Well thank you very much Rob for those very kind words of introduction and to you as the Leader of the State Liberal team here in South Australia, I know it';s always quite a challenge in the early months of Opposition, but I wish you well and congratulate you on the great job that you and your team are doing in providing an alternative here at the State level in South Australia.
I';ll have the opportunity over the weekend at the Liberal Party Conference of saying something of Rosemary';s contribution to the Party here in South Australia, but I can';t let the occasion of this very large business gathering go by without, on behalf of the Liberal Party around Australia, thanking her very warmly for the leadership she';s given to the Division over the last three years.
I also, of course, acknowledge the presence of many of my South Australian colleagues, Senator Robert Hill, the Defence Minister and Leader of the Government in the Senate, Senator Minchin, Senator Vanstone, Senator Ian Macdonald from Queensland and my other Federal and State parliamentary colleagues.
Very importantly, ladies and gentlemen, I want to thank you for supporting this lunch. I want to thank the sponsors and collectively to say to those of you who continue to support in a very visible way the Liberal Party cause here in South Australia, that it is in the best sense of the term an important investment in the future of this State and through it a very important investment in the future of our country.
I always remind audiences such as this that of course the Federal performance of the Liberal Party in South Australia over the last three years has been better than any other State in Australia and it';s a source of great pride to the South Australian Division. But of course we face sometime, I guess, around about a year or a bit or more, don';t any of the journalists read anything into that, from now we will face another electoral contest and that';s an electoral contest that should not be taken, the result of that should not be taken for granted.
Elections are always very hard to win and the longer you';ve been in Government the harder it gets. People might say, look you';re a mile in front, and people keep saying to me the other mob are hopeless, and I tell you the Labor Party when it comes to a Federal contest is never hopeless. They';re always a very tough opponent and in the 29 years that I';ve been in Federal Parliament there has only been four elections during that period of time when you';ve really had landslide results. Most of them are determined by one or two or three percentage points of the two Party preferred vote, and we';ll face a very important and a very challenging contest when it comes along sometime in the next year or so. And therefore your support between now and at that time will continue to be absolutely crucial to our prospects of winning.
Of course one of the major battlegrounds will be the relative capacities of the two sides of politics to manage and lead the Australian economy. The economy is not everything but it is certainly very important to the continued wellbeing of the country and it';s very important to the business community of Australia, and I have no reluctance at all, of course, in saying that over the past seven and a half years we have set out to create, and I believe we have created, as good a business climate as this country has had since the end of World War II. I can';t think of a time except perhaps in the late 1960s when you could say that the fundamentals of the Australian economy are as strong as they are now. And in the 1960s one of the differences was that Australia was a far more cloistered and protected economy. We had high tariffs, we had a fixed exchange rate, we had a more regulated economy and we were a far more inward looking economy and a far more inward looking society. But over the past few years the economic performance of Australia has outstripped that of most industrialised countries.
The other day I heard a comparison contained in the latest edition of the Economist magazine which contained a summary poll of forecasts about growth amongst the industrialised countries, both this year 2003 and next year 2004, and in both of those years the poll of forecasts published in the Economist said that the growth in the Australian economy would exceed the growth in all other major industrialised economies, both in Europe, in Asia and in North America.
So the momentum continues. This hasn';t been flash-in-the-pan economic growth, this hasn‘t been economic growth built off the back of an unsustainable boom. What we have been able to achieve in Australia over the last few years are the conditions that can deliver continuously strong growth. Many of you who have been in business for a long time will recall the days when you';d have a few years of strong economic growth and then along would come the Treasury and say they had to administer a short, sharp shock in order to bring the economy under control and take some of the heat out of the economy. Well we don';t need any more Treasury short, sharp shocks anymore because we don';t have unsustainable booms in Australia anymore, we have a continued high level of economic growth which is coming off the back of very strong fundamentals and there are a few comparisons that I';ll be making quite regularly over the next year. And I';ll be making them with increasing intensity and fervour as we get closer to the time when the election is held, and they draw out for Australians, for voters, for your employees and for you, what a change of government has meant to this country over the last seven years.
I can';t find a better starting point, of course, than interest rates. The difference in paying off the average Australian loan now as a result of the fall in interest rates is no less than $450 a month. Now that is $450 a month that the average borrower has additional in his or her pocket as a result of the much lower interest rates that obtain under this government.
The second comparison, and I always enjoy making this comparison because the Labor Party for years has said – oh it was the Party who was the friend of the Australian worker, that the working man and woman in Australia needed a Labor government to look after them. Well isn';t it odd that when you look at the thing that determines the prosperity of the average worker in this country, one of the things that does, is the level of his or her wages. Isn';t it interesting that since March of 1996 the real wages of Australians have increased by 10.2%, that';s since March of 1996 the real wages, that';s over and above inflation, but in comparison over 13 years of Labor government, between 1983 and 1986 wages rose in total by just 2.3% in real terms. So in those two measures, and you are talking here about the prosperity of Australians, and sometimes commentators say why do Australians borrow so much, why do they spend so much, why do they behave as though they have great economic prosperity, they do so because in reality they have. They are better off. If you';re paying less on your mortgage and you';re getting paid a higher wage and on top of that you have two other advantages that I';ll come to, you are better off. And in the end isn';t economic policy about improving the lives of the average Australian.
Good economic policy is not an end in itself. It is not some kind of arcane science where you strive to get 99 out of 100 and go away and feel self-satisfied and say aren';t I good. In the end good economic policy is only a means to an end and the end is to improve the prosperity and the security and the happiness of the Australian people. So we';ve cut their interest bills and we';ve increased their real wages and Australia';s unemployment rate has fallen from 8.2% in March of 1996 to 6.2% now, and we';ve generated almost 1.1 million new jobs over that period of time.
And if the Labor Party and others hadn';t obstructed us in the Senate we would have been able to get rid of these stupid unfair dismissal laws that we still have and we would have generated tens upon thousands more jobs, particularly in small business and I can say to the small business men and women of Australia that we will continue to fight to secure the passage of further changes to those unfair dismissal laws.
And another comparison that you will be hearing a lot about from me over the next few months is in the area of apprentices. Now we hear a lot about the young men and women who leave school and go to university, but we should remember that 70% of young Australians when they leave school don';t go to universities – 70%. So what happens to them and their opportunities is just as important as what happens to those who leave school and go onto university and in December of 1995 just four months before the government was elected to office, the number of Australians in apprenticeships totalled only 141,000. Today I am very proud to say that more than 390,000 young Australians, not all young but mainly young, are in apprenticeships and traineeships. And this is one of the factors that explains that the decline in Australia';s youth unemployment rate has taken it to its lowest level, I believe, since August of 1990.
Now all of those things, interest rates, the level of wages, the availability of jobs, the fall in the unemployment rate, the availability of apprenticeships, all of those go directly to the job opportunities and the hopes and the aspirations of the mainstream of the Australian community. And we';ve been able to create that climate because we have observed the fundamentals of good economic management. We have repaid Labor';s enormous government debt, we have run budget surpluses. Government debt in this country is now down to about 5% of annual wealth generation, 5% of GDP, and to put that in comparison the average of the OECD area is about 50%, it';s 45% in the United States and it';s about 125% in Japan.
Now one of the reasons we have low interest rates in Australia is that we don';t have the government out there in the money markets competing against you in order to borrow money and whilever we run budget surpluses we';ll pay off more debt and we';ll continue in that way to exert downward pressure on interest rates.
So, ladies and gentlemen, it is a story of strong economic performance, but it';s also a story of a government which has been willing to undertake bold economic change and reform.
I can remember addressing gatherings similar to this at this very venue in 1998 and 1999 as we argued the cause of taxation reform. I can remember coming here and arguing the cause of industrial relations reform and I have argued the cause of other areas of economic reform over a long period of time and you don';t have a strong economy by sheer luck. You have a strong economy if you are willing, over a period of time, to undertake economic reform which is essential to our long-term future.
But because, my friends, a political contest is about alternatives and whenever you fix your gaze on a political contest which is going to happen sometime in the future, you are entitled to make comparisons, and because this is a business audience I should remind you that despite what the Labor Party might say about its pro business credentials. I mean it makes a lot of general speeches, I hear Mr Crean and I hear his new Shadow Treasurer saying – oh we';re pro competition, we';re pro the business sector, we';re pro investment, we';ll run a very responsible economic policy ((inaudible)turn the power off on me) but what …… I had a list of Labor tax slugs just when the power went off but ladies and gentlemen let me remind you that whatever the rhetoric may be, whatever the rhetoric may be about Labor';s pro business credentials, over the last four months the Labor Party has either committed itself to tax increases or opposed and blocked tax reductions that we have put forward that will over a four year period cost the Australian business sector about $1.1 billion.
I wonder how many people in this audience who are in the mining industry realise that as part of the funding of the Labor Party';s alternative higher education policy they are going to reduce the value of the diesel fuel rebate by 10% which will represent a slug on the mining industry of $467 million over four years.
It';s important that Australia is an effective part of the globalised economy and that means the relatively free flow of people and employees from one country to another is necessary and in order to ease the tax burden on some foreign resident employees who are temporarily in Australia, we put forward some taxation measures which would represent relief of about $180 million, and that has been blocked by the Australian Labor Party.
The Labor Party is also vowing, and in combination with the minor parties, will block some taxation measures worth $270 million which are designed to make Australian companies more internationally competitive. And they';ve also vowed to block , are in the process of blocking some measures relating to franked dividend rebates that will cost the business sector $210 million over a period of four years.
Now those things don';t receive an enormous amount of publicity, but you ought to be aware of them, you ought to understand that despite the rhetoric to the contrary the Labor Party remains a Party that resorts to a tax increase and a slug on the business community if it wants spare cash to finance some of its programs.
It may preach the doctrine of budget balancing and budget surpluses and sound economic management, but it really hasn';t fundamentally changed its spots and in many respects because Mr Crean relied on the left wing of the Labor Party to preserve his leadership a few months ago, in many respects you can see Labor Party economic policy being more enthralled to the left wing of the Labor Party than perhaps was the case on some earlier occasions.
So ladies and gentlemen although as I said at the beginning of my remarks the economy isn';t everything, although there was an American President who had hanging on the wall that well-known sign that said it';s the economy stupid, although the economy is not everything, it is the means by which as a community we not only generate wealth but also the means by which we are able to provide those less fortunate in the community with the assistance and the safety net to which they are properly entitled according to the values of a fair go and the ethos of an egalitarian Australian nation.
It is true as Rob said in his introduction that over the last year this country has faced some enormous security challenges and I wish I could say otherwise to you today but the reality is that we live in a world where those security challenges are going to go on for many years into the future. We';ve just passed through what can only be described as a terrible week on the international stage, the appalling attack on the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad and the dreadful suicide bomber attack on Israel, orchestrated by Hammas and its associates which must fill anybody in the world who is hoping for a peace settlement in the Middle East, with a sense of absolute desolation and absolute despair.
We have to understand that terrorists respect no hierarchy when it comes to their targets. Terrorists attack indiscriminately, they attack Americans, they attack Australians, they attack Indonesians and when the bomb went off outside the Marriott Hotel in Jakarta, they weren';t avenging their Muslim brothers as they sometimes say, they were in fact murdering their Muslim brothers, because all but two of the people who died at the Marriott Hotel blast were citizens of Indonesia.
What I think that attack and the attack in Baghdad has driven home to many people is that the war against terrorism is a war that ought to embrace all peoples. It shouldn';t be seen in terms of the terrorists only targeting certain countries. It is true they hate western nations because they hate us not so much for what we have done, they hate us for who we are and what we stand for and the values that we hold dear. But in the process of carrying out what they are about they strike indiscriminately and when I was talking yesterday to the Indonesian Foreign Minister in Canberra, he made the remark to me that the attack in Jakarta outside the Marriott Hotel had provoked a very deep sense of anger and rage within the Indonesian community because it was seen as very much an attack upon ordinary people and ordinary citizens of that country and sadly it has brought home to Indonesia and brought home to all of us again that this is a campaign and this is a war in which all of us must be involved.
But our capacity to do it effectively, our capacity to intervene so effectively as we have done in the Solomon Islands, our capacity as we did to participate in the campaign in Iraq, our capacity to contribute in Afghanistan and East Timor, all of those things go back to the fact that we have a strong economy.
Defence has consumed even more of our resources than in the past and it';s very likely to continue doing so in the future and fundamental to that is a strong economy and that is why we have placed such enormous emphasis on it and that is why we continue to regard it as being so much at the heart of the current strength of the Australian nation and our future.
Finally, ladies and gentlemen, can I say again how much I appreciate the support that you all continue to give to our Party here in South Australia.
We have a huge fight ahead at a State level. I don';t like the fact that we have eight State Labor and Territory governments, it';s very lonely at Premiers'; conference meetings. I am glad I provide the food at the Lodge the night before and not the other way around but it is lonely and I want to do something about that, and I want to encourage all of you to support Rob and his colleagues here in South Australia and indeed all around the country.
Our next big fight though is a Federal fight and it will be tough, I am not saying that in a ritualistic sense. The first election is easier to win, the second one is easier to win than the third and the third is easier to win than the fourth. There haven';t been many governments in Australia that have won four elections in a row. You keep reading that we are a mile in front, we';re not, if we lose seven or eight seats we are out of government. You may not think that is reflected in political coverage but it is the reality.
I was taught very early in political life always to sort of play cautiously and run scared and I believe that. It';s a good bit of advice and it';s a good bit of political doctrine. I';ve seen a few too many examples of people who complacently assume that they would be re-elected because of their undoubted and undiluted brilliance. Well, can I say that that is not a disease that I am going to catch, it';s not a mistaken belief I have or any of my colleagues have and we are all acutely aware that we have got to work like crazy between now and when the election is held sometime in some stage of the second half of next year to win the confidence of the Australian people.
Here in South Australia that means hanging onto the nine seats that we now hold. 75% of the Federal seats in South Australia are held by the Liberal Party. We have got to work hard to do that and with your help we can make it.
Thanks.
[ends]