E&OE....................................................................................................
To you Robert and to Ron Spithill, to all the other very distinguished
business guests, ladies and gentlemen. It is a great delight to
share this occasion with you tonight.
And Robert spoke of some of the things that we do well in this
country. And I thought tonight that we were, at long last, starting
to get things into proper balance because last night I had the great
pleasure of attending the annual dinner of the Sports Hall of Fame
at the Crown Casino in Melbourne. And this is a great event and
every year they make an award or, in fact, inaugurated a new award
last night, the Sir Donald Bradman award for the outstanding sports
performance and it was jointly won last night by Heather Turland
and Mark Taylor. And they also inducted into the Hall of Fame, as
a new sporting legend, that great tennis player, Margaret Court.
And I thought what a tremendous characteristic it was of Australians
to properly honour the men and women who brought such sporting pride
and pleasure to us and to our nation.
I think tonight we are quite appropriately in a different city
but in an equally impressive way we are honouring business achievement.
And for a long time we haven't really done that as well as
we should have done. And I do think BRW and Alcatel deserve our
praise and our compliment for the fact that they are leading the
way in honouring the great achievers in Australian business because
we do need to treat them like sporting heroes. And I say that as
a passionate follower of Australian sporting achievement and a passionate
supporter of particular sports in Australia but then Prime Ministers
are meant to support all sports, and I do.
But, ladies and gentlemen, it is very important that we honour
excellence in Australian business. And we have a gathering here
tonight at an extraordinarily interesting time for the Australian
economy. I've just come back from a meeting of leaders of the
APEC nations in Kuala Lumpur and the strongest impression that I
took away from that meeting was the new respect and the new esteem
in which Australia is held at the present time by dint of her economic
strength and some of the achievements and some of the qualities
of Australia and Australians that have shone through in the recent
Asian Pacific economic difficulties.
One of the things that I think the economic downturn in Asia has
done is to demonstrate, in a quite emphatic way, the strengths of
this country. What could be a more attractive conjunction of circumstances
to have a low inflation, low interest rate, might I, I hope, not
too immodestly say, a well-run economy, to have a stable banking
system, a transparent banking system, to have a very stable political
system and to have a congenial lifestyle and to have, amongst our
population, hundreds of thousands of Australian citizens who have
very close cultural family and personal links with the nations of
the Asian Pacific region.
Now, when you add all of those things up, that is a remarkably
potent mix and it's a remarkably attractive mix to people who
are looking for some kind of oasis of stability and predictability.
And some of those things that perhaps a few years ago some may have
regarded as irksome, unnecessary, perhaps not adventurous enough,
are suddenly the credentials that make this an appealing country
- the transparency of our banking system, for example. And we have
a world-class financial system now. And when the benefits of the
changes in the taxation reform flow through, particularly in relation
to the removal of financial institutions duties and bank account
debits tax and the removal of stamp duty on share transactions,
it will become an even more attractive place as a financial centre
in this part of the world.
So what I think one of the...that the Asian crisis has done
is to highlight again the tremendous strengths. And I was saying
to Ron earlier over dinner that one of the many endearing things
about Australians and he, as somebody in the forefront of
information technology, finds it particularly endearing and
that is that we've always been great devourers and rapid devourers
of new technology. And it is one of the characteristics of Australians.
And that is also something that is standing us in tremendously good
stead in present circumstances.
I think the Australian economy has done better than just about
anybody in this room expected. I have to confess there were occasions
earlier this year when I thought it would slow down a little more
than it has but, overall, it has performed very well. And all of
the indicators coming to us are very positive and are very strong.
And it is a fact that we are probably enjoying about as great a
period of economic stability and strength and attractiveness that
I can remember in the 24 years that I've been in Parliament.
I entered Parliament in 1974 when there was a period when the world
was beginning to change very rapidly. And the manufacturers will
nod their heads in particular. And it was at a time when all the
constance and all the verities of that long period of economic stability
after the end of World War II was seeming to come to an end. Now,
we haven't gone back. We've gone to a new period of opportunity.
And the world is very different and it's forever different
from what it was 25 years ago but we do have now some strengths
and we have a tremendous opportunity. And I am really tremendously
excited that I've got the privilege of being Prime Minister
of this country on the cusp of all these great events that we're
going to celebrate - our centenary as a federation, the coming of
the Olympic Games to Australia and the opportunities that this very
strong country, economically and politically in our part of the
world, now has.
The fact that we are seen in the region as having the endowments
of a western country without some of the encumbrances, perhaps of
our North American friends and some of our European friends, in
dealing with the countries of the region. We've sort of got
all the advantages without any of the disadvantages of our history
and of our culture and here we are in this part of the world and
we can be a very special intersection of culture and of economic
opportunity and of political history.
One of the messages that comes out of the last year is that the
process of reform is never-ended. Those who argue that having done
something about the industrial relations system, having essentially
removed many of the tariff barriers that Australia used to have,
having brought about further financial sector reforms and ultimately
when the taxation is reformed that that will be the end of it. That,
of course, is wrong. There's never an end to economic reform
because new challenges come along which invite you to make further
changes.
So, ladies and gentlemen, all of this adds up to a time and a community
that needs business achievers. It does need risk-takers. It does
need people who excel. It does need a nation that sees its men and
women of business excellence as being equally important to our country
as our great sports men and women. And tonight is a tribute to those
people and tonight is a reminder to all of us, to those in government,
not only of the inadequacy of the capital gains tax system but also
it's a reminder to us of just how important it is to have business
heroes and business achievers and just how important it is to the
future of our country that we have people who are world-class performers
in business.
So I am delighted to be here tonight. I do compliment the sponsors
of tonight's gathering. I congratulate, in advance, those who
will be announced as winners and I thank all of you for the support
that you're giving to an occasion that is very important to
the future of our country as we go into the 21st Century.
Thank you.
[ends]