E&OE.................................
Thank you very much Peter for those warm words of introduction. I am quite relaxed about my Treasurer going door knocking because, unlike one of my Labor predecessors, I'm confident that my Treasurer has put his tax return in on time.
Ian Carson, President of the Victorian Division, Dennis Napthine, Peter Costello, my Ministerial and federal and state Parliamentary colleagues, fellow liberals.
Thank you very much for your welcome. Janette and I are delighted again to be amongst our friends and supporters and people dedicated to the liberal cause within the Victorian Division.
It's now just a little over 5 years since the government I lead was sworn to office on 11 March 1996 and it is for a moment an occasion to reflect on what has been achieved over that five year period. To remember the state of Australia five years ago and to contemplate the state of Australia today. To acknowledge the enormous improvements that have been made to the underlying strength of the Australian economy, to recognise that this country has a more balanced and appropriate set of foreign affairs and defence relationships with the rest of the world, to know that over the last five years we have swept away the then rising tide of political correctness that would always substitute the interests of minority groups ahead of the interests of the mainstream of the Australian people.
It is an occasion for reflection, not an occasion for complacency or nostalgia, but certainly an occasion for reflection. And it's also an occasion to remind ourselves of what it was all about and why we did the things we did because economic reforms are not ends in themselves. Having a balanced budget is not sort of a spiritual value, having a balanced budget means that you can do other things. And in the end if you look back at what we have done over the last five years, what we now do and what we will do in the years ahead, it has all been about one single goal and that is securing our future. Securing our future as a nation through securing the future of our economy. Of securing the future of our education system. There is now more choice within the education system of this country than ever before.
I spent the day in the electorate of Dunkley yesterday, campaigning for our magnificent member, Bruce Billson, and as I went around probably half a dozen principals of catholic schools and small independent schools, not the principals of very well known GPS schools in Sydney and Melbourne, but the principals of small, independent and small Catholic parochial schools whose students are not the children of wealthy people but of mainstream Australians, and person after person said to me, thank you for what you have done to allow the parents of our students to exercise more choice.
Last week I was in Queensland. In fact I was in Queensland the week before and the week before that and I spoke to the head of one of the largest catholic private hospital complexes in Australia and he said to me I want to thank you and your government for saving the private hospital system of Australia through your private health insurance rebate.
I don't pretend to you that the health system of this country is perfect. When you look around the world, the balance that we have between private and public in the health system just as the balance we have between private and public in the education system, is superior to any that you find in a comparable country. And I simply say that if you're on a modest income, it's better you get sick in Broadmeadows or Bankstown than in the Bronx or Brixton because the conditions that you'll be treated under are infinitely better.
So as we look back over the last five years, we see a pattern of reform. Some of it has been, in the eyes of some in our community, at a dizzy pace, but it's all for a purpose. And the purpose is securing our future, of building a more secure Australian community. Without economic security, we can't have a stable society. Without the secure provision of basic services, we can't deliver fair outcomes to all of our people.
And Peter dwelt a moment ago on hypocrisy of the Labor states in relation to the GST. The greatest single gift of the GST is for the first time since World War II it guarantees growing revenues to the states of Australia to fund the provision of basic services for their citizens.
I mean that should never be forgotten and by what the year after next Peter, the state of Queensland will begin to be ahead of what it is under the current arrangements and the other states are going to follow and one by one they will become increasingly better off and they will have the wherewithal, the financial sinews, to provide growing levels, not diminishing levels of public services. But today, as well as reflecting on what we have done to secure our future in the policies we've followed over the last five years I want to focus for a few moments on the alternates because in the end political contests in this country are two horse races. There'll only be one result at the end of the year - the government I lead will be re-elected, or the opposition led by the Australian Labor Party will be defeated. They're the only possible outcomes. A Freudian slip. There are only two possible outcomes, we win or they win. If they win, Australia loses, if we win Australia wins.
But I do for a few moments very seriously want to take you through the implications of a Labor win. Because it's important that we communicate these implications to the Australian people. It will be no tiny adjustment, it will be no tiny shift back in time. You won't be, as Mr Beazley would want you to believe, just adjusting a little bit of the edges and life will go on virtually the same. If Labor wins federally, you will with the exception of South Australia, have federal and state Labor governments in all of the states. You will have blanket Beazley, wall to wall, trade union dominated governments throughout the whole of Australia. And the implications of that in an area like workplace relations are absolutely horrifying, because of all the cultural things that Labor will again change to the disadvantage of this country it will be the culture of the workplace.
Make no mistake. Even though union membership now may be only 19.7% in the private sector and 25% overall, make no mistake my friends, the federal parliamentary Labor Party is more dominated and more beholden to the trade union movement now than at any time in the 27 years that I've been in federal parliament. And the latest example of that was the installation at the whim of the New South Wales Labor executive of Jenni George - Jenni George - she will join Martin Ferguson and Simon Crean and all of the others who held high office in the trade union movement. I watched this extraordinary phenonomen as fewer and fewer Australians like trade unions, particularly the young, I've seen the membership of trade unions halve in the years I've been in politics. Despite that, ladies and gentlemen, you see their increased power and their domination of the federal parliamentary Labor Party. And if Labor wins federally in co-operation with Labor governments in all but one of the Australian states, except in South Australia, they will have an unrivalled historic opportunity to return power to the trade union movement, the like of which we've not experienced for 30 or 40 years. What that's going to do, will of course be to destroy free bargaining which now exists in the workplace. Australian workplace agreements will be abolished. Compulsory unionism will come back and there won't be any kind of you know, muffled, gentle, compulsory unionism, it will be full on compulsory unionism and if you don't believe me, look at the moves that are already under way to force non unionists effectively to contribute to union funds. Now, if you think you've seen the thin end of the wedge in relation to that you have and if you get a federal Labor government they'll do a deal with every single state Labor government around Australia to create a defacto compulsory unionism in every workplace in this country.
There'll be an enormous threat to the independence of contractors. You've got a taste of that here in Victoria and the assault that is being launched by the Bracks government on the small businesses of Victoria via their employment contracts legislation and congratulations to Dennis Napthine and his colleagues for their guts in opposing that legislation in the Victorian Upper House.
But in many ways and bizarrely and perversely for a party that still says it believes in helping the working men and women of Australia, the real victims of a federal Labor government will in fact be the wage and salary earners of Australia. Because the wage and salary earners of Australia have been better off under our government than they were under the governments of Mr Hawke and Mr Keating. They've been much better off. I know a lot of Labor people find this hard to believe, but in fact because of the increased productivity in the workplace which has flowed directly from our approach to industrial relations, workers now have higher real wages, and have had higher real wage increases over the last five years, than they did in 13 years of Labor. And when you add to that the fact that the average home loan is now costing that person $270 a month less than it did when I became Prime Minister, it adds up to the reality that they are much better off in real terms. Now that will be at risk under a Labor government because if you go back to a union dominated imposed collective bargaining system you will not get the same productivity gains. You will lose them.
And all the productivity gains that have come out of more flexible arrangements of the workplace, which have allowed the business to work better, particularly small business. All of those gains are going to be lost. So on that one central issue, and in the years before I became Prime Minister I probably poured more of my intellectual and political energy into a campaign to free the industrial relations system than any other single thing because I regarded it as the greatest blight on the productivity of this country that we had inherited from pre World War II days. And I believe very passionately as did Peter Costello and many others that what we had to do in this country was to change our industrial relations culture and we have done it. And we've done it against terrific odds. You'll all remember the very difficult and bruising waterfront dispute in 1998. Something that year after year members of the Liberal Party, state councils all around the country, all of our leading business supporters told us that somebody, one day, some time might have the guts to tackle it, and we did.
We tackled reform on the waterfront. There was a lot of bruising in the process but in the end we now have a waterfront that is functioning efficiently to the benefit of the Australian people. We have achieved a productivity level ahead of the benchmark that we set ourselves in 1998. And enormous credit is due to Peter Reith for the leadership that he displayed as Industrial Relations Minister on that issue.
But ladies and gentlemen there is an enormous risk, worse than that there is an enormous cost to all of us if Australia goes back to Labor in the area of industrial relations. And as I reflect over the five years about what we have done, I look at the Labor Party and I ask myself what has Mr Beazley done in the five years that he has been the Opposition Leader. I mean five years is a long time. I haven't wasted my time. I haven't let the grass grow under feet. I haven't swanned around in a white car and said gee it's nice being Prime Minister. I put my head down along with all of my colleagues and I've worked from day one. And not everybody has agreed with everything that we have done but they know that we have tried and in many areas we have succeeded in making a huge difference for ht benefit of Australia.
But by contrast what has the Labor Party done over the last five years? Can you think of one single policy that you can undeniably identify with Kim Beazley? Rollback? Somebody says rollback. Well Michael Egan who is actually in government as a state Labor Treasurer says we won't know what rollback is until Mr Beazley tells us. I mean the reality is that in five years he has achieved nothing. He's identified himself with no great policy cause. He has no political branding. He does not stand for any clear fundamental change in direction in any area if he becomes Prime Minister. Now as you want to do in politics you make comparisons. So I won't be unfair. I won't compare him with a Liberal. I'll compare him with a member of the Labor Party. And let's choose somebody who I think it's fair to make a comparison with - let's compare him with Gough Whitlam. Gough Whitlam of course was the worst Prime Minister this country has had since World War II. But I tell you what he was a much better Opposition Leader than Kim Beazley. At least he did something when he was Opposition Leader. He took on the Labor Party. Political historians will know that it was his determination to reform the Victorian branch of the Labor Party. In the early 1970s it paved the way for Labor to win seats in this state in the early 1970s. And at least he was identified as standing for things. You know, the cities and the outer-metropolitan renewal and urban redevelopment and all of those things. I mean it all went wrong, hopelessly wrong when they got into government but the point I'm making is that if you go back to the time after he'd been Leader of the Opposition for five years at least people had a clear idea that if Whitlam won he would do this and this and this and this. They didn't know that he was going to absolutely destroy the economy of the country. He kept that under wraps.
But the point I make my friends is that you have responsibilities in opposition as well as having responsibilities in government. We are all part of one political process. The Leader of the Opposition and the Shadow Treasurer think they can talk the Australian economy down, they can refer to recessions without there being any consequence and when they're taxed about it they say we're only the Leader of the Opposition. Don't ask us, don't expect us to have any kind of responsibility. Well they do have responsibilities. And in the long run the Australian people will judge you on what you do both in government and in opposition.
And in that context as I look back over the last twenty years, and I look at the way in which the Australian economy has changed in that twenty year period. And there's really been five grey areas of reform and it's very instructive to look at how the two sides of politics have behaved in relation to those areas of reform both in government and in opposition. It's very instructive of the mind set and the sense of irresponsibility of the Australian Labor Party. Financial deregulation. The intellectual stimulus for that came from the Campbell Report which I initiated as Treasurer. To their credit the Labor government when it came to office began to implement those recommendations. But we made it possible because we supported it. We supported it because it was right for Australia. It wasn't politically convenient for us to support it. We could have run a whole lot of interference from Opposition. Just imagine the fear campaign you could have run about foreign banks. I mean there's a potential to run a campaign against domestic banks. Just imagine the fear campaign that could have been run about foreign banks. But we didn't and the reason we didn't do it is because we believed it was right for Australia even though we were in opposition and they ended up getting the credit for it even though they opposed the idea in the first place. And Mr Keating's first utterance on foreign banks when I announced their entry as Treasurer in the last days of the Fraser government were to say that letting foreign banks in was a surrender to the foreign multi nationals of the world. He quickly changed his tune when he became Treasurer.
Fiscal consolidation as the pointy heads call it, or getting back into the black as the rest of us would call it - they never got seriously into the black when they were in government. And in opposition not only did they admit their guilt, but they tried to frustrate every single attempt that Peter Costello endeavoured to undertake to repay that enormous government debt we inherited.
Tariff reform, necessary. Introduced by the Labor government, we supported it. We could have run a fear campaign on that. We could have run around every manufacturing industry in Australia, every blue collar establishment in Australia in many of the regional areas and say this is outrageous, it's going to destroy all your jobs. But deep down we always knew that if we were going to give our efficient exporters a chance, if we were going to give some kind of long term future to the efficient industries of Australia we needed to have sensible tariff reform. So we behaved responsibly as an opposition.
The two other great reforms that have been implemented under this government of course - industrial relations reform fought tooth and nail by Labor, and taxation reform fought tooth and nail by Labor.
So you see in that little story you see a very clear pattern. When Labor was in government and implemented things that were good for the country they got our support as a responsible opposition. When we are in government and we implement things that are good for the country those things are opposed tooth and nail in a completely opportunistic fashion by the Australian Labor Party. And of course nothing is more redolent of that approach than the treatment of taxation reform by the Australian Labor Party. Labor has been utterly and completely opportunistic on the issue of taxation reform. You would almost if you closed your eyes and in your minds eyes imagined what they would be saying as they discuss their tactics, they would be saying to each other well we shouldn't say it but this country really does need tax reform but it's pretty hard if you're the government that brings it in. And they've had a go at it. Gee I hope it falls over, and isn't it good they've done it. And if the transitional difficulties continue long enough they might lose and we'll get the benefit of the reform that they had the courage to bring in and we will have been seen to have opposed it all along, now isn't that a great outcome Simon.
Now that basically is, I believe, deep down what the Labor Party is on about. Now that's a challenge for us. I don't deny that there have been transitional difficulties with the introduction of the new system. That was inevitable. You can't bring in such a mammoth change in this country without some dislocation, some adversity, and some challenges. And it's our responsibility in the months between now and the election to ensure that those are well and truly ironed out and dealt with and that the longer term benefits that tax reform will contribute to securing our economic future are well and truly understood.
But there's something else that we have to do over the months ahead and that is to remember some of the highlights of Labor's last years in office - the things that you know really lifted our spirits like housing interest rates of 17%, of bill rates paid by farmers of 22% and 23%. And that 11.2% unemployment rate that was achieved when Mr Beazley was the Minister for Employment, and the $85 billion of government debt that he racked up as Finance Minister during the last five years of Labor government.
We have paid back $50 billion of that $85 billion in the face of unrelenting opposition and interference from the Labor Party. We now have a government debt to GDP ratio of 6.4%. In other words the debt owed by the federal government is only 6.4% of the total amount of wealth generated by the entire Australian economy every year. And if you think that's a bit profligate, it's 130% in Japan and it's about 45% in the United States, and the industrial world average is about 35% to 40%. In other words we have restored the fiscal stability and strengths of the Australian economy. Now all of that will be at risk, all of it. And I ask all of you in the months ahead just to keep those three things very much in your mind. I mean you should almost have a little sign over your bed at night, it's not the economy stupid, its just you know, sort of, 17, 11.2 and 85 and every time you see somebody and every time you engage anybody in a political debate, just remind that that was what it was like when Mr Beazley last helped run the affairs of this country.
And in the last five years he has done nothing to give flesh and blood and meaning to what he stands for in relation to the future of this country other than that.
My friends, with your help and your loyalty and your understanding the government has come a long way in the last five years. Modern politics is more challenging by the day and by the month. We deal with a more volatile electorate, we deal with an electorate which is increasingly demanding, we deal with an electorate which in general understands the need for change, but in specific (inaudible) terms is often challenged and unsettled by change and it is a supreme test of our political skill that we maintain the necessary momentum for change and improvement because it's needed to secure our future, to secure our living standards and to secure jobs, and to understand the need on all occasions to communicate the purpose of change and to make sure that those people left vulnerable by change are protected to the maximum extent possible.
There's going to be a great fight over the months ahead. It's a fight that I enter with energy and enthusiasm, commitment, but most of all an unshakeable sense of self belief that the only side of politics that can deliver a secure future for our country is our side, our team and our great party.
[Ends]