E&OE.............................................................................................
Thank you very much Peter for those very warm and kind words of introduction.
To the Premier of Victoria, Jeff Kennett, to the President of the
Victorian Division, Joy Howley, to my many federal and state parliamentary
colleagues, and fellow liberals from Victoria.
This is certainly a very large gathering and I thank all of you for
coming along in such large numbers to hear my speech. Or perhaps I'm
wrong. Richard Alston said you were all on the way to the football.
But whatever it be, it's always great to address hundreds of
members of the rank and file of the Liberal Party and it's appropriate
that I do so this weekend because it is almost to the day six months
since the government was re-elected in October of last year.
And it is therefore an opportunity to do both a stocktaking of that
six months and also to throw forward to the next two and a half years,
because immediately after its re-election, the government did set
about keeping faith in a most emphatic way with the commitments that
we made to the Australian people in the lead up to the last election.
I said when I spoke to this Council only a few weeks after the October
election that I believed that in many ways the victory in 1998 was
greater and more meritorious than the victory in 1996, because in
1996 we were campaigning against a tired government that had become
lazy, arrogant and out of touch and led by somebody who imagined that
his judgement was always superior to that of the mainstream of the
Australian community.
And we won very emphatically in 1996 but in 1998 we were seeking an
explicit mandate to implement one of the most courageous blueprints
for economic reform that any western country has seen in the last
thirty or forty years.
It is the reality, ladies and gentlemen, that no federal government
in Australian political history has gone to the people with such a
comprehensive, open, transparent blueprint for economic reform than
the government I led to the last federal election. We've had
governments in the past that have talked generally about reform, we've
had governments in the past that have laid out general scenarios of
what they would do, but I defy anyone to name a government in Australian
political history that actually took a detailed reform plan to the
Australian economy in a fundamental area such as taxation, to the
Australian people, laid it all out in detail and said vote for us
or against us, on the basis of this plan.
Now I say that very deliberately because in the weeks ahead the Australian
Senate will have to make a decision in relation to that plan. And
I want to say to you with all of the conviction that I can muster,
that the government has absolutely no intention of retreating from
the responsibility to implement that plan that was given to us by
the Australian people in October of last year.
We haven't put our political bodies on the line, survived to
tell the story, but to walk away because of the desire of those who
hold the balance of power but more particularly, the negative approach
of the Australian Labor Party and the Australian Democrats, to frustrate
the will of the Australian people.
We embarked upon a programme of further economic reform and change
immediately we were re-elected. We put the taxation legislation into
the Parliament, we set about our plans to privatise the remaining
elements of Telstra and thus make Australia not the second largest
share owning democracy in the world, but indeed the largest share
owning democracy in the world. And not only as Peter says, can we
by selling the rest of Telstra, remove for ever federal government
debt, a remarkable legacy to bequeath to our children and grandchildren,
but also if we can sell the remaining elements of Telstra, Australia
will boast the highest percentage of share owners of any democracy
in the western world.
But an even more important thing has occurred over the last six months.
And that is that I believe that over the last six months the Australian
community and importantly the world community, has begun to realise
the full extent to which Australia was able to stare down the worst
of the Asian economic downturn.
There was a sense of it before the election, there was a growing confidence
that maybe the impact of the Asian downturn would not be nearly as
great as we had suspected, but I don't believe it was until after
the election and through the Christmas and New Year period that the
full realisation came to the Australian public that not only had we
stared down the Asian economic downturn, but we had in fact demonstrated
a capacity for economic performance that was beyond the wildest expectations
of even some of our most enthusiastic supporters.
We have been able to deliver the lowest interest rates, the lowest
inflation figures for 30 years, the best unemployment level for almost
ten years, levels of business investment that make us very proud and
very optimistic about the future and we are increasingly attracting
the attention of the rest of the world. There was a sense, as Peter
alluded to, when we came into office that Australia was the anxious
outsider knocking on the door of the Asian club seeking admission.
Now all of that has been significantly changed and we have demonstrated
that we are an economic strongman in this particular part of the world.
And that was overwhelmingly due to the measures that we took when
we came to office.
If we had not cut the budget deficit that we inherited, if we had
not taken some of those decisions that caused some unease and criticism
in the community because of their impact on particular groups, .........making
a contribution to repairing the fiscal position, we would not now
be in the situation that we are. And it took a great deal of skill
and a great deal of economic and political courage to do it. And I
do want to pay a special tribute to the work that Peter Costello did
in that task as the Federal Treasurer, because unless you have a committed
Federal Treasurer who has the national interest uppermost in his mind,
you will never get long-term economic benefit and long-term economic
results.
So my message to our supporters and our foes alike, is that we were
not re-elected to sit on our laurels. We were re-elected to implement
the promises we took to the Australian people and we were re-elected
to renew our commitment to an even more vigorous reform agenda. There
is never such a thing as there being no further need of economic and
social reform. There is always a need for change and reform
not change in the name of change for its own sake but change
because society always requires that that what is no longer working,
should be swept away and replaced by something that will work.
And the challenge of economic reform is still very real in this country
and the benefits of economic reform are so apparent at both a national
and a State level. Ask any fair minded Victorian where this State
would be had it not been for the courageous economic and other reforms
of the Kennett government over the last seven years.
And it is because of that courageous reform agenda that of all the
State governments of Australia none is in a stronger economic and
political position, none deservedly enjoy such a high level of public
respect than does the Coalition government here in Victoria, led by
the Premier Jeff Kennett.
We're not only going to implement the things we said we would
do before the election, but we also intend to go further in areas
that we began work on in our first term. We have succeeded in reducing
unemployment. Unemployment now is lower than it has been at any time
since the early 1990s. But it is still too high and it could go lower
if we could make further reforms. It could go lower if we could get
rid of the unfair burden of the unfair dismissal laws on small business.
It could go lower if we could entrench junior wages in the Australian
industrial relations system. We have tried to do that. I mean there
is not a man or woman in this audience who has employed anybody who
doesn't know the simple reality that if you force employers to
pay higher wages for inexperienced, young employees, what they will
do is employ less of them. And you don't need a degree in industrial
relations, you don't need to have anything other than a bit of
experience of life to understand that that is a reality. But while
you have an Opposition overrulingly dominated by former trade union
officials I mean one of the extraordinary things about the
modern Australian Labor Party is that as the influence of unionism
in the community falls, the influence of trade union officials in
the Labor Party rises. They have more influence now in their parliamentary
party than what I think they had twenty five years ago. At least 25
years ago they had one or two people who occasionally invested some
money.
In all sorts of things.
But ladies and gentlemen, we are determined to do more on the industrial
relations front. We are determined to continue the process of industrial
relations reform begun in the early 1980s by many people who believed
that the old centralised industrialised relations system was no longer
serving the interests of the Australian community.
But it is not only on the economic front that this government has
seized the agenda and has laid out an action agenda for the next two
and a half years.
We are a party which is willing to embrace the social agenda. We are
a party that does not believe that good government is about good economics
alone, important though that is. We are also a government that believes
a modern compassionate society does have to provide a proper social
security safety net and one of the proudest boasts that the Coalition
Government can make is that we have done exactly that.
Contrary to what our critics said three years ago we haven't
reduced the real value of the pension but actually increased it. Contrary
to what our critics said three years ago, we haven't reduced
workers wages, we've increased them. The workers of Australia
now are infinitely better off than they were under Bob Hawke or Paul
Keating. Real wages are higher, interest rates are lower, take home
pay is therefore greater and spending power of the average family
is therefore greater. I mean that is why there is a sense of economic
stability, an economic strength within the Australian community that
we haven't seen for a while.
We are also keen to add value to the existing structures of our society
that look after the less privileged. And last night I had the opportunity
here in Melbourne to outline in more detail our government's
ideas for building what I call a new social coalition in Australia,
where you get the government, the welfare sector, the business community
and the volunteer efforts of individual Australians working together
in an effective coalition to look after the disadvantaged in the most
effective manner.
I have never made any apologies since I've been Prime Minister
in seeking the advice from those who know best about the way to best
assist the less privileged in our community. And much and all as I
respect the work they do you don't get that advice from a bureaucracy.
You get it from those great coalface organisations like the city missions,
and the Salvation Army and the Society of St Vincent de Paul, who
daily deal with these difficulties and understand them in a way that
surpasses any understanding that most others can have. And I deliberately
involve those organisations in providing advice and in helping to
make the decisions that we've made in that area.
And last night I announced a major series of taxation concessions
involving a cost to the revenue of over $50 million a year. It will
provide more incentives for generous benefactors in Australia to give
more to help those in the Australian community who need assistance.
And in making those announcements I acknowledged the fact that there
are at present many Australian companies and many Australian businesses
that have a rich tradition of giving generously and giving unstintingly
to those causes within our community which deserve assistance.
We've also articulated quite unashamedly the principle of mutual
obligation. And that is a principle that says that a compassionate
society should look after those in society who need help, but in return
those who are helped should be willing, in an appropriate way, to
give something back to the community in return. And that is the basis
of our work for the dole approach. And that is the basis of our approach
in a number of other welfare areas. When it was first announced it
was derided, it was attacked as being heartless and insensitive. But
once the Labor Party realised that the majority of the Australian
community understood both the fairness and the decency and the common
sense of such an approach, it began to change its tune.
So ladies and gentlemen, I'm very pleased, indeed proud to report,
six months into our second term that not only have we rapidly begun
to implement the policies we took to the electorate in 1998, but we
have also begun to set a new agenda in a number of important social
areas.
And having reported on that what do we see on the other side of Australian
politics? We see the Australian Labor Party still bereft of policies,
and still bereft of any sense of real political direction. There are
many of us in this room who've had a lot of experience in politics.
We've had experience in both Opposition and in Government. And
it's very instructive to have experience in Opposition, very
instructive indeed. You learn a lot and you don't forget any
of it if you're sensible. And one of the things you learn is
that when you're in Opposition you will never win the respect
of the Australian community or the Victorian community, or indeed
any other community, unless you are prepared to undertake hard policy
work.
Unless the public knows what you believe in and what you stand for
you are never going to become a decent government. And the great problem
with the Opposition in Australia at the present time is that nobody
has the faintest idea of what it stands for other than the desire
to replace the Government.
I have no idea what the Labor Party's long term policy is on
taxation. I don't know whether the Labor Party is going back
to the old pre Hawke/Keating interventionist approach to industry
policy, or whether they're going to return to the Hawke/Keating
approach. I don't know what their policy is on something like,
let's take something like youth wages. Mr Beazley's party
voted against the maintenance of youth wages, yet he said in an interview
in the papers last week, the Melbourne Age nonetheless, he said that
he was really in favour of keeping youth wages. He says he's
in favour of removing the power of the Senate to obstruct legislation.
And yet as Peter Costello says he's running the greatest bit
of Senate interference that we've seen for decades.
The Labor Party unfortunately has lapsed into the greatest mistake
that any Opposition can make and that is opposition for its own sake.
And it doesn't matter whether the Labor Party is dealing with
an issue that the public voted for, or the public voted against, or
that the public has never heard about before, or the public likes
or the public dislikes, they have a simple rule of thumb: if Howard
and the Liberals are for it, we're against it. Now that may make
for easy decision making because you don't have to give it any
thought. You just automatically oppose it. But it doesn't in
the long term build community respect. And I found in my years in
Opposition, and there are a lot of them, and I shared them with quite
a number of people in this hall, and I'm sure Jeff found the
same thing, that if you just automatically oppose what the other crowd
is doing irrespective of its merits, in the end you pay a very heavy
price. And I think the Australian population is growing increasingly
weary of it. And I think the Australian population believes that if
a government has the courage to lay out in painfully explicit detail
how it intends to change the Australian taxation system, take the
political risk of putting that forward as its policy for an election
and wins that election, I think the Australian public deep down think
they ought to be given a fair go and they ought to be able to implement
it.
There are just two other things I'd like to touch on my friends,
and that is to say a few words about the very difficult circumstances
that are unfolding in what was the old Yugoslavia. All of us I know
regret, and feel a sense of a heavy heart, and a sense of disturbance,
when weapons of great destruction are launched against any country.
But as history has told us repeatedly if intransigence, if the brutal
repression of minorities, if a denial of the human rights of minorities
is tolerated indefinitely without reprise and without retaliation,
a much heavier price is paid further down in time.
And the stubborn intransigence of the Milosovic regime in Belgrade,
their unwillingness to reach a negotiated understanding with the Ethnic
Albanians in Kosovo, the appalling human rights record of that regime,
the atrocities that have been practiced upon the people of Kosovo
so vividly displayed on our television screens, have really left the
NATO countries no alternative. And whilst there is no, and it is of
course not at all likely that there will be, involvement of any Australian
military personnel in the NATO action, let me say that that action
does have the understanding and the support of the Australian Government.
We believe that the NATO members have tried hard and long to reach
an accommodation and a fair outcome, and they have been driven to
the use of force and the use of military weaponry through the intransigence
of the Milosovic Government in Belgrade.
The final thing I would like to say because this is the occasion of
your annual meeting, and that is this: that I do appreciate in a very
real sense the support and co-operation that I have received from
the Victorian Division over the last 12 months. I have frequently
said, and I say it again today because it is true, that there is no
more professional, no better organised Liberal Party Division anywhere
in Australia than the Victorian Division. And that has been true for
a long time. It was true when Michael Kroger was your President, It
was true when Ted Baillieu was your president, and it remains true
today with Joy Howley as your President. And the standards set by
the Victorian Division could be well emulated by a number of divisions
in other parts of the country. I don't say that critically, I
say it in praise of the high degree of professionalism that you have
demonstrated at both a State and a Federal level over a long period
of time. You have been great friends, you've been great supporters,
you have been a wonderful part of a great party. We have achieved
an enormous amount, and the years ahead give us an opportunity to
build for future generations a Liberal achievement and a Liberal inheritance
which will make them immensely proud. Thank you.
[Ends]