Assistant Minister for Productivity, Competition, Charities and Treasury Dr Andrew Leigh MP has drawn a powerful link between Gandhi’s moral vision and Australia’s evolving sense of justice, calling the Mahatma “a man who showed that truth and compassion can outlast empires.”
Speaking at Parliament House during the Mahatma Gandhi Society Incorporated’s Australia–India Relations and Gandhi Birthday Celebrations, Dr Leigh described Gandhi as a guiding light for both nations, one whose message “still matters in a century that often rewards speed more than patience, and volume more than truth.”
Dr Leigh began by recalling Gandhi’s first impressions of Australia in 1896, when he criticised laws restricting Indian migration. “He had already recognised a troubling pattern: the racism of South Africa’s colonies was being encouraged, even taught, by a still whiter Australia,” Dr Leigh said. Yet Gandhi chose patience over rebuke when meeting Australians years later, preferring dialogue to confrontation.
He recounted how Richard Casey, Australia’s wartime Governor of Bengal, struggled to bridge their differences. “Casey was a man of neat timetables and typed memoranda. Gandhi was a man of parables and prayer,” Dr Leigh said, quoting Casey’s words: “Among saints, he was a statesman; among statesmen, a saint.”
Dr Leigh told the audience that Gandhi’s influence had flowed deeply into Australia’s conscience, from Indigenous rights to environmental activism. “Patrick Dodson drew a line between Gandhi’s struggle against empire and the Aboriginal struggle for justice at home,” he said, referring to Dodson’s earlier Gandhi Oration. “Vincent Lingiari, like Gandhi, believed that dignity begins with self-determination. He didn’t raise a rifle; he raised a principle.”
Drawing parallels with the Terania Creek protests of 1979, Dr Leigh said the rainforest activists “demonstrated that ordinary citizens, using moral discipline rather than violence, could reshape public policy.” He reminded listeners that the Gandhian legacy thrives “in the quiet persistence of peace campaigners, in the generosity of volunteers, in the compassion shown by those who welcome refugees.”
Dr Leigh also quoted former High Court Justice Michael Kirby, who argued that Gandhi’s ideals remain vital to modern causes, from gender equality to climate action. “Gandhi’s message was about the ethical duty to live truthfully, to resist cruelty and to widen the circle of compassion,” Dr Leigh said.
He noted that global leaders continue to draw inspiration from Gandhi’s philosophy. “António Guterres, the UN Secretary-General, said Gandhi’s vision ‘forms part of the pillars of the UN’s work’,” he added. “His life proved that non-violence is not passivity but a means to achieve justice and change.”
Reflecting on Gandhi’s human flaws, Dr Leigh acknowledged his “ambivalence about caste and his occasional moral rigidity,” but quoted University of Melbourne scholars Dolly Kikon and Hari Bapuji in saying that “Gandhi’s evolution was part of his greatness.”
Dr Leigh told the audience that Australia, too, has evolved. “Australia began with exclusion and has spent a century learning inclusion. To honour Gandhi is not to canonise him but to share his willingness to change.”
Citing author Satendra Nandan, he described Gandhi’s enduring appeal: “The oppressed, dispossessed, displaced, discriminated, marginalised, vulnerable everywhere found in him an embracing love.”
Dr Leigh also invoked George Orwell’s 1949 reflection on Gandhi, who, despite disagreeing with his pacifism during World War II, still praised his “personal integrity, intellectual courage and political impact.”
Looking to the present, Dr Leigh said Gandhi would see “over a million people of Indian heritage helping to build this nation,” and that his philosophy “lives in habits of conscience: the instinct to protest without hatred, to persuade without humiliation, to seek justice without revenge.”
He concluded that Gandhi’s example continues to bind Australia and India. “Our histories have not always aligned, but our destinies increasingly do. In an anxious world, both our nations can show that moral courage and mutual respect are not weaknesses but strengths,” Dr Leigh said.
As the speech closed, he reminded the gathering of Gandhi’s timeless advice: “The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.”
“May that spirit continue to guide both Australia and India: friends bound by history, strengthened by shared ideals and brightened, whenever possible, by a good laugh.”
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