Two Terrific Tomes, Together

Recently the Melbourne Theatre Company offered the presentation online of some great speeches in Australian history. Hearing one of these prompted me to review a superb collection of such speeches, published in 2005, ‘Men and Women of Australia’: Our greatest modern speeches, edited by Michael Fullilove.

With a foreword by that great speech writer Graham Freudenburg, this volume contains many exceptional addresses, ranging from Menzies’ famous ‘The Forgotten People’ speech and Whitlam’s equally epoch-marking ‘It’s Time’ address to Keating’s Redfern Park speech, perhaps the first move in modern Australia’s willingness to accept some responsibility for its mis-treatment of the first nations, and as far back as Billy Hughes’ ‘It is the duty of every citizen to defend his country’. Obviously the selection reflects the time: this was before the Apology to the stolen generations, a speech that would surely have been included, and before Julia Gillard’s famous ‘misogyny’ address in the Parliament.

Two things prompted me specifically to turn to this tome.

The first was an appreciation of a speech by Vida Goldstein (1869–1949), who lived in Melbourne and was an immensely significant social reformer, leader in the suffragette movement not only in this country but internationally, and was one of four women who entered the national parliament when women were first permitted to do so in 1903.

That leads me to the other related tome, You Daughters of Freedom: The Australians who won the vote and inspired the world, by Clare Wright (Text publishing, 2018). This is a big and meticulously researched work covering the struggles of women for the vote, for the right to stand for election, and many struggles for equality. So many things are striking in this work, including the great sense of celebration at the time of Federation, but with that also the fears and suspicions of many of those leaders, especially those which led to the ‘White Australia Policy’. Within this time of change, suffragettes made their case and first in New Zealand and then Australia, women led the way. In 1902, Goldstein had travelled to the United States to support the suffragette cause there and somehow was invited to meet with President Theodore Roosevelt. She was informed that he considered Australians ‘fine people’ and ‘talked warmly of the Australian soldiers he’d served with in the Spanish-American War.’  Roosevelt said that he supported the principle of votes for women and for that reason was keen to meet her. Goldstein realised that she had more political rights than any woman he had ever met. He declared that he had his eye on what has happening ‘down there in Australia’. (See Wright, 101 – 103).

Goldstein was also active in supporting the women’s cause in Britain. One example of her pragmatic ingenuity was her realisation that she had to use the men of Australia to persuade British men that they had nothing to fear from women having the vote and entering parliament. So in 1907 she collected written testimonials from around the state and federal parliaments and had these published in Britain. ‘Even former opponents of women’s suffrage, like Thomas Waddell, the colonial secretary of New South Wales, testified that women exercise the franchise wisely and I feel sure that their influence in public life will be all for the good.’  Goldstein sent ‘a thick wad of sanguine, self-important letters of validation from respectable and influential men’ to her sisters in Britain. (Wright, 226). In London in 1911, she joined in a march of forty thousand  people, a procession for suffrage, and her short speech on that occasion is included in the Men and Women of Australia volume, (136 – 7). She declares that women of New Zealand and Australia have shown the way and her hearers that day ‘will soon be citizens of no mean country.’ (The colonies strike back!)

Goldstein’s sense of the critical moment is something vital to so many of the speeches included in this collection. This struck me as I read a number of them made around the time when Australia was (again) considering becoming a republic. Even the broken-hearted speech of Malcolm Turnbull after that abortive referendum is included. Robert Hughes’ speech made in this context is especially striking, as he reflected upon the idea of and need for constitutional change. His opening words are so striking, ‘Welcome, fellow chardonnay-swilling elitists’—parodying the parody of progressive thinkers of the day.

Hughes spoke of Jefferson, third president of the United States and one of those who framed that country’s constitution. Jefferson held that since the constitution was for the living, not the dead, it ought to be revised every thirty years as times and needs changed. In contrast, Australians have been exceptionally unwilling to embrace constitutional change. Hughes declared, ‘We want to enter the 20^th century just as it is ends … Why are some of us so timid?’ (241). It is the prospect of change ‘that seems to alarm Australian monarchists’, he says (243).

Reflecting upon these speeches, it is first worth observing how valuable it is to receive these collections, to remind us of great leaders, warriors for freedom and equality, for creative change and a vision for our collective life. When presented in this way, history can be an invitation. It is not a call to go back to some golden age, as if there ever was one. It is the invitation to consider the present and its possibilities. This is what it means I think to say that these speeches each reflect a moment: a moment in time that was, perhaps proved to be even if not felt to be at the time, momentous. That is to say, in a significant way for the people who heard or read these remarks, they were invited into the movement of time and thus to participate more fully, with greater awareness and therefore freedom, in the life of their community.

A speech can do this and great speeches do this powerfully, with a dynamic that is much more than words. They move us. They can change us and change things.

A speech, like a lecture or a sermon, can have three kinds of impact. Along with information and emotion, it can (first) persuade. It may also denounce or repudiate. Each of these will have its place. But the third aspect is more important and without it the speech is much less effective. It can invite. An inviting speech may persuade us, it may urge us to reject some current or possible direction or policy, but it does not take us into the future unless it invites us, thus respecting our integrity and personal responsibility.

Oratory is one of the great and abiding human skills—at least I hope it will abide, in spite of our radically changed world. These two terrific tomes provide great examples of speeches that have made us who we are and invite us to become who we might be.