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51
DAIL EIREANN
AITHEASC 6
ROBERT J. L. HAWKE, M. P.
PRiOMH-AIRE
NA hASTRAILE
D Ciadaoin, 21 Deireadh F6mhair 1987
V
DAIL EIREANN
ADDRESS BY
ROBERT J. L. HAWKE, M. P.
PRIME MINISTER
OF AUSTRALIA
Wednesday, 21 October 1987
DAIL EIREANN
De Cadaoin, 21 Deireadh F6mhair 1987.
Wednesday, 21 October 1987.
Chuaigh an Ceann Comhairle i gceannas ar 10.30 a. m.
The Ceann Comhairle took the Chair at 10.30 a. m.
Paidir.
Prayer.
The Taoiseach ( Deputy Haughey), the Leader of the Fine
Gael Party ( Deputy Dukes), the Leader of the Progressive
Democrats ( Deputy Desmond O'Malley), the Leader of The
Labour Party ( Deputy Spring) and the Leader of The Workers'
Party ( Deputy Mac Giolla) conducted The Honourable Robert
J. L. Hawke, Prime Minister of Australia, to the dais,
where, Members standing and applauding, he was received by
the Ceann Comhairle.
The Prime Minister then took his seat on the dais beside the
Ceann Comhairle.
An Ceann Comhairle ( Deputy Sean Treacy): A Phriomh-
Aire Uasail, cuireann s6 gliondar 6 chroi agus m6rtas orainne
ti bheith anseo inniu le labhairt linn. Ocid mh6r, agus 6cid
stairiiil, ti a bheith ar cuairt ar ir dtir. Ti cead mile fiilte
romhat agus guimid rath agus s6an ort f6in, ar do bhancheile,
Hazel, agus ar mhuintir na hAstriile.
Mr. Prime Minister, it is indeed a great honour for us as
the elected representatives of the Irish people to have you with
us in Diil tireann today. Since the foundation of the State,
this is the first occasion on which a Prime Minister of another
country has addressed this House. We welcome you as leader
of a nation and of a people with whom Ireland enjoys a unique
ethnic relationship arising out of our history of emigration
and deportation. As a result approximately five million
Australians, a third of your population, have Irish blood in
their veins and this binds us together in a very special way.
Edmund Burke expressed this sentiment eloquently when he
wrote: The close affection which grows from common names,
from kindred blood;
These are ties which, though light as air, are as strong as
links of iron.
Two centuries are a short time in the history of any country
but in the case of your country, out of the trials, tribulations,
hopes and fears of emigrants and deportees, a country has
been forged which has taken its place among the great nations
of the earth.
We remember with deep pride the contribution which the
Irish and their descendants made to the growth and success
of Australia. Moreover, we do honour to their memories by
forever cherishing that indomitable spirit which pain and
suffering cannot and must not quench. They longed for freedom
and dignity, and they certainly were not denied the
realisation of their hopes and dreams in your country. In
time your shores gave them the assurance of a new life with
unfettered horizons.
Sir ^ p
In the words of Dorothea Mackellar they could say:
I love a sunburnt country,
A land of sweeping plains,
Of ragged mountain ranges,
Of droughts and flooding rains.
I love her far horizons,
I love her jewel-sea,
Her beauty and her terror-
The wide brown land for me.
We all know that this brown land was loved and honoured
for 30,000 years in the culture and art of the Aboriginal
Australians whose benign heritage is gaining increasing international
appreciation. Mr. Prime Minister, your country's
.1 recognition of this great heritage enriches us all.
The Irish contribution to Australian liberties has been significant,
but perhaps even more significant has been the effect
of their activities and perspectives in contributing to the overall
liberalising and humanising of the climate of Australian life.
Their individual zest, and their vigorous refusal to accept
injustice as they saw it, have also been vital to this climate. I
may say that the Irish who went and settled in Australia came
from all over Ireland, North and South, and from both
Irish traditions. The fact that they and their descendants
contributed to the creation of a tolerant, liberal and open
society has undoubtedly a significant lesson for us in this
island today.
The Australia to which the Irish emigrated in the last
century, and the Ireland from which they departed, were very
different from what we see today. Both our countries have
changed very much for the better in economic and political
terms, but I would stress that the quintessential spark of what
constitutes traditional Ireland with its love of music, literature
and sport has added colour and verve to community life in
Australia and has helped to form what today is an indigenous
Australian culture and lifestyle. Irish names like Kenneally,
Durack, Buckley, McCullough and White figure prominently Seven
in Australian writing, carrying on a tradition set by Marcus
Clarke, Christopher Brennan, John O'Brien and others of
Irish descent. In the realm of art the names of Sidney Nolan
and Arthur Boyd are known around the world. The Irish have
also made a significant contribution to the Christian Churches,
to the legal profession, to the medical and health care field
and, dare I say, to politics. I understand that seven of your
Prime Ministers were of Irish descent. That speaks volumes
for the role the Irish played in the political life of your country.
We in Ireland look forward in anticipation to being closely
associated with your bicentennial celebrations next year. You
can truly look forward to 1988 with deep pride. We share that
pride, and we will rejoice with you on that great occasion.
In conclusion, Mr. Prime Minister, perhaps I could briefly
quote Professor Patrick O'Farrell with whose writing you are
well acquainted: Ireland in Australia was both fact and dream. Its dimensions
of fact coincide with the boundaries of the continent,
but its dreams were unbounded, spanning the
world and more than the world. No man can fix the
boundaries of the nation, of the mind and heart. Least of
all the soul.
With these sentiments, Mr. Prime Minister, it is now my
privilege and great honour to call on you to address this
House.
Eight . e, I
ADDRESS OF PRIME MINISTER OF AUSTRALIA
The Honourable Robert]. L. Hawke, MP', Prime Minister
of Australia, then delivered his address.
Prime Minister Hawke: A Cheann Comhairle, when I
arrived at Dublin Airport on Sunday, I told the Taoiseach
that I felt as if I had arrived home. The friendly welcome you
extended to me then has been borne out in all that I have been
shown by all whom I have met over the past few days. I have
seen the beauty of your country and felt the spontaneous
warmth of your people. Indeed, I do feel at home.
The Australian and the Irish people share so many values
and so much history that our kinship could hardly be closer.
Today, however, in this place, we celebrate perhaps the most
important of those shared values. For this place is a tangible
expression of the right of the people to govern themselves and
of every individual to speak his mind. Many great Irishmen
Daniel O'Connell and Charles Stewart Parnell among them
fought for the right to do what I am doing now: to speak
in the free Parliament of a free Irish nation.
Of course, many of those Irish nationalists who were never
permitted to achieve their aspirations for liberty in their own
homeland came to Australia to enrich our social and political
life. Charles Gavan Duffy, for example, became Premier of
Victoria and lived to see Australia become a united, independent
nation, after spending half his life in Ireland fighting
for representative Government. What an irony it is then
that Australia, after just over a century from the time of its
European settlement, should have achieved independence a
generation before Ireland.
The struggle of Irish patriots over centuries is fulfilled in
this building, in the parliamentary service given to it by such
national leaders as de Valera and MacBride, and in the vigour
F: of your parliamentary life.
do not need to remind you how precious an achievement
nV
that is or how fundamental to political life are the liberties of
free speech, inside and outside parliament or how infinitely
superior a means of government is the process of free and
fair democratic election to the alternatives of violence and
authoritarianism which we see around the world today.
As members of democratic parliaments we have the gravest
of responsibilities, not just to our own constituents and to
our own nation but truly to the whole world. For there are
all too few parliamentary democracies in the world, and all
too many forces seeking to limit or even to snuff out those
that do exist.
It is not inappropriate in this context that I pause to make
particular mention of Fiji, one of Australia's closest and most
important South Pacific neighbours and a nation where the
democratic flame burned brightly for the 17 years since it
became independent. Fiji has recently succumbed to military
rule. I am sure I speak for all of us when I express my deepest
hope that all the people of the nation of Fiji will quickly secure
once more their democratic rights which have been taken from
them. A Cheann Comhairle, I know it is a rare event for a foreign
leader to be invited to address the Dii and I want to assure
you that I am grateful for and deeply honoured by the motion
passed unanimously on 14 October to extend this privilege to
me. You have placed me in distinguished company, since
my only predecessors as foreign leaders on this podium are
President Reagan and the late President Kennedy. The choice
of two Aeiasand one Australian reflects the historical
truth, and, may I say, the paradoxical truth, of this most antiimperialist
of nations and that historical and paradoxical truth
is that Ireland is the head of a huge empire in which Australia
and the United States are the principal provinces. It is an
empire acquired not by force of Irish arms but by force of
Irish character, an empire not of political coercion but of
spiritual affiliation, created by the thousands upon thousands
of Irish men and women who chose to leave these shores, or
Ten
who were banished from them, to help in the building of new
societies over the years.
It seems appropriate, with hindsight, that President Kennedy
opened his address to the Irish Parliament in June 1963
with a story about the remarkable Thomas Meagher. Meagher
led the Irish Brigade into battle at Fredericksburg in the
American Civil War but his life story, in fact, spanned three
continents he was born in Waterford; he died in America;
but he also spent time in Australia as a convict transported
for his involvement in the 1848 uprising.
It is true that more of your fellow-countrymen and forefathers
became American than Australian. But it is true, too,
that the Irish form a greater proportion of the Australian
population than of the American. Indeed, almost one-third
of Australia's population more than five out of 16 million
people proudly claim Irish ancestry.
Outside Ireland itself, Australia is the most Irish of nations,
and we are proud of it. Moreover, I assert that those who
came to Australia from Ireland as well as from Great Britain
and elsewhere found a society which presented them with
opportunities that were not available in older societies where
rigid hierarchies and orders of social class were already established.
The Irish found in Australia a congenial and egalitarian
environment where their talents were welcomed and
rewarded. That spirit of egalitarianism remains one of the
distinguishing characteristics in the make-up of both our
countries. I had the pleasure yesterday, in an address to University
College, Dublin, of outlining my thoughts about the extraordinary
way the Irish took up the opportunities presented
to them and contributed in almost every field to the creation
of the Australian nation and the Australian identity. In particular,
I called attention to the Irish commitment to justice
and equality of opportunity, a commitment which has been
the central theme of your struggle for nationhood in this
Eleven
country and which underpinned so much of the Irish contribution
to Australia.
I mentioned in passing that a new eminent personage is
expected to arrive in Australia soon from Ireland. A worldwide
search was instituted some time ago for a statue to grace
the newly refurbished Queen Victoria building in Sydney.
The statue sought was of Queen Victoria herself but in none
of the many former British colonies of the Victorian era could
a town hall or city plaza or private royalist be found who was
willing to part with a suitable statue of the Queen. Until the
search came to Ireland and to this city. I am pleased to
report that a statue of Queen Victoria was found not far from
this very building and is to be if I can use this term in other
than its former sense transported to Sydney and placed on
public display.
A Cheann Comhairle, as a leader of one of the oldest
and proudest Labour parties, the Australian Labour Party, I
acknowledge the seminal role the Irish played in the formation
of that party and of our trade union movement, and in our
struggle for a fairer, more compassionate, more prosperous
society. A number of my predecessors as Labour Prime Ministerincluding
the incomparable John Curtin and Joseph Benedict
Chifley were of Irish extraction. In the way Curtin devoted
himself to the task of leading Australia through the Second
World War, the Irish attributes of dedicated and selfless
commitment, determination, character and courage shine
through. It is equally easy to see an Irish-derived compassion
and vision in his successor Chifley's sweeping reconstruction
of the Australian economy to equip it for the challenges of
peacetime. Among today's generation of Labour leaders, the Irish
tradition is still strong and if you looked at a list of my
Ministers you would see enough names like Bowen, Keating,
Hayden, Kerin, Walsh, Young, Ryan, Duffy and Kelly to
satisfy even the most nationalistic among you. indeed, half of
Twelve
my Ministry claims Irish origin so now you may understand
even more clearly why I said at the outset that I feel at home.
In 1985 we were privileged to receive an official visit by
President Hillery and last year the Australian Parliament
played host to the first visit of a delegation of Irish parliamentarians.
We will be sending an Australian delegation
here next year in honour of the millenium of the City of
Dublin. I can assure you that it is a delegation which poses a
major problem of selection from the long list of bids that are
in to join it.
A Cheann Comhairle, it would not be appropriate if I dwelt
today solely on the historical elements of our relationship, as
important and enduring as they are. As political leaders we
must turn our attention to the ways in which we can address
the many contemporary issues we confront. As medium sized
western industrial economies, which share and nourish the
same commitment to democratic principles and practices,
Australia and Ireland bring vitally important perspectives to
the resolution of these problems.
Neither Australia nor Ireland is a large country compared
to the super powers and the economic giants. By ourselves,
our capacities to effect great international change may seem
slight. What we can do is by force of example, and by the
persuasion we can apply to others. Australia, through its
alliance relationship and through our many bilateral links
with other countries, and Ireland through in particular its
membership of the European Community, and both of us
through our membership of the United Nations and other
international bodies, can take positions that advance our goals
and keep faith with our principles. And, of course, many of
those goals and principles we share, and many of our aspirations
we hold in common.
Australia is an aligned nation, Ireland espouses neutrality;
but from these different vantage points we both work for a
world in which conflict and tension are lessened, and in which
the arms race can be brought under control and reversed. We
Thirteen
both share a sense of expectation and satisfaction that the
United States and the Soviet Union are about to agree to limit
their intermediate nuclear forces. That agreement will be the
first occasion on which the super powers have agreed to reduce
their nuclear forces, not merely to slow down the rate of
grolwth. With this agreement signed we must, as nations with a vital
interest in both the preservation of peace and the advancement
of human development, continue to work towards further
reductions in the nuclear arsenals. Our goal must be that one
day the world's resources may be concentrated not on the
needless accumulation of weapons which could obliterate
mankind but on the essential humanitarian tasks of caring for
the elderly, sheltering the homeless and feeding the hungry.
Australia and Ireland are also working in harmony towards
the enhancement of human rights around the world. Neither
of us should ever be diffident or apologetic about supporting
in other countries the rights and freedoms which we fought
and worked so hard to achieve at home. We advocate and
support decolonisation and the principles of national selfdetermination.
We both stand for the elimination of the evil
of apartheid and the expunging of racial discrimination.
Last week I attended the meeting of Commonwealth Heads
of Government in Vancouver, Canada. Over recent years,
Australia has been at the forefront of those inthe Coinmonwealth
who see the need for measures to place pressure
on the racist Government of South Africa in the direction of
negotiations with the black majority. Australia and Ireland
have been active and willing participants in the efforts of
the United Nations, through its peace-keeping forces, -to
contribute to peace and stability in many of the world's areas
of tension. May I pay, on behalf of the pe * ople of Australia,
particular tribute to Ireland's efforts in this regard.
The commitment of successive Irish Governments to the
enhancement of the prospects for international peace is, of
course, entirely consistent with your efforts over the years to
Fourteen : 17
achieve peace and stability on your own borders. The troubles
in Northern Ireland pose one of the most heartrending issues
facing not just Ireland, and not just countries like Australia
that have Irish connections, but the whole world. Australia
strongly supports the efforts by the Irish and British Governments,
through the Anglo-Irish Agreement, to end the
communal strife in Northern Ireland. Above all, it is clear
that violence can only worsen that communal strife and can
only hamper the progress towards peace which is being made.
I assure you that the Australian Government will do all within
its power to discourage any Australian citizen from adding in
any way to the violence in Northern Ireland. We believe that
reconciliation and the search for understanding provide the
only way forward. And we recognise that this is precisely
Ireland's approach.
A Cheann Comhairle, ultimately peace and the enhancement
of human rights depend on economic growth and prosperity.
If as political leaders we have not understood the interrelationship
of economic policy and political stability, then
we have learned nothing of the lessons of this century. The
world paid a heavy price in the Second World War for the
failure of the major economies in the twenties and thirties to
control the tendencies towards protectionism. As horrendous
as that price was in the Second World War, it would be as
nothing compared to the results of unbridled conflict in the
nuclear age.
Both our countries have undergone an historic transformation
in their economic orientation. In Australia, beginning
in the fifties, we came to the recognition that our future
lay in the Asia-Pacific region. My Government have done
everything they can, through the redirection of our external
plicies and domestic restructuring, to promote the enmeshmetof
our economy with the Asia-Pacific region, the fastest
Ieadtoo made a fundamental decision to link its future
with Western Europe, through membership of the EEC. For
Fifteen
both of us, these changes have led to great achievements.
Your President, Dr. Hillery, noted in his address to a
parliamentary luncheon in Canberra in 1985, that the Irish
economy has developed in a relatively short period into a
highly sophisticated, modern, industrialised one. But we both
now face major new challenges. It is my firm belief that hard
decisions are best made with the active understanding and cooperation
of those who are most affected by them.
In my talks on Monday with the Taoiseach, we discussed
strategies of consensus and co-operation through which our
nations can create the self-discipline needed to meet our economic
challenges. We also discussed the advantages inherent in
the removal of domestic barriers which can produce uncompetitiveness,
low productivity and inefficiency.
We found common ground on all this. Countries like ours
cannot afford to live beyond their means. The tough political
task of responsible economic management requires us to reorder
our priorities, reduce deficits, attack indebtedness,
tighten spending and question the assumptions of the past.
Between us we may have differences about how we do that,
but those things must be done. We must do this not by
creating confrontation in our communities but by actively
seeking to inform and involve all members in making the
decisions which are necessary. Short-term costs will inevitably
ensue in this process, but Governments, I believe, have the
obligation to take the right and tough decisions now in the
long-term interests of their people.
One of the central factors facing economies of medium size
is that domestic adjustment, however essential, is not enough
in itself to maximise growth. All the hard decisions and all
the efforts to adjust will avail a nation little if it must swim
against an international tide hostile to economic growth and
development. In a world of vast external imbalances among
developed countries and enormous debt problems, particularly
in the Third World, the strength of the world trading
system can no-longer be taken for granted.
Sixt~ eenz
Iam sure you would not expect me to visit a member of
the European Community without mentioning in this context
the damaging impact on that trading system of the Coinmunity's
policies of agricultural subsidisation. Australia
believes high levels of protection and subsidisation in the
centre of world economic powers Europe, Japan and the
United States will in the end only hurt all consumers and
producers, whether they live behind the protectionist walls of
the major economies or outside them. It would be shortsightedness
of the most dangerous kind to adopt policies
which fail to recognise that all would be losers in the end.
A Cheann Coinhairle, next year Australia is to celebrate
the bicentenary of the arrival of the First Fleet on Australian
shores on 26 January 1788. Dublin, this great seat of European
civilisation, will celebrate its millenium in 1988. It is appropriate
to recall here that before the First Fleet was ever
conceived of, and before even the foundation of Dublin itself,
I. there was a living civilisation in Australia that of the
Aboriginal people a civilisation which stretches back at
least 40,000 years. For all that our bicentenary celebrations
must focus on the achievements of the last 200 years, it will
be my intention that due recognition be paid to the obligation
Australians owe to the original Australians.
For Australians, 1988 will be a milestone in our national
development and will give us cause to reflect seriously on the
progress we have made. It will also focus our attention on the
way in which Australia has relied on and been immeasurably
enriched by the constant influx of new peoples, new cultures
and new ideas, to sustain the momentum of that development.
It is in this context that we in Australia will have special cause
to recognise the contribution of the Irish people over the last
200 years.
During my visit I have been pleased to hear at first hand of
7the plans be ing made, both Government sponsored and private,
to participate in our bicentennial celebrations in Australia.
I say on behalf of all Australians that we are deeply grateful Se'venteen
for the contribution you are making. And may I say how
much we are looking forward to seeing the Taoiseach in
Australia next March during Irish week.
The Irish Government are helping generously, in a number
* of important ways, with the celebration of the bicentenary.
We look forward to welcoming Asgard II when she joins the
parade of Tall Ships on Sydney Harbour next January. She
and her crew, I assure you, will be made to feel at home.
The Irish Government have also assisted with a number of
scholarly projects investigating the Iris h-Australian connection.
And of very great value not just at the scholarly
level but for the whole Australian community the Irish
Government are making available in microfilm the convict
records of the 40,000 Irish men and women who were transported
to Australia in the 18th and 19th centuries. This will
enable us to answer with more precision a central question of
Austra* lan history: who were the convicts? Where did they
come from? What were their crimes? Most of us, in our minds,
use that word in inverted commas. I can answer you that
when we get these details many Australians will try to establish
that they are members of a very great 6lite. But this much,
my friends, is already crystal clear. Whether it was politics or
poverty which forced the Irish out of their homes and across
the seas to Australia, the new arrivals invested our new society
with lasting and invaluable qualities.
Australia is very much the richer for having been able to
draw on the generous influx of Irish aspirations, Irish traditions,
and Irish spirit. We would not be the country we are
today were it not for you. It is those bequests which are the
durable and over-arching bicentennial gifts from Ireland to
Australia. They are the debts Australians for their part owe
to the Irish.
I thank you again for your invitation to address, you and
for the warm hospitality you have extended during my visit,
not only to myself and Hazel, but to all those travelling with
me. It has been a privilege to renew in this way the ties
Eigbteen
the already close and friendly ties-between Australia and
Ireland. I look forward to a future in which Australia and
Ireland can play an even more co-operative role with each
other and a more constructive role together in world affairs.
A standing ovation was accorded to the Prime Minister on
the conclusion of his address.
An Ceann Comhairle: Mr. Prime Minister, it is now my
privilege to offer you the profound thanks of this House for
your inspiring address which we shall long remember and for
your kind and generous remarks about us. As you and your
wife Hazel will be leaving us shortly, you can rest assured
that you carry with you the warmth and affection of the
members of Diil Eireann and of all the Irish people.
Go n-61iri go geal libh agus le muintir na hAstrile.
The Prime Minister, amid applause, then withdrew from
the Chamber, accompanied by the Taoiseach, Deputy Dukes,
Deputy Desmond O'Malley, Deputy Spring and Deputy Mac
i Giolla. Cuireadh an sui ar fionrai ar 11.15 a. m.
Sitting suspended at 11.15 a. m. Nineteen
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