2001-05-093918REPS2664702001-05-09—————Miscellaneous2664714:05:0026647PRESIDENT,TheThe PRESIDENT10000PON/A10—Your Excellency, Mr Speaker, Prime Minister, Leader of the Opposition, Senators and Members meeting here today as the joint commemorative sitting of the 39th Parliament: I acknowledge the Wurundjeri people, on whose land we meet today.When the 111 members of the first Australian parliament met in this place on this day 100 years ago, 12,000 Australians, representing a fair proportion of the 3½ million people of the newly formed Commonwealth of Australia, witnessed the event. Proceedings were illuminated by natural light alone. There was no amplification; each speaker's words carried only as far as the strength of his voice would allow. There were few cameras to capture images of the solemn and significant ceremony that occurred in this room—the opening of the first parliament of the Commonwealth of Australia.They met here because the Australian people, after more than a decade of debate and discussion, had chosen to create for themselves a country out of a continent, a nation out of their separate colonies. Thirty-six men, six from each of the six states, elected on the basis of a first past the post ballot, made up the first Australian Senate. They were all men. Only women in Western Australia and South Australia were eligible to stand for election, and no women were eligible to vote. It is well to remember, though, that there were many outstanding women of considerable influence in public life during the 1890s.The founding fathers recognised that, for the new Commonwealth to be effective, those from the small colonies must feel as much a part of the new nation as those living in the thriving cities of Sydney and Melbourne. They wisely understood that the success of the new Federation would depend upon a Senate able to offer a balance to the weight of numbers in the House of Representatives. And so the first Australian Senate was born—inspired without doubt by overseas example but, from its inception, enshrining the notion of fairness so valued by those it sought to serve.To further this principle, the method of election for the Senate was changed at the 1949 election to one in which senators are now elected by proportional representation. Perhaps this has been the most fundamental change since its creation. In 1975 senators were elected to represent the Northern Territory and the Australian Capital Territory, and the Electoral Act has since provided for those senators to represent the external territories. The Senate has changed, and evolved, over 100 years. In addition to today's 76 senators, 406 other Australians have served as senators. The most significant change has been the election of women. Surprisingly, not until 1943 was the first woman elected to the Senate, Dorothy Tangney from Western Australia. At the same election, Enid Lyons was elected as the first woman to the House of Representatives. Presently, there are 22 women amongst 76 senators.The words spoken here today will be broadcast throughout Australia, using technology that did not exist 100 years ago. So, too, images of the history being celebrated and the history being made today can be seen by millions of Australian men, women and children. Yes, some things have changed; but some have not. Words like service and selflessness, respect and commitment, judgment and justice were used 100 years ago to define the obligation owed to the Australian people by those like us who have the honour to represent them. The meaning of those words and the commitment implicit within them remains as relevant now as it was then. In 1901 the parliamentarians assembled here were reminded of that important and fundamental obligation by Australia's first Governor-General. One hundred years later, I am pleased to welcome his successor, Australia's 21st Governor-General, Sir William Deane.14:10:0026647The GOVERNOR-GENERALThe GOVERNOR-GENERAL (Sir William Deane)QT2PON/A10—At the outset, I acknowledge the Wurundjeri people, on whose ancestral land we are privileged to be gathered. I have received the following message from Her Majesty The Queen:I extend to all of you gathered in the Royal Exhibition Building in Melbourne, especially to the Senators and Members of the House of Representatives through whom all the people of Australia are represented on this historic occasion, my congratulations on the one hundredth anniversary of the Commonwealth Parliament. Since the ninth of May, 1901, when my grandfather, commissioned by, and in the name of, my great-grandfather, opened the first Commonwealth Parliament, Australia has established and nurtured one of the best parliamentary democracies in the world. I have every confidence that that democracy will continue to flourish in the centuries ahead. I have also received the following message from Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother:I offer my congratulations to the Commonwealth Parliament on its Centenary. I remember so well our visit in May 1927 when my husband opened the provisional Parliament House in Canberra and how touched we were by the warmth of the welcome we received.I have such fond memories of my visits to Australia and I send to all Australians my best wishes for happiness and prosperity in the years ahead.On this day in this magnificent building in 1901, our nation's central democratic institution, the parliament of the Commonwealth, came alive. Throughout the following century, that parliament has been the focal point of our national political life—the place and the means whereby national laws are made, national governments are controlled, national aspirations are articulated and pursued and national questions are debated and determined.Over the years, the overwhelming majority of our Commonwealth parliamentarians have served Australia with dedication and integrity. As a nation, we have known a century of democratic rule, uninterrupted by military conquest, civil war or dictatorship of the Left or Right. Truly, we have much to celebrate as we look back on the first century of the life of the parliament and of the democracy of which it is the keystone. At the same time, we must look to the future and to the challenges which lie ahead, for the strong and vibrant democracy which we have inherited must never be taken for granted.One challenge is for our democratic institutions to remain stable and yet be responsive enough to meet the aspirations and expectations of the changing Australian community. Those expectations include the expectation that, in the context of our multicultural diversity, the parliament will be truly representative of all the people; the expectation that the elected representatives of all Australians will work to heal any divisions in our society and, in particular, to achieve true and lasting Aboriginal reconciliation; the expectation that the voices of the disadvantaged will be heard; and the expectation that our natural environment will be protected and preserved for future, as well as present, Australians.All of us who are privileged to hold public office, be it elected or appointed, owe a duty of trust to the present and future generations of Australians to put the pursuit of the common good above personal gain or ambition. As we celebrate the centenary of the first meeting of our national parliament, let us be conscious of that duty and of the basic fact of our democracy; namely, that the ultimate source of all government power and authority in this land is the people—all the people—of our Commonwealth.God bless Australia and all Australians.10000SPEAKER, MrMr SPEAKER—Your Excellency, Senators and Members, I invite the Prime Minister of Australia, the Hon. John Howard, to address the meeting.14:18:0026648Howard, John, MPMr HOWARDZD4BennelongLPPrime Minister10—Your Excellency, Mr Speaker and my fellow Australians: today above all days is a day to celebrate in an appropriate way the great success of Australian democracy over the last 100 years. Democracy is a practice of government common to many nations and to millions of people, but to work effectively in any society it must reflect the values, the mores and the attitudes of each community to which it is applied. The great success of Australian democracy, of parliamentary democracy, has been that over the last 100 years it has expressed the values, aspirations and mores of the Australian community. We find in that compact between a popularly elected House of Representatives and a Senate with equality of representation from the states that fair go concept between the different parts of the Commonwealth so that the voices in the more sparsely populated areas of Australia are not drowned out by the predominance of votes from Sydney and Melbourne. In building our Constitution, the founding fathers borrowed not only the British parliamentary system but also the American federal system of dividing power between the centre and the states. We provided, with a certain degree of caution, that the Constitution would not be easy to change. Yet when the people wanted change, as they so demonstrably did, to right a moral and historic wrong, in 1967 they voted overwhelmingly to include the first Australians in full participation in the political and constitutional life of our nation.Our democracy has been strong and true and effective because we have put our faith above all else in functioning, vigorous institutions. The three great guarantors of liberty and democracy in this country are our robust parliamentary system, with the free play and exchange of political views and ideologies; an independent and absolutely incorruptible judiciary; and, finally, a strong and on occasions very sceptical media. Those three things together have done more to guarantee liberty and freedom and the Australian way than any other set of institutions.And so, as we gather here today in Melbourne on 9 May and give thanks to God for the privilege of being an Australian alive at the beginning of the 21st century, let us honour some people. Let us honour those people who put the Constitution together. Let us honour their patience, their persistence, their forbearance and their foresight; and let us thank them for what they gave us and what has proved so durable over the last 100 years.Let us also thank the political leaders of the past; let us honour them. And may I particularly honour two of them. May I honour the contribution of John Curtin, whose great leadership during World War II was so important to our nation. Let me also honour the great Robert Gordon Menzies, the founder of the party I am proud to lead now, for the contribution that he made in giving Australia its postwar strength and prosperity, laying the foundation for so much of what we enjoy today.And let us lastly, but most importantly, honour those Australians who died that we might meet in peace and freedom here in Melbourne on 9 May 2001. We owe much to those people who gave us the Australian Constitution, who gave us Australian democracy. We owe an even greater debt to those who made the supreme sacrifice that we might live to enjoy it to its full.10000SPEAKER, MrMr SPEAKER—Your Excellency, Senators and Members, let me invite the Leader of the Opposition, the Hon. Kim Beazley, to address the meeting.14:24:0026649Beazley, Kim, MPMr BEAZLEYPE4BrandALPLeader of the Opposition00—I would like to acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which we stand, the Wurundjeri people, and pay respect to their elders and any other elders here today.Your Excellencies, Prime Minister, Madam President, Mr Speaker, parliamentary colleagues, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen: on 1 January in Sydney we celebrated the birth of our nation; today in Melbourne we celebrate the birth of our nation's democracy. Both celebrations mark a unique event in history: Australia was the first nation anywhere in the world to be created by the decision of the people recorded through the ballot box.These celebrations have involved us all in a journey of rediscovery. As leader of the oldest political party in this parliament—a party older than the parliament itself—it has been a particularly poignant journey for me. We have come to realise better than ever before that behind the years of dogged argument, lobbying, disputes and persuasion, inside and outside the great constitutional conventions between 1891 and 1898, there lay a genuine people's movement, a people's aspiration, a people's inspiration. The very foundations of this our parliament proclaim that the ballot, not the bullet, must decide—the will of the people registered through parliamentary elections.This parliament of the Commonwealth is unique among all Australia's great institutions: it is the only one that all Australians own in common and that each Australian owns equally. The most precious of all our rights—that single, equal vote—is the title deed of our common ownership. If it is the will of the people which gave this place its very being, if it is the will of all Australians equally which every few years renews the legitimacy of this place, what does it mean for those of us privileged to be here as members today? I believe it means this: that it is the fundamental duty of this parliament, and of any government formed from it, to be on the side of all Australians—not just those with wealth or with education or those who shout the loudest or who are well organised, but each and every Australian. Nobody is expendable in the name of change or progress or some imposed concept of a higher national interest—nobody. We should never give up on any group or section of our fellow citizens—never. Everybody counts and is entitled to our respect and attention—everybody. This is the great Australian ideal around which we can truly be a nation united. This is the great Australian ideal which must find its living expression in the Australian parliament.For while this place has been the great stage for an honourable and necessary contest of political parties and ideas for over 100 years, it is the very genius of democracy—its vital spirit—that this contest not divide the nation but unite it. We have remained united through passion filled debates that swept away what, at the time of Federation, seemed part of the very fabric of our society: the exclusion of women, isolation from our region, White Australia. To the very great credit of this nation, we have over the last century improved upon the essential egalitarianism on which this parliament was founded. We can, and we must, do more in the century that lies ahead. Let us, therefore, lift our eyes above the noise and turmoil of our daily lives. Let us look forward to those great tasks of the century ahead: to heal the hurt we have done to this most ancient and fragile of lands; to achieve a real and enduring reconciliation between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders and other Australians; to harness the courage with which Australians last century fought for our freedom and in so many ways defined our national character to a new century of confident engagement in the world beyond our shores; to embrace the revolution of knowledge which will sweep the world; to move forward to a proud Australian republic which honours its past and looks forward always to the future; and, above all, to include all Australians equally in all the opportunities our country so abundantly offers, in peace and freedom. These are great tasks indeed. The citizens of our nation entrust this parliament with the immense responsibility of achieving them. If we listen to the people, if we believe in them, if we draw on them for our strength and our purpose, we will succeed.14:30:0026650SPEAKER, MrMr SPEAKER10000PON/A10—Your Excellency, Madam President, Prime Minister, Leader of the Opposition, Senators and Members: as Speaker of the House of Representatives and as a South Australian, let me highlight an uncharitable piece which appeared in Sydney's Daily Telegraph in May 1898 in opposition to the Convention Bill. The Sydney Telegraph reporter wrote:We may accept a Federation which will raise Melbourne in a great measure to the Sydney level, but to force us down to that of Melbourne would be an unmitigated evil.Despite views such as these and the polarisation of the then colonies on a range of issues which have been outlined by other speakers, less than three years later the Commonwealth of Australia would be born and the First Parliament of this great Commonwealth would be called to assemble in this building, on this day, 100 years ago.How could such a transformation occur? Part of the explanation lies in the fact that, by the 1890s, the strong political differences between the Australian colonies were moderated by an even stronger sense of a unique Australian nationality. As a local writer noted in 1895—ignoring, as was customary for the time, the thousands of years of prior Aboriginal settlement:A man from Ballarat does not in Hobart, in Cooktown, or in Coolgardie, feel among foreigners. There is less diversity of local prejudice, of dialect, and of custom between the north and south and east and west of the whole of this Continent than there is between the north and south and east and west of England.The simple reality is that the union of the Australian colonies was only achieved through major compromises made by great Australian parliamentarians who recognised that the moderation of some matters of high principle was necessary to secure the political unity of this continent in a federal Commonwealth. The compromises have been referred to widely and reflected, as they do today, the conflicts between advocates of free trade and those of protection, between political conservatives and political liberals, between large colonies and small colonies, between capital and labour and, 100 years ago, between those who advocated a liberal franchise including women and those who sought to restrict the vote and include property as a prerequisite. As with all great compromises, no-one achieved all that they wanted. The greatest Victorian federalist, Alfred Deakin, expressed his balanced satisfaction when he wrote:A federal constitution is the last and final product of political intellect and constructive ingenuity; it represents the highest development of the possibilities of self-government among peoples scattered over a large area ... Like my friends, I would if I could have secured something still nearer to my own ideals. But for the present, as we must choose, let us gladly accept it.This is the essence of what we celebrate today: one indissoluble federal Commonwealth achieved, as has been noted, without war, rebellion, bloodshed or civil disorder of any kind. As such, it serves to remind us all that we must cherish our national achievements, reflect pride in our national institutions, and be grateful. Pivotal among these national institutions, and drawing its power solely from its election by the people of Australia, is the parliament of the Commonwealth.It is a current fashion to denigrate the parliament and to treat with cynicism those who practise the art and science of politics. Just as intense negotiation led to practical constitutional compromises on a vast scale 100 years ago, so too does the resolution of conflicting views, through political dialogue, give expression and final effect to the wishes of the people in this democracy in the 21st century. This is the greatest of the many lasting achievements of our federal founders 100 years ago. At the centre of political legitimacy is the consent of the governed. In my view, the Australian people have been well served by their elected parliaments since the birth of this Australian Federation, one of the world's oldest continuous democracies.May we draw inspiration from the work of our predecessors and have great faith that the Australian people will continue to seek to send to their federal parliament legislators of commitment, integrity and enthusiasm. Through them, and the people they represent, the Australian Commonwealth will continue to grow and prosper into its second century and beyond.In accordance with the resolution of the House of Representatives of 27 February 2001, the House stands adjourned until tomorrow at 10 a.m. in the Legislative Assembly chamber, Parliament House, Melbourne.10000PRESIDENT,TheThe PRESIDENT—Pursuant to the order of the Senate, the Senate stands adjourned until tomorrow, 10 May 2001, at 10 a.m. in the Legislative Council chamber of the Victorian parliament.14:39:0026651Special Joint Sitting adjourned at 2.39 p.m.