Prime Minister
PRIME MINISTER: Thank you very much for your welcome. We acknowledge the Ngunnawal people past, present and [inaudible] future. We gather here tonight, there are no parties, there are no aisles, there are no MPs, or Senators, staff, it is just people who are grieving and shocked and saddened, angry, frustrated.
And the only words I can offer tonight are four names, Hannah, Aaliyah, Laianah, and Trey.
We must speak their names.
We must remember their names.
We must remember them, their souls, their lives, their hopes, their dreams, their strength, their courage.
All of that was taken away in a murderous act of violence, which none of us here can comprehend.
We’ve just sung Amazing Grace and I can only think that the only response is to seek to understand this, is just to understand grace [inaudible].
The families of Hannah and her children, they have shown such strength and such grace, and we want to stand with them here tonight.
We stand with them, with our hearts and everything we have to let them know that they won’t stand alone.
But to all of those others who face the same dangers this day and every day, to those who have had the same thing stolen from them through murderous acts of violence in the past, we also remember you here tonight.
And we gather, and we remember.
We give thanks for what we each have, because times like this remind us of [inaudible].
I want to thank everybody for coming here tonight [inaudible] and the spirit in which we come.
It’s a good thing we do tonight, and I thank those who’ve gathered us here tonight.