"The high youth suicide rate bothered many young Australians. For each of the last seven or eight years as Prime Minister I, along with the Leader of the Opposition, would attend a conference in Parliament House which brought together young men and women from all around Australia to talk about personal beliefs and the values of our society.
I spoke about my own values, spiritual beliefs and what meaning I found in life. On quite a number of occasions the question was asked of me, why did I think the youth suicide rate in Australia was so high. It was not an easy question to answer. The high suicide rate clearly troubled those young people. I replied that one of the reasons was that we no longer lived in a society governed by absolutes. Everything in life had become relative. Taking one's life had been, years ago, one of those taboo, or absolutely unthinkable, acts, which only the most completely desperate contemplated. Perhaps society's steady descent into relativism was one of the explanations why suicide, especially among the young, had become more common."
John Howard, Lazarus Rising, Harper Collins (2010), p 491.
