Page 651 - Week 05 - Tuesday, 4 July 1989
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DR KINLOCH: May I rejoice in that democratic exercise. I therefore welcome citizen Duby's original motion. I therefore honour citizen Stevenson's amendment, which whether seen as a noble cause or a lost cause, as citizen Follett has described it, is a splendid assertion of the democratic constitutional rights of man and the citizen. I have to use the term "man" there because that is what was in the original - l'homme.
I have to say to citizen Stevenson that I will not be voting in favour of his amendment, as the Residents Rally will not be, because I believe we must move on. But I defend to the death his right to present it and argue for it. He shows his courage and forthrightness in doing so. He properly speaks for his constituency who voted for him. I endorse the mood of his amendment. We should all think carefully about the matters he has raised, and in this committee which will, I hope, be formed I hope some of the themes that he has presented will be considered.
Citizen Kinloch wishes therefore at this time, on this date, in this mood, to add, for the first time in debates in this Assembly, a simple but always profound statement about the rationale for changing government - to raise our hopes and our standards, to heighten our democratic commitment. I regret the sexism of the statement I am about to read; especially I do so to citizen Follett. It is a product of a sexist age in which neither blacks nor women had either freedom or the rights of free persons.
I am very aware of this statement today, especially to citizen Kaine. He will forgive me; I had no choice but to do that. I recognise our mutual love and affection for Jefferson. He will appreciate I do not wish to breathe a word of criticism of Thomas. Yet inherent in this magnificent statement is all that was to follow over the next 200 years for blacks, for women, for all people who at that stage, 200 years ago, were disadvantaged.
As I think of this statement which goes into our Hansard tonight for the first time, I think in particular of two photographs in the current exhibition of photographic art in our Australian National Gallery. There is one of Daniel Webster in 1851. Have a look at it - that great orator of the middle of the nineteenth century, that great democrat, a populist, my friends and colleagues.
But, above all, I think of the original photograph in that exhibit in the National Gallery of Abraham Lincoln on 10 April 1865, the month in which he was assassinated. I shivered as I saw it - that great figure who, less than two years earlier, had resolved that his nation, under God, should have a new birth of freedom and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.
Now for a statement which, fellow citizens, continues year in, year out to remind me of the central ideology of a free
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