Guy Barnett (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We all have heroes, and tonight I would like to speak about and celebrate the life of William Wilberforce. William Wilberforce’s impact on Australia was substantial. This week we celebrate 200 years since the abolition of slavery, and it is appropriate in that regard to recognise the impact of William Wilberforce across the globe and, in particular, in Australia. I note at the outset the motion moved in the Senate today by Senator Joyce:

That the Senate—

(a)

notes that 25 March 2007 was the 200th anniversary of the passing of William Wilberforce’s bill for the abolition of the trans-Atlantic slave trade;

(b)

commends the Government for continuing its work to eradicate the modern day version of slavery, the trafficking of humans for the sex industry in Australia; and

(c)

congratulates the Australian Catholic Religious Against Trafficking in Humans for its work in the fight against trafficking, including its publication warning women in Thailand about the dangers of working in the Australian sex industry.

I celebrate the life of William Wilberforce because he had a significant influence in Australia. This week in the parliament we have had some special events to commemorate and celebrate the 200 years since the abolition of slavery. On 26 March, Dr Stuart Piggin, an associate professor and Director of the Centre for the History of Christian Thought and Experience at Macquarie University, gave a public lecture that I hosted in Parliament House on William Wilberforce and his impact on Australia, and I will share more about that shortly. The next day, on Tuesday, 27 March, World Vision sponsored an event with keynote speaker David Batstone, who gave a talk entitled ‘Liberating the captives: the rise of the global slave trade’. He has released the book Not for Sale and is the president of the Not for Sale Campaign, supported by World Vision and many others, which has the objective of stopping human trafficking in the sex slave industry.

William Wilberforce was born on 24 August 1759 and died on 29 July 1833—a life of 74 years. He was influenced as a young boy by his aunt towards evangelical Christianity and he attended St John’s College, Cambridge, where he befriended William Pitt, the future Prime Minister. While at university Wilberforce decided to seek election to parliament and, in 1780, was elected at the young age of 21 as the member for Hull. William Pitt became the Prime Minister in 1783 and Wilberforce became a very key supporter. He became the MP for Yorkshire in 1784 and embarked on a tour of Europe with a friend which changed his life and career. He resolved to commit his life and work to the service of God. He was counselled by John Newton, the author of Amazing Grace, as all of us are aware, and also by Pitt. They both advised him to remain in politics. He did so. He had two main objectives in his political career, and I would like to summarise them. His first objective was to stop the slave trade and the second was the reformation of public manners. He succeeded in both, primarily after his death.

William Wilberforce had a deep faith in Jesus Christ. He had a deep calling. He was also committed to a strategically important band of like-minded friends. He had a belief in the power of ideas and morals to change culture through a campaign of public persuasion. He was willing to pay a high price to achieve those objectives. You can see the length of time that elapsed between when he started his campaign and his initial success in 1807 and then further success in 1833, just a month or so before he died, when the slave trade in the British Empire was abolished.

William Wilberforce had a genuine humanity rather than a fanaticism, and had strategic partnerships for the common good, irrespective of religion, ideology or method. I think his example counters the cynical pessimism of our day, of modern-day Australia, that an individual is powerless to effect change. He is a great example of a man who persevered and used what we sometimes refer to as the drip effect; he just kept chipping away, trying to make a difference, and he did.

Wilberforce was also involved in a whole range of other activities. He was a founding member of the Church Missionary Society, now the Church Mission Society, and of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, now the RSPCA. CMS Britain was responsible for sending the first chaplains to Australia, and I will comment more on that shortly. A CMS auxiliary was set up in Sydney in 1825, primarily to engage in work amongst Aboriginal people, with much influence in the Aboriginal community. The Benevolent Society of New South Wales was established by evangelical associates of his.

I will quote some of the comments Dr Stuart Piggin made in his public lecture about what Wilberforce did for Australia:

What did Wilberforce do for Australia? The waves created by his many societies for liberation, evangelisation and education washed over the Australian colonies. It will never do to think of your early population as made up of the great unwashed; for they were not unwashed by Wilberforce and his merry men and determined women. He unleashed a cleansing flood, not only through the large number of societies for human betterment which he supported in Britain which were reproduced in the Australian colonies, but also through the influence of the vast array of those who sought to emulate him: not only clergy and missionaries, but also settlers, governors and soldiers, merchants and farmers, and their wives and daughters.

In his address Dr Piggin referred to Wilberforce laying the foundations of the church in Australia. He also referred to the governors, specifically Governor Lachlan Macquarie. Macquarie was governor from 1810 to 1821 and transformed Sydney town through the implementation of Mr Wilberforce’s principles. In his first year in office Macquarie named a new township, on the north bank of the Hawkesbury, Wilberforce:

... in honour of and out of respect to the good and virtuous Wm. Wilberforce, Esq., MP—a true Patriot and the Real Friend of Mankind.

Stuart Piggin also referred to Darling and the abolition of transportation, to La Trobe and the care of Aboriginal people and the influence that William Wilberforce had in that regard. He said:

In 1833 Mr Wilberforce died, but his influence continued to spread in ever widening circles. In that very year the British House of Commons began an inquiry into the condition of native peoples in British settlements. Henceforth indigenous peoples were to be accorded justice, rights, civilisation, and Christianity, accepted voluntarily. This resolution of the House of Commons came from a motion from Mr Thomas Fowell Buxton, who assumed leadership of the anti-slavery movement from Mr Wilberforce.

About Wilberforce’s influence in Australia, Stuart Piggin said:

Mr Wilberforce accepted that he was not in politics to serve his own interests, but to act as a servant of Christ, a good model for a nation on the brink of self-government. His godly army abolished transportation, elevated a convict population, and transfused gospel values into your commercial institutions, your banks and newspapers and your legal system.

He referred to the two principles that Wilberforce lived by, including:

... that Christianity must be allowed to shape our social systems and national structures as well as our individual morality, and that vital religious faith is required if our cherished national values are to produce morality with civility.

In conclusion, I will say that the movie Amazing Grace will premier in the theatrette at Parliament House on 19 June, sponsored by me with World Vision. It is based on the Wilberforce story, and I am very much looking forward to it. I seek leave to table the public lecture by Dr Stuart Piggin, entitled ‘William Wilberforce and his impact on Australia’.

Leave granted.