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Thank you very much Chief Justice for those very warm words of welcome, your Grace the Archbishop of Brisbane, Scott McLennan, my parliamentary colleagues, ladies and gentlemen, and students of St Leo';s.
I';m very pleased indeed to have the opportunity at last of responding to an invitation that was first extended to me more than two years ago, to participate in this annual lecture in honour of a man who has interested me for a number of reasons to which I will allude in a moment. But the generic reason why I particularly enjoy the opportunity of being here tonight is it allows me to meet and talk to a cross section of young men studying in this College at this University, and in that way to reinforce my understanding of the attitudes and the aspirations of contemporary young Australians.
Sir James Duhig, as I am told, was the youngest Bishop in the Catholic Church when he was appointed by the Pope in 1905 and I also understand he was the oldest Bishop in the Church or served longer than any other Bishop alive when he died in 1965. He had a remarkable career in the Church. He was described by many people instinctively as Duhig the builder, like so many of the prelates of the Catholic Church that shaped the Church through the 20th Century. He was born in Ireland and he epitomised the magnificent contribution that people of Irish descent have made to the development of this country. And I';m reminded that the last time I shared a table with the Chief Justice and the Archbishop was in fact at the St Patrick';s Day dinner here in Brisbane, held by the Irish Association whose President, I think his name was Kennedy, told me as the evening wore on that in fact Brisbane had the largest Irish Association in the world. I wondered about that but given the boisterous character of the evening and the enthusiasm with which the Doyles and Cosgroves and O';Connors were greeted, I didn';t think it was politic to argue with him.
But James Duhig was a robust contributor to political debate. I read a little about him in preparation for this lecture. He was a person who corresponded with Frank Ford who was briefly Prime Minister of Australia between the death of John Curtin and the election by the Labor Party of Ben Chifley as Prime Minister. He was a great admirer of John Curtin but he formed a very deep commitment to the founder of the Liberal Party, Sir Robert Menzies. And that association between Menzies and Duhig was well known in the 1940s and the 1950s. He did something in the 1940s that I don';t think any person occupying a like position in any Church would do today – he openly attacked the Government of the day during the election campaign. He campaigned very strongly for the Menzies inspired referendum to ban the Communist Party in 1952. That proposition failed, and I have to say with the benefit of hindsight it was probably a good thing for civil liberties in Australia that it did fail, and the Australian people demonstrated on that occasion as they so frequently do when faced with very difficult choices, a capacity to make very wise decisions. Some of you may of course say he would hardly argue with that proposition.
Duhig did make an enduring contribution to the place and the role of the Church, particularly in education in the state of Queensland, and particularly in the city of Brisbane. He of course died in 1965, only a very brief period after the great breakthrough had been achieved in relation to justice for Catholic education in this country. As this audience, young though it is, would know better than most of the same age of groups within Australia, that for about 100 years since the passage of the Public Education Acts in the various states of Australia, the Catholic component of the Australian population had operated under a great injustice of being denied any Government assistance for the maintenance of their education system. And despite that very considerable burden, maintained with enormous commitment and success an education system until the arrival of Government assistance in the early 1960s. And it';s one of life';s ironies that the person who described himself as a humble Presbyterian, Sir Robert Menzies, was in fact the first Prime Minister of Australia to really provide a breakthrough in the 1963 election, offering direct grants for science blocs without discrimination between Government and non-Government schools.
And so began a change in Government policy which produced more equitable treatment. If Duhig were alive today he would be proud of the strength and the virility of the Catholic education system and he would marvel at the greater degree of equity and the fair treatment and the recognition of that fundamental principle that in a society such as Australia parents and parents alone should have the right to decide the nation and the place of the education of their children. And that was a principle that was for many decades denied to people in Australia. We now have arguably the best mix of Government and private education of any like country in the world with some 70 percent of our children being educated in Government schools, and some 30 percent in non-Government schools. And as somebody who himself was a very grateful product of the public education system in New South Wales, let me say that I';m very proud of the contribution that my own Government has made to the maintenance and the expansion of opportunities for not only Catholic parents in the education of their children, but all Australian parents in the choice of the institutions in which their children should be educated.
The President of the Club invited me to address my remarks to the cultural development of Australia. He then was kind enough to go on in his letter of invitation to say well of course, you can talk about any subject you choose. I have thought that tonight would be an opportunity for me to focus briefly on three areas which are important to the development of this country and the cultural development of this country in the very broadest sense. And they are areas of priority that were identified by me as leader of the Government before the last election, not as issues that had to be addressed in the very short term, but issues that were important to the long term development of Australia.
The first of those surrounds something that will be of enormous significance and challenge to so many of the students who I am addressing tonight in the not too distant future, and that is the challenge of balancing your work and your family responsibilities. Family life remains at the heart of our society and it is important on occasions such as this that I state my very strong commitment to governments, whatever their political persuasion, of following policies which encourage and strengthen families, encourage and strengthen people to make commitment to their own families, and also encourage and allow policies which permit people to make the choices they want concerning the care and the upbringing of their own children.
We live in an age where people are demanding far greater choice, and of all the things I find as I move around the Australian community, none excites and interests quite as much in all generations of the constant juggling act that is involved particularly with young children, in balancing work and family. Many of you will look at me and say well that is of no particular interest to me at the moment, and at the moment I';m sure it is of no particular interest to the great bulk of you in this room tonight. But in the not too distant future it will and one of the aims of the aims that the Government has is to promote taxation policy, welfare policy, industrial relations policies and to encourage the States to promote policies relating to such things as school hours, which give to Australian parents the greatest degree of flexibility in balancing their work and their family responsibilities.
The second area that I wish to see my Government focus on not only in the years immediately ahead but hopefully years after that, is the challenge of the demographic change that is now occurring in Australian society. Every western country has an ageing population. The good news is that the challenge for Australia in that area is not as great as it is for many other countries. The bad news is that unless we now adopt policies which provide incentives for a number of things to occur, many of the difficulties that will be faced earlier by European countries, where the ageing process if further advanced and has been aggravated by inadequate public policy, we will find that those challenges and those problems are overtaking our society.
We are an ageing population for a combination of reasons. Our fertility rate, along with all other western countries, has fallen sharply with a very strong decline occurring in the 1970s. It';s also the case that we have workforce participation rates in some age cohorts that are lower than what they are in equivalent countries. And the significance of that with an ageing population is that the fewer people in the workforce means that a greater burden is thrown on those that remain in the workforce to support an ageing population which by definition has fewer workforce participants.
I never like on these occasions to trouble my audience with too many statistics. But one in this debate about the ageing of the Australian population and the participation of older people in the workforce that struck me very forcefully a few weeks ago was to learn for the aged cohort of 55 to 64 the workforce participation rate in Australia was 49 percent. In the United States it is something like 60 percent, and in New Zealand and most other comparable countries it is between 57 and 60 percent. Now that statistic is a metaphor for part of the problem that we face in our society. People are being encouraged out of the workforce at too early an age. We have employment practices in the private sector which I think are increasingly out of date and antagonistic to the longer term workforce participation interests of this country, and all of us has a responsibility to make a contribution both in Government and in the private sector to creating a society in which the value of the contribution of mature aged workers is counted far more than it is now, that we alter employment practices that provide automatic retirement from partnerships and other participation in terms of far too early an age. But ladies and gentlemen, developing policies around those two issues are very important in the medium and longer term.
But tonight I would like to address some particular remarks to the third area that I identified before the election and which I mentioned a moment ago, and that is the issue of sustainable development. It';s current and topical because of the world summit on sustainable development which is taking place in Johannesburg as I speak. And it';s also contemporary because of the debate that surrounds the decision of the Government not at this stage to ratify the Kyoto Treaty. And I want to say a few things about that decision because I know how important issues relating to the environment are, not only to young people in this country but also to people of all generations. The environment is no longer a boutique political or social issue. It is something that is of importance and interest to all sections of the population. It';s almost a clich to say that we are all environmentalists now, but it is substantially the case. We are all concerned about environmental degradation. We all have a responsibility to arrest such things as the appalling levels of salinity in Australia. We all have a sense of concern and an obligation to do something about the level of greenhouse gas emissions.
There will be debate in Australia and around the world about how rapidly the global warming is occurring. There will inevitably be debate about the quality of the science that has been injected into this discussion. But in my judgement there can be little argument that there is a strong body of opinion which suggests that global warming is occurring, that is having a deleterious effect on the environment and that all countries have a responsibility to do what they can to address that particular issue.
And I want to make it clear from the outset that my Government and Australia therefore is very strongly committed to meeting the greenhouse gas emission targets that were set for our country at the Kyoto meeting two years ago. We were provided with a target of 108, the baseline year of 100 being 1990 and we were allowed to have greenhouse gas emissions of up to 108 in the target period which is between 2008 and 2012. So although we are not ratifiers of the Protocol, we are as a developed country prepared to commit ourselves to meeting the target we were given by the international community, and it';s very important that that point be made. And it';s very important that we understand that under the Kyoto Protocol there is a very big difference between the treatment of developed countries and developing countries. A developing country can ratify the Protocol without assuming any obligations under the Protocol. They are not given greenhouse gas emission targets, whereas developed countries such as Australia, if they ratify, are given targets and are subject to other obligations which don';t attach to developing countries.
What we have chosen to do is to commit ourselves to the target that we were given but at this stage because we don';t think it is in our national interest at present, and I';ll come to an explanation of that in a moment, we have declined to sign the Protocol. I want to make it also clear that our refusal to sign the Protocol is not because the United States has refused to do so. If we come to the conclusion as a Government at some time in the future that it is in Australia';s interests to sign the Protocol, then we will sign that Protocol irrespective of whether the United States has signed it or not, just as we decided after a lot of internal debate in the Government party room, in fact one of the best debates I';ve seen in the six and a half years as Prime Minister, to join the International Criminal Court even though the United States was strongly opposed to being a member of the International Criminal Court. It is easy for people to make the erroneous assumption that because we share the same view as the United States on certain issues, we take the view we do because it is the United States view without analysing that there is an individual national interest in taking that position.
One of the reasons why we take the position we do on Kyoto is that Australia is in a very unusual position for a developed country. We are a net exporter of energy. We rely very heavily on energy and on the resource sector, not only for production in this country but also to earn export income. And in that sense we are very different from many other countries, developed countries, and therefore the impact of the international arrangements in this area fall rather more heavily than they do on other countries. The baseline for calculating obligations under the Kyoto Treaty is 1990 and without in any way being unkind or disrespectful to our friends in Europe, I am constrained to say that a baseline of 1990 was particularly convenient to many of the European countries. For example, 1990 happened to neatly capture for the United Kingdom the benefits of the closure of large numbers of mines and pits in the United Kingdom carried out in the 1980s for reasons unrelated to compliance with international demands to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. And it';s also fair to say that the deindustrialisation of Europe, particularly eastern Europe and eastern Germany which followed the fall of the Berlin Wall, also has conveniently delivered greenhouse gas emission credits when you have a base year of 1990 to many of the countries of eastern Europe.
It is very important therefore that Australia';s position in relation to this issue be understood that';s not the attitude of a country that is blindly following the United States, it is not the attitude of a country that is unwilling to meet her internationally allocated targets but is the attitude of a country that is unwilling to commit itself in stages two and three of the Kyoto process to targets in those stages which have yet to be allocated and could impose burdens on this country which are out of proportion to our contribution to greenhouse gas emissions and out of proportion to the obligations that a country like Australia should carry.
It should be borne in mind that if you have developing countries that do not have targets and, for example, a new aluminium investment is involved and the investor has to choose between locating the investment in a country such as Australia where it will have to effectively buy carbon credit in order to establish the industry and a developing country where no such obligation would be involved, naturally for economic reasons the investor will locate the industry in the developing country.
Now our argument very much is that until all countries are treated on an equal basis there will remain very strong arguments in the national interest as to why Australia should not at this stage join the Kyoto Protocol.
Ladies and gentlemen there are just two other thoughts I want to leave with you tonight and both them relate very much to the political culture of this country.
As you would imagine, and you were reminded of it in the Chief Justice';s very gracious introduction a short while ago, I have been very strongly committed to and involved in political activity in this country for all of my adult life. I joined the Liberal Party because largely the environment in which I grew up and the values that I envied as a child from a father who had a small business in which he worked very hard for very long hours and occasions for not a particularly large return, left me with a very deep sense that people who stuck out on their own and started with absolutely nothing and ended up with something to pass onto their children represented about the best that people could aspire to in our community.
Politics in this country has changed a great deal over the last 30 years. It has become a great deal less tribal that it used to be.
When I was growing up and first became involved in the Liberal Party I thought there was a thing called a 40-40-20 rule. 40% of people voted Labor, 40% of people voted Liberal and 20% of people moved around in the middle.
Politics along time ago unfortunately was more sectarian than thankfully it is today. For socio-economic reasons Irish Catholics in Australia tended for economic reasons to adhere to the Labor Party, not because their philosophy was automatically more Labor but rather for economic reasons the Labor Party identified more strongly with the trade union movement than because of their economic conditions that actually involved a significantly high proportion of them.
That of course changed as economic conditions and opportunities changed and we became in every sense an even more egalitarian and upwardly mobile society.
We have, I think, a society in which there is no longer a 40-40-20 rule but sometimes as I wonder around the country I think there is about a 30-30-40 rule. You have 30% who always vote Liberal, 30% who always vote Labor and 40% who move around in the middle. Now I';m generalizing but I think you understand my meaning.
I no longer hear as many people coming up to me saying – I think you';re doing a good job, or I think you';re doing a terrible job but I couldn';t possibly change my vote at the next election because my father has always voted Labor or always voted Liberal and he would turn in his grave at the thought of me changing my vote. I think all of that has changed a great deal.
Politics has become somewhat less ideological than it was. For most of my political experience world politics and there was a projection of it into the Australian domestic scene, world politics was defined by the struggle between the American led west and the Soviet led east. I have to say that the most dramatic political event of my lifetime was the collapse of Soviet communism, the fall of the Berlin Wall and what it represented as a triumph of western Liberalism, using Liberalism in its very generic sense, western Liberalism over the centrally planned economic and political approaches of Soviet communism and communism around the world.
Now those divisions had a projection into this country and that had an impact on the policies adopted by the various political parties in our community. That of course has now disappeared and many of the old divides and the old clich s that used to be relevant, even up until about 15 years ago, are now no longer relevant and it probably strikes many of you, the young here tonight and that';s the bulk of you, as faintly odd that we would have even contemplated a referendum 50 years ago to ban a political party that now doesn';t exist for all practical purpose, the Communist Party of Australia. In fact it reminds me of an ironic exchange that I had at a place which is also very ironic for a Liberal Prime Minister to address.
I was in China recently advocating the cause of Australia';s natural gas industry, an advocacy which in company with the efforts of many other people proved to be very successful, and I became the first western political leader to address a meeting of the cadres of the Communist Party in China and I went out, and we talk about somebody';s father turning in his grave – perhaps my father may well have experienced that if he could have contemplated that I would do that, and I addressed this very large gathering which is just like a large university lecture ampi-theatre though a lot more polite to me than students are on some occasions when I go onto campuses in Australia. They were very very polite indeed and they asked me a whole series of questions and I had just left Australia immediately before the Dalai Lama had arrived and there had been some criticism of me in Australia because I hadn';t seen the Dalai Lama and when I gave my speech to the cadres. I then had a question time and one of them got up and said – you said Prime Minister in your speech that you are in favour of good relations between Australia and China and I said, “yes I am”. Why therefore did you allow the Dalai Lama to come to Australia? I thought that was a delicious irony. Here I was leaving Australia being criticized because I hadn';t seen the Dalai Lama, who incidentally I had met on his earlier visit and somebody for whom I have a very considerable personal regard and respect, and I arrive in China and I am criticized for allowing him to come to Australia and I thought to myself how can I possibly, in terms that won';t be offensive to my guests, how can I possibly explain myself away and explain my country away and I thought to myself I will tell them the story of the referendum to ban the Communist Party carried out in Australia 50 years earlier and I patiently explained that we once had a referendum, a vote in this country, to ban your political party and I said you probably think that';s pretty terrible but I said the good news is that having been given an opportunity to decide whether or not we should ban the Communist Party the Australian people in their wisdom decided that we would not ban the Communist Party. And I somehow or other think that resolved in their minds what they saw to be the unfriendliness of our decision as a country in allowing the Dalai Lama to come here.
Now ladies and gentlemen can I conclude by saying to you that I always enjoy very much the opportunity of coming to a residential college, I have been to many of them around Australia.
I know something from colleagues of mine from Queens land of the reputation of this college. That struck a cord! It';s all good and you can make what you will of what I mean by good. It will mean different things to parents and different things to students and I understand that but I do enjoy the opportunity of engaging I hope in some exchange of thoughts about the future of this country.
With no exaggeration can I say that one of the questions that I get asked most frequently as Prime Minister, particularly by school groups who will come and have a photograph taken in the Prime Minister';s quadrangle and then I will invite them into my office for a while and they will stand around and ask questions and give me a bit of advice, and very readily and very freely, and invariably one of them will say what is the best thing about being Prime Minister, and my answer to that and I mean it very sincerely is that the best thing about being Prime Minister is the opportunity it gives you to meet so many different groups of Australians in their own environment and in the circumstances in which they interact with each other and interact as part of the Australian community and it leaves me always with a sense of enormous optimism.
You would expect me to say this but I mean it very genuinely, this country is held in very warm regard around the world. I have the opportunity, especially this year, to represent Australia in many places for many reasons and the regard in which we are held for our economic performance and strength, the regard in which we are held for the moral stand we took to help the people of East Timor two years ago, and the regard in which we are held for the friendly face we projected to the rest of the world at the time of the Sydney Olympic Games are but three examples of positive reactions I received as Prime Minister.
It is a huge privilege to have met the Australians who are part of the St Leo';s family. I commend the stewardship of the College, of the Church, of the Jesuits to this institution and the contribution that so many have made over the years.
I wish all of you well in your studies and your future life.
I have three children whose ages are not all that, in fact they are very close to the ages of most of the students here, and I therefore have some familiarity and understanding with your aspirations and motivations and they are ones that enthuse me, ignite in me a belief that the younger generation in this country is capable of everything and more than equivalent younger generations in earlier years of this country were capable of and able to contribute.
Thank you very much for having me tonight.
God bless you all and I hope you will have very long and successful lives and careers.
Thank you.
[ends]