Subjects: Women in parliament; marginal seats; childcare; new tax system; education; 5th anniversary of Coalition Government; gun laws
E&OE................................
Well thankyou very much Deidre. To all of my parliamentary colleague's, particularly can I welcome a former parliamentary colleague Dame Margaret Guilfoyle, ladies and gentlemen. It is important at the beginning of what is going to be a very crucial year politically for the Liberal Party throughout Australia, it is important that the Federal Women's Committee should have decided to organise this seminar. And I wanted to share a few thoughts with you, not exclusively about the roles and responsibilities of women within the Liberal Party, but also as well as touching on some of those things about the nature of the political challenges and opportunities that present us at the present time.
The first and most obvious thing to mention as all of you know that the Liberal Party over the years has prided itself on the principle of equality of opportunity within its own ranks, within its organisation. And increasingly over recent years without the compulsion of a quota or anything approaching that, the Liberal Party has seen a very significant increase in the number of women entering Parliament. That of course has been a reflection of the changing character of Australian society. It's a change that has occurred in most cases comfortably and in a very supportive and welcoming environment. There still remain in my view too few opportunities for women in sections of the Party so far as parliamentary representation is concerned. And that is something which will over a period of time be cured, some of you will find the pace at which it is cured too slow, others will find it about right. The important thing of course about the Liberal Party has always been that we hold very dear two important considerations. One of those is the principle of choice and the other of those is the merit principle. And in many ways so many of the attitudes the Liberal Party takes towards policies that effect both men and women are based upon those two considerations. It probably hasn't escaped the notice of this group that at it's very formation in some parts of Australia the Liberal Party mandated equality of opportunity and equality of responsibilities for both men and women. I think it varies around the divisions. And if you go around Australia if my understanding of constitutions still serves me correctly, the Victorian Division more precisely requires an equality of opportunity than some of the other divisions. Although increasingly we find as constitutions are remade the requirement that a certain number of positions be occupied by women. Federally of course the Liberal Party saw 1996 as the high watermark of female representation - as far as numbers are concerned - within the Federal Parliament. We had a very large number of the new members who flooded in in 1996 were women. And I'm very pleased to say, and I'm very conscious as I speak in the Federal Electorate of Hughes, of some of the quite outstanding individual performances in marginal seats in 1998. And indeed I say without any fear of contradiction that the difference between us winning and losing in 1998 was the capacity of our female members to hang on to marginal seats. That is not to say of course for a moment that we don't have some good blokes in marginal seats. And it's not to say incidentally that marginal seats are only for women. I thought I'd get a few head nods on that. We don't have any 5% rules in the Liberal Party and as you know driving around Australia the increasing numbers are examples of women holding, winning pre-selections for, and holding what are traditionally regarded as safe seats. So we have progressed a very long way and what I'm pleased to say about the representation of women in the Federal Parliamentary Liberal Party is that they represent all the experiences of women in life. They represent women whose lifes experience in many of its years of being in a caring family role combined with careers. Represented women who've come into Parliament a younger age than some others. Women who've had a very early and long association with the Party and who are very preoccupied with and fully committed to the long term philosophic interests of the Party in a very special and focused way. In other words the women who've come in to our Parliament in the Liberal interest that represent increasingly the broad spectrum of women within the community. And that of course is how it ought to be. And it's how we have tried to apply politics in a time that we've been in Government.
Now as you know I'm not the regarded as the most politically correct Prime Minister that Australia has had and. as a result I've not been somebody who'd been very fixated on what I might call doctrinaire anti-discrimination. Just as I am interested in practical reconciliation, so it is that I am interested in providing practical freedom and equality of opportunity for all sections of our society. And to me life under the Liberal Party is very much about offering people, particularly women in our community, two very important things. It's about offering respect and it's about offering them choice. It's about understanding that men and women share many things in common. It's also about fully recognising that there are some things that women do better than men in our community and women have special skill at doing. The same thing can equally apply in relation to men. It think it's silly of us to pretend that life is anything else but that. The important thing is not to be hidebound by some stereotype as to what peoples roles are. Just as many of you would have found it unacceptable 30 years ago that when you heard the overworked expression that a woman's role is this or that. Just as so many of you would have found that unacceptable, equally women have a right to find it as unacceptable women who choose not to have either a full time or a part time career in the paid workforce, those women have every right to resent any depiction of them as having a second class existence. In other words what we have tried to do is to maximise the choices available. It is not for me to say that a family should organise its childcare responsibilities in a particular way, it is my responsibility as Prime Minister to try and generate policies that give the women of Australia the maximum choices in relation to the care of their young children. And one of the things that I'm particularly pleased about is that the impact of the new taxation system has been to significantly reduce the aggregate cost of childcare within Australia and also to provide far greater opportunities. And we get criticised as a Government over a lot of things, all Government's do. But I note with some satisfaction that over the last year of so the volume of complaints about the adequacy and the variety of childcare facilities in Australia has significantly declined. And it is because the new taxation arrangements have made those facilities more affordable for low and middle income families and they have also particularly in relation to after school day care expanded the opportunities. I'm also very pleased that the new taxation arrangements have given some additional support and incentive to those families that decide that when one or more of the children are particularly young one of the parents shall remain out of the paid workforce.
Most of those things are emblematic and also in a practical way make a contribution towards our commitment to providing people with the maximum freedom of choice. And that choice principle runs through another thing that is very important to Australian parents and that is the education that they choose for their children. I'm a very strong believer in freedom of choice in education. As the very satisfied product of a state government education system here in NSW let me say that I enjoyed the opportunity as a parent to choose to send our three children to Government schools at a primary level and to send them to independent schools at a secondary level. I'm not saying that that's the best choice, I'm saying that it was our choice. And what I'm also saying is that everybody in Australia as far as reasonably possible should have the same choice. And if you look at the policies that we've pursued in this area you'll find that the choice that's been opened up has been very considerable indeed.
This happens to be as you know, ladies and gentlemen, the by the day, if not by the date, the 5th Anniversary of the election of the Government in 1996. And I was saying earlier out at a gathering in Liverpool organised by Danna Vale that I had many happy recollections of that night. And I know that quite a number of you in this room, particularly those of you who were elected for the first time, had many happy recollections. And that includes at least three of four in this room who were elected for the first time. One of the really vivid recollections of that occasion of course was when the news came through that Danna had secured the seat of Hughes with a swing of something like 11 or 12%, one of the biggest anti-Labor swings that have been achieved in the country.
Over that past five-year period of course we've done a lot of things. And I believe our country is a better and a safer and a stronger country as a result. One of the things that I'm particularly proud of that we were able to do in that five year period were the changes that we brought in relation to uniform gun laws. And those changes have made Australia a safer country and although they caused some resentment amongst some of our traditional supporters they remain to me as one of the most important social achievements of this Government. Because providing a safer community in which to live, although it is more directly the responsibility of State Governments within our Federal system, maintaining a sense of safety and a sense of security is an enormously important thing for Governments to seek to achieve to do. And when I look back over the last five years and I think of some of the Government's achievements I do think very much of that particular achievement.
We do, as I said in my introductory remarks, we face a big challenge. We've had some big setbacks at State level, we face some challenges Federally. I don't underestimate the nature of the fight that lies ahead of us. I've always tried to be a political realist and I've always recognised that in politics that if you lose touch with reality then you cease to have long term usefulness to the Australian public. I believe that we have a good story to tell. I believe that our record of achievement over the last five years is a very strong one. And I believe that we have within us both the capacity, the people and also the policies to provide the most acceptable alternative when the election arrives at the end of the year.
Can I just say a few words specifically directed towards what is the purpose of this seminar. It is very heartening to me that this seminar should have been, first of all, organised on a national level. I think it is important that we share our experiences around Australia. It is true that there are different pressures and different demands and different challenges in the various States of Australia. But certainly from a national point of view there are a lot of common experiences to be understood and realised. We do live in a very different political environment now to what we lived in a quarter of a century ago. I've often said that we have fewer rusted on supporters of either side of politics. It was always the case when I first joined the Liberal Party and was working in election campaigns when Sir Robert Menzies was Prime Minister that I would come across people who would say 'gee I think the Liberal Party is making a mess of things but I could never bring myself to vote Labor'. And likewise I would come across people who would say 'well I can't abide what the Labor Party is doing but of course I'd rather die than vote Liberal'. That was a very common thing, and there is still plenty of people like that, I certainly hope there are people like that, but there are fewer of them, there are fewer of them and there are more people now who are inclined to switch their allegiance, there are fewer people who - particularly amongst the young - who regard voting for one or the other side of politics as utterly unacceptable. And that represents a very big challenge to all of us and it makes the process of campaigning more difficult. It also means that we have to be a more representative political party. I know it's an old cry from a party leader and somebody who came through the organisation but both sides of politics have to worry a lot about our shrinking membership base. Too much from both sides of politics we see a diminishing number of people arguing with great ferocity and intensity about control of that diminishing number rather than trying to expand our horizons. We have to find new and different ways of recruiting the interest and the commitment of people whose lives are busier and more complicated, and this particularly applies to women, than they were a generation ago. We have to challenge some of the assumptions about our meeting structures and times in the way that we mightn't have thought likely 20 or 30 years ago. We have to recognise that when political parties membership base becomes too narrow they cease to be representative. This is a challenge of course that our political opponents have, I mean you look around the Federal Senate, on the Labor Party side just about every person is a former trade union official or party apparatchik. It is an appallingly narrow interest group that represents that Party. And it's very important that our Party not become like that. We need to put into Parliament people with a multiplicity of backgrounds, we need to put into Parliament people who, yes some people who've had a life long commitment and involvement in party activities, even political staff experience. We also need to have people who've been successful in business and professions. We need to have people who've been successful in what you might loosely call life. In other words people who understand what it is to raise a family, who understand what it is to grow up in a loving family environment, who understand what it is to combine raising a family and running a business and being part of a community. We need all of those talents, and we have to try harder now to make sure we get the right mix. It happened rather more naturally on earlier occasions but we have to try that much harder. And that's why a seminar like this that brings together a group of people who, I guess represent all of the experiences that I've touched on. Not a group dominated by any particular age cohort, not a group dominated by any particular experience in life, not a group dominated by any particular ideology but just brought together by a common Liberal bond and philosophy. And I therefore think the seminar is very timely and I congratulate those who've put it together and organised it. And I think it's wonderfully symbolic that it's held in the middle of an electorate that we captured from the Labor Party in 1996. An electorate where the sitting member's majority rose in 1998 and it really is an electorate that, in many respects, represents the many sides of the city of Sydney. It's metropolitan yet it's outer metropolitan, it's aspirational yet it's not the what you call the leafy blue-ribbon suburbs so inappropriately sometimes used in relation to some parts of our heartland. It's got a bit of everything that makes up the variety of Sydney and I think it's a very appropriate place in which to hold this seminar.
Can I thank all of the members of the committee, to you Deidre in particular and all of your other colleagues at a State level for the contribution that you've made to the Liberal Party over the years.
We have a tremendous opportunity in front of us. There's no reason why we can't win a third term. We've struck some turbulent weather at the moment but that is always the case. I don't know, and I read a lot of political history, I reflect on the experiences of previous governments, I think of some of the difficulties through which previous Liberal Governments passed and how they came out of them. I reflect upon the difficulties that previous governments of other political persuasions went through only to come out of them. We need commitment, we need good people, we need good policies, we need a strong party organisation and all of those things are brought together today and I thank you very warmly for the support that you've given.