 My name is Ben Ball. I'm the publishing director of Penguin Australia. Thanks very much to the Lowy Institute for hosting us this evening. There's a little added frison making a speech, launching a book of speeches. So I'm not going to make a speech. I'm going to make a few short remarks. I do want to say, though, what a particular pleasure it is to be involved in the publication of this book for three reasons. First is it's a terrific collection. It's got some wonderful speeches in there and is a wonderful study of the craft of making a speech, which, of course, is a terrific exhortation for us to continue to talk and convince and engage each other. It's not a collection of slogans, you'll notice. Second, it's a further step in the partnership that Penguin has with Michael. We published his terrific and award-winning book, Rendezvous with Destiny, and we've just published the first Lowy Institute paper with Penguin specials, both of which have been terrifically rewarding to be involved in. So I'm very excited about how that relationship is developing, and I think all of those books or some of those books are available here this evening. And Michael might be convinced to sign them for you, if you ask him very kindly. Thirdly, on a personal note, actually, we were just mentioning this. Michael and I met as schoolboys, which is very sweet, doing some, and when Michael was doing some speech, firing of his own. And I've watched him from afar, see his career go from strength to strength with great admiration, but never any surprise of all the people I've ever met, there was nobody sureer to make a success of himself than Michael. So it's a great pleasure to be involved in this publication, which goes some way to proving myself right. I'm here to introduce somebody who's going to launch the book before we hear from Michael himself, so will you please welcome Malcolm Turnbull, Minister for Communication. Well, thank you very much. Now, the reason Michael is proposing to sign copies of his book is because, as the publisher knows, once signed, it cannot be returned. This is a vital role of any author, because the more that you sell, the more that he signs and you can't return, the fewer that will be remained. And as Clive James Languages, with ill health, should never forget one of his finest poems, which is entitled, My Enemy's Book Has Been Remaindered. I can't remember it all off the cuff, but it goes along these lines. My Enemy's Book Has Been Remaindered. It is piling up in places where remaindering occurs. It stands there stacked next to vast towers of the Kung Fu cookbook and Hitler's war machine and so on. Now, that will not be the fate of men and women of Australia, Mark II, at least if Michael signs lots of them. Now, can I say that many people say that the art of giving speeches, good speeches, is over? That is not true. It is fair enough to say that the art of really long speeches is over, and that's probably a good thing. I think it's important to remember that there has never been a bad short speech. There have been many mediocre and, indeed, appalling long speeches. I think that the arrival of the social media 24-7 news YouTube has, in some respects, shortened people's attention. But there is a moment. There is a moment always for a great speech. And so much of that is timing. I mean, think just very recently of Julie Bishop's speech to the Security Council, where Julie, our foreign minister, who's obviously spoken in this room on many occasions, was able to speak for the whole Australian nation. And she spoke from her heart. That will be one of the great Australian political speeches in the third volume, I have no doubt. But it was the time, the timing. She rose to the occasion. And so often that is what is called, what public figures, public men and women, are called upon to do. There is a great speech here, which was written by Graeme Frudenberg according to Michael, but delivered by Arthur Corwell in 1965 about the Vietnam War and expressing the Labor Party's opposition to it. And nearly 50 years ago, looking back on that, it just rips with prophecy, line after line after line. What a remarkable contribution. And yet, of course, Corwell was not a great orator. And there are many times I won't, I can think of a leading figure in the Labor Party at the moment, not Andrew Lee, who's here, who I boost all the time, by the way. I boost him all the time. And people think I do this, I refer to his pre-political moments of economic rationalism. People think I do that in order to embarrass him with his colleagues. It's not so. I do that out of sheer self-interest and a concern for the nation, because I fear that at some point, I fear that at some point, if history is our guide, that the Labor Party will return to office many, many years hence, but he's a young man. And I just want to be sure that when they do, there is a fair chance that Andrew will be the Labor Treasurer, because at least we'll have somebody that can count and is numerate in that position. So that's why I'm boosting him. He doesn't believe this. He fails to recognize I have his best interests at heart. But returning to the subject of oratory, the timing is critical, but also the audience. So many politicians, I think, make the great mistake of having a prepared speech, sometimes written by their department, more often by their staff. And John Dart is here from my staff, he's written, drafted many a good speech from me, although as he'll tell you, I'm the worst person to write a speech for, because invariably I go off the cuff, or unplugged, as my critics sometimes say, and invariably want to put it into my own voice. But John comes very close. If you work with somebody long enough, as Graham did with Goff Whitlam and indeed as other speech writers have done with other prime ministers and leading politicians, if you work closely with someone long enough, you can capture their voice and be able to write effectively for them. But the most important thing is to understand your audience. And this is one of the great things about the House of Representatives, because most of the time, of course, it's just about empty, and there's a lot of fine speeches that are given and nobody is in the chamber listening to them. But there are moments of great political theater, often around question time in debates that time, debates between leaders, and the place is alive. And the really, the good orator, the good parliamentarian, does not read from a speech, but focuses on the audience, both his own supporters and the men and women opposite, and of course, above all the people that are watching on television. And you can find some politicians will have great speeches written for them, but they're not be able to deliver them effectively. And I think that's because they are captives of their text. One of the things that is important in a parliamentary speech, and Michael captures two of them here in this book, in the first speech and the last speech, is the value of an interjector. Now, interjections are to be cherished. Some members of parliament resent them as an interruption to the perfect flow of their own remarks, but they are to be cherished. Sometimes they're a lifeline, believe me, when you're running out of material and the muse is deserting you, somebody will stand up and have a go at you. I love being interrupted by the member for Isaacs. Mark Dreyfus is one of Victoria's great QCs, a leading lawyer, because he always gives me the opportunity to remind honourable members of that great line of our really dear and now late, sadly, late friend, Neville Rand, who always used to say that anyone can go to jail if they get the right lawyer. But in the first speech, Michael records King O'Malley, one of our first great politicians, a Labor member, sort of as he describes him as a sort of P.T. Barnum type of politician born in America. And he is here recorded extolling the virtues of bomballa as the future capital of Australia and pointing out that it has a cool climate and that were, for example, the capital to be located in Tumut, which, according to O'Malley, is too warm. I'm not sure whether he'd ever been to Tumut in winter. And he's talking about bomballa there, and one of the other members says, did the honourable member see any snakes at bomballa? To which O'Malley says, I saw fat snakes fit to eat, but every snake I saw at Tumut was dead. Quite a good repost. And of course, in the last speech, which Michael's been generous enough to record my eulogy for on the speech on the condolence motion following Robert Hughes's death, Lucy's Uncle Robert, I was saved by the prime minister, none other than Tony Abbott. And I said, talking about Bob's contribution in the Republican debate, I said, I think he had a swing at you, Tony, in one of those debates. And the prime minister's opposition leader then, Mr. Abbott said, he missed, to which I could respond, yes, he missed, but what a loss for the nation would have been if he had connected. Now, these are great opportunities. You should never always cherish an interjection. Can I say that Michael also notes, and I'm sure he'll remind us in his remarks later, that all of these speeches are a capsule in time. They are time capsules. And it's interesting, particularly in the context of the Republic debate, it's interesting to go back and look at what leading figures said whether they were labor or conservative about Australia and Britain a couple of generations ago. It was Menzies that said in 1948 that the boundaries of Britain are not on the Kentish coast, but at Invercargill, the tip of New Zealand, and Cape York, the northern tip of Australia. And of course, Michael quotes John Curtin saying, in about the same time in the Second World War, Australia is a British land and the 7 million Australians are 7 million Britishers. They are located in the Antipodes, but they are not a bit different from those who are located in any part of this country. Now, I don't think, I can't see as the myth makers, political myth makers of today, the Labor Party would want to be highlighting those remarks, but it is important to remember that every speech is caught in its own context and in its own time. And this is particularly important in the context of the Republic debate because it's very easy to say, to look back at our grandparents and great-grandparents and say they were bootlicking him, bootlickers to the British imperialists or whatever, they weren't, they weren't. They saw themselves as part of a greater Britain. They felt they had the same rights, the same political identity as their Kith and Kin in the United Kingdom. So Michael, I hope that this book will be well read and well emulated. I hope that the brevity of the edits will inspire speechwriters and politicians to keep their remarks brief. And above all, I hope that they will always be prepared to grasp the thunderbolt. The tendency to be safe and dull and not take risks in public remarks is very corrosive. It is absolutely vital that those who speak to the Australian people, to the parliament, to the nation, to a branch meeting show a little bit of themselves. You have to speak from the heart. If you want to touch people's hearts, you have to open your own heart to them. The standard set of words, the talking points will never do that job. It's vital to be true to yourself. It is vital to speak genuinely. And you know, I think one of the traps for many politicians is that they spend so much time trying to be somebody that they are not. Trying desperately to conform to some sort of model, some advisors, some political spin masters description of what they should be saying, that they actually lose their real identity. I mean, I thought Julia Gillard, who's of course her misogyny speech delivered in defense of Peter Slipper, what an extraordinary day to be thinking of that, imagined. But that speech was clearly very much from her heart and it was the one of all the speeches she gave. It was the one that cut through the most for that reason. You know, I remember in that ill-fated 2010 campaign when Julia Gillard then prime minister said, I'm going to show people the real Julia. I wondered just a little bit whether she had spent so many years being somebody else that the real person had been lost. And there's a lesson to that in that for all of us. There is nothing that people can discern more readily than falseness, than the sort of pretence, the spin. That the Australian public are so alert to that. The single most important thing for all of us as public speakers is to speak from the heart. That doesn't mean to eliminate facts. It means to try and show a little bit of yourself. And that can be done in even a dull speech. I'll give you an example. One of the greatest British orators you would believe, I can find the line here, you would believe was Edmund Burke. There is a statue of him in Westminster Hall. And he wrote so many wonderful speeches and pamphlets and reflections on the revolution in France. The age of chivalry is dead. And all of these great lines that people are quote, well quote for as long as the English languages remember, they'll be quoting them. But you know, he used to empty the House of Commons because he was seen as being at a dull delivery. But even in the longest, most technical speech, he could come up with a gem. In the trial of Warren Hastings, who was this British director of the East India Company, who had plundered and robbed the Indians and was tried in the House of, impeached in the House of Commons for his criminality. In a speech that is full of accounts and amounts of money and so many thousand lucks and so many thousand pounds and converting Indian currency to British currency and all of this stuff, Burke could just throw this in, just in the midst of an extemporary speech. He said, we hope and trust that after all his concealments and although he appears resolved to die in the last dike of prevarication, all his artifices will not be able to secure him from the siege which the diligence of the House of Commons has laid to his corruption. A reminder perhaps that all of us can grasp the thunderbolt at any time. All of us can strive speaking extemporary to grab that little bit of insight, that flash, that lightning bolt that actually cuts through all the persiflage and touches people's hearts. Thank you very much. I'm delighted to launch this book and I hope that none of it is memorialized in a poem about remaindering. Thank you. Minister, thank you very much. Oh, you don't want to record this bit? Let's find it. I noticed Michael hastily revising some of his speech actually as you were, let's see what's in Michael's heart. Please welcome Michael Fulver. Well, thank you, Ben. Ladies and gentlemen, first of all, thank you very much to Malcolm Turnbull for his generous speech launching the new edition of Men and Women of Australia. Malcolm is a person of formidable intellect and as we saw tonight, he's a brilliant public speaker and I think it's very important for our democracy that people of Malcolm's caliber go into public life and indeed grasp the thunderbolt when they do. I first met Malcolm a quarter of a century ago when I was a uni student and an ardent Republican and he asked me to join the National Committee of the Australian Republican Movement. And I might say that the issue of the Republic produced many fine speeches and in fact there's a whole section of the book which is devoted to it. And the reason for that is that a good speech needs a big idea. If you don't have original ideas, you can't give an interesting speech. And our big idea was a rather simple one and that was that our head of state should be one of us. Our idea was that every office under the Australian Constitution, including the highest one, should be held by an Australian, someone who has chosen to make their life with us and among us. And ladies and gentlemen, I'm convinced that is an idea whose time will come. And at that time I met characters, figures like Malcolm and many others whose speeches appear in the book. I met Bob Hughes, one of this country's great characters, much loved by his niece Lucy and many others. I shared a podium with Bob at the summer rally for the Republic at the Sydney Town Hall in 1996 that Malcolm will remember. And in his speech, which was far more memorable than mine, Bob began his remarks with the great, what I believe is the greatest salutation in the history of speeches. He rose to the lectern. He said, welcome Chardonnay-swilling elitists. Bob's speech is in the book. I included Malcolm's wonderful tribute to Bob that he gave in the parliament with the charming exchange that I was going to quote, Malcolm, but you quoted it yourself. But I think Malcolm quoted it to make a really important point about interjection and the importance of spontaneity, not that I'm encouraging anybody in that direction now. But Menzies, of course, was the master of this. He was the master of the public meeting. And my favorite anecdote about Menzies responding to an interjector was when a woman shouted from the floor, I wouldn't vote for you if you were the archangel Gabriel. And quick as a flash, Menzies replied, if I were the archangel Gabriel madam, you wouldn't be in my constituency. One of the other speakers who appears in my book, whom I met in the Republican movement was a mutual friend of ours, Neville Rand. And I'd met Neville once before when I was three or four at the Sydney Fish Markets. I was there with my parents and the Premier walked by leaving a wake behind him and he padded me on the head. And even to a child, I tell you, I could tell he was a giant. He didn't remember that first meeting, but he enjoyed me telling him about it. The thing about Neville was you couldn't help but like him. He had a wicked sense of humour and an utter lack of pomposity. He would arrive late at meetings of the National Committee of the Australian Republican Movement with a grin and a wink. He'd make a little joke in his hoarse voice under his breath to the junior members of the committee. And he'd cut through the cafe talk, of which there was a little bit at that time. He'd employ a few choice colloquialisms and he would bring us all to the point. Neville was pure crystal. And he was pure crystal on his feet as well. There are many anecdotes of Neville as a public speaker, but my favourite was when a country party MP insisted on heckling Neville at the dispatch box. And this went on and on. And finally, Neville fixed a cold eye on this gentleman. And he warned, if the honourable member does not cease to interject immediately, I shall be forced to acquaint the house with a particularly villainous act he has perpetrated in the past month. And the opposition MP turned pale and silent. He said nothing else for the rest of the debate. And afterwards, one of Neville's colleagues approached him and said, mate, that was fantastic. What did you have on the bastard? And Neville said, nothing. But you can be sure with a man like that, he will have done something dreadful in the past month. Ladies and gentlemen, I have no doubt that criticisms can be made are currently being made on Twitter of my selection of speeches. About half the people are outraged. I included a speech by Julia Gillard, the other half outraged. I included a speech by Tony Abbott. I know that a panel of historians and bureaucrats would not have come up with the same list. I certainly hoped they wouldn't have. This is a personal selection, and I hope and trust that it's stronger for that fact. I published the first edition of this book nearly a decade ago. And a few years ago, I thought we could do with a second edition. I thought to myself, it's time. And one reason for that was Barack Obama. And it may seem odd to invoke his name at the launch of a collection of Australian speeches. But Obama owes his national political career to a single speech that he gave at the Boston Democratic National Convention in 2004, his famous speech. And his campaign four years later was a test case under near-laboratory conditions of the power of speeches. You may remember that his campaign rested on the quality of his speeches, which were set to music and uploaded to YouTube. And you might recall that when he was forced to face the most treacherous issue of all in US politics, race, he didn't hold a press conference or schedule a 60 minutes interview. He booked a hall in Philadelphia and made a long, candid and compelling speech. And a few months later, on a frigid January morning, I was very privileged to be standing on the National Mall when a black man was elected president, was inaugurated, I should say, as president on the gleaming white steps of the US Capitol, a building that was raised by slaves. And I thought then, who says, who says that speeches can't change the world? Now, what does this have to do with us? I don't think it's too much of a stretch to believe that Australian public figures seeing how Obama transformed the political landscape in America, seeing how he defeated the Clinton machine and the GOP, it's not too much of a stretch to think that it made them try harder to give better speeches. It certainly made Australian audiences demand better speeches. And I think there have been some important speeches in recent times, including Julia Gillard's misogyny speech, Kevin Rudd's apology to the stolen generations and Mr. Rabbit's speech on closing the gap, which was not only a fine speech, but evidence of the power of speeches. And for those of you who haven't seen it or read it, he began by saying that when Paul Keating made his Red Fern Park speech, he said, I was an opposition staffer and my job was to find fault with everything that Keating did. But I couldn't dispel the belief that the point, his central point that our treatment of our indigenous people was a stain on our souls. And that changed my mind on these issues. And it led me to rethink my positions on those issues. It led him to change his life, if only a little bit. In other words, the Red Fern Park speech had changed Tony Abbott's mind. That's what great speeches do, they change minds. The book also contains Noel Pearson speaking in a windy park in Hopevale, Tim Winton on our oceans, Les Carlion on Fromel, Lieutenant General David Morrison on the role of women in the Australian Army, Quentin Bryce on Trooper Donaldson, VC and many others. It also includes some speeches by notable visitors to our shores who had something interesting to say about our country, including Obama himself, as well as Ong San Suu Kyi in this room. And a wonderful speech that Nelson Mandela gave at the Sydney Opera House in 1990 in his first year of freedom. And one of the young people in the crowd that day was me. Ladies and gentlemen, I wanna say some thank yous. To paraphrase Winston Churchill, never before in the field of Australian publishing was so much owed by one editor to so many. My first thanks go to the speakers and copyright owners who gave me permission to publish their words. And a few of them are here this evening and I'd like to recognize them. Linda Burney, who used her inaugural speech to the New South Wales Parliament to take us on a stroll around her electorate. Heather Henderson I think is here, the daughter of Sir Robert Menzies, an advocate by profession and temperament and a member in good standing in my opinion, along with Gough Whitlam and Paul Keating of the holy trinity of great Australian speakers. I'd like to recognize Lady Killen, widow of Sir Jim, whose speech on his sparring partner, Fred Daly, is in the book. And finally, Phil Walansky, whose mother Sabina, a Holocaust survivor, gave a wonderful speech at the opening of the memorial to the murdered Jews of Europe in Burleigh and a speech that radiated optimism and forgiveness. Ladies and gentlemen, my colleagues here at the Institute were exceptional, including Sarah Hipsley, Joe Botcher, Pitt Brandt, Sinclair Prowse, Matthew O'Neill, Sue Yeung and Anthony Bubello and most of all, the tireless Marty Harris, an outstanding research associate without whom this book simply would not have been published. Thank you very much Marty, we're sorry to lose you to Canberra. Thank you also to Amelia Kettle and Kate Weston for organizing tonight and Penguin for funding it. Thank you, Ben Ball, the best publisher in Australia and also my partner in crime on the Lowy Institute papers and all your colleagues at Penguin, especially Rachel Scully, the editor. I'd like to express my appreciation to the Lowy Institute's founder and chairman, Frank Lowy and the rest of the board, including my old friend, Mark Ryan, Jim Spiegelman and David Lowy who are all here tonight. I want to mention Graham Freudenberg who couldn't be here. Graham is the Dean of Australian Speechwriters. He wrote for no fewer than six Labor leaders. I need to thank Paul Keating because I learned about speech making and speech writing from Paul. It's true that there is a fair number of Keating speeches in the book. People have made that comment. But then again, Paul's back catalogue is so good. That's the problem. Paul was the king of the parliamentary put down and there are so many quotes that you could use but my favourite was when one of the opposition leaders that he faced and put down, perhaps it was John Huston or Alexander Downer was criticising Keating for not living in his electorate. You remember this seems weird now but this was one of the issues at the time that it moved out of Blacksland, the own real estate somewhere else and they were criticising him. And Paul replied in Parliament extemporaneously, Malcolm, he is dead right about that. I live where the electors want me to live. That is in the lodge, Deacon ACT-2603 and you'll never live there, mate. Finally, thank you to my family, to my mum Patty and my late father Eric to whom the book is dedicated. Whenever I got onto the stage as a little tacker they were in the audience and mum is here again tonight. Thank you to my brother Christian, my personal hero. Nothing as prosaic as a speech of course could do justice to my three handsome sons, Patrick, Thomas and Alex who are behaving so impeccably tonight. I just want to say I'm very proud of you all. Thank you to my beautiful and talented wife Gillian who leaves me speechless with love and admiration. I might say, my friends have heard this story before but I have to tell it again. We met at a speech in Oxford when I was sitting up in the gods and I looked down and I saw a beautiful woman sitting next to a friend of mine and I thought this is, she looked up at me and gave me a big smile and I thought this was fantastic and weeks later I met Gillian and the courtship began and when we were an item we had a candlelit dinner and I said to Gillian as you do at those moments, darling, when our eyes met at that speech I knew this was something special and she looked very confused and said were you at that speech? So speeches have played a big part in my life. Ladies and gentlemen, let me finish because I know there have been no bad good speeches but lots of mediocre long speeches. Ladies and gentlemen, I think speeches have roared back. I think to Malcolm's point about Twitter shortening our attention span, it's true, it does that but the new technologies mean that speeches are no longer locked in the archives. They're now available, they're on YouTube. You can share them on Facebook, you can send them to people and it turns out that the combination of new technologies like Twitter and old technologies like courage and wit and intelligence and spirit it turns out that combination is a deadly one. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much. I'd just like to say one more time thank you all for coming. Thank you minister for launching the book. Thank you Michael for showing something of what's in your heart. Again, the books are available here. It would gladden all of our hearts if you were to go and peruse them and again, Michael might sign you on. So thanks again for coming, bye bye.