Foundation Dinner for St Sava's Serbian Orthodox College at Yarrowville

Foundation Dinner at Daltone House, Jones Bay Wharf, Pyrmont
Monday 28 June 2004, 7.00p.m.

It seems compulsory nowadays for all public figures to wrap themselves in flags at public gatherings. I therefore stand before you as the longest serving Leader of the Federal Parliamentary Labor Party and the only one to have been commissioned by a King in our armed forces. I am wearing the insignia of a Companion in the Order established by the Queen on my advice. If I was in uniform I could wear the Asiatic and Pacific Campaign medal awarded to me by the United States for my service as the navigator of the only Empire aircraft attached to MacArthur’s headquarters in Leyte and Manila.

No patriotic Australian can vilify the Serbs. The German Empire’s invasion of Belgium and the Austro-Hungarian Empire’s invasion of Serbia brought the British Empire, including Australia, into World War I on 4 August 1914. Hitler’s invasion of Yugoslavia in 1941 brought Russia and America into World War II in 1941.

A Bosnian Serb terrorist, an Austrian subject, had assassinated the heir to the Austro-Hungarian Empire in Sarajevo on 28 June 1914. The Karadordevic King Peter I of Serbia was married to the eldest child of Nicholas, Prince and later King of Montenegro. At the end of the war Serbia became part of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes; in 1929 it was renamed Yugoslavia, a term created by Josif Juraj Strosmajer (1815-1905). He was a chaplain to the Emperor Franz Joseph in Vienna, was consecrated bishop of Bosnia and Sremska – the ancient Sirmium, one of the four capitals of the Roman Empire in the third century AD, - founded a seminary there for the Bosnian Croats and worked for a reunion of the Catholic and Russian Orthodox Churches. Sremska is some 75 kilometres west of Belgrade.

I confess that I took an anxious interest in Yugoslavia after October 1934, three months after I reached military age, when King Alexander I of Yugoslavia was assassinated on a visit to France by one of his Macedonian subjects. His wife was a great-granddaughter of our Queen Victoria. On 27 March 1941 his son Peter, aged seventeen, was declared of age by the Yugoslav army two days after his uncle, the Regent, signed the Tripartite Pact of Germany, Italy and Japan. King Peter became Britain’s and Australia’s only ally in the continent of Europe. On 6 April, Palm Sunday, Germany blitzed Belgrade and on 19 April established the Independent State of Croatia, which adhered to the Tripartite Pact on 15 June. Hitler’s invasion of Russia had to be delayed till 22 June. Japan brought the United States into the war beside Britain and Russia in December.

In March 1944, at the Yugoslav embassy in London, King Peter married the Greek Princess Alexandra, who was descended from our Queen Victoria; our King George VI was his best man. Their first child, Alexander, was born in July 1945 in Claridge’s Hotel in a room which Britain declared Yugoslav territory; our future Queen Elizabeth II was his godmother. Margaret and I were presented to ex-King Peter at functions organised in his honour by his compatriots and former subjects in my electorate of Werriwa in September 1960. He urged them to be good citizens of Australia and loyal subjects of our Queen. He also visited Perth, Melbourne and Brisbane in his six-week tour. He died in Los Angeles in 1970.

I have taken this audience through this history since our Department of Foreign Affairs is seriously short of staff that knows Balkan history and Balkan immigrants. This was shamefully revealed in April 1999 when the Prime Minister and Leader of the Opposition published congratulatory messages to a group celebrating the anniversary of Hitler’s puppet Independent State of Croatia.

Politicians, even elder statemen, give careful thought to attending functions to raise funds for church schools. This function will raise funds to establish a co-educational school, which will add a Serbian Orthodox model to the variety of schools which are available in Sydney’s multicultural community. I recalled the eulogies delivered at John Newman’s State funeral by Labor Premier Carr, Catholic Bishop Cremin and, as the bishop called him, his fellow priest Father Radan.

I have an ecumenical attitude to church institutions. I may be the most distinguished person to have attended Knox Grammar School, formerly a Presbyterian and now a Uniting school. I may be the most distinguished student from St Paul’s College at the University of Sydney. It is the oldest university college in Australia and the only male college, which does not have female residents; Sir William McMahon was also a student there. In recent years I have made speeches at the Marist Brothers Rugby League College at Campbelltown – my secretary attended it –, at the Marist Brothers Rugby Union College at Hunter’s Hill and at the Jesuit College at Riverview. (My driver and typist are Greek Orthodox.)

I was elected in 1952 to represent the division of Werriwa in the House of Representatives. There would be few areas in the world, which possess such rich racial, and religious resources and which have acquired them as quickly. There were always Anglican, Catholic and Protestant churches in the electorate. By 1952 the Catholic churches were already attracting large numbers of parishioners from all parts of Europe and from European colonies in Asia. There was a synagogue on the boundaries of the electorate. Orthodox churches, one Russian and two Serbian, were soon built within the boundaries. Just before I retired, a Macedonian Orthodox church was built. Since then many mosques have been built, Hindu and Buddhist temples, a Zoroastrian shrine and Antiochian and Greek Orthodox churches. The Anglicans and Protestants noted that married men could serve as priests in Orthodox parishes.

In carrying out duties in my electorate, I could not be uninformed or insensitive about the ethnic and religious backgrounds of my constituents. I had three Australian grandparents and one British grandparent. Margaret had two Australian and two British grandparents. We had a lot to learn. We assiduously accepted all invitations to ethnic functions at clubs and churches. After I was elected as Deputy Leader of the Federal Parliamentary Labor Party in February 1960, we had the opportunity to visit most of the European, Asian and Pacific countries from which people had come or wanted to come to Australia.

I did not visit any Communist countries before I became Leader of the Opposition in February 1967. Aware that Coalition Governments would criticise me for visiting them, I did not do so until they had been visited by ministers. After John McEwen, the leader of the Country Party and therefore Deputy Prime Minster, had visited Yugoslavia, Margaret and I visited Belgrade, Zagreb and Split in January 1972. (McEwen had invited the Muslim Prime Minister, Djemal Bijedic, to visit Australia; he accepted the invitation in March 1973; we then found that ASIO could not protect him.) On a visit to Western and Eastern Europe as Prime Minister in December 1973 and January 1974, I took Margaret with me to Belgrade, Mostar and Dubrovnik; President Tito and his wife invited us to luncheon at the White Palace in Belgrade and Bijedic showed us the war graves above Mostar. Between 6 and 13 May 1981 we travelled from Trieste through Pula, Zagreb, Plitvice Lakes, Zadar, Split, Dubrovnik, Belgrade, Ohrid, St Naum, Lake Prespa, Prilep and Bitola to Volos. As ambassador to Unesco and Vice-President of the World Heritage Committee, I took Margaret to the Unesco General Conference in Sofia. Between 2 and 7 October 1985 we travelled to Sofia through Zagreb, Split, Hvar, Korcula, Dubrovnik, Kotor, Budva, Dubrovnik and Belgrade; we became familiar with the characteristics of Catholic and Orthodox architecture in Yugoslavia and Bulgaria.

St Sava’s pupils will respect this heritage site of Varroville, which was named by its founder after Marcus Terentius Varro (116-27 BC), by whom we have only one complete poem, De re rustica. He was the most learned of the Romans, according to the rhetorician Quintilian, whom to-day we would call a speech-writer or plagiarist.

The pupils will understand words such as patriarch, exarch or metropolitan, ecumenical, uniate, or autocephalous, ex cathedra, in partibus or filioque.

The pupils will explain why Jews, Muslims and Eastern Christians are offended by the irresponsible American use of the word Crusade.

The pupils will realise that Eastern Christians bore the brunt of Ottoman occupation for 500 years.

The pupils will realise that, according to the 2001 census, there are 64 000 Australians who were born in the former Yugoslav republics but 529 400 Australians, 2.8% of the total, who claim to be Orthodox; this is a 6.5% increase in Orthodox believers since the 1996 census.

In yesterday’s Sunday Telegraph Cardinal George Pell praised our Melkite Catholic bishop for sponsoring a Christian Muslim Friendship Society at Greenacre on 18 June. He said
‘Regular sporting contests between Christian and Muslim schools and with state schools would help here. School rivalries can often make for adult friendships and understanding.’

With the insertion of the words ‘Eastern and Western’ before the word ‘Christian’ I would respectfully agree with those sentiments.

I wish the pupils of St Sava well in all their activities and aspirations.