Ballarat Prime Ministers' Avenue: Malcolm Turnbull unveils statue in the gardens

Mr Turnbull arrived in the city on a sunny Friday to reveal the bust by sculptor Linda Klarfeld, who had previously created the bust of Mr Turnbull's predecessor Tony Abbott.

In his speech acknowledging the honour, Mr Turnbull spoke of the moving Welcome to Country delivered by Ash Skinner, before reflecting on the importance of democracy and the peaceful conduct of Australian politics in comparison to the rest of the world.

"Before the Europeans arrived, there were well over 300 different language groups, with many subgroups as different from each other, as Hungarian is from French," Mr Turnbull said.

"I was the first certainly the first Prime Minister, possibly person, speaking language in the House of Representatives, in the Ngunnawal language, which had been almost lost.

"It's an enormous privilege to be Prime Minister. We are an extraordinary country, as new as a newborn baby in the arms of their mother or father as they're being naturalised, as they're becoming Australian citizens, and as old as the oldest continuous human civilisation on earth.

"There is a great tradition of intelligent ingenuity and innovation in Australian public policy. Alfred Deakin (former member for Ballarat), the celebrated small-L liberal Prime Minister was responsible for so many things.

"In the 19th century, he went to the United States and looked at how the Americans were managing their water resources, and saw it was a shambles. He came back and instituted reforms in Victoria, which were then copied elsewhere in the country, which invested all water in the Crown, so it could be licensed. People didn't own water, rather they had entitlements to water.

"Now we manage water better than just about any other comparable country in the world. That is in large part due to Alfred Deakin, because he got the settings right at the beginning."

Mr Turnbull reflected on the vagaries of the United States' political system, and urged the crowd to defend Australia's civil disposition, despite our differences.

"We've got a more resilient democracy in the United States, but we can't take it for granted," he said.

"So I know when people come through here, and they'll look at the various prime ministers and reflect on how good or bad or funny or silly or whatever they were, I hope they also reflect on the importance of our freedoms, the importance of maintaining, and the importance of defending the integrity of the institutions that enable them to be realised."

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