First may I thank you for your very warm welcome and I'm delighted to have the chance to come into the Parliamentary building to see a little of the old one and now of the new one.
Of course 1988 is a great year for Australia, but it's a very, very great year for Queensland and for Brisbane. I have been to Expo 88 with you today and it was most exciting, absolutely fantastic, and we've enjoyed every single moment of it. And may I congratulate you most warmly on quite the brightest and best pavilion there which was the one in Queensland. (Applause)
I'm so glad you have a flourishing, thriving, private enterprise which at low levels of taxation gave you enough return to the Exchequer to enable you to build a smashing pavilion! First create the wealth and then you know how to distribute it to help create just a little bit more.
Now your City is named after Sir Thomas Brisbane. He was Governor of New South Wales. Well, none of us is perfect! (Laughter) But New South Wales, you know, is really rather terrific just at this moment. But this great Sir Thomas Brisbane knew another good thing when he saw it, and really the City as I've seen this year is quite fantastic.
As you come into this State you can feel the energy, the zest, the dynamism of what is really true liberty and a spirit of enterprise. You can see the development all around you. You can see the truth, not of Thatcherism but of someone much, much older than me, Adam Smith who wrote the marvellous works on the creation of the wealth of nations. [end p1]
He wasn't a professor of economics although he's quoted by most economists. He was in fact a professor of moral philosophy. He knew human nature, he know how to work with the grain of it, he knew that wealth was created and work was done for the community through the genius, the talent, the energy, the enterprise of individuals. And he knew what you have learned in Queensland, that if you liberate that energy you'll do the best not only for individuals and the family but also the best for the community of which we are all a part.
I know you've done marvellous things in Queensland, I know you have the biggest number of tourists in your State throughout the whole of Australia. I know you have some very valuable deposits of minerals. I know you do wondrous things in agriculture. I know you do wonderful things in commerce. I know that your roads and your trains run excellently and are an example to many, many others. But, you know … many, many others—they make an operating profit the railways, I'm just trying to learn a very great deal from what happens in Queensland. But, you know, I do sometimes say to people who think things are just there for the picking, those raw materials, those deposits of metal were there for a very long time before Australia was rich, before Queensland was rich. They still have to be developed by enterprise, they still have to be got out at a reasonable price by using the very latest technology.
All of this you know, all of this I admire, and all of this is working very greatly to the advantage of the people of Queensland.
But, you know, it's a great mistake to think of things just in terms of economic success, or even of economic [end p2] freedom, because it wasn't only the desire to do better that won those things, it really was the spirit of enterprise, the pioneering spirit, the willingness to undertake the risks for the belief that you will build a better life. It took all that spiritual, moral side in order to do it.
Sometimes I hear people say, “Well, you have a good deal more, isn't it very materialistic?” and I say, “No, it's what you do with the money that counts, it's how you spread it around, how you help other people who need some help, and you simply cannot help them to the extent that you wish unless you first put in your own effort, your own money, your own family's time to create that wealth. Not got up and made speeches about it, about what governments can do about it, but doing something about it yourself.”
That in fact has happened in Queensland and you have built a very great society here, and it just reminds one, as one thinks in this bicentennial year, of the enormous spirit of the people who chose to come here and chose to go to the United States of America in the first place. Most of them went knowing the difficulties they'd face, realising that it would be a very, very hard time. What marvellous spirit they must have had. What tremendous courage. And perhaps the best of all things, when things didn't turn out as well and when they had really hard times, nevertheless they turned round and tried again, and eventually built this great nation.
Whatever our difficulties, life is much easier for us than it was for them. But that spirit that was in them is that same spirit which has been inherited by us. And [end p3] you have shown us in Queensland, and Australia is showing us that we can build as good a future, as better a future than we have, for future generations, as our forefathers built for us. That is our duty, that is our confidence, and that is what I see happening in Queensland.
Just one other thing. I said earlier today, or was it yesterday, or was it the day before?—I really can't quite remember—but I said earlier, that internationally, and you are a tremendously important part of the international scene in the Pacific, internationally between East and West, which of course is relations with the Soviet Union and relations with China, things are more hopeful now than at any time in my lifetime. And also the world is a smaller place than at any time in my lifetime. And why I said freedom was on the offensive, was that for years we have been defending our way of life and no-one has been more in the forefront of that than the Australians, and we are so very grateful as we all defend freedom and justice. But then as we have defended it, sometimes we haven't put the case for freedom under a rule of law and human rights, firmly enough to other nations. But a remarkable thing has happened in the last two or three years, they realise that their way of controlling the lives of human beings, of forbidding them to do anything unless they're allowed to do it, hasn't worked. They have seen their failure and they have had the courage to turn round and try to analyse the success of Western societies. And that means a little extra liberation of the human spirit in their countries.
And so our philosophy, instead of being on the defensive, has been proved to be the philosophy for the future of mankind, the policies, the practice; all because our [end p4] ancestors years ago had the insight to see it, the courage to translate it into practice, and the will to try again when they first did not succeed, and in the end to give us this marvellous heritage that is Queensland, that is Australia, that is my country, that is America, that is Europe, that has democracy in India, and which is now on the peacetime offensive the world over. You've done wonders. Thank you for a marvellous evening. Let's together carry on doing wonders. This British, Australian, Queensland partnership is fantastic. We'll develop it into the future. (Applause)