Well thank you very much Chris, Andrea, Jason, Steve, my existing parliamentary colleagues, both federal and state, and it's great to see a former colleague in Richard Alston here tonight, still playing out his great support and affection for the Liberal Party, ladies and gentlemen.
This has become an honoured annual tradition. Three years ago, almost to the day, on the 14th of July, we fought and won a magnificent victory and it was, as Michael Ronaldson said, a wonderful team effort, it brought together all of the talents and all of the energy of the Victorian division of the Liberal Party and many parliamentary colleagues from around Australia. We knew that if we held Aston we could truly claim that we were back in the game, we knew that if we lost Aston in that by-election it would have given enormous momentum to the Labor Party in July of 2001. And we all knew that when we did hold onto Aston in a very impressive way that it represented an enormous set back to the ambition of the Labor Party to win the election in 2001. Now we don't have an Aston by-election this year, we don't have any by-elections this year that I'm aware of, but we do have an enormous challenge, we'll be asking the Australian people for the fourth time in a row to vote us back into office and we may well think with economic conditions as strong as they are, with an opposition that is yet to tell the Australian people what it believes in and what it stands for, and I have faced now five leaders of the Australian Labor Party and I have to say that the current leader of the Australian Labor Party is the most policy deficit of all of the leaders of the Labor Party that I've faced.
I think people knew what, and politics is in the end about competing visions for the future of our country, politics in the end is about a choice between one platform as opposed to another, and when I think of the various Labor Leaders I've faced, I think people knew what Bob Hawke stood for, you mightn't have agreed with it, but he carved out an identity and people knew that he had certain priorities and beliefs, I think many people knew what Paul Keating stood for, they didn't like it, but they knew what it was, I think Kim Beazley finally in the dying months of the last campaign finally established what he stood for and people decided that it wasn't tough and strong enough. And we all knew that Simon Crean basically believed in restoring the power and authority of the trade union movement to run Australia and we didn't like that very much. Btu I've got to say I've not got the faintest idea of what the current Leader of the Opposition stands for, I don't know what their tax policy is, I don't know what their policy on families is, I haven't the faintest idea of what their policy on foreign affairs and defence is, except to cut and run at the worst possible time, giving the worst possible signal to the worst possible people in Iraq. They claim that are better on health and education than what we are, yet the reality is they have not articulated an alternative policy on health and education. There's a strong suspicion that if they win the election they'll have a long list of independent schools on the hit list, there is a suspicion, more than a suspicion, a commitment on their part to do away with the Medicare safety net which is one of the best pieces of strengthening of Medicare that this country has had for years.
But having said I don't know what they stand for in all of these areas there is one thing that I do I think detect a stand for and it's been exposed today in a very graphic way by none other than Access Economics, which is a respected independent economic organisation that has done costings of Labor Party tax policy, not only for this election but the previous election, and Access Economics released today a report that is a damning indictment of the consequences of the Labor Party's industrial relations policies. Of all of the things that I dread about a national Labor government in this country, and if Labor wins the next election you'll have nine Labor governments in Australia, just imagine nine of them, it'd be Labor everywhere, all across the country, state, federal and at a territorial level. But one of the things I think we can be certain they will do is to bring back a union dominated industrial relations system. They'll take away Australian workplace agreements, they'll take away the secondary boycott provisions in the Trade Practices Act, they will give effectively unrestricted union entry into workplaces, even where none of the workforce belongs to the union or wants to belong to the union, they'll destroy many of the pro-productivity measures that have been a feature of our industrial relations policy. And the consequences of that identified not by me, not by the Treasury, but indeed by an independent economic organisation of great repute, Access Economics, an organisation that Labor itself says is expert enough to cost its own policies, and Access Economics has done a report for the Business Council of Australia and it has calculated the massive economic consequences of a re-regulation of the Australian labour market and for the first time in a long time we have some independent compelling evidence of the economic consequences if Labor's industrial relations policies are brought back. Now I speak with some feeling about this issue because of all the policy things that I've been identified with in public life, especially over the last 15 or 20 years, none has been more important to me and to the future of Australia than the reform of our industrial relations system. We have a stellar economy by world standards at the present time, and one of the major reasons we do is that we've changed the way we conduct industrial relations in this country. When I had the privilege a few week ago in Washington of having an hour long discussion with Dr Alan Greenspan, the Chairman of the American Federal Reserve system, we talked about the value of productivity improvements to a modern economy and he pointed out how impressed he was with the productivity improvements that had occurred in Australia over the last few years and they were due to two things, they were due to the way in which we adapted and used information technology as Australians in their great capacity to adapt to new technology and new circumstances can always do, and the other reason is that we changed our industrial relations system, and all of that will be at risk if we turn back the clock. As somebody said today, I think it was Phil Barresi, he said very effectively at a gathering of small business people in his electorate, he said that something like 60 to 70 per cent of the membership of the Federal Parliamentary Labor Party consisted of current or former trade union officials, yet the union membership in the private sector in Australia is now only 17 per cent. And it gives you an idea of the unrepresentative character, and it gives you an idea of the obsession that the Labor Party still has for the re-regulation of our labour markets. So I urge you all to study reports of that Access Economics analysis of the economic consequences of turning back the clock so far as industrial relations are concerned.
We have my friends come a long way in the last eight and a half years, this country's economy is the envy of the rest of the world, we do have the best economic conditions we've had since World War II, we have for the first time since 1968 inflation below three per cent and unemployment below six per cent. We've repaid in the last eight and a half years $70 billion of that debt that we inherited that we weren't told about in March of 1996. And that's not just an empty figure. Because we've repaid that debt it means that every year we have $5.5 billion more available to spend on education, on health, on roads, on defence, on taxation cuts, yes, and on baby bonuses from the 1st of July and all the other things that ought to represent the dividend of good economic management. And economic management is never an end in itself, the purpose of running an economy well is to bring security and contentment and opportunity to the people of our nation. I don't want the economy run well to get some kind of certificate from an international financial organisation, Peter Costello and I haven't sweated over the Australian economy in the past eight and a half years to get some kind of international applause. We've done it to produce a human benefit and that human benefit is all around us, and there are many things that I'm proud of in relation to our economic management, but in a way there's nothing I'm more proud of than the fact that we in the Liberal Party, we the party that believes in enterprise and business and personal effort and personal rewards and personal endeavour, yet we have been far more successful in rewarding the workers and the employees of Australia than have our political opponents. In the 13 years that Mr Hawke and Mr Keating were in power, real wages, that's your wages after inflation, rose by just on three per cent, in 13 years. And in the eight and a half years that we have been in Government real wages have risen by 13 per cent. In other words, we have been better at remunerating the employees and the workers of Australia, unionists and non-unionists alike, than our political opponents. And when you add to that the lowest interest rates in 30 years and the enormous improvements in employment and the buoyancy of the business outlook, and might I say to those who are here in business tonight the profit share of the Australian economy, that portion of our annual wealth going to corporate profits, is the highest its been since we began to record those figures through the Commonwealth statistician.
So we have a good picture, we have a good story to tell, but it won't be enough to tell a good story of the past or to say good things about the present, we must also talk about the future. We must talk about future obligations to achieve a balance between the development of this country and the environment. And last week, last Friday in Canberra we struck an historic deal between a Federal Liberal Government and eight state and territory Labor Governments about water in this country, a most precious resource, a resource which is becoming increasingly scarce and we as a nation must confront that issue as Australians and not as Queenslanders or New South Welshman or as Victorians. Rivers flow across state boundaries, the Great Artesian Basin lies beneath the boundaries of states, we have to find national solutions to a national challenge and we've begun to do that and a result of the decision taken last Friday, $500 million can begin to be spent on repairing the health of the River Murray and restoring the capacity of the Murray/Darling Basin to contribute to the agricultural wealth of this country.
There are many other environmental challenges, we must recognise we have in our energy statement that this country's enormous natural advantages in areas such as coal and natural gas and to a lesser extent oil can best be exploited by investing rapidly in technologies that reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the use of those energy sources. But the choice in the future is not between traditional sources of energy and renewable sources, but between those energy sources that produce high emissions and those that produce low emissions. We must continue to confront the challenge of an ageing population, we're not as unfortunate in that sense and it's not happening as rapidly in Australia as it is in Japan and many countries in Europe, but we have in common with all industrialised societies that challenge, it needs a combination of policies, it demands that we utilise our older mature workers more effectively than we have in the past, we don't ask people to work until they drop, but we invite people to work for as long as we wish to, and if they are allowed to do so they will contribute to make a massive contribution to the future of our country. We need to recognise, as the Government has, the need to have a sensible balance between the provision of strong health and pharmaceutical services and the importance of having them kept on an affordable basis. And it took political expediency and after 25 months of posturing for the Australian Labor Party to finally recognise, not for the best of reasons but for self-interested reasons, the need to support our measures in relation to the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme.
We need to recognise as the years go by that internationally this nation's future does not lie exclusively with one part of the world. Our great priority will always be our immediate region in the Asia Pacific, but Australia is a nation that has linkages and obligations and also opportunities all around the world. We are in every sense a citizen of the entire world and not just as our region. And I count it as one of the great successes of this country's foreign relations over the last eight and a half years that we have simultaneously been able to build an ever closer relationship with the United States of America, yet at the same time to build a very close relationship with China. And that achievement was symbolised last year in the national parliament when on successive days the House of Representatives and the Senate were addressed by the President of the United States, George Bush, and the President of China, Hu Jintao. And there the entire Australian community could see symbolised the fusion of those interests, there was nothing incompatible between the two of them, there's nothing that stops a close relationship with the, results in a close relationship with the United States affecting our capacity to relate to the people of China. And so it will be in the future and we are a nation that has great and enduring links with different parts of the world that obviously because of our geographical proximity our first but not our exclusive interest must be in our own region.
Now they are some of the challenges and some of the opportunities that we have ahead of us. But we only have this if we have good policy, good economic management doesn't happen by accident, it doesn't fall out of a tree, it has to be worked on, it can't be taken for granted and if you put the wrong people in charge with the wrong policies or a combination of the wrong policies and no policies you'll end up with a bad result. And there's a lot at stake later on in the year when the election is held, whenever later on in the year that may be, there is a lot at stake. What is at stake is a maintenance of what we have come to enjoy over the last eight and a half years, what is at stake is the repute and the respect of this country around the world. What is at stake is the capacity of this country to respond in an effective way to the immense challenges that we have. And in many ways the fate of our government could rest in the hands of people in this room. If we can hold all of our seats in Victoria, if we can reach out and win seats like McMillan and Chisholm and hold the ones we have now, we have the launching pad for a victory.
So my friends, we have collectively a great responsibility, this wonderful party of ours which I've been proud to lead for so many years now has demonstrated again and again that it is the most representative party of the Australian people. We're not owned by anybody, we're not owned by the business community, we're not owned by any one section of the community, we are a party for all Australians and for all the talents of all Australians. And if we can, by our work and our effort and our policy projection, in the time ahead communicate that sense of passion and commitment to the future as much as of a telling of the story of the last eight and a half years then I believe we will be able to celebrate a victory on election night, but it will be hard, it will be tough and anybody who pretends otherwise is deluding themselves and does not understand the political history of this country. But I am greatly encouraged by the quality of my colleagues who hold seats and represent Victoria in the Senate. I want to pay tribute to all of them from Peter Costello, a magnificent deputy leader and a wonderful Treasurer who's done an absolutely fantastic job over eight and a half years, I pay tribute to all of them from Peter down. But like Oliver, I want more, I want more Victorian lower house members, I want to hang onto all the Senators we've got, and if we can do that we can come back again here next year, all of us, with a few more MPs, with Chris returned and Bruce and Phil and Jason Wood taking over from the just re-married Bob Charles, and congratulations Bob, it was great to see he and Rosie exchange their vows, it was a wonderful ceremony and Janette and I were privileged to be there, he's been a great mate and a great stalwart for the Liberal Party. If we can do that we can come back here and have a real celebration in a years time. Let's go to it, and let's win it.