Slade Brockman (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On 26 June 1963, the United States President John F Kennedy said these immortal words: 'Ich bin ein Berliner.' Those words captured the essence of the middle of the Cold War, bookended by the amazing turn of phrase of Winston Churchill, who said, 'From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has fallen across this continent,' and, at the other end of the Cold War, the remarks of US President Ronald Reagan: 'Mr Gorbachev, tear down this wall.'

Through that period of the Cold War, the West—not without difficulties, not without disagreements and not without conflict on issues that are significant—remained united: united in its sense of self and united in its belief in the core principles of Western democracy and free and open markets, which allowed the world to grow at an unprecedented rate and to have peace for a long period of time in most of the world, although, sadly, not all. It also allowed the Western nations to unite in challenging those parts of the world which used oppression and coercion, and which treated their citizens with contempt and as playthings for authoritarian regimes that offered them no human dignity.

We are coming into a new era where, once again, we see the strands of authoritarianism rising and uniting around the world. We've seen, just in the last few weeks, the heads of state of various nations who do follow that authoritarian path come together in their shared vision of the world, which, quite frankly, should be horrifying to all of us and horrifying to all peace-loving and freedom-loving people around the globe. So, as we head into the next hundred years, the West must once again come together with a sense of unity of purpose and shared belief in the value of freedom, democracy and free enterprise—those beliefs that underpin not just our standard of living but who we are as free peoples.

We must remember that, at its heart, society is about giving people the best possible life they can have. Authoritarian societies cannot deliver a good life. In fact, they can deliver only the opposite of that. They can deliver only suffering, misery and pain to the people who live under those coercive regimes. It is incumbent upon us, as a Western democracy, to always hold that dear to our hearts and do everything we can to cherish, preserve and expand democracy throughout the world.

Senate adjourned at 19:54