The great thing about Fitz's books is that they are celebrations of Australia. They are part and parcel of the history of who we are and who we hope to become. And the great thing about his writing is it's also replete with the language of Australia and Australianisms. In fact I saw in this morning's press I was criticised for using some Australianisms. And I'd just say to, well I was having a Dad and Dave this morning - that's a shave - picked up my copy of the Oz and saw, was it George Megalogenis having a go at me and I thought, fair crack of the whip. Don't come the raw prawn with me George. Or coming from Queensland I'd say you'd get the rough end of the pineapple but enough of that.
Before I begin if I could acknowledge the First Australians on whose lands we meet and whose cultures we celebrate as the oldest continuing cultures in human history.
Today we come together to honour a truly great Australian, in Sir Charles Kingsford Smith. One who was beyond any doubt a person who has inspired the nation's imagination. One who pushed literally beyond the frontiers of our land and in doing so pushed beyond the frontiers of our minds. These are great achievements because Charles Kingsford Smith and his fellow aviator Charles Ulm are without doubt chapters in our nation's story, chapters in our nation's imagination, chapters in the sort of Australia that we wish to become.
It's also an honour today to be launching this book by one of Australia's most prolific writers. I think it is fair to say that Peter FitzSimons has been an extraordinary contributor to Australian writing. I am advised Peter that you have penned 20 books already. This puts you in the league of being a veritable front-rower for the Australian publishing industry and with awards as the nation's best selling non-fiction writer on three occasions in the past decade, I think it is fair to say therefore that Peter FitzSimons himself, in himself is a literary stimulus package self-contained. With appropriate impact on the macro-economy.
Peter's doing important work because he's bringing life to great Australian legends. Legends of sport, legends of war and the great legends of pioneering adventurers like our great aviators.
In particular, he has sustained a deep fascination in Australia over our role in the last World War; his books on Nancy Wake, Kokoda and Tobruk. As a writer, Peter brings to life the personalities behind the iconic stories of Australian history because the truth is we are shaped not just by impersonal forces - political, social, economic - as if we are simply hapless ships in the night. We are shaped actively by the active decisions of women and men. Decisions of courage, decisions which have turned the course of human history. Charles Kingsford Smith was one such man.
Peter's book does two things. First, it gives us a comprehensive picture of the man, Charles Kingsford Smith, from his earliest days in Queensland. Second it recounts, with enthusiasm and extraordinary detail, the birth of modern aviation. The story of modern aviation is itself a remarkable story. As Peter says with great eloquence, in some 66 years we went from being three foot off the ground to one foot on the moon. This is extraordinary when you look at the full spread of human history.
Australia also played an important part in this journey. As a nation, Australia, this nation of vast distances, was enormously changed by aviation. In many respects the aviation revolution achieved physically what the digital revolution is achieving electronically, shrinking time and space and so overcoming finally the great tyranny of distance. Aviation literally re-drew the map for us. It brought us together as a nation, enabling a vast expansion of trade and business activity in closing great distances with flights of just an hour or two. It's something that we now take for granted. It was not always so.
As Peter reminds us in this great history, we shouldn't take the aviation revolution for granted. It is in itself an extraordinary story. That's why we are all captivated by the simple thought of those magnificent men and their flying machines. A great Australian story also of courage, of innovation and nation-building and this transformation has all happened within the lifetimes of many Australians who are still with us today.
For many Australians, certainly those of my parents' generation, it's difficult imagine any person who more captured the imagination of a generation than Charles Kingsford Smith. ‘Smithy' as he was known to his mates and the nation, ‘Chilla' as he was known to his beloved family. He was Australia's greatest long-distance pioneering aviator and in doing so he exhibited great physical courage. Great physical courage. This is something which is written of less these days than it should be. Great physical courage as our veterans from Tobruk and Kokoda know full well from their own life experience.
Kingsford Smith's 1928 three-legged journey from California to Brisbane took extraordinary courage as he and his crew ignored all advice and flew from one geographical ‘speck' to the next. He was traversing what he described as - and I quote him - “virgin air”, perhaps not mindful of an entrepreneur some generations later who would copy the phrase and use it for defined entrepreneurial purposes. Others said he had undertaken a flight that would “stagger the imagination”. And he did.
After a total of 83 hours and 38 minutes in the air, Smithy and his crew landed the Southern Cross in a paddock which was to become Eagle Farm in Brisbane. This was an extraordinary moment for Australians. This conquering of the Pacific brought some 300,000 spectators out to Mascot Airport in Sydney alone. And again as Peter says in his book, eloquently, to bring the same number to the airport today you'd need to land a space-craft from Mars.
Today there are over 120 Boeing 747 non-stop flights flying more than 30,000 people between Australia and the United States every week. How the world has changed. Now, that flight takes around 14 hours, some 69 hours less than Kingsford Smith's pioneering flight.
The nation has never forgotten Kingsford Smith. Charles Kingsford Smith for three decades decorated our $20 note. Our nation's busiest airport is named after him. He was portrayed by the late Bud Tingwell - - Bud's first speaking role - - in the 1945 film ‘Smithy'. And for Queenslanders, the legend of Kingsford Smith has always been in our sights, as we pass by the Southern Cross on Brisbane's Airport Drive, a very physical reminder of those magnificent men and their flying machines.
Smithy's was a remarkable life, hair-raising from the start. Like the day he jumped from the roof of the family shed holding nothing but an open umbrella. How many of you have done that?
Like the day he also decided to join up and serve with Australia in the First World War. Smithy served in Gallipoli and survived. He served too on the Western Front and survived. He clocked up some 800 hours in the air with the Royal Flying Corps and survived. His courage, his physical courage was recognised by the award of a Military Cross for conspicuous gallantry and devotion to duty - though he once quipped it was for acts of absolute foolishness.
Smithy could also inspire extraordinary confidence in those around him - a born commander and leader of men, who was fastidious when it came to preparing his plane for flight. Indeed his radio operator on the Southern Cross, Jim Warner, famously said he'd follow Smithy on a tomato crate with cracker-box wings if he said it would fly.
This book isn't just a biography of Smithy. It's also a history of Australian aviation. From its earliest days, when Australians acclaimed Harry Houdini as the first man to fly in Australia - provoking extraordinary scenes at Sydney's Rosehill racetrack, with men and women tossing hats into the air and weeping with excitement. Reminding us afresh that there is something exhilarating, something extraordinary about science, technology and innovation, about breaking through the frontiers of possible.
Today, the Australian aviation industry is a $6 billion a year business. It supports more than half a million jobs. It carries more than 25 million passengers on international flights and 50 million domestic passengers each year. In the great tradition of Charles Kingsford Smith, ours also is a Government that believes aviation has a role in shaping our nation's future, not just a part of its past.
We are the first Government to develop a National Aviation Policy, which I expect to be finalised later this year. We have already signed an “Open Skies” agreement with the United States, increased capacity in other markets including South Africa, Thailand and Malaysia, and we are in negotiations for a comprehensive agreement with the European Union. Aviation for Australia does not just have therefore a vital history, vital as it is. It has equally for us, a vital future.
Since the beginnings of the aviation industry, governments have played an important role in supporting and advancing the industry.
I haven't yet read all 700 pages of this book but there have been parts of it that I've dipped into. And one part where my attention has been particularly fixed has been an account of a bit of political deal-making one evening some time after the war to end all wars, when Billy Hughes, then Australian Prime Minister, was returning from Parliament in Melbourne to Sydney on the night train.
Prime Minister Billy Hughes was known as an avid early champion of Australian aviation. Travelling to Versailles for the peace conference after the First World War, and constantly flying back and forth between London and Paris had got our Billy thinking about the great distances that isolated Australia from Europe.
So much so that Hughes announced a 10,000 pound prize for the first all Australian crew or solo pilot who could fly from England to Australia in a plane of British make. Pity about Bleriot and all those other folks. Of British make.
Some time later, Paul “Ginty” McGinness, the driving force in the establishment of Qantas, was desperately looking for government support to expand the fledgling Qantas airline. He'd had little luck with Hughes but he persevered. He was a man of insight.
Knowing that Billy was on the train from Melbourne to Sydney one night, McGinness also boarded the train with one thing in mind - cornering the Prime Minister. There were no registers of lobbyists in those days. And McGinness managed to get the Prime Minister in a corner. Indeed, Hughes was willing to cut a deal as only Hughes could.
His message to McGinness was clear and was fully minded of the high policy considerations of the day. And that is, if the Country Party would just stop backing Labor in the Senate, then he would back the airline. And so too a deal was struck, that Hughes would find the money to subsidise a service between Charleville and Cloncurry. And so the deal was done.
The fledgling Qantas spread its wings through a late night train deal between McGinness, a great Australian entrepreneur, and Hughes who was a person of chequered history in the history of the Australian Labor Party but nonetheless an Australian Prime Minister. And in time, politicians would find also a way to avoid the fateful night train between Melbourne and Sydney.
The life of Charles Kingsford Smith and his co-pilot ended tragically in 1935, when they were declared missing, presumed dead, after the Southern Cross disappeared over the Bay of Bengal. It was a tragic end to a life of extraordinary courage and of extraordinary vision. It was Charles Lindberg's mother who said, on hearing of her son's plans to fly from the United States to Paris, this quote from her I believe speaks down the ages: “For the first time in my life I realised that Columbus also had a mother.”
Today we have two men who did not get to know their fathers. And as Prime Minister of Australia, I honour the sacrifice of your family. The pioneers of aviation took great risks and they paid a very great price. We are proud of them. We are proud of them all. But it was the sacrifice of these great Australians who believed so ardently in the importance of flight to bring the world and its people together which actually made the sacrifice worthwhile.
Smithy's, alongside those other great pioneers of aviation, remains inspirational today as a story for us all. A life brought back to life by this great book by Peter FitzSimons. So well done, mate. Another great Australian epic.
It therefore gives me great pleasure to officially launch Charles Kingsford Smith And Those Magnificent Men and all those who sail in her. This is truly one for under the Christmas tree.