Donald Horne's version:

A NEW nation, the Commonwealth of Australia, was born when six colonies under the British crown came together as a federation in 1901. That nation, now sovereign and independent, and strengthened by flows of immigrants from many nations, dedicates itself, a hundred years after its creation:

TO the rule of law, and to the equality under the law of all Australians;

TO maintaining Australia as an active parliamentary democracy based on universal voting and on freedom of opinion;

TO upholding Australia as a liberal, tolerant society;

TO strengthening Australia as a society devoted to the wellbeing of its people;

TO the belief that the ancestors of the Aborigines and the Torres Strait Islanders, as the original occupants, held a custodianship over the land, a custodianship that as Australians we have all come to share.

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