Mr HOWARD (Prime Minister) (2:25 PM) —I move:

The death of Pope John Paul II left an impression on the world and grabbed the attention of the world, as the deaths of few people in my lifetime have. His death took from the world a great religious leader, a man of great strength and conviction, a man of peace and a man who, arguably, played an instrumental role in the destruction of Soviet communism. The late Pope was an inspirational leader for the one billion adherents of the Catholic Church throughout the world. As a non-Catholic can I say that, on most occasions, he spoke in the name of the entirety of Christendom. He was a person with enormous authority who believed that to temporise over your basic beliefs in the hope of gaining some short-term popularity was always an unproductive thing to do. He was a person who opposed watering down the faith, as he saw it, in the face of criticism in order to win support.

He was a friend to all Christian denominations. In an unprecedented way he reached out to Jewish people, to those of Islam and to other denominations. He was also to many people of no faith at all a figure of great strength and inspiration. He demonstrated great personal courage when he survived an assassination attempt more than 20 years ago. He will be remembered as a very much-travelled pope. He came to this country on two occasions: in 1986 and again either late in 1995 or early in 1996. I had the great privilege of an audience with him at the Vatican in 2002, and although the onset of Parkinson’s disease was very obvious and although his health was failing, his great good humour, his vivid recall of his time in Australia and his capacity to communicate about the affairs of the day were still very much there.

He dedicated his life to the dignity of the individual. He incurred a lot of criticism both from outside and on occasions from inside his own church. But he never wavered from what he thought was right. Although like every other human being he was not always right, and although there were things he said that I may have disagreed with, overwhelmingly he articulated the basic tenets of the Christian faith common to all of us, and he articulated them in a very courageous and very effective way.

In many respects his finest hour was when he advocated the cause of freedom in his native country, Poland. The way in which he associated himself with the Solidarity movement in Poland, the way in which he gave a spiritual dimension to the political leadership of Lech Walesa, was quite inspirational and quite outstanding. The reason why Soviet imperialism finally collapsed was that it was economically worthless but, even more importantly, it was morally bankrupt, and no person, no individual, did more to expose the moral bankruptcy of Soviet communism and the suppression in particular of his native Poland than the late Pope. So with some personal commitment and feeling, I am very honoured to have the opportunity to move this motion and speak in praise of the contribution to his own church and Christendom more broadly, the cause of peace and the values of our civilisation that I believe the Pope represented. He sometimes appeared to take an unfashionable stand. He was often criticised but he never wavered. Whether he was always right or sometimes mostly right and sometimes wrong is not really the point: he showed a strength of character and a commitment to what he believed in that is rare in this modern world, so I salute him and I honour the contribution he made to the world, his church and many things that I think bind all of us together.

May I take this opportunity of congratulating the new Pope, Benedict XVI, on his election to the See of Rome and to the throne of St Peter and to a position which is in a sense the oldest in Western civilisation as well as its spiritual dimension. I wish him well. It is not an easy time to assume the job but I suppose, that being the case, I do not seek to compare him with his illustrious predecessor. That is always unproductive. On this occasion we pause to honour a great figure, a dominant figure of our time, a great religious leader, a person who believed in the good things of life and a person who was a great advocate of the cause of the dignity of the individual, the human spirit and the free values of democratic life that we all hold dear.