Former MP praises his adopted country on Australia Day

Former politician and St John’s Anglican Church member John Ryan has presented an Australia Day thanksgiving service today.

John Ryan.

First of all I would like to acknowledge that we are gathering today on Aboriginal land

of the Dharawal people of the Eora nation. I acknowledge elders past, present and

emerging and pay my respects to any Aboriginal people here today.

I can claim citizenship of three countries – Canada, Ireland and Australia.

But

Australia is the most precious to me because it has been the land where I have

enjoyed the most amazing opportunities.

Few people know this, but I arrived in Australia at age five, as an assisted migrant

from the UK, as a 10 pound POM, born to parent with a serious but undiagnosed

mental illness with the result that I became a neglected child, running and sometimes

even sleeping in the streets at the age of seven. By my mid teenage years I was

mixing with juvenile delinquents, and due to the stress I lived under, I was probably

developing mental illness symptoms of my own. At age 15 I moved to a boy’s home

in place of being charged and receiving a record for juvenile crime.

But somehow from that background I completed school, attended university, I

became a high school teacher, got married, had two kids, built a home, spent 16

years in the State Parliament, now I’m an Executive member of a NSW Government

Department with 40 years of public service. I have met the Queen, twice, I have an

album of selfies with almost every Australian PM since Gough Whitlam, I know every

living Premier of NSW since Barry Unsworth and I count many of them as friends.

By any measure, I have enjoyed a charmed life.

I credit the Lord Jesus Christ for the healing and behavioral changes that needed to

happen in my life before any of this was possible.

Australia is the land of opportunity.

But for the rest I thank Australia for being a land of incredible opportunity, in my view

the sweet spot of the world. We not only have the world’s most enviable standard of

living we have probably created the best material lifestyle in human existence.

We had the choice of becoming either an indulgent welfare state like Europe,

shouldering massive national debt and experiencing regular episodes of social

unrest or following the American model where an excessive commitment to personal

freedom provides great wealth for many but leaves millions without the benefits of

aged pensions or health care.

We have borrowed the best from those societies and avoided their problems.

The greatest myth about Australia is that our greatness has come about by luck.

That is a lie my friends. Our greatness wasn’t an accident, a quirk of history or luck

based on mining.

We have made our own luck. That’s what our founding mother Elizabeth Macarthur

did right here in Camden. She took sheep breads from around the world and made

them something better. The Macarthur Merino is still the most commonly farmed

sheep breed in the world.

The main reasons that Australia is the joyous, free, reasonably equitable and very

prosperous country we are today, where personal stories like mine are possible is

because we have access to high quality education, abundant employment

opportunity and our participatory democracy.

In this enormous country of ours, you are never too small matter and you’re never

too small to make a difference. I’m living proof of that, and so is Camden.

I thank God for what we have and I pledge myself to work harder to build it, sustain

it, defend it and pray for it, and hope that all of you that appreciate our amazing

country will join me in doing the same with everyone who shares the same goals.

God Bless you and God bless our Australia