It's a great day for the nation and it's a great day for Western Australia. Personally, it is a genuine honour to be in this house in Cottlesloe. I'm from Queensland, a fair way away, but no Australian grows up without knowing something of the life of John Curtin and this is the first time I've been here.
I think it says many rich things about Australia and our history. It says, as part and parcel of the great dream that is Australia, that any person of whatever modest beginnings can do and aspire to that which they wish in this great country Australia.
Curtin's origins were modest, this house is a modest house, but he rose to the highest office in our land. Of course, he was a person of talent and ability and dedication.
I think the other great thing which the story of Curtin says, which John Faulkner alluded to before, is here is a man and a very human man and full of human frailties and failings who had to wrestle with his own personal demons and in his own case, the great challenge of alcoholism. He struggled with that and prevailed.
He was therefore a person made of flesh and blood like the rest of us, but a person who saw that his contribution required him to rise above those challenges to make his contribution to the nation. And he did and we are the better for it.
Also, in a house like this, all of us engaged in the rough and tumble and the difficulties and challenges, and sometimes the brutalities of politics, understand that at the end we are nothing without our families. And here in this house, which has been here for the better part of three quarters of a century, you can sense that John Curtin was also the product of the nurture and the love of his family, as those of us engaged in public political life continue to be today. In a room like this, the warmth and the support, the succour, the friendship, the unquestioning love towards a person committed to political life - even in the case of national political life which would have you removed from this city for months and months on end to a distant place called Canberra - speaks much I think about the absolute and fundamental importance of the love of family.
The last thing to say about this day is Curtin's extraordinary contribution to our national survival.
Yesterday, it was my privilege to visit with the Premier, Geraldton and to visit, in my case, for the first time the memorial which we have now designated a national memorial for the HMAS Sydney.
When Curtin became Prime Minister, this was one of many extraordinary sad tidings for the nation, the loss of 645 of our sailors in that engagement off the coast of Western Australia. From the end of 1941, through to the dark days of ‘42 and through to ‘43, his life in political office was full of one almost unending tide of bad news.
Yet it says something about the calibre of the man that in the midst of that tide of bad news that he could summon the energy, summon the courage and summon the quality of leadership to see that there was in fact a destination called victory. And he prevailed and the nation came in his wake - the nation I think also encouraged by the fact that they saw in Curtin one of us.
I'm pleased that the National Trust has this shovel-ready. I find it interesting that in my two days in the West that I've gone from Oakajee, where we spoke of thousands of jobs to the Northbridge Link this morning where we spoke hundreds of jobs to this humble abode in Cottlesloe where we are talking about 16.
So we are moving from deep sea ports to rail redevelopment to restumping the back verandah. Do whatever work's necessary. But you know something, this is good work because what it also says about those who attend here this morning is that one of the great qualities of being Australian is that on the things that matter we transcend the smaller things which divide us and that is reflected very much in the work of all in the preservation of this important monument for the nation. Thank you.