In a rare move for an Australian prime minister, Anthony Albanese addressed the nation on Wednesday evening as the war in the Middle East, and its economic fallout, continues to grow.
His speech from Canberra was broadcast across all TV and radio networks simultaneously, separate to the PM addressing the National Press Club on Thursday.
Albanese outlined the government’s response to the Middle East crisis and encourage Australians to play their part by saving fuel for areas and industries that need it most.
It’s not the first time PMs have stopped the nation to deliver an address like this.
2020: Taking Covid ‘very seriously’
The most recent address to the nation from a PM was six years ago, when Scott Morrison took to the airwaves near the beginning of the Covid pandemic, on 12 March 2020, to reassure Australians.
At the time, 140 people in Australia had contracted the virus.
He said the federal government had been “taking the coronavirus very seriously”, and confirmed a $17.6bn package, including cash handouts of $750 to 6.5 million people on low incomes.
“I want to reassure your family tonight that while Australia is not immune to this virus, we are well prepared. And we are well equipped to deal with it,” he said in the speech.
Morrison later attracted much criticism for Australia’s slow vaccine rollout, which the then PM had repeatedly described as “not a race”.
2008: The ‘worst financial crisis in our lifetime’
The last global financial crisis prompted Kevin Rudd to deliver a financial address on 14 October 2008, announcing a $10.4bn economic stimulus package to alleviate pressure on Australians.
At the time, he labelled it the “worst financial crisis in our lifetime” akin to a “national security crisis”, and promised to use the federal government’s surplus to support low-income earners and families.
“Many Australians have become concerned, anxious and even fearful as to the future,” he said during his address.
“As prime minister, I was not prepared to stand idly by while people’s fears here were being fed by the stream of bad economic news from abroad.”
Australia would emerge from the crisis relatively unscathed compared with other advanced economies, avoiding a recession thanks to fiscal measures.
2003: Iraq invasion ‘in Australia’s national interest’
On 20 March 2003, John Howard made an address to the nation announcing Australian troops would be sent to Iraq.
It was the second time he had made such an address, having announced a plan in response to the Wik high court decision on the 30 November 1997.
In his 2003 speech, Howard said the government had decided to commit Australian forces to Iraq “because we believe it is right, it is lawful and it’s in Australia’s national interest”.
“We are determined to join other countries to deprive Iraq of its weapons of mass destruction, its chemical and biological weapons, which even in minute quantities are capable of causing death and destruction on a mammoth scale.”
History would look back on the decision a little differently. Estimates on the death toll in the Iraq war range drastically from 150,000 to more than 1 million.
1993: Mabo and righting a ‘historic wrong’
On 15 November 1993, Paul Keating made a televised address in response to the high court’s historic Mabo decision, which overturned the doctrine of “terra nullius” (land belonging to no one) and paved the way for the Native Title Act and Indigenous land rights.
It would be one of Keating’s great legacies as a Labor leader.
Keating told Australians the decision “rejected a lie and acknowledged a truth”, allowing the nation to “right an historic wrong”.
“We owe it to Aboriginal Australians, to all Australians – indeed, we owe it to our fair and democratic traditions and to future generations – to recognise native title,” he said.
“Tonight, we are within reach of an enlightened, practical response to Mabo.
“I’ll be proposing legislation to parliament this week, which meets both the spirit of the high court’s decision and Australia’s responsibilities and needs.”
1941: ‘We are at war with Japan’
The first national address in Australia’s history is commonly attributed to prime minister John Curtin’s momentous announcement that Australia was at war with Japan.
On 8 December 1941, the PM delivered a historic speech on radio after the unprovoked attack on Pearl Harbor.
“Men and women of Australia, we are at war with Japan,” Curtin declared.
“We did not want war in the Pacific. The Australian government has repeatedly made it clear – as have the governments of the United Kingdom, the United States and the Netherlands East Indies – that if war came to the Pacific it would be of Japan’s making.”
Curtin finished with a flourish, quoting the English poet Algernon Charles Swinburne:
“Come forth, be born and live, Thou that has help to give, and light to make man’s day of manhood fair, with flight outflying the sphered sun, hasten thine hour and halt not till thy work be done.”
