In business, integrity is just as important as in any of the great public offices... but I believe one of the first and fundamental obligations of competent business leadership is above all to protect the reputation and integrity of the business - to that degree the integrity of the business is the integrity of the leader.

They (the youth of Australia) are out there clamouring in all forms of voice, and they are not so much hedging us older Australians aside as saying, 'For heaven's sake, listen to us and empower us to help drive this country towards a wonderful future.'

But it is my total conviction that all the trappings of good leadership are generic and widely applicable whether you are standing in a khaki queue with your mess tins or on an automobile production line.

It's instructive to consider the more spectacular and well-known falls from grace of leaders in the public eye... In the main, the issues behind these falls could be grouped under a lack of competence, a lack of support or loyalty from those they sought to lead, and a lack of failure of integrity. Of all these the last is the most egregious, the most fatal. We so much want our leaders to be unfailingly decent that an obvious or perceived flaw in integrity can be the toxin which kills them off.

Older people often mistakenly consider that the young people do not care about their country, but the reverse is actually true.

But the people of the disaster area fundamentally needed to understand that the rest of Australia had noticed their misery and their stoicism and their intense sense of community and determination to arise from the sodden wreckage of their homes, and that Australians would dig deep to help. I helped to describe the community ethos which quickly triumphed over incipient despair. It is this mobilisation of the unifying spirit that thrills us all, even as we mourn.

I must say that part of our national wealth is not only the nation's people but those people who lead them.