Brendan O'Connor (Gorton, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is hard to overstate the influence of the Irish, and the influence they have had upon modern Australia. The fact is that the land of saints and scholars, with its bittersweet history, has given the world the likes of Wilde, Swift, Shaw, Joyce, Beckett, Edna O'Brien and William Butler Yeats. To Australia, the Irish were indispensable in forging an egalitarian spirit, the fair go, support for the underdog, our healthy scepticism of authority, our self-deprecating humour and our sense of the absurd. We are indebted to the ancestors of Lalor, Curtin, Chifley and Keating for our political leadership; to those of Lowitja O'Donohue, and Mick and Pat Dodson for our Indigenous leaders; and to those of Sidney Nolan, Tom Keneally, Nicole Kidman and many, many more in the arts.

In this year, the centenary of the 1916 Easter Rising and the republic that followed, on behalf of federal Labor and, I am sure, the entire parliament, I wish all Australians of Irish descent, or not, and indeed all our Irish friends in Ireland and across the world, a very happy St Patrick's Day.