Inspirational Speech by Bill Shorten

The following speech was made by Bill Shorten at the Special Olympics dinner held on Friday August 28th.  I really appreciated the speech and I hope that you do as well.

You must be thinking, oh my goodness, what could a junior minister in the Rudd Government have to say that could provoke your interest on such a fantastic night.

Well first of all I would like to acknowledge the traditional owners of the land and I would like to thank Special Olympics Sydney Upper North Shore for inviting me.

The first thing I would like to say is that I congratulate Mel Eustace on her award.  It was fantastic.

I don’t know what set of circumstances brings you each here tonight.  It could be a family reason, it could be a notion of just giving back to your community.  It could be that you’ve accidentally come across Special Olympics and once touched, you can never let it go, because it is so special. 

So before I talk about the awards, I just given some thought to what is happening with disability and certainly there could be no question I particularly want to speak to parents tonight and siblings.

There’s no doubt in my mind that this country cannot be the country it aspires to be until kids with an impairment get proper schooling, until older parents with adult children can be freed from the anxiety of what is going to happen to their children when they die.

[Applause and cheering]

I mean that - you know leaving all the clever jokes about politics aside - or the not so clever jokes - Special Olympics is quite remarkable.  I looked for - in the beginning of the Olympics, the Olympics that we know about in Ancient Greece, where wars were interrupted and soldiers were allowed in an interval of peace to compete on fields of honour for laurel crowns of national glory.  Sport has always been a way of exalting youthful effort and praising personal discipline and periodically as well, for a time at least, avoiding and replacing war.

But can I suggest that you tonight are connected to the earliest beginnings of modern Olympics because we’ve become an accepted way for disadvantaged minorities - the American children of slaves, the African tribesman who were colonised - to lift themselves up out of disadvantage to wealth and acclaimed renown and indeed a temporary equality.

I think it is fantastic to have Jane Flemming here.  It is no accident that we look up to athletes as our role models and we cheer for them and we grieve for them down all the turnings of their individual stories.

Our country is like this.  We are actually - and you represent here tonight the finest values - we are a place of refuge, of hope and new effort.  We - with this country, and we should never forget it, is new beginnings for smashed and broken peoples of other tribes and other destinies.  We are a country who exalts our sporting heroes in the same way that other countries will exalt their famour artists or their famous generals.

We see, when we see these artists perform tonight, courage, great under pressure, hard work.  We see the virtues actually that we would wish to possess ourselves.

And I know and you know, especially the families here know, that athletes as Special Olympians train - they train and they push themselves and they compete fiercely.  I’m not sure if each of the performers we see tonight and Mel Eustace and her colleagues, see themselves as ambassadors or role models or indeed fighting discrimination, but they are.

What I hope is that we all realise here - and the shame is that there is not another 10,000 people watching tonight - that all the Special Olympians and their families, you are modest people, but you are actually pathfinders, you are breakers of barriers and you are beacons of hope.

[Applause]

When I see the Special Olympics you have actually proven - you prove every day to the rest of Australia that you are special athletes.  You show what you can achieve and you refuse to be defined by your impairment.  You encourage people to look beyond their disability and beyond their own narrow prejudices.  And in fact, events like this in  my opinion, and the reason why I am so pleased to be here, is you make it a little easier for the other Australians with impairments who are battling prejudice and ignorance in the broader community.

I don’t think it is any accident that volunteer coaches and captains and tireless teachers who give up their weekends and their holidays to this great task of improving youthful performance beyond the limits of yesterday, and actually striving, you strive for better horizons of efforts and achievement with some of the most disadvantaged and the disqualified and the most excluded that young people can be.

Only Special Olympics, and I know this from first hand from my experience, is actually like that.

And I mean, the volunteers and the coaches and indeed the fundraisers who daily go beyond the call of duty deserve our praise, perhaps even song, and certainly sometimes I think, especially the families, our prayers, for the enormous unimaginable work that is done in an uncomplaining routine day in, day out, down all the years of your quests.  And the people in the Special Olympics expect nothing in return - except for the silent auction, so don’t forget that.

[Laughter]

I have to say and Greg touched upon it, it was 40 years ago that one such volunteer took it upon herself to break down the barriers of tradition and prejudice and bad human habit, however commonplace and I too wish to pay a tribute to her today, the founder of the Special Olympics organisation - and understand that there are activities that leads you to every other place in the world, and your truly global tonight - but I’d like to acknowlege that Mrs Eunice Kennedy Shriver who passed away on 11 August, 13 days before her brother Teddy Kennedy, himself a survivor of so many of the collisions of life, and vibrancy and her passion should be sorely missed.

We should understand that she was a Kennedy and she was a visionary and a tireless campaigner for people living, like her own sister Rose, with an intellectual disability.

Her strong belief in their potential has seen the Special Olympics part of a family that you are all here directly or tangentially involved in, of over two million people across the world.  Eunice Kennedy Shriver said famously: You are stars and the world is watching you; by your presence you send a message to every village, every city, every nation, a message of hope and a message of victory.

And indeed, as Ted Kennedy said at the funeral of Bobby Kennedy, Some men - and it’s a quote from George Bernard Shaw: Some men see things as they are and say, why? I dream things that never were and say, why not?

You’re all modest people here tonight and you’re all remarkably generous people and I am a privileged visitor to your world and what you’re doing, but you should be congratulated on what you are doing.

So it’s my pleasure to hand over to John Foreman who’s going to announce the winner of the senior and junior volunteers for the year’s award and we will never give up until we get proper treatment.

Thank you very much.