E&OE...
AUSTRALIA RISING
Thank you very much Spencer, to Jeff Seeney, the Leader of the Opposition in Queensland, Bruce Flegg, the leader of the parliamentary Liberal Party in Queensland, my old friend Warwick Parer, or good friend of long standing, Warwick Parer the President of the Queensland division, ladies and gentlemen. I'm delighted to be back in Brisbane, to have this opportunity to address the Queensland Press Club. Queensland, of course, is a big part of the Australian success story in the early 21st Century. Perhaps the closest analogy is California's hold on the American imagination last century - the magnetic pull of a better life; a place where dreams are realised and trends emerge that alter a nation's temper.
My speech today is about the future of our nation. It looks ahead to an Australia rising to the challenges of the next decade and beyond - to an Australia within reach.
This is the first of a series of speeches I'll make in coming months on a wide-ranging future agenda, an agenda that includes further strengthening our economy, education reform, new social policy challenges, climate change and Australia's APEC agenda for later this year. Next month's Budget will outline a forward-looking strategy to further build Australia's prosperity. Consistent with the last 11 years, the Government's core objective, in the Budget, will be to keep the economy strong and the nation secure so that Australians can plan for the future with great confidence.
I want to begin my speech today by sketching the sort of world Australians are likely to be living in a decade or more from now. For argument's sake let's say by the year 2020, when most of today's children will be young adults. Liberal democracies, like ours, will continue to flourish, yet their purpose, patience and resolve will continue to be tested. For a country like Australia, there will be no holiday from history or from the long struggle against terrorism. The fight is a different type of war against a different type of enemy. Our interests and our ideals demand that we stay engaged in the world and in the global battle of ideas.
Australia's defence forces must be combat ready and well-resourced and our alliances close and strong in 2020. We will continue to carry a heavy burden for order and stability in this part of the world. Indeed one of the most far-reaching national security decisions my Government has taken was to end a posture of benign neglect in the Pacific and there will be no going back from that commitment.
In 2020, policy makers will still be grappling with the great disjunction of our age - and that is between a globalised economic order and a fragmented political one. Australia has a profound interest in a stable, cooperative and market-oriented global system underpinned by stable, cooperative and market-oriented nation states. And no-one should pretend that the nation state is going anywhere. People will continue to express their demands for security, economic wellbeing and identity primarily through national politics. And the duty of political leaders will still be protecting and advancing the national interest. It will be a world where economic and geopolitical power is more evenly distributed; perhaps more so than at any time since America's rise in the late 19th Century. The human face of globalisation in 2020 will be increasingly Asian and middle class - as our region becomes the epicentre of history's first truly global middle class. It will be a world of intense competition for markets and for global talent. Australia must work hard to earn our place in a fiercely competitive global economy. We must ensure Australia retains and attracts our share of the best and brightest - the researchers, the scientists, the innovators and risk takers who'll generate the ideas for a rising Australia.
Australia's workforce will continue to face challenges from demographic change, from technological change and from globalisation. The Treasurer's Intergenerational Report earlier this month showed that we have made progress in meeting the challenge of an ageing society. Nonetheless, many families are confronting these pressures directly with the rise, for example, of the so-called sandwich generation. More and more baby boomer women in particular carry heavy responsibilities around caring for ageing parents and for children still at home, while also holding down a job in the paid workforce.
All of this points to the need for governments to become even more nimble and responsive to individual needs in the next decade. The old rigid welfare state models have become increasingly obsolete. It also underlines the need to maintain a strong economy. Despite the challenges we face, there's no reason why Australia should not be even more prosperous by the year 2020. But it means becoming even more competitive through economic reform. It means keeping the size of government and our tax burden down on workers and risk takers. It means keeping downward pressure on inflation and interest rates through budget discipline and a flexible workplace system. It means creating the conditions for growth so business will continue to invest and create jobs. It means ensuring that our schools, our tech colleges and our universities are institutions of excellence. And it means investing in our people so they have the skills required in the 21st Century.
In the late 20th Century, indeed at the very end of it, the great genius of our democracy was the ability we found to reform Australia's economy while not leaving behind those who felt threatened by economic change. A rising tide that lifts all boats is our abiding national challenge - a calling for our time and for all time. I spoke about this last year at the National Press Club in Canberra. I talked about the best kept secret of the Australian achievement - and that was our national sense of balance. This sense of balance is the handmaiden of national growth and renewal. It means that we respond creatively to an uncertain world with a sense of proportion. And you might ask, what helps us keep our balance? To me, it's really no secret. It's economic growth, leavened always by Australian commonsense.
Just as we face a global battle of ideas so there is a battle of ideas going on here at home over Australia's future. One side - we in the Coalition - aims to build on what's been achieved over the last decade, to build on policies that have helped sustain the longest economic expansion in our modern history, created two million new jobs, slashed unemployment to a 32 year low, cut welfare dependency and given more Australians a direct stake in the economy. The other side wants to tear down this achievement. It wants to go back to government by a few mates for a few mates - where favoured groups get a special say in our workplaces, in education policy, in environment policy and in welfare policy. Where the national interest gets squeezed out in favour of noisy sectional interests and where the quiet voices of those who work hard, pay their taxes, take risks and contribute to their communities get drowned out.
It's critical that Australia not slip back to the ways of the past. It's especially critical that there be no roll-back of the reforms that have kept our economy growing through a turbulent decade. Any step back will see Australia fall behind in the global economy, reducing our capacity to create jobs, to innovate, to care for the sick and the aged and to help those who need a leg up in today's competitive world. This is not simply an economic argument. It lies at the heart of our quest for a better society. Ultimately, it is a moral argument that bears on what I call the human dividend of economic growth. It's a moral argument because of what growth means for a fair and decent society. The American economist Benjamin Friedman argues this point at length in his book The Moral Consequences of Economic Growth. Broadly distributed economic growth, he notes, provides benefits far beyond the material, supporting political and social stability, fostering tolerance and enhancing opportunity. It's crucial not just to meeting our economic challenges but to meeting our social and environmental challenges as well.
Ladies and Gentlemen, priorities do matter in politics. My Government's number one priority is strong growth, greater prosperity and wider opportunity. An Australia rising to new heights while preserving our great traditions of a fair go and pulling together in times of adversity, an Australia where people have more choice in their daily lives and a strong sense of social cohesion. I've never understood or accepted the argument of those who say that one detracts from the other. By raising families, by employing other Australians, by giving back to their community, Australians show every day how the two of them go together.
I want Australia in 2020 to still be the best country in the world in which to live, to work, to start a business and to raise a family. As a Government, we've made thousands of decisions in the last 11 years that impact directly on the lives of Australians. No doubt we've made our share of mistakes - all governments do. But we have never lost sight of the big things that affect people's lives - their jobs, the wellbeing of their families, decent health care, genuine choice in education and a good social security safety net. We've never lost sight of the human dividend from a strong and growing economy. We've also never lost sight of the need to strike a balance between different interests and different objectives. That's not the same as always seeking consensus and always looking to please. It often calls for hard choices, for example, putting the budget back into surplus, reforming the tax system and the welfare system and abolishing laws that protect a few jobs but destroy many, many more.
Hard choices imply trade-offs. When these are ignored, when ideology takes over, that's when costly mistakes are made. It's when unintended consequences multiply. Why do I dwell on this? Because in part my political opponent pretends to have discovered a different brand of politics - a politics without hard choices, without trade-offs and without unintended consequences - a politics of gestures and good intentions and little else. He argues that in this world Australians face one overriding moral challenge, and that is climate change. I'll talk more about this challenge in a moment, but let me say where I stand on priorities, on decision-making and on the moral challenge of our time.
Climate change is a serious policy challenge and a major priority of my Government. At the same time, we know that independent action by Australia will not materially affect our climate. No-one - not the IPCC, not Sir Nicholas Stern, not even Al Gore - makes this argument. Australia emits fewer greenhouse gases in a year than the United States and China emit in a month. Do we need to lower carbon emissions over time? Of course we do. But to say that climate change is the overwhelming moral challenge for this generation of Australians is misguided at best and misleading at worst. It de-legitimises other challenges over which we do have significant and immediate control. Other challenges with moral dimensions just as real and pressing as those that surround climate change. It also obscures the need for balance in government decision-making. It feeds ideological demands for knee-jerk policy reactions that would destroy jobs and the living standards of ordinary Australians.
To me, the moral challenge of our time is not vastly different from the challenge earlier generations faced. It is to build a prosperous, secure and fair Australia - a confident nation at ease with the world and with itself. It's to give every generation of Australians the chance of social mobility. That's why jobs and economic growth are so important.
A generation ago, this challenge revolved squarely around reversing the then decline of our economy. And this has been the work of both sides of politics in government. Unfortunately, it hasn't been the work of both sides of politics in opposition. Looking back, broad consensus surrounded the need for five great structural reforms to give Australia a shot at prosperity in the 21st Century. They were financial deregulation, tariff reform, privatisation, tax reform and workplace relations reform. And I've always paid credit to the former Labor government for its reforms in the area of financial deregulation and tariffs. The Coalition in Government has gone much further with tax reform, privatisation and workplace reform making our economy more strong, flexible and competitive. And where the Coalition supported all of the big reforms undertaken by the Hawke and Keating government's, the Labor Party, regrettably in opposition, has fought every major reform we have taken to strengthen our economy, they fought getting the budget back into balance, they fought waterfront reform, they fought tax reform, they fought workplace relations reform, they fought the privatisation of business agencies, even though they had supported a similar policy in relation to both Qantas and the Commonwealth Bank when they were in government. And what that means of course is that in 12, in 11 years rather of opposition, Labor in 11 years has still not developed a coherent alternative plan to keep the Australian economy strong, which is the fundamental responsibility of both sides of politics in 2007. It's totally indulged in the negative and on the eve of its national conference in an election year, is still bereft of a credible, forward economic agenda.
Labor has opposed our policies for macroeconomic stability and disciplined financial management. By balancing the budget, paying off government debt, establishing the Future Fund and confronting the challenge of an ageing society, we have laid the foundations for a new era of growth, prosperity and opportunity. But the job is not done. While Australia has lifted her game, so have our competitors. And we must stay on the course of economic reform, including workplace reform. Australia's workplaces, as I'm sure this audience knows only too well, represent the arteries of our economy. Clog them up with more and more regulation and you slow our economic pulse. WorkChoices is not just about more jobs and higher wages, compelling as that case is, its importance extends to the broader macro-economy.
We all know that Queensland is doing well, and it's doing well in part from high commodity prices in the mining sector. In the past, under centralised wage fixing, a terms-of-trade boost like this would have triggered a wages break-out across the entire economy and sections of industry, particularly manufacturing, would have been decimated. This time that has not happened because relative wages have reflected industry fundamentals and because overall wages growth has been well-behaved. This is an historic achievement for modern Australia in a time of prosperity. Quite simply, it never happened under the old centralised, union-dominated, industrial relations system. And it's meant that inflation has been contained which in turn has limited upward pressure on interest rates. It's meant the Reserve Bank hasn't had to slam on the economic brakes. It's meant that Australia can continue to grow, now for the 16th year in a row.
Crucially, in this context, the union dominated industrial relations system that Mr Rudd has promised to give us will bring back the worst features of centralised wage fixation. Higher wages paid in very profitable sectors of the economy will flow through the system to other industries which can't afford them with adverse economic consequences including job losses. There's also a microeconomic case for WorkChoices that often gets overlooked in the debate. Flexibility at the workplace creates an environment that encourages innovation, the acceptance of new technology and the development of worker skills. Without genuine flexibility the underlying dynamism of our economy ebbs away, the spirit of entrepreneurship - especially in small business - is crushed and Keynes' famous animal spirits become very tame and timid beasts indeed.
A rising Australia desperately needs that entrepreneurial spirit. It needs the enterprise workers in our mines, our factories and our service firms who've transformed our workforce and its aspirations. Mr Rudd has made his work choice. He's put union power ahead of workers' jobs. The risk takers in our economy need to know that they will not have Julia Gillard, and Greg Combet and Sharan Burrow looking over their shoulder every time they employ a person or restructure their firm. Not to mention Simon Crean, Martin Ferguson, Jenny George and Bill Shorten. Mr Rudd cannot have it both ways. He can't go on about productivity while proposing to hand over power to people who've never taken a business risk in their lives.
Labor's real agenda isn't productivity. It's power - and for that it's prepared to undertake the first major reversal of economic reform in Australia in 25 years. Continued economic reform remains a vital part of the National Reform Agenda being pursued by Commonwealth and State Governments together. At the COAG meeting earlier this month we agreed to take forward reforms that will deliver more competitive energy markets, better transport infrastructure and less red tape. But stripped of the rhetoric, all levels of government in our federation must live up to their responsibility. In the end this is the only long term answer. The only sustainable federalism is a federalism based on the acceptance of individual responsibility by the various components in the Federation.
My opponent claims he will end the blame game in the Federation. What he's really saying is that all criticism of state and territory governments - all of which happen to be Labor - is off limits. He talks about saving money by getting rid of duplication. Yet many of his actions point to more overlap and duplication. A large slab of his so-called