Scotland's First Minister Alex Salmond
Scottish Parliament
Saturday, June 30, 2007
Your Majesty, on behalf of the people of Scotland I thank you for declaring this third session of the reconvened Scottish Parliament open - although as many of our constituents have already noted we will then move seamlessly into recess!
I thank you also for your wise reflection on the development of our Parliament. In turn we in this chamber acknowledge your own vital role, as Queen of Scots, in guiding the tenor of our deliberations.
Your Majesty, this Parliament meets - as it always has done - on behalf of the community of the realm.
This Parliament exists - and always will - to serve the people and to provide national leadership which reflects their hopes, addresses their fears and raises their aspirations.
It is a Parliament which the people demanded. It is also a Parliament of which the people make demands.
Scotland is a country is transition. Our nation faces some pivotal choices in the years ahead. But we do so from a position of strength. Scotland is not confused, nor are we a people ill at ease.
Rather, after two sessions of a renewed democratic tradition, we are a country weighing the options for our future. We do so positively, and with the highest ideals.
As you noted in your address, Scotland is engaged in a process of change. Scotland's journey continues in this third Parliament and together we will seek to write the next chapter in Scotland's story.
Your Majesty it will not have escaped your notice that I am the first SNP First Minister that this Parliament has elected. I believe in the restoration of an independent Scotland. Others in this chamber take a different view.
I welcome that debate and the national conversation to follow. The challenge for all of us is to have that conversation with dignity, with respect and with substance.
Your Majesty, we are not alone in addressing the future. The same conversations - in different ways perhaps but essentially the same conversations - on identity, responsibility and aspiration are taking place in Belfast, in Cardiff and perhaps even in London.
In Europe we see different visions of government in an interdependent world. Across the world we see a new order struggling to be born, one based on the rule of law and addressing the planetary imperatives of tackling mass poverty and global warming.
These changes in governance are not to be feared but rather to be embraced.
It is, after all, the essence of democracy that what has always been so, need not always be so.
Change is what political leadership is about - it is why each and every Member sought election to this Chamber. Our role is to turn this Parliament into the crucible for national debate, a forum for the nation - the place where the spectrum of ideas are debated and tested and broad concepts are honed to specific Scottish needs.
Your Majesty, as you noted, every time you visit us you a find a different Parliament. This Parliament is led by Scotland's first minority Government. That innovation was unintended - very un intended - but it is one which has breathed new life into our political debate.
I am confident that this National Parliament will govern in the national interest as we address the immediate concerns of our people.
This is a Parliament of minorities. Every party, including my Government, is required to persuade, to reflect and to respond.
The people of Scotland have delivered a Parliament which demands collective leadership. That is exactly what they will get.
This Parliament will also reflect a nation determined in its internationalism. Scotland has a proud and remarkable history, both with our immediate neighbours and in the wider world.
This Parliament will reconnect with that global legacy and challenge the world, as we challenge ourselves, to assume responsibility for the imperatives of our generation.
In 1999 when making this very speech the late Donald Dewar said of the Parliament "This is about more than our politics and our laws. This is about who we are, how we carry ourselves."
In that, as in much else, he was right
Your Majesty, many of us today bear the white rose of Scotland - McDiarmid's rose "which smells sharp and sweet and breaks the heart"
Against the backcloth this week of further tragedy in Iraq it is a reminder that our national story has its full share of grief and pain as well as triumph and expectation.
But through it all, hope remains and dreams do not die.
In this Parliamentary Chamber, above the clash of debate and the arm wrestling over amendments and motions, these enduring themes prevail - our responsibilities to the people we serve, our responsibility to our country and Scotland's responsibility to the world.