Principal, Dr Steffan Silcox:[Choir performs] Ladies and gentlemen, it is now with great pleasure that I introduce the Prime Minister of Australia, Mr Kevin Rudd, to speak to us.
Kevin Rudd, Prime Minister of Australia:Thank you Dr Silcox and Ted for your friendly welcome to this great part of our country and to you, the members of this local community, thank you for coming out this evening.
My first thing to say is that I am sorry I am late. It's all Julia's fault [Laughter], it sounded like a good excuse at the time, it does happen to be true. But I really appreciate the fact that you've come out on an evening like this to be with us.
We began this series of Community Cabinets as a government that, within a month or two of being elected, and we began this series of Community Cabinets here in Perth, from memory, in January or February of last year. And I remember them saying at the time they'll never keep it up, they'll never stick to it, it's all too hard. I can tell you it is hard, but since then we have gone around the country and we're going round the country again, and we have held Community Cabinets of this type in every State of the Federation. We have been in communities in Queensland and New South Wales, Victoria, Aboriginal communities in Arnhem Land, here in the suburbs of Perth, both in the north and in the south. We intend to keep doing it, and the reason we're doing it is because it keeps us as a government linked to what you in the community have to say to us. It's very easy for governments in Canberra to become detached from what's going on out on the ground. I don't intend to allow that to happen to this government and one of the antidotes is to make sure that we are up and out there on a regular basis engaging local communities like you good people who have come along this evening. Thank you for that round of applause from this guy up the front here. And I'll buy you a beer later.
The purpose is not so much to hear from us, we'll do our best to answer the questions you put to us. The purpose is for us to hear from you. There's none of these Community Cabinets that I have attended that we have not learned something and taken something up and taken the idea, often coming from local community experience, about what we can do to apply that idea nationally, and engagement with local groups such as the ones that will speak with our Ministers separately after this evening's Q & A about the issues of great concern to you here in this local community. Understand this, it triggers ideas in our mind about other things to do as well. So you are legitimately here arguing the interests of your local community, that is right, that is good, that is proper and we are here to say what we can do and what we can't. Some of the answers we won't have at our fingertips this evening and we will undertake to get back to you within a reasonable time. I'll seek to answer any questions put to me, but if it is genuinely too difficult, it will head off to one of the Ministers, and we can blame them for not having the answers. Folks, thanks for your attendance this evening. It's over to you. [Applause.]