E&OE...........
Well thank you very much Chris, Andrea, Peter and Tanya, Pam and Anthony and Phil Barresi, my many other federal and state parliamentary colleagues, fellow Liberals. This is a fantastic night of, dare I say it, tribal political celebration. I';m not one who is prone to that kind of expression but tonight really is an opportunity to, metaphorically speaking, let our political hair down and recollect for a moment what a magnificent thing we did on the 14th of July in the year 2001. It was a fantastic thing.
In the long history of Australian politics there have been seminal by-elections which have really told the world if you bothered to analyse in a realistic way, and I saw a succession of Labor blokes fail to do that on the first of those videos, if you really analyse what';s happened they';re going to tell you something about the immediate political future. We had the famous Bass by-election in 1975 which saw the extraordinary swing against the Labor Party in northern Tasmania. We had that remarkable Flinders by-election in 1982 which the Labor Party should have won but didn';t. It not only denied the Labor Party the seat but it also resulted in Bill Hayden losing his job as Leader of the Opposition and then that resulted in the defeat of the Coalition in 1983. We had the Canberra by-election in 1995 when Ros Kelly so obligingly resigned and it was dismissed as a mere municipal aberration by my immediate predecessor. 16 per cent swing is some municipal aberration. And then we had the great result here in the seat of Aston.
We were in a lot of political trouble in the middle of last year, we were in even more political trouble in the early part of last year. But we began as any Government that';s in trouble ought to do, we asked ourselves why we';re in trouble and we decided what we could do to get out of trouble. I mean I';m a great believer in politics that if you';re in trouble you don';t just sit there imagining that your undiminished genius is going to win out in the end. You';ve actually got to do something about the trouble that you';re in. I';ve watched a succession of former Prime Minister of Australia, particularly my immediate predecessor imagine that they could never be defeated. One thing you ought to understand about politics, and that is that you can either win or lose and normally if you';re foolish enough you end up experiencing as many losses as you do enjoy wins. And what we set about doing last year was addressing the reasons for our political difficulties. We started with a great Budget, we followed it up with a number of other very important initiatives in areas of policy concern. But importantly here in Aston we chose what is the imperative in any political contest, and that is a candidate who is right for the electorate and right for the times. And that is exactly what we did with Chris.
And I remember that night very well. I perhaps don';t remember it quite as well as Chris, but I think I remember it immediately after Chris. I wasn';t here, I was watching and very emotionally involved in another contest. It was a rugby test between Australia and the British and Irish Lions. And just as I got the first results in that showed a swing to us, we scored a try. And so it went on. And we had a magnificent win over the British and Irish Lions that night and when I got the final for the night and I guessed as Peter Costello guessed and I could tell by the look on his face even though he said we';re only fractionally in front on the two-party preferred vote, it seemed to me that we were going to make it. And I said next morning through a laryngitis afflicted voice on the inaugural programme of the Insiders on the ABC, I said that we were now back in the game. And I really believed that with all my heart. I thought if Labor can';t win a seat like Aston in a by-election in the circumstances that faced them then, then they weren';t going to win the general election. And I believed that then and my belief in our capacity to win was not to waver or to be shaken from then until the 10th of November.
It was a great tribute to the rank and file of the Liberal Party members in Victoria that we won it. I was overwhelmed when I arrived at that meeting and learnt that 500 members of the party here in Victoria, which still has without doubt the most committed rank and file members of the Liberal Party anywhere in Australia, had door knocked the entire electorate. It was a wonderful community effort and of course we went on and I can';t describe the sense of exhilaration that I felt when Chris was sworn in as the new Member for Aston. And as he will remember and as the title of the first video said, in my speech at the Wentworth Hotel on the night of the 10th of November, I said that the Aston by-election had been the turning point in our recovery.
It taught me a lot of political lessons, and that is that you can retrieve a difficult political position if you apply yourself, if you get the right candidates and if you remember that in the end politics is a battle of ideas and a battle of commitment. I think one of the reasons the Labor Party lost the last election was that they were lazy for five and a half years, they did no policy work, they thought that they were going to ride in off the back of public discontent with the GST. They failed to realise that aspirational sense in the Australian community that they will support a Government that is doing the right thing for the country. I';ve just come back from a visit to Europe and it reminded me again of the great esteem in which this country is held. And the three things that define the contemporary regard for Australia, we';ve always been well regarded but the three things that have really lifted us in the eyes of the world are our magnificent economic performance, people know and understand that we';ve got the fastest and strongest growing economy in the Western world. They also admire what we did in East Timor, they saw us speedily and effectively and professionally stand up for a small country that was being pushed around by a bigger country. And their sense of innate fairness and decency came through and they supported it. And they also greatly admired the face that Australia projected to the world through the Sydney Olympic Games of 2000. They saw a face of Australia, the open warm-hearted volunteer face of Australia that we Australians know and understand and feel is our innate being, but which perhaps many other parts of the world don';t fully understand.
So ladies and gentlemen, this is a night to feel pretty happy about what we did a year ago. But it';s also a night to remember that we';ll repeat it only if we continue to govern well. The Labor Party is having a lot of trouble at the present time. They';re 60/40, they';re 50/50, I think John Button got it right. I think John Button';s analysis of the Labor Party is the best thing I';ve read about the Labor Party for years. And if I were the Labor Party I would take a lot of notice of what he says, which means that they will totally ignore his advice. I don';t think it really matters whether you';re 60/40 or 50/50, I was bought up on the simple democratic principle that one man or one woman';s vote was worth the same as the next person. Didn';t really matter whether you belonged to a union. We don';t have block company votes in the Liberal Party, you don';t have 50 per cent of branch votes at conferences in the Liberal Party being dictated by the Business Council of Australia. So why should people throw their hats in the air if the national conference, which Mr Crean has convened for October of this year after a lot of argy-bargy says yes, we';ll have 50/50. That';s not going to solve the problem, just read what former Senator Button and former Senator Schacht have said.
But the other thing we';ve got to do is to continue being the party and the Government of ideas. And that video identified a number of things that I';ve regarded as important for the policy agenda of the Government during the current term. And nothing is more important than the debate that goes on in the community, I call it a barbecue stopper, about the balance between work and family. I find that if you really want to get a conversation going, particularly amongst younger people, you';ll start talking about the competing challenges of work and family. We';re having a bit of a debate at the moment about paid maternity leave. Now Janette and I are at a stage in our family existence where we';re not seeking any qualification for that. But let me say this my friends that it';s part of an overall debate and it';s very important that we as a Government give a lead in identifying the issues that are involved in trying to strike the right policy balance in this very important area of work and family.
It';s important that we don';t make the mistake of thinking that there';s a one size fits all approach. The proposition that we should have some kind of paid maternity leave is a proposition that ought to be examined providing the interests of small business are properly protected, because I don';t believe a government should mandate something like that at the expense of small business. But it should be examined as part of an overall policy package.
I';ve been very impressed with some research I';ve read recently by an English researcher by the name of Catherine Hakim who said that as a result of her research you could divide parents, particularly women in terms of their attitude towards work and family into three groups, those that were overwhelmingly home-centred, those that were overwhelmingly career centred, and the 60 to 70 per cent who fell in the middle who sought in different ways to balance both their families and their work responsibilities. I think it';s important in this whole area that we don';t make the mistake of saying to the community well this is a particular prescription for a particular section of the community and we';re going to mandate it for all sections of the community.
I think it';s important also to remember what government has already done in this area to assist families. We brought in a baby bonus at the last election, I';ve noticed in recent days that that';s been attacked by a number of bodies, including the Australian Industry Group. I want to reject that criticism because that particular proposal recognises what everybody who has become a parent for the first time remembers very well, and that is that one of the economic difficulties particularly of having your first child is that sudden loss of the income of the mother. And the baby bonus is designed to do that, it';s designed to recognise the loss of income that is suffered at the time, particularly when the first child is born. And I think it';s also important to remember the value of what we have already done in this very important family area, and I came across, when I was getting ready for tonight, I came across an excerpt from the Melbourne Age. I do read the Age from time to time, very carefully. And this was an article written by Bettina Arndt for both the Melbourne Age and the Sydney Morning Herald, and she said this, that the surprising news of research commissioned by the Age into the impact on families of six years of the Howard Government is as follows. Conducted by the National Centre for Social and Economic Modelling the research compared the disposal incomes of families in 1996, the last year of the Keating Government, to March of this year, that';s March of 2001. Every family studied from affluent dual income couples through to struggling sole parents showed increases in disposal income. But it was sole parents on welfare who saw the greatest improvement. Sole parent, two child families totally reliant on Government assistance have gained $59 a week, a 19 per cent increase in disposable income over the last five years. This is largely the result of a 37 per cent boost in family assistance.
I mention that ladies and gentlemen to make the very simple point, that in this very very important area of assisting families to balance their work and family responsibilities, we as a community have a lot of challenges ahead of us. We do have a declining birth rate, but you shouldn';t be so naive as to imagine that introducing a paid maternity leave support of a period of 12 or 14 weeks is going to on its own suddenly reverse the declining fertility rate in this country, that is simplistic and naive in the extreme. But what is not simplistic or naive in the extreme is to have a range of policies that recognise that government';s can facilitate the choice of families as to how they balance their work and their family responsibilities. And we have been doing that for the last six and a half years and we';re going to go on doing that with the assistance of people such as Chris and Tony and Phil and others, we';re going to go on doing it for the remainder of this current term.
I just want to finish on one note and that is that politics is a team effort. I';m the Prime Minister of Australia because I have the support of the Liberal Party, I have the support of all of you and I have a wonderful parliamentary team. And I have an extremely good parliamentary cohort from here in Victoria. In the six and a half years I';ve been Prime Minister I';ve had around the Cabinet table from Victoria outstanding Ministers. I mean you couldn';t get a more outstanding Treasurer than Peter Costello. And I don';t know anybody who handles media moguls with quite the flair that Richard Alston does, I mean he never bats an eyelid, he';s always got total control, he always does extremely well out of the ERC, he does extremely well. And in former Ministers, in Peter Reith who showed conspicuous courage in what he did to reform the Australian waterfront in 1998, in what Michael Wooldridge did as Health Minister, Kay Patterson the new Health Minister, David and Rod Kemp. I mean fancy being both the Minister for the arts and sport, I mean that is, I know it';s a hardship post Rod, people say to me what did Rod Kemp do to offend you? You give him such a terrible portfolio. And so ladies and gentlemen the list goes on.
I just want to say to all of my colleagues from Victoria, and finally and very importantly to the Victorian division of the Liberal Party what terrific and loyal and sustained and committed support that you';ve given me in all the years that I';ve been Leader of the Liberal Party and especially over the last six and a half years. We have come a long way in that period of time. This country is regarded with affection and esteem and respect all around the world. And that is because we as a Government have stood for something. The worst thing to do in politics is to inherit government and do nothing with the authority and the responsibility it gives. And even if some of the things we do are unpopular, and we';ll probably do a few things between now and the next election that will make us unpopular, but they';ll be done in the name of strengthening and improving our country and they';ll be done in the name of fulfilling the things that we stand for. Because in the end what matters are the values you espouse, what matters are the changes that you endeavour to bring about for the benefit of your country. You think of the great figures of Western politics in the last 30 or 40 years, the ones that stand out are people like Thatcher and Reagan who turned the tide of history, who inherited a country, in the case of Margaret Thatcher, that was literally the joke of Europe, a country whose economy was declining, a country whose social structure was collapsing, whose self respect was diminished. And she turned that around. And Ronald Reagan, no greater President in the post-war period the United States has seen. His legacy to history as he destroyed the moral will of the Soviet Union and led the ultimate triumph of the forces of political and economic freedom over the forces of political centralisation and state control. Now they are the role models in my view of the sort of governments that we should have in our country. They';re the sort of approaches and the attitudes that have inspired me and they';re the sort of approaches and attitudes that inspire the members of my Government.
But tonight is a night particularly to celebrate and endorse the victory of a great local member in Chris Pearce. Thank you Chris for what you';ve done, we rejoiced in your victory a year ago, it was the turning point and we rejoice in tonight';s celebration.
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