Event: Australia Day
Date: 26/01/07
Venue: Southern Cross Club Canberra



Anzac starts with procession and military agenda. Dawn service, rum and milk, mid-morning march, children in school uniforms, lunch – two up, crown and anchor. We all have clear ideas about the protocol, the itinerary and the reason for the day, the history and our act of remembrance for those who have paid the supreme sacrifice.

Australia Day we wake up and wonder “what next?” It can be a time of cursory reflection, talking about what someone else did which was wonderful before continuing the day, ala from about 2pm on Christmas Day.

Let’s be honest, for many it passes without event. Maybe that is Australian; we are not big on self promotion, or aggrandisement.

As a nation we can build big monuments, bridges and buildings but they will get old and decrepit and are tangible only to those proximate to them and so otherwise relatively irrelevant. We can bestow honours but they generally will be forgotten and, the unfortunate fact is, all of us here are going to pass on, adorned with rotting laurels or not.

The most transient of things that we offer is legislation, which comes and goes at the stroke of a pen unless it enshrines the self evident of what is overwhelmingly perceived as peoples’ basic rights. Even then it is only protected by public opinion and demonstration if the public becomes aware it is threatened.

What we can leave for posterity, where we can make a difference is in the philosophy of a nation we leave for our children and those for whom Australia will be their inheritance. We can continue to develop a belief system that is not a celebration of celebrating but really delivers something for our nation into the future and, if good, is a benefaction for our world.

What is to be the benefit of living in this nation that differentiates us from others? What it should be is the right of the individual to prevail in their endeavours, the right to attain your highest potential freedom that does not impede the potential of others. A culture that is strong, yet kind, and a discipline and coherence to keep us at the forefront of the eternal battle that in the history of the world will always exist between alternate value statements.

When the prize is so evident in the fluke of history that bestowed all who live in this land with the wealth and freedoms they have, a form of belligerence is required to keep it, but this is justified by the bank of rights that is endowed on the general public; deposited by the privations of many before.

All sustained cultures morph and flex with the issues of their time but remain underpinned with specific values and beliefs. However, the sobering fact is what we may in general, believe is good, others may place as irrelevant or undesirable. We too have parts of our culture that we may retain while others we may wish to lose.

Our protection of the underdog is admirable, our participation in the destruction of the tall poppy less so. I believe now we are changing this ethos when examining those who are successful from “how dare you do that” to “how do you do that”.

The reality of the wider world Australians live in is neither flat, nor fair, nor free. Our philosophy and the enterprise of our nation must navigate in the constant condition that the world is governed by people and people are generally greedy, looking after themselves first and the closest to them next.

A nation’s capacity to affect other nations is governed by its power, values and its ethos of compassion. That so being, it’s encumbered on those nations which are compassionate to be powerful otherwise we are hoping for the powerful, which always exist in some form or another, to be, or to become, compassionate.

As a nation we must sail knowing this and take it that the best we can do for the world is to inspire our values of freedom, a fair go, protection of the vulnerable, a right to attain your potential if you are blessed with the attributes, regardless of your colour or creed, but providing you dedicate yourself.

Live fully but leave harmless others who may disagree with your views if they are not a threat to your person or property or others.

If our value statement is worthwhile it must be worthwhile to state to ourselves and promote to others.

What is more conceited? To have an ethos of compassion that we say is purely our own and not to be bestowed or promoted to any other peoples or nations, or to say that it is bestowed upon us to promote to others?

As an analogy, is it justifiable to say “I don’t beat my wife; I believe it is wrong, but I listen at night to my neighbour beating his to a pulp”? Does the argument stand that it’s a cultural conceit for me to think that wife beating is abhorrent?

That wife beating is wrong may be just my own personal value statement. Do I have a duty, if I think it is wrong, to place myself in a position of power to stop it happening to others?

A culture without any rules is not a culture, it is a vacuum. Vacuums are filled by the strongest culture proximate. No necessity is present that any culture should believe in freedom of belief, the equality of the individual before the law, quiet enjoyment of property or the right of potential. Some of the most successful alternate cultures in the world today don’t. The truths that you hold as self evident are also, at times, tenuous.

This being the case; eat, drink and be merry now and our grandchildren will reap our ambivalence about what we foolishly take for granted.

In our town there is one last veteran of the Second World War campaign against the Japanese in PNG. Everyday before dawn he takes his dog and a spike and picks up the rubbish and papers dropped by others along the riverbank.

In that is something very Australian, that he never complains or asks for thanks. He just does it. Maybe something is clearer in his mind than in ours.

Hear there are displayed three attitudes – the attitude to pick up paper and rubbish, the attitude to drop them and the attitude to walk past them. Only one of these attitudes will lead to a greater nation.

It is acceptable for our society to bring to account the imbalance that is present between rights and responsibilities. It is imperative that when we talk about rights we acknowledge the privations of those who went without to bring those rights about.

Everybody in this room also has the responsibility to be a leader by example – to pick up the rubbish in the street and not say why or look for the compliment. Let your example be the seed that changes the outlook of others around you.

In politics we have the responsibility to always place the inalienable rights of the citizen above the vested interests of big business, other big vested interests whose specific design is purely there own selfish enhancement, and the irate minority who demand the manipulation of the quiet enjoyment of the majority to fit their specific demands.

It is a privilege for big business to earn a profit in our, the people’s Commonwealth, not a right. Nor may it come at the expense of the individual when he or she wishes to enter into business and profit by their exertions in the purchase and or sale of goods and services.

The belligerent minority interest must look into their bank account of sacr