Australia is the best country in the world. Every year, Australia Day gives us an opportunity to celebrate Australia and being Australian.
Australia Day is a day of beginnings – about how the Australia that we know and love today has come to be. It is a chance for all of us to reflect on how our families came to be here.
As Noel Pearson has rightly said, there are three parts of our national story: our Indigenous heritage, our British inheritance, and our multicultural success.
Australia Day is a chance to celebrate these three strands of our society, and in particular to reflect on the arrival of the First Fleet, which brought with it many of the British institutions which are so central to Australian life today – our system of Parliamentary democracy, the rule of law, property rights, and the right to vote.
Our unique Australian sense of humour is a mix of the British and the Irish, and the British gave us a language that connects us to English-speaking people in every continent around the world.
As Australians, we have hand-picked the best bits of British culture (while rejecting the class system which holds Britain back) to create the exceptional Australia which is so dear to each of us today.
To everyone across the electorate, I hope you had a very happy Australia Day!
