Subjects: Peter Nugent's 1989/1990 campaign for the Victorian seat of Aston; the Howard Government's achievement since coming to office in 19
E&OE..................
Well thank you very much Peter for that very warm and generous welcome. To my other federal parliamentary colleague, Phillip Barresi, to all the other many other distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen.
It's always a delight to come back to the electorate of Aston. The first time I ever campaigned for Peter Nugent was in fact in Wantirna. I accepted an invitation to, when I was leader of the opposition back in 1989, to attend a ball or something at the Wantirna High School to help as part of Peter's campaign to beat a fellow called Ferguson I think who was then the federal member. I think he was a union official like most of them. And we went along and it was the most. in between the invitation I sort of lost the leadership of the opposition but I still went along. And I remember it was a great night and that sort of began my association with Peter Nugent. He won of course in 1990 when the Liberal Party did extraordinarily well in the state of Victoria. It had something to so with the growing unpopularity of the then state Labor government. It had quite a bit to do with 17.5% mortgage interest rates and of course it had more to do with the quality of the candidates because it had an enormous amount to do with all of those factors.
But Aston is an electorate that I've visited on a regular basis. And it brings together something of a cross section of suburban Australia. I visited this magnificent Bayswater South Primary School this morning which is a role model as a government school providing bilingual educational opportunities not only for schools in Australia but also around the world. And it was a really sort of morale building experience to spend an hour with such dedicated teachers, enthusiastic students and a supportive community. And it was all coming together in a very special and quite spectacular way.
We're having this marvellous gathering in the electorate of Aston about half way through the Government's second term in office. And it's an opportunity to reflect a little bit on what has been achieved but also to remind ourselves of the challenges that lie in front of us. Because running a government and running a political party is never something that you can take for granted or you can be static or passive about. It's always a huge mistake in politics to ever imagine that you've finished the job. That having done a lot of things you can take it easy for a while - that's when something out of the clear blue sky comes along to cause difficulty. Now we have done a lot. And as Liberal Party members and as Liberal Party supporters we have every reason to be proud of what we have achieved over the last four and a half years.
The Australian economy now is stronger than it has been at any time since the late 1960's. We have lower rates of unemployment now than at any time in the last ten years. And as Peter said the unemployment figures that came out this morning show that our unemployment rate is now down to 6.3%. We have now created in the four and a half years that we have been in government no fewer than 809,000 new jobs.
And that is really the ultimate goal, the end product, the human dividend of strong economic growth and strong economic policies. You don't run economic policies, you don't commit yourself to economic reforms for the purpose of passing some examination in economic management. You do it to produce a human and a social dividend. And being able to stand in front of you and say that as a result of the economic policies we've followed we now have a much lower rate of unemployment than we had. We have a youth unemployment rate which is dramatically lower than what it was in March of 1996. And I can remember in one of the two debates that I had with the then prime minister Paul Keating, compered by Ray Martin, I was asked what I would like to be able to say after my first term in government that I achieved. And one of the things I said I'd like to be able to speak of was of some significant reduction in youth unemployment.
Now we still have a distance to go. And for those people who are trying hard to get work and who still can't get it we have an ongoing responsibility. But it does give me great heart and I know it must give you and it must give people who are working elsewhere around the country in the Government's political interests to be able to look back and say well we have made an identifiable difference.
The measurement of somebody's success in public life is what he or she achieves not necessarily the length of time that he or she holds a particular position. I know of people that have held positions for a long time and done nothing with the power and the influence that they have. And I've known people that have held positions for relatively short periods of time that have made a difference.
We have transformed the Australian economy. It is stronger now. Business conditions are better than they were. They're not perfect, they are better than what they were. We have undertaken some quite dramatic reforms. Our industrial relations changes are quite ground breaking. And all of those industrial relations changes will be threatened if there is a change of government.
I spoke rather facetiously a moment ago of the union affiliation of the former Labor member for this electorate. I said that quite deliberately not because there's anything wrong with belonging to a union or being a union official but there's something wrong with a political party where something like 70-80% of its members and 80% or so of the front bench of the party are former union officials when only 20% of the Australian community belongs to a trade union. In other words you have a party that is skewed in its representation of the Australian community. And if you have a skewed party you're going to get skewed policies and you're going to get skewed outcomes in government. I think it's very important for all of us to think for a moment about the alternative.
We're feeling confident. We've introduced tax reform with a minimum of the difficulties that people forecast, and I'll come back to that in a moment. But in political life, and I speak to you as the leader of the parliamentary Liberal Party as much as Prime Minister. In political life you can never take anything for granted. We found that in Victoria. There probably weren't many people in this room who thought we were going to lose the Victorian election. I didn't think we would but we did and that is a lesson to all of us. You don't take the public for granted. Once you've achieved one thing you get on to the next and don't assume that there's some sort of lasting recollection of every single thing you've done. And I don't say that critically because people's lives are busy. We all have our personal challenges and our personal responsibilities, we worry about the future of our families, we get on with our lives and that applies to the great bulk of our fellow country men and women.
So it's a big challenge to win the next election. I believe we can do it and I believe though that we will best be able to do it if we remember the importance of keeping contact with the rank and file of the Australian community. And never imagining that there's ever been a government in the history of this country that has been there other than by the gift of the consent of the Australian public.
But we set out almost three years to reform the Australian taxation system and any body who has had anything at all to do with politics in this country knew that that was one of the great reforms that had to be undertaken. We've needed to do it for 25 or 30 years. Bob Hawke set out to do it and then was scared out of it by the trade union movement. Mr Keating set out to do it and he lost the support of his then prime minister and gave away in disgust and then as prime minister launched an absolutely negative fear campaign against the Fight Back programme of John Hewson in 1993. Remember the 1993 election? The Labor Party campaign against us and our GST. And as soon as they got in to office, they increased every last indirect tax they could lay their hands on without any compensation for the pensioners or the fixed income earners.
Now I knew that it was difficult. I knew it was dangerous. I was told by people. I mean I was amused to read in the papers that the government's meant to be poll driven. When I told the Liberal Party's pollster that we were going to introduce a GST, I think he looked around for another contract. He didn't think it was a particularly sensible thing to do. It was a politically risky but in the end I had always believed that if you told the Australian people what you thought was necessary in the national interest, you laid out your plan in detail, you made sure it was fair and then you set out with all your energy to sell it to them, that they would come to understand and support that what you are doing was in the country's interest. And I think the reason why we won the election in 1998 and the reason why we ultimately got the legislation through Parliament with some changes was that deep down the Australian people realised that this was a reform that had to be undertaken.
And the thing that gives me the greatest pleasure of all in relation to tax reform is that the negative campaign waged by our opponents and others has failed. They wanted the first of July to be a disaster. They wanted the world to come to an end on the first of July. They wanted the sky to fall in on me. They wanted every small business man and woman in the country to be up in arms. They wanted people to be complaining about the GST and when that didn't happen, they were left rather bereft and rather barren and rather naked in a policy sense. Because if you invest of all of your hopes and aspirations on negative things, rather than positive things, you are bound to be disappointed.
And the great thing about what we've tried to do over the last four-and-a-half years is that we've set out to do something positive. We've always taken the view that you are elected to do things and to change things for the better. And that's going to be our watchword over the next 18 months. If anybody imagines that the reform process is finished please let me assure you it's not. It never finishes. We're not going to do foolish things, we're not going to do unnecessary things, but there are a lot of other areas that need further change and reform. We need to make certain that our social welfare system is thoroughly contemporary for Australia in the 21st century. That doesn't mean for a moment let me tell you that we're going to take away benefits that people are entitled to. We're not in the business of cutting pensions or benefits. That's never been our philosophy. We are in the business of making sure that people who are not entitled to them don't get them, and we also very strongly support the principle of mutual obligation that says that if people get a benefit and they can put something back to the community in return for that benefit then it's only reasonable that they be asked to do so. But this is an area where some further change and reform to strengthen the system and to make it more efficient and more relevant to the 21st century is clearly needed and there'll be more said about that in the weeks and the months ahead.
So the process of reform and the process of further strengthening the Australian economy must go on. But as Peter said political life is not just about economics. It's important, it's important to see economic policy as a means to an end and not an end in itself. As I said a moment ago we don't make the economy efficient so that we can get 85 or 90 out of 100 from an economics professor. We make the economy work better so that we can generate flesh and blood personal opportunities for people. All of you in small business think now how much better it is to be operating under a lower interest rate regime. Think how much better it is to have the opportunity of running your businesses in more buoyant economic times. Think of how much better it is to know that the community has the confidence to embrace something as big as tax reform. And one of the things that's great about the tax reform we brought in is that it demonstrates to all of us that we can master change, we can handle difficult transitions, and we can emerge from the process a stronger and better country. And that is enormously important to our sense of national self being and our sense of national confidence.
And as Peter was kind enough to say, we've also been busy in other areas. The willingness of this country to stand up for the people of East Timor; the way in which we have rebalanced the foreign relations of Australia to make certain that although our prime area of concern is the Asian-Pacific region, we also have very important links with other parts of the world. When I led the delegation to London a few weeks ago to commemorate a hundred years of the passage of the Australian Constitution through the then Westminster Parliament, some of the media criticised it and quite apart from the historic or cultural significance of the visit, and the important milestone it represented in commemorating an event that was quite material and crucial to the federation of Australia a hundred years ago.
Most critics seem to forget that the United Kingdom is the second largest foreign investor after the United States in Australia, that the United Kingdom is one of the most important destinations for Australian foreign investment abroad, and that Australia is now second only to France as an exporter of wine to the United Kingdom. It's a reminder that the relationship between the two societies is a very contemporary one. And when I hear people talking about us not having any further relevance to Europe, I'm also reminded that there are what, a million Australians of an Italian heritage in this country, 700,000 or 800,000 of Greek heritage and so the list goes on. Australia has very long and enduring historical links not only with Britain and Ireland but also with many other countries of Europe. And one of the special things about Australia is that we have a bit of everything. Here we are in the Asian-Pacific region, we're of European heritage, a lot of associations with the United States, and of course we have hundreds of thousands of Australians of Asian heritage - from India, from China, from everywhere - who are making a magnificent contribution to this country. And the idea that we should not see ourselves very much as a political citizen of the world and not just a citizen of our own region is a very unreal view of where Australia's place in the 21st century should be.
So I speak to you as a Prime Minister who's certainly not complacent; who believes that we have justified the trust people put in us in 1996 and 1998; who believes that this country is stronger and better than it was when we came to office; believes that this country has a very strong sense of its place in the world, a place that enables it to punch above its weight of 19 million people; and also a country that is about to showcase itself to the rest of the world through the Olympic Games, but also a country that has in front of it like all other societies in the modern world, our share of challenges and our share of difficulty.
And the last thing I want to say to you is that I have received tremendous support from the rank and file of the Liberal Party in the time I've been Prime Minister and that's been delivered to me from the people of Aston by your local member. I congratulate him on the terrific contribution he's made to the people of Aston, and the very very vigilant and the effective way that he's represented them in the national parliament. He's great credit to the electorate and he represents you extremely well and I'm absolutely delighted to be a colleague and a friend of his and to come here and give him all the support that I can. Thank you very much.
[ends]