E&OE..................
Mrs Marjorie Turbayne, Sir Alastair Goodlad the British High Commissioner in Australia and Lady Goodlad, Sir John Mason, Baroness Gardner, Madam President, Chief Minister, my ministerial and parliamentary colleagues, ladies and gentlemen.
Today is a wonderful occasion and Janette and I are delighted to have been extended the honour of participating in this opening ceremony. Quite rightly Sir Alastair referred to the importance of the values at stake in the response by the civilised world to the terrorist attack on the 11th of September. And in the context of this gathering it is worth remembering that many of the common ideals and common values that are shared by the people of Britain, the people of Australia and the people of the United States and indeed the people of many lands in the 21st century, many of those ideals and values in fact find their origin in the Magna Carta. And that is the historical context and the great historical significance of an occasion like this.
I can';t imagine as a faltering but nonetheless dedicated student of the history of our country and the shared history and our country and the experience of the United Kingdom, I can';t think of things that are more important in binding us together than those common commitments to the liberty of the subject; the importance and the primacy of private property within an orderly democratic society; the freedom from arbitrary arrest and the right of people to be judged by their peers according to the evidence made available in that process.
They are things that we have grown up to take for granted, they are things that the people of Australia and the people of Britain have held in common through the life experience of everybody here today. They are not things of course that have been experienced throughout the lifetime of many people around the world. And it';s those values, those principles and those freedoms and all the other associated freedoms that our peoples have stood for through the centuries which were assaulted on the 11th of September. So when I and others have spoken of that attack not only being an attack upon the people and the values of the United States but also an attack upon the people and the values of Australia and the people and the values of the United Kingdom, we have an understanding of what is involved in that.
Because in the end our societies are judged by their values, they';re judged by the things that they are prepared to stand for and defend. And in the long history of the association between the people of Great Britain and the people of Australia there have been many examples of their shared determination to stand together against the forces that would deny the liberty of the subject against the forces of tyranny, the forces of arbitrary arrest and detention without trial. And it will always be to the enduring credit in the history of mankind that the people of Great Britain and Australia and New Zealand and Canada and other parts of the then British Commonwealth stood together and alone against the worst tyrrany the world had confronted in the 20th Century. And then in 1940 they were standing for the things given birth in part by that compact between King John and the Barons of Runnymede.
And so today when we express our gratitude to the Australia Britain Society, we express our gratitude to the generous contribution from the Government of the United Kingdom. We reflect upon the tremendous heritage that we have in common. The people of Australia and the people of Britain have a lot in common. We share a language, we share a common cultural tradition, we share a common love of sport, we share a common commitment to robust parliamentary institutions. We have inherited much we in Australia from Great Britain. We';ve inherited so many of those things and many more. And today is an occasion for us to celebrate the freedoms that we have in common, for we Australians to acknowledge our debt in those areas to the people of Great Britain and all that that has meant in the formative stages of our nation.
It';s also an occasion for us to recognise that in the 21st Century it is a partnership in every sense of equals. It is a partnership of two nations which although in different parts of the world and often being cast in very different situation are nonetheless two nations that still have great affection towards each other, who still feel in the same way about certain fundamentals of life, who still react with the same indignity and anger when the fundamentals of our society are obscenely assaulted. So today is an occasion to celebrate what we have in common. It';s a day for all of us to express our gratitude to those people who have fought for the fundamental liberties we have. Those people who';ve died for those fundamental liberties and sadly there are far too many of the young men in earlier generations of both our nations who died defending freedom and died of course to give us the kind of life that we enjoy today.
So ladies and gentlemen I am delighted to be here today. I congratulate the Australia Britain Society. Marjorie I can only say you are magnificent, your leadership of that organisation, your inspiration, your cajoling, your capacity to apply pressure ever so subtly, ever so effectively, ever so humbly but always very successfully is quite legend, not only in this city but in many other parts of Australia. It';s a lovely occasion, it';s a thoughtful, ever so appropriate contribution to our Centenary of Federation by the Australia Britain Society. I hope it will be a place to which people who love freedom and believe in the values of our two societies come to reflect upon what they can do to contribute to the common maintenance of those values and the shared experience of their benefits in the years ahead. Thank you.
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