Published: 24 Jun 2010
Union congratulates Julia Gillard as our new PM and thanks Kevin Rudd for his many achievements
CONGRATULATIONS
Hi Julia, Congratulations on this extraordinary achievement of representing the national collective interests of our country at the highest possible level. Your competency, confidence, moral and ethical responsibility and certitude together with a professional and intellectual commitment to excellence have underpinned this success. The unanimous support of your political peers reflects an experience maturity and respect that has helped provide this opportunity to change and develop governance in this country in a fashion that can transform lives through the application of the fair and decent policies of our party and movement
You have been a great friend of my union and have found the time and effort to demonstrate a level of commitment to the understanding of the important and specific industrial issues confronting this important sector of our national economy. Your fairness and willingness to engage in the finding of solutions to continue the important work of both promoting productivity and durable workplace practices along with fair and sustainable industry and workplace policy has never compromised your determination to promote a strong and sustainable trading economy. You in turn have our respect and support as a major stakeholder to continue to meet the important demands placed on this economic and industrial sector.
The standing ovation you received at our Quadrennial Conference two years ago was genuine and heartfelt and my comments that you were to become Australia’s first woman to be the political leader of the country have proved to be well founded. Not through any intuition or prescience on my part but by a firm belief in your capacity and character.
Again on behalf of my union and members and personally congratulations! The next chapter of this great adventure awaits us all. You can rely on my and the MUA’s support in every way in the great challenges before you.
Sharan and I are at the ITUC Congress in Vancouver where by tomorrow we will see another woman of capacity and extraordinary character achieve the highest possible office in her field of endeavour and I know you will take as much delight in that as we do.
Sincerely and in unity
Paddy
Padraig Crumlin
National Secretary
Maritime Union of Australia
THANK YOU
Dear Kevin, I would like to personally and on behalf of my union thank you for the wonderful contribution you have made to the party, the country and to the international collective interest.
Your intelligence, sincerity and honesty combined with your strict adherence to the highest moral standards and prosecution of those standards has been one of the major factors in assisting our country back to an acceptance of fairness and decency as the most important bulwarks of governance and government in our country. After the long years of the cynicism and dissembling of the Howard Government your vision for the country has revived and revitalised our collective self esteem and helped restored a belief in the political process to the many Australians marred and damaged by his policies of elitism and partisanship.
Your courage in confronting the gruelling and harrowing elements of racism and xenophobia nurtured by his government's political opportunism and moral abrogations have laid a clear path forward for ongoing and sustainable reconciliation and social and economic justice for all our nation in general, and our indigenous people in particular. Your actions and your government's will continue to resonate with a light and authority that will send those shadowy and corroding prejudices into hiding for many years to come. These are hard and often unpopular policy commitments but you have never resiled from your responsibilities and determination to rehabilitate those negative nuances of our national character
The 2020 Conference was illustrative of the vision scope and optimism of your leadership and will continue to serve the country and the party well for many years to come.
Most importantly your leadership resuscitated decency in the workplace after years of worker and trade union abuse and marginalisation and you have assisted our national workforce to regain fundamental rights based on an alloy framework of fairness and justice. There is no doubt that this framework is substantial and durable enough now to stand the test of time and political cycles
Please pass on to Therese and accept yourself the thanks of my union for the attention seriousness and respect you have always paid us and the industry within which we find our livelihoods. Your period of leadership rid us of one of the most divisive and destructive Governments in the nation's history and replaced it with one that genuinely aspires to create a better fairer and more sustainable environment for all Australians.
Again on behalf of the union and personally thank you for these things and the very many other contributions you have made in this defining period of our national, labour and Labor history
Sincerely and in unity
Paddy
