By H.E. Dr. Brett Mason, Ambassador of Australia to the Kingdom of the Netherlands.
I am often asked why Australians feel at home here in the Netherlands. It is true that our soldiers have fought alongside each other – most recently in Afghanistan. And it is also true that hundreds of thousands of Australians claim Dutch ancestry. Indeed, my island home was literally put on the map by Dutch navigators and known for over 150 years as New Holland. But above all else, while Australians and the Dutch may speak different languages, we share a common voice.
The Netherlands was an early pioneer of democracy and liberalism on the European continent. And the Dutch remain consistent and powerful advocates for these values today. It is a proud legacy. My country, Australia, is much newer. But fortunately, those same principles shaped the life of my country. Today, in forums here in the Netherlands and throughout the world, we share common values and promote common causes.
As I peer out the back of the Australian Embassy I can see the tall towers of the Peace Palace, the dedicated home of international law and justice since 1913. As the fore-fathers of public international law, the Dutch hold a special place in that history. Even as a very young country, Australia saw the virtue of nations subjecting themselves to international legal norms and the rule of law. Australia ratified the Statute of the Permanent Court of International Justice in 1921 and subsequently accepted the Court’s compulsory jurisdiction. Australia then played an important role in the drafting of the Statue of the Permanent Court’s successor, the International Court of Justice and advocated strongly in favour of compulsory jurisdiction.
Today, Australians continue to play important roles in the international courts, tribunals and other organisations in The Hague. Whether as judges, prosecutors, investigators, legal counsel or interns, Australians are prominent in formulating and enforcing international law in the International Court of Justice, International Criminal Court, the Permanent Court of Arbitration, the Hague Conference on Private International Law as well as other specialist criminal tribunals. Australia and its citizens also continue to make important contributions to Europol and the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons.
My fellow ambassadors represent nations that have all played a part in Australia’s story. Peoples from all nations on earth have come to Australia and made it a better country, a better place to live. With nearly 1 in 4 Australians born overseas, Australia warmly welcomes new citizens keen to build our nation. While we differ in background, ethnicity and religion, that diversity is a strength when united by shared values of democracy, tolerance and the rule of law and a commitment to take part in the life of the Australian community.
This year, 2016, is a special year in the long relationship between Australia and the Netherlands. It is 400 years since the arrival of the Dutch mariner, Dirk Hartog, to the shores of Western Australia on 25 October 1616. Dirk Hartog and his ship The Eendracht were on their way to Batavia, today Jakarta, to ply the spice trade. But ship and crew went further west than any other Europeans and made landfall on an island just off the western extremity of Western Australia. He then famously nailed a pewter plate to a post before leaving to sail north and chart the coast as he went.
In so doing, Dirk Hartog became not only the second European to land on Australian shores but the first to realise that he had discovered a new land. Since antiquity, the ancients had posited a great unknown southern land – Terra Australis Incognita. It was Hartog who thought he must have found it. By the 1620s maps of the world no longer showed Terra Australis Incognita; instead they displayed a large landmass of unknown size dubbed Eendracht Land, named after Hartog’s ship. Within thirty years of Dirk Hartog’s voyage, Dutch mariners (particularly Abel Tasman) had mapped nearly two-thirds of the continent. They called it New Holland.
This year in Australia we celebrate the man and the nation that quite literally put Australia on the map. While Dutch navigators and their cartogrophers drew Australia into the pages of the modern world, it is our shared values and common interests that sustain our relationship today. While Dirk Hartog’s pewter plate may today be fragile and dim, our relationship with the Netherlands is strong and bright.
Information:
Australia’s Embassy in The Hague http://www.netherlands.embassy.gov.au/
Photography by Mr. Fabian Moers, Australian Embassy.
