John Howard (Bennelong, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

I’ll call it straight after APEC, will I? I see! Very interesting. It’s not the Labour Day weekend, is it? You want me to rule it out, do you? I thank all of those people for their contribution, including Chris McDiven, the federal president of my party. I thank them.

There is one other group that I want to thank most fervently of all: my wife, Janette; my three children, Melanie, Tim and Richard; and Melanie’s husband, Rowan, who is wonderfully a part of our family. I have been very lucky. I have three wonderful adult children. The greatest thing you can do in life is to have three children and for them to grow up, and you are still the very best of affectionate friends when they grow to adulthood. Gee, I am very, very lucky in that respect and I thank them, and I thank God for the opportunity I have had to share that relationship with them. Janette has been the pillar of my life and her counsel, love and support have been fundamental to any success I have achieved in public life, and I want to record that gratitude. We all think of our families particularly at Christmas but we are close to them all of the time. I hope I speak for everybody in this chamber in saying how important our children are to us. I know family is important to every member who sits opposite, as it is to every person who sits behind me. But, in my case, I take this opportunity of publicly expressing the immense gratitude I feel to them for their love, support and counsel through the year.

The last thing I want to say is on the nature of the event we go to. We go to Christmas to celebrate the birth of Jesus of Nazareth and to acknowledge the extraordinary contribution of Christianity to the moulding of this country. It remains the case that the Judeo-Christian ethic has been the greatest moral influence and the greatest shaper of the behaviour of human endeavour in Australia. It has been and remains the greatest force for good in our community. The organised Christian church, like any other organisation, has made many mistakes and, like any other organisation, it contains its share of hypocrites, but overall the influence of the Christian religion in this country remains a remarkable force for good.

I acknowledge the fact that many Australians, whilst they join in celebrating Christmas and enjoy the festive and family part of it, do not see any particular religious significance in it. In a secular country, that is as it should be. I believe in a secular society in Australia in the sense that we do not have any organised religious adherence. We do not have a state ordained religion, but I think we are, nonetheless and despite that, stronger for it: we are a country where the influence and the deposit of Christianity remains very strong. To me and to millions of other Australians, the central importance of Christmas is to mark the birth of a man who has had a greater influence on the world than any other single human being. It is a very important thing to acknowledge that.

It is the time, flowing from that, to recognise that, despite our extraordinary bounty, we are nonetheless a country that has within its midst people who have not shared that bounty. One of the obligations all of us have in different ways is to try to make sure that next year there are still fewer of them. I suppose we will never get to a situation where there are none of them, but we ought to retain a sense of hope because, despite everything that is said about the direction of the world, by any measure there are fewer people in poverty, there is less disease and people are living longer and healthier lives—not only in countries like Australia but also around the world—than ever before. I sometimes think that we allow ourselves to be overwhelmed by a negative view of the state of the world. If we look at what has happened over the last 50 years, if we look at the extraordinary liberation of hundreds of millions of people from poverty and the remarkable contribution that different global economic forces have made to that, it is a cause for hope and a cause for optimism.

Very finally, I spare more than a thought for the men and women of the Australian Defence Force who are serving their country loyally and magnificently in different parts of the world. It is a lonely time for them. It is a time of separation. It is a time when the thought of family and loved ones is very acute. We should never forget the sacrifice they make, and we in this country should always, whoever is in government, have a special place in our affections and a special place in our hearts for those people who put their lives on the line in the name of this country to do what they are asked to do by the elected government of this country.

To all of my colleagues who sit behind me: thank you very much for your great help and support through the year. It has been a great year for the coalition. I hope next year is an equally great or even greater year for the coalition. That is in our hands and in the hands of the Australian people.

On a personal basis, I wish the Leader of the Opposition well. I wish a merry Christmas to the Leader of the Opposition. I congratulate those who have been elected to the frontbench. We look forward to rejoining the battle, the struggle, the strife and the turmoil in the interests of the Australian people when the parliament reconvenes in February next year.

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