Prime Minister Paul Keating delivered his Redfern Address in Redfern Park, Sydney, in 1992. He spoke about the need to close the gap in health, living standards and life opportunities between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Australians and, in a first for a serving prime minister, he publicly acknowledged the violence committed against Indigenous Australians through the process of colonisation: 'It was we who did the dispossessing. We took the traditional lands and smashed the traditional way of life. We brought the diseases. The alcohol. We committed the murders. We took the children from their mothers. We practised discrimination and exclusion. It was our ignorance and our prejudice. And our failure to imagine these things being done to us. With some noble exceptions, we failed to make the most basic human response and enter into their hearts and minds. We failed to ask - how would I feel if this were done to me?' In 2007, ABC Radio National listeners voted the speech as their third most 'unforgettable speech' behind Martin Luther King's 'I have a dream' speech and Jesus' 'Sermon on the Mount'.

Paul Keating delivered the Australian Labor Party's 1993 election platform speech to the party faithful at Bankstown Civic Centre in Sydney, Keating's hometown hall. Unlike the Sydney Town Hall launches in the 1980s, this was a deliberately low key affair designed to resemble an old-style election campaign launch in keeping with the difficult economic times of the period. Keating received the loudest cheers from the audience when he announced his intention to set up a committee of eminent Australians to develop a discussion paper setting out the options for a Federal republic of Australia. The Age reported that it was intended to be an 'austere but stylish' affair, but ended up being somewhat sombre. 'But no one ever claimed Paul Keating was a fine speech-maker. His oratory finesse lies in other areas' although his speech did convey 'the vision, the passion and the strength of the man', more through his ideas than his style of delivery.

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Ryde Civic Centre in Sydney was the location of John Howard's policy launch speech as Opposition Leader. Ryde Civic Centre, “in the heart of middle Australia”, was described as a “nondescript”, “drab structure”, a “relentless vista of brick and tile” – “possibly the world's only brick-veneer skyscraper”. According to The Sydney Morning Herald 'Howard has always come to Bennelong to campaign at least once during elections - whether as leader, minister or Opposition frontbencher - usually to the Coxs Road Community Centre in North Ryde. But Bennelong is more than merely a local base for a national politician - it is his inspiration. He said as much in the opening words of Sunday's policy speech; Ryde was "a microcosm of Australia", with significant aged, veteran, nuclear family and, increasingly, ethnic populations.'

The hall was crowded with the Liberal Party faithful: "About 800 local Liberals – mainly besuited, many over 50, but a few in their 30s, and some of them with children in tow...” The national anthem was played in military band style, and a 3-minute video focusing on Labor’s low times was screened. The Age reported that 'Everything about the Liberal Party's launch in a nondescript civic hall in one of Sydney's outer northern suburbs was designed to emphasise the fact that Howard is nothing more than an average bloke who, through persistence and common sense, is on the verge of winning the glittering prize of Australian politics.'

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This 'no-frills' policy launch took place on 20 September 1998 at the Riverside Theatre in Parramatta, a marginal NSW Liberal seat. Howard spoke almost without referring to his prepared notes, and Alan Wood of The Australian judged it to be 'one of his best performances'. The Sydney Morning Herald described it as 'dogged and gutsy, sincere and earnest'. The Canberra Times reported that 'Few political leaders, here or abroad, could do what Mr Howard did with such confidence yesterday. This was his major set-piece speech of the campaign, in which he had to perfect his message and set the scene for the last, decisive two weeks of the campaign. Yet he delivered it without a prepared text. He spoke in sentences, fluently, coherently, persuasively, without hesitations. For the assembled Liberal faithful (his parliamentary colleagues and staffers aside) it must have been like watching an actor spontaneously making up his own lines as he went along. That impression was, of course, misleading. Most of the Howard phrases and themes had been rehearsed and refined through constant repetition since the campaign began. And this may be one of Mr Howard's problems…Perhaps if he spent time discussing his ideas with speech-writers, and moulding their words to his own style, his rhetoric might be not just fluent, but fresh…'

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Prime Minister John Howard launched the 2001 federal election campaign with a policy speech at the Sydney Recital Hall on 28 October 2001. It was 'an old-style stump speech from notes' to the Liberal Party faithful. The standing ovation that followed his speech lasted nearly 10 minutes. Meanwhile, police kept protestors almost a block away from the recital hall. A group of anti-nuclear protestors, dressed in white, danced and played three large bong drums and a guitar. Other protestors included Ansett workers and anti-war demonstrators.

Matt Price of The Australian observed that 'The PM was strangely flat at the beginning of his speech. Earlier, we'd been treated to a shameless slideshow of John with young diggers, John with old diggers, John with retired diggers. With flags everywhere and the slogan Keeping Australia In Safe Hands emblazoned across the backdrop, it seemed we might be in for yet another military pep talk. Thankfully, Iron John left his tank at Kirribilli. He barely mentioned the terror campaign and spent the early part of his address defending the Coalition's record and pumping up his colleagues. The new stuff was vintage Howard - a sexy baby bonus, a big hike in aged-care funds and a promise to be tougher on drugs. All went down a treat. But again, the most raucous cheer came when Howard praised Ruddock.'

Dennis Atkins of the Courier Mail was more concerned with his style of oratory ‘A speech is poetry: cadence, rhythm, imagery, sweep! A speech reminds us that words, like children, have the power to make dance the dullest beanbag of a heart.’ So said Ronald Reagan's speechwriter Peggy Noonan in her bestselling political memoir What I Saw At The Revolution. This might be the case in the speech capital of the world, Washington, DC; but yesterday the dullest beanbag hearts at the City Recital Hall in Sydney were safe when John Howard gave us his best shot for re-election.'

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Prime Minister John Howard's policy speech on 26 September 2004 at the Brisbane City Hall was broadcast live on Sky News. Channel Seven also assembled an audience to watch his speech and track their responses using the 'worm'. Journalists were divided on the effectiveness of the speech. According to the Courier Mail 'Some election policy launches are all image and rhetoric, some are memorable only for their slogans, and some, especially if a government has been in office for a long time, are predictably dull. After 8 1/2 years as prime minister, John Howard was guilty of none of the above yesterday. His 65-minute Coalition campaign speech at Brisbane City Hall was strong on substance, politically shrewd and surprising for the number and range of initiatives it promised.' However, The Sydney Morning Herald reported that 'Howard… spent most of his speech looking tense, grim and at times almost manic. He held the sides of the lectern in a vice grip for the most part, but even so his right arm, the Dr Strangelove one which indicates when he's agitated, broke loose on a few occasions and waved about threateningly.'

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Kevin Rudd's policy speech for the Australian Labor Party on 14 November 2007 in the lead up to the 2007 federal election was held at the Queensland Performing Arts Centre in Brisbane before an audience of Labor Party faithful, including former prime ministers Gough Whitlam, Paul Keating and Bob Hawke. Commenting on Rudd's first major policy speech, Tony Wright of The Age reported that 'Whitlam, Keating and Hawke gave no sign of it, but each of them – master orators in their different ways – must surely have winced at Rudd’s technocrat delivery of his almost hour-long speech. Reading from those transparent West Wing-style teleprompters – what John Howard scathingly calls wing-mirrors – Rudd appeared to be ticking off paragraphs lifted from a focus group.'

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On 29 March 2008 Prime Minister Kevin Rudd tabled an historic motion in parliament apologising to Australia's Indigenous people, particularly the Stolen Generations, for laws and policies that 'inflicted profound grief, suffering and loss'. It was tabled in response to the Human Rights and Equal Opportunities Commission 'Bringing Them Home' report tabled in May 1997. The report was a milestone in the history of Indigenous rights in Australia concluding that, from the earliest days of white settlement, Indigenous children had been forcibly removed from their families by the government.

Kevin Rudd's address to Parliament:"Today we honour the Indigenous peoples of this land, the oldest continuing cultures in human history. We reflect on their past mistreatment. We reflect in particular on the mistreatment of those who were Stolen Generations – this blemished chapter in our nation’s history. The time has now come for the nation to turn a new page in Australia’s history by righting the wrongs of the past and so moving forward with confidence to the future. We apologise for the laws and policies of successive Parliaments and governments that have inflicted profound grief, suffering and loss on these our fellow Australians. We apologise especially for the removal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families, their communities and their country.

For the pain, suffering and hurt of these Stolen Generations, their descendants and for their families left behind, we say sorry.

To the mothers and the fathers, the brothers and the sisters, for the breaking up of families and communities, we say sorry.

And for the indignity and degradation thus inflicted on a proud people and a proud culture, we say sorry.

We the Parliament of Australia respectfully request that this apology be received in the spirit in which it is offered as part of the healing of the nation.

For the future we take heart; resolving that this new page in the history of our great continent can now be written.

We today take this first step by acknowledging the past and laying claim to a future that embraces all Australians.

A future where this Parliament resolves that the injustices of the past must never, never happen again.

A future where we harness the determination of all Australians, Indigenous and non-Indigenous, to close the gap that lies between us in life expectancy, educational achievement and economic opportunity.

A future where we embrace the possibility of new solutions to enduring problems where old approaches have failed.

A future based on mutual respect, mutual resolve and mutual responsibility.

A future where all Australians, whatever their origins, are truly equal partners, with equal opportunities and with an equal stake in shaping the next chapter in the history of this great country, Australia."

On 16 August 2010 Julia Gillard, Australia's first female Prime Minister, launched the Australian Labor Party's election campaign with a speech in Brisbane. The Sydney Morning Herald reported that it had a 'speech night feel'. 'The entire thing was scripted to be unscripted – no teleprompters, no notes - so it looked committed and humble, rather than snazzy and slick.' The election delivered Australia its second hung parliament since Federation (the first was in 1940).

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The National Press Club of Australia started out as a press luncheon club, the brainchild of a group of journalists over a few drinks in a Canberra pub, the Hotel Kingston. The idea was backed by the federal parliamentary press gallery before receiving formal approval from the Australian Journalists Association. The first person ever to address the National Press Club was Minister for External Affairs Sir Garfield Barwick on 17 May 1963 (he became Chief Justice of the HIgh Court the following year). This luncheon was held at the Hotel Canberra. On Thursday 27 May, 1976 the Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser officially opened the new Club premises at 16 National Circuit Barton where the club resides today. In his welcome address, the club President, Max Hawkins, made special mention of Tony Eggleton who led the original committee in 1962. Billy McMahon, who when he was Prime Minister, was instrumental in the approval of the club and the then Minister for the Interior the Hon Ralph Hunt. In fact it was Mr McMahon that turned the first sod on this site on November 29, 1972. Over the years the club has hosted addresses from a vast array of visiting international figures, Heads of State, religious leaders, innovators and of course our political leaders including every Prime Minster/Opposition Leader every year over the past 40 years.