Prime Minister John Howard and Democrats Senator Aden Ridgeway have held a joint press conference urging Australians to vote yes to the preamble in Saturday’s referendum.
Transcript of joint press conference held by Prime Minister John Howard and Senator Aden Ridgeway.
PRIME MINISTER:
Ladies and gentlemen, Senator Ridgeway and I have decided to call this joint press conference to make a joint appeal to the Australian people to vote yes to the preamble on Saturday. And the fact that the two of us have come together at this news conference symbolises the value of the preamble as a uniting element in constitutional debate in Australia.
Because Senator Ridgeway is a self-declared yes voter on the republic and I am a self-declared no voter on the republic. But on the issue of the preamble both of us together are asking the Australian people to vote yes because we see the preamble as a way as we go into the next century of expressing what unites us rather than continuing a debate about what doesn’t unite us. [Read more…]