Thank you very much for that very warm welcome and I';m delighted to have this opportunity to open your conference, to welcome those who have come from other parts of Australia to Canberra, and to reaffirm my very strong personal interest in and support for ALSF, for the cause of liberalism on university and college campuses all around Australia, and in the process of that to hark back to something that I identify as being important about Liberal students way back in the middle 1980s when the Liberal Party was going through a very long period of opposition – and that is that fundamental to the political debate that goes on in this country is the battle of ideas. That unless a political party wins the battle of ideas, it cannot hope to either gain or retain office.
And I found in the 1980s, as I found in the 1990s and I know you are contributing to in the 21st century, that Liberal students are at the forefront of the battle of ideas, and that there are certain constant attitudes and values that are important, and no matter whether you are in Government or in Opposition, you have to maintain them. And one of those is an issue that is very dear to your heart, and that is voluntary student unionism. And I';m pleased to report again that the Government has prepared and will reintroduce as part of its university reform package, legislation to bring voluntary student unionism to the campuses of Australia. The legislation will stipulate that membership of student associations is to be voluntary, and we';ll make it a condition of funding to higher education institutions that student unionism or the payment of money not related to a student';s course is not a condition of enrolment. This is a fundamental straightforward principle of freedom of association. I have never seen it otherwise. The Government I lead has never seen it otherwise, and we will continue to argue before the Parliament that this legislation be adopted.
I take the opportunity of thanking all of you for the contribution that you have made to supporting the Federal Coalition Government over the last seven and a half years. We have now won three elections, but I remind all of you of the vagaries of politics. There is no such thing as an unbeatable Prime Minister or an unelectable opposition. If you reflect on Australian political history, you will learn that just over 40 years ago, Australia';s longest serving Prime Minister Sir Robert Menzies in 1961 went very close to being defeated by the Labor opposition. And it';s a reminder, that election, when the Government of the day was returned with a majority of only one after the election of a Speaker, it';s a reminder that anybody who imagines that a party that has been in office for a number of years assumes some kind of infallibility and automatic entitlement to reelection, it';s a reminder of how wrong that approach can be. And one thing you will not get from this Government, and one thing that you will not get from me, is any sense of complacency. Winning the next election will be very hard. They get harder each one you have to fight. And it';s only a period of 16 months between now and the next Federal election, and we will need the assistance and support of people all over Australia if we are to retain Government.
One of the issues that is in front of us at the moment is of course reforms to the university sector and the reform package that Brendan Nelson has so ably articulated and put together. This is the most important opportunity that the university community of Australia, and extended from them the student and potential student body of Australia, has for many years to reform, to get more resources into the university sector, to open up opportunities for young Australians to further expand the horizons of Australian universities to the rest of the world. No Government can afford to provide out of the taxpayers' dollars all of the money that universities will need in the future. No Government can do that – whether it';s a Liberal Government or a Labor Government. We are now being treated to the fantasy, so to speak, from the Labor Party, from Mr Crean, that somehow or other you can provide all of these additional resources without imposing an additional burden on the taxpayer.
What we are seeking to do is to provide more resources to Australian universities through increased contributions from the taxpayer and also increased contributions over time from the private sector. We are not proposing to charge $150,000 for university courses. The way that charge glibly rolls off the tongue of our political opponents implies that if our reforms are passed, after they';re passed, every university student in Australia will have to pay $150,000 for a course. That is a complete and utter untruth. We in fact are going to increase by 25,000 the number of Commonwealth funded places in Australian universities. We are going to increase the number which are now available under the HECS scheme, a scheme introduced by the Labor Government in the 1980s and the introduction of which was supported by the Coalition in opposition because we thought it was a necessary reform. And I invite you to contrast the cooperative forward-looking attitude of the Liberal Party in opposition to the negative, destructive attitude of the Labor Party now in opposition.
The reality is that we need greater flexibility for our universities. We should increase the number of HECS funded, Commonwealth funded places, and we';re going to do that. We';re going to do that to the tune of 25,000. We';re also going to double the number of full fee paying places that will be available to Australian students. And I find it amazing and an extraordinary piece of discrimination against Australian students, that the Opposition Leader can say as he did at the weekend, if he were Prime Minister he would prohibit full fee paying Australian students, but he wouldn';t prohibit full fee paying foreign students. I can';t for the life of me understand why it';s alright for a student from England or America or Japan or Indonesia to pay full fees for a place in an Australian university, yet it is wrong for a student from Sydney or Perth or Toowoomba or Ballarat to pay full fees for a place in an Australian university. I find that unacceptable discrimination against Australian students, and I have never been able to understand why it is that you should give a privilege to foreign students but you deny the same opportunity to Australian students.
Our proposals offer the only effective path forward. The university sector needs more flexibility, it needs more resources, it needs more capacity to vary what it offers, and students need greater choice, including access to student loans. The only policy that offers that is the policy of the Coalition. The ideas that we have had from the Australian Labor Party so far indicate a mindset that is still very much determined by the attitudes of the 1980s and the 1990s, a preoccupation with discriminating against Australian students when it comes to full fee paying places, an unwillingness to recognise that different universities have different needs. And unless you provide universities with the flexibility, then of course they will inevitably be able to offer a lesser quality product to the students of Australia';s future.
This Government over the last seven and a half years has properly earned itself a reputation of being a Government that is very supportive of investment in our intellectual capital, very supportive of research – not only medical and scientific research, but research in all sectors of the Australian society. Our Backing Australia';s Ability program, which I announced at the beginning of 2001, has poured hundreds of millions of additional dollars into research, into the universities, in a collaborative effort between industry, universities and scientists and researchers. And overall it has begun to reverse some of the elements of the brain drain from Australia, and we have seen in recent years the return of many talented Australians to this country because they again see it as a nation that beckons and is welcoming to those people who are prepared to invest years of their intellectual capacity and their lives into valuable research for the good of humanity and for the furtherance of science.
In opening your conference, ladies and gentlemen, can I return to the theme that I mentioned at the beginning. And that is that politics in Australia now as always is about a battle of ideas. We have three great goals as a Government. We have the goal of providing national security. That is the first responsibility of any Government, particularly in the circumstances in which the world now finds itself. And there is not much doubt in the minds of the average Australian as to which side of politics is better able to guarantee and deliver national security in all its respects in the circumstances of 2003 and beyond.
Our second great goal is to provide economic strength, and there is once again very little doubt that this country has outperformed most countries over the last seven or eight years economically. Australia is a stellar performer on the international stage and much of the deserved respect for Australia around the world now is a product of the economic strength which we have displayed over the past few years. The fall in unemployment, the continued high growth rates, the elimination of budget deficits, the energetic economic reform in the areas of industrial relations and taxation, a willingness to seek a free trade agreement with the most powerful country in the world, which if achieved will do more than any other single external thing to underwrite our economic future. All of these things speak of a Government which is determined always to be a reformist progressive Government in the management of our economy.
And our third great goal of course is to deliver social stability. One of the proud boasts of Australia is that we are an egalitarian society and we, all of us, have a responsibility to ensure that it is kept that way. We all have a responsibility to try and ensure that Australians, wherever they may live, whatever their background may be, have equality of opportunity. We cannot guarantee equality of outcomes, but we can work to deliver equality of opportunity, and that has always been a very important part of the Liberal Party';s belief system. So they are our three great goals for the governance of this country – national security, economic strength and social stability. And if you look at the detail of our policies, you will see that all of them in one way or another relate to those three over-arching objectives.
In the past few weeks, we have seen a little bit of activity from those on the other side of politics. I make no comment on who should be the leader of the Australian Labor Party. That is a matter for the Labor Party itself. I have always taken the view that comments made about things like that by the leader of the opposite party are inevitably seen as rather self-serving and therefore are properly discounted by the Australian public. But something did come to my attention this morning, and I';d like to leave you with this thought, and in the process of leaving you with this thought, leave to the Leader of the Opposition the two questions that I believe that he should answer. I noticed in an article in The Australian this morning written by Glenn Milne, suggesting that the proposition that negative gearing be taken away for investment properties in Australia was in fact understudied by the Labor Party';s equivalent of the expenditure review committee, and therefore on Friday when Mark Latham said that it was something that was being examined, he was in fact speaking the truth, and that therefore the rebuke that was delivered to him by the Opposition Leader immediately afterwards was undeserved. Just as you will have questions to me in a couple of moments, and I';ll be very happy to answer them, I';d like to leave two questions for Mr Crean to answer.
The first is – was the Labor Party';s expenditure review committee examining negative gearing? Was Mr Latham therefore telling the truth when he said what he did? And if that is the case, the second question is – is negative gearing still a policy option to the Australian Labor Party? Is it still on the table? And if it is, why did Mr Crean mislead the Australian public last Friday when he said in rebuking Mr Latham that negative gearing, the removal of negative gearing, was not a policy option for the Australian Labor Party? With those questions to the Leader of the Opposition, can I conclude my remarks.
I thank all of you for the tremendous support that you have shown to the Liberal Party cause on campuses around Australia. I wish your conference well. I thank you for having me as your patron. And I have much pleasure in declaring this annual gathering of the ALSF open.
QUESTION & ANSWER SESSION
QUESTION:
I know that all of the campuses that are represented today have been working very very hard to sell the higher education reforms on campus. What do you think is the single most important message that we should be selling or we should be promoting to sell these reforms and also to help the Coalition in the next election?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well I think the most important message that you have to get across is that whatever oppositions might say the truth is that no government in the future will be able to afford to provide all of the additional resources that universities are going to need. And the idea that you can put more resources into universities, you can make courses cheaper without there being somebody who picks up the tab, without there being some cost down the track is just fairyland. And what we have to do is have a partnership. We all should remember that one of the things Australia does very well is mixing public and private contribution when it comes to the provision of important human services. We do it far better than most other countries.
The HECS system is fundamentally a very fair sensible system. That';s why we supported it when we were in opposition. And the introduction of the HECS system was an acknowledgment by the then Labor government that the Whitlam fantasy of free university was in fact precisely that, a fantasy. But we now have signs now from Jenny Macklin and Simon Crean of a return to the Whitlam fantasy. Now I think it is deceptive to pretend to people that you can not have contribution from both public and private sources. We are going to put billions of dollars more over future years into universities, we are going to increase by 25,000 the government funded places. And this idea that every university place is going to cost $150,000 which is what the Labor Party is trying to put around, I mean they use very slimy descriptions. The reality is that they';re trying to implant in people';s minds that idea and they know that';s untrue because a person who now has a HECS supported place their equivalents plus 25,000 in the future, they';re going to have the same places, it';s just that we';re going to double the availability of fully funded places and we';re going to make them available for Australians as well as making them available for foreign students. I mean I really find it quite unacceptable that if you';re a foreign student you can get a fully funded place in an Australian university but if you';re an Australian one you can';t and that basically is what the Labor Party is proposing.
Look university reform is never easy. It';s always far more popular to go into the campus and say everything';s free or less costly, you won';t have to pay anything extra, nothing will be harder, you won';t have to compete any more, and there';ll be billions of extra dollars available from the taxpayer, we don';t know how it';s going to be paid for but somehow or other it will miraculously become available. It';s always easy to say that and the people over the next few months who will say that will get bigger cheers than those who argue commonsense. But in the end the Australian public is very sophisticated, the Australian public understands that no government can afford to provide all the resources that universities need in the future. Unless you have a contribution from private sources we';re not going to be able to meet the demands of universities years into the future.
QUESTION:
I';m often approached by members of the Country Liberal Party, I know this comes from the left field, about the possibility of a branch of the Liberal Party being established in the Northern Territory. I often say that it';s not the case and that I';m not some sort of secret agent sent to destroy the CLP however the rumours persist. I was wondering if you could comment on whether the Liberal Party has ever considered or will ever consider establishing a branch in the Northern Territory.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well we don';t have any such proposal in front of us at the moment. I don';t mean by that that we are going to have something in front of us next week either. I';m not just using that to be in any way tricky, it';s just that we don';t. The approach of in effect having a blended product in the Northern Territory is one that has worked. Obviously if circumstances indicate it in future it might be appropriate to do it in a different way then clearly the party would consider doing so. But I think given the nature of the territory the current formation is the better way in current circumstances of maximising the non-Labor vote.
STUDENT:
I note that later in the week one of the topics for debate during the conference is the double jeopardy rule. I was just wondering if you could briefly outline your view on the abolition of the double jeopardy rule or the maintenance of the rule.
PRIME MINISTER:
Yes I think there are circumstances in which it can work an injustice. I have previously publicly supported a review and the possibility of its replacement with a set of provisions that will mean that in certain carefully defined circumstances it won';t apply.
STUDENT:
It';s interesting to note that around half of the country';s universities were established post 1989 and the John Dawkins'; reforms, and a lot of those universities were regional universities. I';d like to know what the Nelson reforms are going to do and how they';re going to assist students in rural and regional communities.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well the important thing to remember about the Nelson reforms is there';s a guarantee that in the transition no universities are going to be worse off. I mean it';s very important that that first be stated. I think the second thing that has to be stated is that the greater flexibility that';s going to be available to universities will be of benefit to regional universities as much as they will be of benefit to the older universities. And thirdly and very importantly the more resources that are freed, both government and non-government resources, to go into universities are going to make a contribution to all of them, not just the established universities, the older ones, but also the regional universities as well.
QUESTION:
Just a question regarding an area that you spoke about as a priority of the government being national security. With the recent boat people arrivals off the west coast of Australia the ALP have again stated their policy for a coastguard. How would that adversely effect the Australian defence forces, and why is it the case that the ALP continue with policy that obviously failed at the last election?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well I don';t know about….I can';t answer the second part of your question. But the first part of your question is that the idea of a coastguard is an idea which if implemented would do enormous damage to the Royal Australian Navy because what it involves is taking a large number of assets out of the Navy. Apart from anything else, I mean one of the consequences is that it could well mean that the personnel involved fell under union control because a coastguard could well be within the reach of the Maritime Union of Australia which I think all of you agree would be a very undesirable outcome.
But the strongest criticisms of a coastguard have come from the Navy itself who say that in one of the most valuable things about the early years that a person has in the Navy is the training opportunities and if you take some of the assets that would be useful for that training away from the Navy and put them into a coastguard you would weaken the Navy. You see you can';t have it both ways, you can';t have an additional asset without making additional resources available or taking the resources for that new asset away from something else that has them now and that of course is what the Labor Party is proposing. They';re not proposing to spend hundreds of millions of dollars more on acquiring new assets. They';re really shifting people from one part of our defence force into a coastguard, weakening the defence force in the process, and not adding in any way to our capacity to provide surveillance.
Look it is quite remarkable, now let';s call this for what it is, it is quite remarkable how successful this country has been since late August of 2001, that';s almost two years, in deterring illegal immigration. It is quite remarkable given the size of our coastline and the nature of the challenge that we face. And I think it has been a quite remarkable achievement.
QUESTION:
I was wondering Prime Minister whether you thought there was a contradiction between Labor';s Opposition to an increase in the student contribution to university fees yet their commitment to compulsory up-front student union fees?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well I think there';s a contradiction there and I think also there';s a contradiction between what federal Labor is saying about our proposals and what state Labor has done in New South Wales. In some cases the last New South Wales budget increased TAFE fees by 250 to 300% and TAFE colleges are the places to which some 60% or more of people who leave school go in preference to a university. And some how or other it is social justice to increase those fees by in many cases 250 to 300% yet it is an ideological and fairness outrage for us to propose that universities will have the freedom if they choose to increase fees by up to 30%. There';s an enormous contradiction in relation to that. I think the whole idea of the, as I said earlier, the abolition of the right of people to pay full fees if you';re an Australian but it';s perfectly okay if you come from a foreign country. I think that';s a fundamental piece of discrimination against Australians.
QUESTION:
I have particular concerns about paid maternity leave, in particular the ACTU model that';s been put and the effects that that may have on job opportunities for young women. I was just wondering if you will protect us from that sort of scheme?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well look, in a free society I think people will make their own choices as to how they organise their family life. My view is that the notion of paid maternity leave should be considered as part of future changes which effect the work/family balance. I have never said that I';m against paid maternity leave in principle and I';m not. I encourage employers where they are able to and can afford it to make paid maternity leave available and many of them do. I am against making it compulsory. That would be an unfair imposition on many small employers and there';s no way that a Liberal government will make it compulsory. I want to make that very clear.
I think it';s also the case that the benefits of paid maternity leave have been grossly exaggerated by many of its advocates. I mean I';ve read stories suggesting that it would have a dramatic impact on the fertility rate. That';s just completely incorrect. The Unites States is one western country that does not have paid maternity leave but has a much higher fertility rate of 2.1 than many of the European countries, especially Scandinavian countries, which have paid maternity leave and have much lower fertility rates. You all appreciate that the decline in the fertility rate in this country is due to a whole combination of factors and the notion that 14 weeks paid maternity leave is going to bring about some kind of reversal in that is really….it only has to be stated for people to realise that it is an absurd proposition.
My very strong view in this whole area is that the role of the government is to provide men and women with choice so far as balancing their work and family responsibilities are concerned. We do live in a different society now than a couple of generations ago, but it is still the case that men and women when they have children want choice. They don';t want to be told by the government that the best thing to do is to if you';re a mother is to race back into the workforce as soon as you possibly can, and nor do they want to be told by the government that the best thing to do is to stay at home indefinitely. They want to have a right to decide and increasingly the model is emerging of what I call the policeman and the part time sales assistant where 50% of couples with dependent children in Australia now have either one or one-and-a-half incomes. Only 17% of couples with dependent children have two full-time incomes and one of the things that you have to be very careful of in getting advice in areas like paid maternity leave is to make sure that the paradigm on which the advice is based is a paradigm that is represented of the majority of the Australian community and not representative of a limited section of the Australian community. Now what we have tried to do is to increase choice. We have increased the family benefits, where families have a child under five we have effectively provided income splitting for single income families through the changes we';ve made to the child benefits, we have made child care not only more available but also more affordable, and we recognise that there is no one size that fits all in this area, that some families when they have children will want one parent to be out of the workforce indefinitely, others will want that parent to be out of the workforce for a while and then go back part time with the option perhaps when the children are much older going back full time, others will want both parents to be in the full time workforce all the time.
Now my job is to within the constraints of the budget have policies that allow the maximum number of Australian parents to exercise the maximum amount of choice. It';s not to say you should do this, or modern society requires that you behave in a particular fashion. Clearly a stable, united, caring families are the best environment to bring up children. Nothing alters that and the more that we pursue policies to make it easy for people to exercise their choices and one of the driving forces behind the view that I';ve had for a long time that we should have more flexible school hours is a belief that the current model which is an older model for a time that is not really quite as much with us as it used to be that does need review and I don';t think it';s beyond the width of state education authorities to find ways of providing more flexibility in school hours. What I';ve got in mind perhaps is that after school ends in the traditional sense you could have a bit more supervised sporting activity and that would make a contribution to the growing problem of teenage obesity. You could have some supervised homework so that the time that parents spend with their children at night is not bedevilled by arguments over homework.
Now I mean they';re fairly elementary I think and basic and important propositions and these are issues that Australian parents are quite interested in because it effects the quality of their lives, it effects their relationship with their children and they';re the sort of things that I have in mind when I talk about more flexible school hours, and I think they are issues that should be debated. And I notice from time to time that I get plenty of advice from the state premiers about how to run the country, and from time to time I give a bit of advice to state premiers about how I think they should discharge some of their responsibilities.
QUESTION:
Just a quick question, are you concerned about at rate and breadth of changes that you';re making both domestically and in foreign affairs is too fast for the Australian people?
PRIME MINISTER:
No I don';t. I recognise that there';s always a challenge if you are a reformist government. There is a tendency for some people to talk of reform fatigue. But Australians recognise that we live in a global community, they recognise that over the past couple of years unfortunately the world has changed, that we do live in an age of terrorism as I described it last week, and that people recognise that you don';t really have the option of marking time. But if you don';t keep reforming and changing you run the risk of falling behind. I think most Australians will go along with that. But I recognise that the advocacy challenge is there all the time to persuade people of the need for reform and change.
[ends]