Order of Australia Association National Conference Welcome Reception
20 February 2009
Dr Neil Conn AO, National President,
Mrs Dina Browne AO, National Chairman,
Air Commodore Peter McDermott AM CSC, National Deputy Chairman,
Mr Mick Davis AM, Chairman, Queensland Branch,
Chairmen and representatives of the Association's branches in the other States and Territories of Australia,
Fellow Members of the Order of Australia,
Distinguished guests - or should I say, distinguished Australians - given the composition of this group,
Ladies and Gentlemen.
It is with great pleasure that I welcome you to Government House this evening.
I acknowledge, with respect, the traditional custodians of the land on which we are gathered, the Jagera and Turrbal peoples and their descendants.
Queenslanders are especially delighted to host the Order of Australia Association Annual conference in this year of celebration of our sesqui-centenary, this being our State's 150th anniversary year. To remind you - and particularly those delegates from New South Wales - it was in 1859 when Queensland became independent from your state. It is our intent to show you in the excursions and functions you are participating in how proud we all are of what we have achieved in our still brief history.
It feels a little strange to be talking about celebration at this time of global turmoil and of national tragedy.
We are also here at a time of national tragedy, of Australia's greatest natural disaster. Our thoughts and sympathy go to those delegates from Victoria and through them to the communities which have been so brutally affected by the bush fires. The loss of life and destruction of property has been truly appalling. Our thoughts are also with those delegates from North Queensland and their communities which have been so ravaged by flood. As others have remarked, never has Dorothy Mackellar been so apt in her description of our country.
Last week I saw first hand the effects of the Queensland floods. You can't help being struck by the way in which Australians as individuals, as communities and as a nation respond to these crises. It is the quiet achievers - such as the volunteer fire fighters - who take on the burden. It is they, as our poets and historians remind us, who have so infused our culture, history and traditions.
It is these sort of Australian quiet achievers which the Order of Australia so aptly recognises in its awards. I am delighted to see the Order of Australia Association has rightly decided to honour them as "Quiet Australians".
The three qualities which your/our Association promotes - love and pride in Australian citizenship, awareness of Australian culture, history and traditions and the sense of national unity among Australians - are very much underpinned by the contributions of the quiet Australian.
Australians may not enshrine these three foundation stones of our nation as formally as others. But of course our history, culture and traditions are very different. Mark Twain - having the advantage of an outsider looking in - spoke of Australian history as ".. so curious and strange that it is itself the chief novelty of the country.... it is full of surprises and adventures, and incongruities and contradictions, and incredibilities; but they are all true they all happened". After the past few weeks we can certainly agree.
But somehow our seemingly bizarre history has produced an extraordinary country. Having lived and represented Australia overseas for much of my life, like Mark Twain I've been able to look often at Australia from the outside. What I see - what others see - despite the vicissitudes of our climate, the frequency of natural disasters - the droughts, floods, fires - is a prosperous, stable, peaceful country, blessed with abundant natural resources, and resilient, outward-looking, essentially decent and fair-minded people, people committed to a fair go for all and despite pressures and downturns, enjoying what is in relative terms and for the rest of the world, an exceptionally high and enviable quality of life.
This image continues to attract - even now - a constant, steady flow of immigrants to Australia - wanting to achieve a better life for themselves and even more importantly, for their children. This flow has enriched our country, our national personality, character and outlook immeasurably.
This peaceful absorption - this blending - even active embrace - of an extraordinarily diverse mix of peoples into our physical and social landscape has itself been a story of quiet achievement - not perhaps sufficiently recognised - alongside the welding of our urban predilections with our rural history, and the way we have managed the ever present challenges of our physical and geographic realities - those "tyrannies of distance" and what some have termed "our splendid Pacific isolation" to achieve a globally tuned, competitive economy and, in political and strategic terms, middle power status.
This isolation may be one of the reasons that we sell ourselves a bit short in assessing - or in recognising publicly - what we have achieved. The Order of Australia Association, with its 8,000 members, therefore has a critically important mission. It has the task of ensuring Australians understand, firstly, that our history, culture and traditions, no matter how different, have served us extraordinarily well.
Secondly, that the sort of national unity we have achieved, however imperfect, has given us a country with a distinctive character and a wonderful quality of life.
And thirdly, that our achievements as a nation should be accorded greater recognition and the individuals that make up the fabric of our nation, of our identity, should be encouraged actively to develop a stronger pride in our country and a greater appreciation of the benefits that citizenship of this country delivers to all Australians.
Paradoxically, the tragedies of recent days and weeks have helped this process - creating an enormous surge of community spirit, of compassion, of willingness to help others ... and readiness to recognise, to thank, to honour, the actions and deeds of people who have given generously and who have risked their livers for others. In these circumstances the Order of Australia will be called on, I believe, to play an ever more important role - providing a means for usually taciturn Australians to give expression to the emotions, the pride, the sense of national solidarity they are feeling at this time.
So this is a good time to hold your national conference - a good time to reflect on what it means to be an Australian and what this association can offer now and in the future to our country and its diverse and splendid peoples.
I wish you a very successful 23rd National Conference and look forward to joining you tomorrow evening and the privilege of presenting the Order of Australia Association Foundation 2008 Scholarship awards.