Bob HawkePrime Minister, Ladies and Gentlemen:
First, may I thank you for your kind words, for your great and valued friendship to Britain, for the invitation to me to visit Australia for the bicentenary, for the tremendous hospitality and welcome which we have received and for the privilege of this great occasion in this truly wonderful new Parliament building.
Prime Minister, our politics may be different, but we have at least one thing in common—we both believe in third terms! We are also both familiar with the rituals of being Prime Minister: questions in Parliament, Cabinet meetings, even reshuffles, but I wonder whether you ever received a letter after a reshuffle like the famous one:
“Dear Prime Minister,
Thank you for your letter. I am delighted to have the opportunism to serve in your Cabinet!”
Did you ever get one like that? [end p1]
I think you know that in me you have someone who is a very genuine admirer of Australia and Australians and I am not at all unique in that. Most people in Britain have a special affection for Australia. The Americans are perhaps our closest allies, the Europeans our partners in the European Community, but it is still Australians to whom we instinctively feel closer, despite the distance and despite some of the differences which have grown up and in sport it is the Australians whom we like to see win if we cannot win ourselves, which seems to be increasingly often!
We both have our caricatures of each other, but in a way they are a sign of affection. They go along with the feeling in Britain for the scale, the adventure and the mystery of Australia, so gloriously expressed in Banjo Paterson 's lines about the Man in the Outback: “and he sees the vision splendid of the sunlit plains extended and at night the wondrous glory of the everlasting stars” .
Of course, we share other mysteries too. You have mentioned some. Dare I mention cricket! This summer in England has been so wet that it has revived the story of the African visitor who witnessed a cricket match in England and went home to explain to his friends.
“First” , he said, “some men stuck six sticks into the ground and stood in a circle round them. Then, two men came out carrying large pieces of wood. Then, someone threw a ball at one of the men and yes, it worked! It began to rain!” (applause) [end p2]
Prime Minister, Australia's bicentenary is a very special occasion. When I spoke at the Australia dinner in London back in January, I recalled that we were meeting in the Guildhall in the City of London and just a short distance from Parliament—two great buildings which had witnessed so much history, which had seen set those standards of democracy, of freedom and of justice of which we are both rightly proud—today, in this magnificent new Parliament House in Canberra—and that underlines how those values are just as much part of Australia's heritage as they are of ours. Indeed, the secret ballot was introduced to the world in Australia and it was an Australian State Government—South Australia—which was the first in the world to grant universal adult male suffrage and the first in the Commonwealth to grant women the vote.
I recall, too, Rudyard Kipling 's words that Australia was a new young country made by rank and file. Almost from the start, you were a society in which achievement was venerated more than status, in which opportunity was every man's birthright.
The ancient Guildhall or the most modern building in the world, whatever is the setting, the values themselves are the same. They endure and their fundamental importance will never fade. Rather, we can hope—and hope more eagerly today than ever before—that more and more of the world's population will come to enjoy them. [end p3]
So the history is there, but that is not everything. We need to move forward with the times and that is something which both Britain and Australia have each done within within their own borders, but not yet enough in the relationship between them.
The starting point, as you indicated, Prime Minister, has to be the reality of our present-day interests: your natural and proper concern as a member of the Western Alliance with your role in the Pacific; our greater concentration on Europe, although we do continue to play a world role in Africa, in the Gulf, in the Far East and South-East Asia, not least through the Five Power Defence Arrangements. But although we may concentrate on different regions, our basic aims are the same: to defend freedom and justice wherever they are threatened. Indeed, I would say that today it is a more active commitment still, because freedom is now on the offensive in a way which we have not seen it in the last forty years—a peaceful offensive which we must carry through by persuasion, by example, and above all by the success of our own societies.
So, too, in our economic life Britain and Australia can work together despite the distance. In Europe, we are moving towards the creation of a single market of 320 million of the world's most prosperous people, a market which will dwarf even the United States and Europe. Britain can provide a springboard for Australia into that market and we hope that our trade and investment with you will help us to do better in the great market of the Pacific which you mentioned in your speech, Prime Minister. [end p4]
Prime Minister, Ladies and Gentlemen, I believe this will prove a historic visit because it will mark the beginning of a new era in relations between Britain and Australia. I have invited you, Prime Minister, as you indicated, to come to Britain with some of your colleagues next year and that will be a chance to carry on the momentum.
When Canberra was chosen as the name of your capital, there were two other possible names on the short list—Eucalypta—I am not sure that would have worked—and Shakespeare—and it is to Shakespeare that I turn to finish these remarks with Polonius ' advice to Hamlet, which sums up all that I want to say to you, Prime Minister, and to Australia:
“The friends thou hast and their adoption tried, grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel”
That is how we feel about Australia and it is in that spirit that I ask you to rise and drink with me a toast— “Britain and Australia—the future!” (applause)