and European history to properly understand Australian history because in a number of areas there is a continuum. I mean we speak a common language, we inherited common cultural things. But I think what we've done over the last generation or so is we've adopted this more interpretive approach to history where we've taught issues and personalities rather than focus on events and as a result a lot of Australian people don't know much about federation. They don't know much even about the first explorers. They certainly don't know a great deal about indigenous history either.
FLYNN:
No they don't. Do you have any personal favourites among the founding fathers because I think they all pretty much were founding fathers?
PRIME MINISTER
Oh I think the dominant personality has to be Sir Henry Parkes. I mean you say favourites, I mean he's really. I think Barton is a very interesting figure as he.
FLYNN:
Our first Prime Minister
PRIME MINISTER
Yeah, he's a very interesting figure Barton, and one of the things I've noticed in the last few months is the growing number of people, admittedly from a group who are intensely interested in politics and history, reading biographies of Barton and Deakin and the. Just as a small measure that book that was sponsored by the Centenary of Federation Council with biographies of the 25 Prime Ministers who've. if the number of times I'm asked to sign a book for somebody is any guide, that's selling like hotcakes. I've had probably a hundred people or more in the past couple of months who've come to me with that book to ask me to sign it. And that's an interesting indication it's probably doing pretty well.
FLYNN:
And in fact our second Prime Minister, Deakin, was the spiritual father of the small "l" Liberals of your own party.
PRIME MINISTER
Yes he was, he was certainly associated with, he's very associated of course with the debates about free trade and protection. And the expression the Deakinite Liberals is part of the history, the philosophical history of the Liberal Party, which of course as you've heard me say before is unique in the sense that it's the trustee of both the Liberal and the conservative traditions in Australian politics.
FLYNN:
Well look you've urged the nation to regain their faith in the nation's political institutions but that, doesn't that require some more responsivity, if you like, or for the institutions themselves to be more responsive to the people.
PRIME MINISTER
Well yes it's a two way traffic, and I accept that the institutions don't always come up to the mark, but I also ask people to see as you go around the world how favourably Australia compares with so many other countries. We've been very successful with federation. We all feel Australian yet we do disperse power very effectively in this very big country of ours. We've been very cohesive, the crowning thing of the Australian achievement is really our social cohesion. I think our egalitarian spirit has helped produce it. But we are a very cohesive country, we've taken people from 140 nations around the world and by and large they've come together very well. You just think over the last ten years Julie of all the trauma in the Middle East, the trauma in the former Yugoslavia and you think of all of the people in our country who've come from those trouble spots, they probably feel very deeply about what has happened. But it hasn't really spilled onto the streets of Australia and you haven't seen bitter public division between Australians of Serbian heritage and Australians of Croatian heritage, you've seen a bit but not very much when you consider the bitterness of what's there and the same thing in relation to the Middle East. I think we've been incredibly successful in the way in which we have held it all together. Now I don't want to sound complacent but on a day like this of all days we shouldn't be reluctant in applauding what Australia has been able to achieve.
FLYNN:
Will that be the message you'll be giving people who you speak at the Commemorative Ceremony at, I think it's about lunch time, 1 o'clock Sydney time today?
PRIME MINISTER
That will be one of the messages I'll be giving. I mean we do need to try and distil the essence of what Australia has achieved. I think our social cohesion is quite remarkable and it's one of the great things of the Australian achievement. And it's due to our egalitarianism, it's due to our mateship, all of those things. I mean the Olympic Games was a huge success, partly because we are a classless society and people for the common good pitched in, they don't worry about position in society, they just work for a common good. And I think we are better at that then just about any country in the world.
FLYNN:
In fact it has been said that the Olympics and the Paralympics were our celebration to the world and that this is our party for us, this celebration.
PRIME MINISTER
Yeah that's a good way of putting it, I think this is a good way of putting it. And the fact the Paralympics and the Olympics were so hugely successful means that we celebrate, this year, starting today in an even greater sense of optimism, because we know that we can do it. Even those people who've retained a certain level of self doubt about the ability of Australia would surely have seen that washed away by the Olympic Games. Because in so many ways it was a celebration of Australian capacity and Australian spirit, and I think all of that will mean that we celebrate this year with even greater gusto. Now that doesn't mean that everything's perfect and it doesn't mean that we shouldn't go on furiously debating the different directions in which we ought to go, that's part of any active democracy. But we have probably overdone the knocking and the self-criticism and having been able to run something like the Olympic Games so very well through a co-operative effort perhaps we will now see ourselves in a more positive light and that can only be good.
FLYNN:
Well for you as Prime Minister is it going to be an extra special day to be part of this historic occasion.
PRIME MINISTER
Oh very moving, a real experience. And I love the history of this country, I like history generally and to feel that you're part of such a momentous occasion, to go to the very spot where the Commonwealth was inaugurated 100 years ago today is quite an experience and it's an incredible honour and privilege to be Prime Minister on the 100th birthday of my country.
FLYNN:
And will you also enjoy the parade and the celebrations later in the evening? Are you going to be part of those as well?
PRIME MINISTER
Oh yes I'll be watching the whole parade and there'll be another celebration and a narrative of Australia from the time of Federation, and there'll be short contributions from myself and the Governor-General and the New South Wales Premier. That's all part of the day, and then of course there are many other celebrations throughout the year. The good thing about the Centenary is that it's going to be something that people own and just as the Olympic torch relay got the Olympic Games going, so many of the local events around Australia are going to get people very caught up with the Centenary. And the gathering in Melbourne on the 9th of May to commemorate the sitting of the first Federal Parliament, that'll be a great occasion as well. It's going to take place in the exhibition building which is being refurbished for the purposes of the Centenary year, and that'll be a great occasion as well.
FLYNN:
Well Prime Minister thank you very much for taking time out on this busy day to join us here and enjoy the rest of the day.
PRIME MINISTER
Thanks, I hope you and all of your listeners do, it will be a great day to be an Australian.
FLYNN:
Thank you.
[ends]