E&OE...........
Your Excellency, Mr Ambassador, Opposition Leader, other distinguished guests, my fellow Australians and fellow citizens of the world.
My very first thoughts today are for the families of those who died a year ago, and I know we all hope that this remembrance service can be of some sustaining comfort and that we may in some way, however inadequately, share the sense of grief and loss that you must continue to experience.
As I reflect on those terrible events, I';m reminded of so many of the strengths of our society. I';m reminded of the remarkable resilience of the American people. I';m reminded of the remarkable acts of heroism and bravery of individual policemen and individual firemen. But above all I';m reminded of the simple reality, and that is that barbarism has no ethnicity, evil has no religion. What was done a year ago today was done in the name of pure unmitigated evil. And in recollecting those events, we must keep that one central reality in our minds. In reaching out to each other, which we must always do at a time of tragedy, we must always draw upon our decent instincts, our instincts of courage, our instincts of compassion and our instincts of tolerance and love. And just as the Ambassador reminded us that the most poignant message to come from that terrible day a year ago was the simple expressions of love, so we should be guided by those expressions in our dealings with one another.
I think also today and my thoughts and prayers are very much with those men of the Australian Defence Force who are taking part along with their comrades in distant fields, in the war against terrorism. I hope they return safely and my thoughts and my love are very much with their families.
A year ago today something happened that we never imagined would happen. A year ago today we were reminded of our vulnerability. A year ago today any sense of complacency that it could never happen here, was swept away. These were attacks, in the minds of Australians, not on distant, unfamiliar places or cities. The cities of New York and Washington are very much the cities of our common culture. And we as Australians felt those things very keenly, and instinctively we reached out to our American friends.
It was also an attack upon the globalised world in which we live. It was an attack upon the mobility of the young of our current generations. But above all, it was an evil attack on mankind and an evil attack that had to be, in a measured, resilient way, responded to.
I was in America at the time and my heart spontaneously went out to our American friends. I tried in my inadequate way to express the representative and collective sense of grief and compassion that we felt on that occasion. And out of the despondency and despair and tragedy of those events, I believe some good has come. The determination of decent men and women around the world to work together to fight terrorism, the determination of decent men and women in our country not to scapegoat individual religions or ethnicities, to recognise that evil is unmitigated and unconditional.
So as we gather in this Cathedral in our national capital to remember those terrible events, we grieve for those we lost, we grieve for the families of those ten Australians who died, we grieve with our American friends. We resolve to work ever closer together to root out evil, we resolve ever more firmly to extend the hand of Australian friendship and mateship to all Australians irrespective of their religious or ethnic background. We are Australians together. We are Australians and Americans and others together in the campaign against evil. We owe to the memory of those who died a year ago today a commitment to a continuance of the values of tolerance and decency which are above all else the foundations on which our society is built.
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