SPEECH BY THE PRIME MINISTER, THE HON. E. G. WHITLAM, M. P.,
TO THE N. S. W. AUSTRALIAN LABOR PARTY COUNCIL, SYDNEY, SUNDAY
AUGUST 1974
Just three months ago the people of Australia returned a
Labor Government for a further three years. We achieved success
very largely because the people of New South Wales refused to be
moved by the fear tactics of our opponents and the smear tactics
of Sir Robert Askin. They gave us a resounding vote in the
Senate and carried all four of our referendums. And a month agoin
Coogee and in Goulburn they took the opportunity to reply
direct to Sir Robert Askin and his administration. With the win
in Coogee we have taken another step towards a Labor Government in
New South Wales, a Labor Government under Neville Wran.
I take this first opportunity to congratulate the New South
Wales Branch, to congratulate Neville Wran, to congratulate and to
thank all of you, my colleagues in the national Parliament, the
officers and above all the rank and file members for your work,
your support and your achievements over the past three years and
particularly the past three months.
Now, three months after our work together led to'the
reaffirmation by the people of New South Wales and the people of
Australia of Labor's right to govern, it is fitting that here,
at the State Council of the Party, I should repeat what I said
to the nation shortly after those elections. I said:
" There should be no uncertainty in any
quarter about our ability and determination
to carry out our program and to provide
strong effective government for the full
term for which you have once again elected us."
Now just three months after the people delivered their
verdict, delivered it in our favour for a second time in 18 months,
our adversaries inside Parliament and beyond it seek every means
to set that verdict aside. To them it is nothing that the people
have twice returned a verdict in our favour. To them it is nothing
that the people have declared themselves, as firmly as our electoral
system allows, on issue after issue issues of tremendous importance
like the people's health, like Australian ownership of Australian
resources, like restrictive trade practices, like electoral reform.
To them it is nothing that their own nominal leaders have committed
themselves to support our proposals as Mr. Snedden and Mr. Anthony
emphatically did in the case of our amended legislation for the
Australian Industry Development Corporation, and as Mr. Snedden
did on the proposal to establish an Australian Superior Court more
than seven years ago when he himself was Attorney-General. They
rejected our universal Health Scheme put to the people at the
elections of 1969, 1972 and 1974. Now that the joint sitting has
passed the Health Bills, they propose to reject the co]. latere. J
legislation needed to give effect to the scheme. / 2
7
-2-
The extraordinary thing, the intolerable thing, is that the
opposition Senators have become more obstructive, not less, more
bloody-minded, more irrational since the elections which they
themselves precipitated. In the session just completed they have
held up by outright rejection or postponement or by dragging out
debate, more than half of our Bills 30 out of 56.
This happens in a Senate in which our own strength was
increased from 26 to 29, a Senate happily devoid of DLP
representation. And more often than not, our legislation has been
rejected not by a majority but simply by rounding up just half the
Senate to negative a proposal. If the vote is 30-all, then the
proposal is lost.
So we have this situation: a mere 30 Senators can set aside
the clear decision of the majority of the House of Representativesthe
people's House, the House which determines who shall govern;
they can set those proposals aside even when they plainly express
decisions made not just by the elected government but by the,
people themselves, at two successive elections. This is a travesty
of the Parliamentary system and it is a travesty of democracy.
It is a travesty and it is a tragedy for Parliamentary democracy,
because this system is everywhere under challenge, in Europe,
in North America, even in Britain itself, the home of parliamentary
democracy. And the system is not so strong that it can sustain onslaught
after onslaught, unremitting war on its basic foundations.. That is
what is being done in the Australian Senate. This is not just a
matter of declaring war on the Labor Government. It is a declaration
of war on the system itself.
Mr. Snedden defends he certainly does not command the
conduct of his followers in the Senate by pleading that it is all
perfectly legal and constitutional. In recent history, the
irresponsibility of minorities and chance combinations of
Parliamentarians in France, in Italy, in Greece have repeatedly
undermined parliamentary democracy. That, too, was all perfectly
legal and constitutional but absolutely destructive of the
system. The question is not just one of the effect this obstruction,
this falsification of democracy, has on the ability of duly elected
governments to govern effectively and to carry through its program
and to plan effectively. Even more important is the question of
the people's faith in the system.
If democracy is to survive, if the parliamentary system is to
survive, the people must be able to believe that the system can
procide change through peaceful methods. The strength of parliamentary
democracy is that it combines the opportunity for social change
with political stability. Our opponents are striving for the
minimum of change with the maximum of political instability.
In their efforts to thwart our program for change the program
twice endorsed by the electors, they are attempting to strip
democracy of its true meaning, to deprive it of its real strength.
It is a thoroughly mischievous and highly dangerous exercise.
-3
And never more mischievous, never more dangerous than in
the times through which we are now passing, at a time when
governments around the world are confronting the enormous challenge
of inflation. The really damaging thing about inflation is that if
long continued it eats away at the very fabric of society. It
undermines the things which unite us and magnifies the things
which divide us. To add to this problem a new dimension of political
divisiveness is to put a double pressure on a system already under
tremendous stress. The supreme irony is that this sabotage comes
from a party claiming to be the champion of tradition and the
guardian of the constitution.
Throughout the last 14 years as Leader and Deputy Leader of
our Party I have asserted the primacy of Parliament, particularly
the national Parliament, as the instrument for the fulfillment of
our policies. A little more than seven years ago at the annual
conference of this Branch I said to you:
" The test of a political party such as ours is
its ability to win power through Parliament,
to secure throughout Australia a majority of
votes of our fellow citizens. The people who
vote for us and a vast majority of those who
don't increasingly look to the initiative
which the national Parliament could take and
to plans the national Government could make for
a solution of their problems and the
consummation of their aspirations."
I asserted, and the Party accepted, that if we were to secure
a majority of the votes of our fellow citizens, we ourselves as a
party had to be broadly representative of at least half the people.
This belief was behind the reorganisation and reconstruction of
the party at the national level and in New South Wales and Victoria.
The people responded to our efforts. We did make ourselves more
representative and more responsive and more responsible. The result
has been that twice within 18 months a majority of the people of
Australia have given us a majority in the House of Representatives.
Twice they have chosen our men and our measures. Twice they have
expressed clear support for our policies and for a Labor Government.
How many elections must be fought and won before our opponents
accept the people's verdict, before they abandon their belief in their
divine right to rule? We allow ourselves no such delusion. We
believe our right to govern rests upon the consent of the governed,
a consent and a confirmation twice given. We shall exercise that
right. We shall exercise the right to govern given us by a majority
in the House of Representatives, the people's House, a consent
confirmed a mere three months ago, a consent for us to continue to
implement our program for the next three years. We shall continue.
I shall continue continue to fight to implement our Labor program,
continue to fight against inflation, continue to fight to preserve
parliamentary democracy in this country. / 4
-4
We are faced with an irresponsible, a discredited Opposition,
a discarded opposition, the most irresponsible and irrational
Opposition in the history of Federation. in these circumstances
we have a double responsibility all of us who form the
Government, all of us in the whole Labor movement who have worked
so hard, so long to create our Government and to give our fellow
citizens the opportunities which our programs offer. When, as has
happened, an opposition defects from the system and sets out
deliberately to sabotage the system, it becomes double important
for us to stand firm and to stand together in defence of our program.
When an opposition deliberately sets out to create a climate of
hysteria, it becomes doubly important that we should not lose
our nerve. When an opposition deliberately sets out to sow the seeds of
panic and division in the community it becomes doubly important that
we should stand strong and united. Thi's is a responsibility that
no section of the movement can avoid. We are in this together.
It is not just the Whitlam Government; it is a Labor government
and it is the people's elected Government.
And it has to be said that there are some sections of the
movement whose co-operation is now most needed. We are not in
the business of union-bashing. We cannot and will not compete with
our opponents in that game. Nor are we going to allow employees to
be made the scapegoats for Australia's present economic problems.
We are not going to ask employees to bear the whole brunt of our
attack upon these problems.
In other words we are not going to follow the policies of our
opponents, which they used in government time and time again and which
they would again use if they had the chance. But employees and their
associations do have to make a choice. We have to recognise that'
actions by unions and employees' associations can have a more damaging
effect upon a Labor Government than all the obstruction and
irresponsibility of our opponents. We can handle our opponents
but we need the co-operation of our supporters and those who claim
to support us.
It is thoroughly shortsighted if individual unions use their
muscle in certain key sectors of industry to win short-term
advantages at the expense of their fellow workers. In-the very
short term these may appear superficially attractive but no union,
still less small sections of any industrial union, can live in
isolation from the rest of the community. What happens to individual
unions ultimately affects the whole of the community, and equally
what happens to the whole community ultimately affects every
unionisnd his family.
Nor can employees ignore the threat which excessive wage claims
or unjustified strikes can make on their industry and their own
employment prospects. As Jim Cairns put it to the State Council
of the Victorian Branch of the Party last month: " In a year like
1974 the economy cannot possibly pay general wage increases of
and more without most of them going quickly into prices, and this
means more inflation."
It can also mean and we must face the fact more
unemployment, especially in industries competing with imported
goods. What all of us in the Labor movement must remember is that
wage claims affect the ability of certain industries to compete with
imports. I know there are some unions and some industries where
wage claims can be dealt with in apparent isolation, where there
is no import competition and added cost of wages can be passed on
to the consumer. There are other industries, however, that are not
so fortunate. In those industries the cost of sudden and immoderate
wage increases cannot be passed on so easily. If they are passed on,
in higher prices, there is a real danger that the industries
will no longer be competitive. They will go to the wall, and jobs
will go with them.
So it is in the interests of all unions indeed, it is the
duty of all unions to ensure that wage claims in our present
economic climate are kept within reasonable and responsible limits..
And this is just as much the duty of unions in non-competitive
industries as it is in industries that are vulnerable to competition.
In fact it is the stronger and more fortunate unions that have the
higher duty the duty to set an example. For we know how tempting,
how human, how natural it is for anyone to seek to catch up with
other employees in other industries who receive a substantial
wage rise. And while I am not for a moment suggesting that no wage
claims are justified, that no one deserves any increase at all,
it is vitally important that wage claims are not made at the expense
of fellow-workers' jobs.
We look to the union movement, and particularly supporters of
the Government, to ensure that wage claims and industrial actions
are responsible. Disputes which affect other workers should be
promptly referred to central union bodies the Labor Councils and
the ACTU. In the interests of other unionists and in the public
interest disputes should be restricted to their proper role as a
last resort, not as the first shot in a process of negotiation.
With respect to wage claims we ask unionists to recognise that a
system of indexation will now be introduced, so that claims should
not now be made and do not need to be made in anticipation of
future price increases.
The only people who can effectively persuade unions to keep
their wages within safe and moderate limits are unionists themselves.
So I urge every man on the job and in the factory to exercise
caution, to remember above all his own and his fellow-workers,
livelihood. For that is precisely what is at stake.
Employees who want to keep a Labor Government should measure
the possible consequences of their actions, not only upon the fortunes
of the Government, but upon their fellow-unionists. And unionists who
want to keep a Labor Government should scrutinise the consequences
of some of their officials who are not Labor, who don't particularly
want a Labor Government, some of whom, indeed, correctly view a
Labor Government as the greatest force for democratic change and
social reform within the Parliamentary system. They reject the
system and therefore they reject our role in it. / 6
-6
The question employees are certainly entitled to ask is why
they should support and co-operate with a Labor Government. It can
be answered at many levels from the narrowest point of view of
an employee's immediate self-interest to the widest considerations
of the national interest and the national good. We all know from
experience what the alternative is. We all know from experience
what methods a non-Labor Government would use by preference and
calculated design to combat inflation. It is the deliberate
creation of massive unemployment. We are not going to take you
down that road.
Look at the general attitude of our opponents to industrial
affairs over a generation. Never once in 23 years, whether there
was inflation or recession, did their Government fail to lend its
support to the employers in the national wage case. For 20 years
unions had been arguing for the re-introduction of wage indexation.
Only now have we a Government taking a positive attitude to the
question. We have made positive and constructive intervention
before the Arbitration Commission. Within hours of taking office
we re-opened the wage case to secure equal pay for women. Against
bitter opposition we have supported the ACTU policy on abolition of
the penal clauses and the amalgamation of unions. We have taken new
initiatives to protect employees by training and retraining programs
and structural adjustment assistance.
Two things are clearly implicit in our opponents' economic
proposals the creation of massive unemployment and the slashing
of basic public expenditure on schools, welfare, health and cities.
On both counts, employees and their families would be the first to
suffer. For most employees, community spending on these matters
the matters which are basic to the quality of their lives and the
lives of the members of their families'-is every bit as important
as their pay packets.
I want to emphasise as strongly as I can that the current
problem of inflation in no way downgrades the importance of our
Government's total program the program I announced in 1972, the
program I repeated in May 1974, the program once again endorsed
by the people in 1974.
On the contrary, the program is crucial to all our efforts
to protect all sections of the Australian community from the
buffets of economic chancgnd circumstance. The fight against
inflation and the implementation of our program will go on together.
They are not contradictory, they are complementary.
Economic management cannot be put into a compartment. It is
part of the whole process of building a stronger economy and
fairer society.
I have said repeatedly that the attack on inflation is a task
for the whole community. That is no mere slogan. We have had
distressing evidence of the failure of some State governments to
play their full part in an anti-inflationary program. it is certainly
not my intention to shuffle off any part of the Australian Government's
responsibility. I acknowledge that the primary responsibility is ours.
There are many things, however, that we simply cannot do on our own. / 7
-7
One of them is the stabilisation of land prices. This objective
has been part of our policy from the beginning. It has been
discussed specifically and in detail with the Premiers on at
least six occasions. We put forward proposals at our meetings on
the Albury-Wodonga project at the beginning of last year. we
discussed it again at the special Premiers Conference in May
last year; again at the Constitutional Convention in Sydney in
September last year; again during the referendum campaign in
November and December last year; again at the Premiers Conference
in June of this year. In addition we have made individual approaches
to particular States. Remember that the escalating cost of land is
the greatest single component in the inflationary spiral. The States
have the power to deal with it: yet only one State, South Australia,
has made a serious attempt to co-operate with us. And their
efforts have already shown remarkably successful results. Let me
say in passing that I look forward to co-operating with a N. S. W.
Labor Government on this very issue. There is much that we will
achieve together, and there are many other areas -law reform,
the environment, civil liberties, to name a few -where a State
Labor Government is uniquely placed to legislate for essential reforms.
The real protection which individuals, not least employees,
have against economic mischance lies in the quality and equality of
the services and amenities which the community as a whole provides.
Wages and salaries are becoming less and less relevant in determining
a person's or a family's real welfare. No longer is a person's
income the sole measure of the quality of his life or his family's
life. The quality of his life is determined increasingly by the
things which the community acting as a whole provides for its
individual members, and what the community alone can adequately
provide. Increasingly, a person's standard of living is
determined not by his income but by where he lives and by the
community services provided by the community in which he lives.
His health, his children's education, his opportunities and his
leisure, his sense of security and his real security increasingly
depend on the community's ability or will to provide for them
to provide for the needs of individuals by collective decision
and action and to promote opportunities for individuals by
collective decision and action.
The Labor program the program of your Government is to
ensure that those facilities and opportunities are provided by
the community through its elected representatives more
abundantly and mo! 5e equally, for all Australians wherever they
live, wherever they choose to live or wherever they are obliged
to live. The nearer we approach our goal the further recedes the
threat of individual disaster through economic misfortune.
That is why we shall press on with our program. To abandon that
program is to abandon the hopes of those who have twice supported
us and twice elected us. We are not going to do it.
The fight against inflation will go on. it will be hard.
It will be won. The fight to implement our program, our elected
program, will go on. It will be hard. rt will be won.
8-
From the very beginning of our term of office we have contended
with the problem of inflation. Let it never be forgotton that the
roots of our present inflation were present from the start the
result of a gross undervaluation of the dollar and a flood of foreign
money which our predecessors tolerated and encouraged. We have
worked ceaselessly, resourcefully, on many fronts, to contain
inflationary tendencies. For the past six days I have presided at
meetings of the Cabinet to determine every detail of our Budgetary
strategy. We reject all panic talk of crisis and doom. Average weekly
earnings today, despite inflation, are 3% higher than when we came
to office. There are 270,000 more people in the workforce 270,000
more jobs than there were a year ago. We reject the view that
the deliberate creation of unemployment is an acceptable remedy
for inflation or even a feasible remedy. We reject the view
that the Government's program of reform must be put aside while
the battle against inflation goes on.
We reject the view that the battle against inflation will be
wholly painless or, for that matter, intolerably harsh. It is
no more helpful or realistic to exaggerate the hardship entailed
by successful remedies than it is to ignore the hardship. And there
are those who exaggerate the hardship. There are companies who
belieave we must shelter them from the effects of competition, or
the consequences of their own mismanagement, to prevent people
buying goods more cheaply. We do not believe that everybody in
the community should be forced to pay more for textiles, or cars
or color TV sets than these goods are worth. Still less should
the unionist, the working man and his family, be required to pay
through the nose.
Above all, as realists, we must reject the view that some simple
magic solution, some single " package" of solutions call it what
You Will is the answer to our needs. The Government has acted and
will continue to act on many fronts, in many different ways.
Our program to fight inflation is a flexible one, not a set of
measures that make headlines for a day. It has included our monetary
policy to restrain excess liquidity. it has included revaluation of
the Australian dollar and tariff cuts. It has included attempts to
get clear and unequivocal constitutional authority over prices and
incomes. Remember that very little " fine tuning" is possible in
economic management. Governments can never be surd that their
policies will not have an impact on the economy beyond the level
they intended. when that happens and there are signs that it it
happening now we stand ready to adjust and rectify our calculations.
That is what responsible economic management means a capacity for
prompt and flexible response to changing circumstances. That is
why hard and fast rules and packages are irrelevant to our needs,
and indeed meaningless in any rational discussion of the problem.
Let me give two exampleof our successful response to particular
difficulties. You will remember the recent headlines when Leylands
sacked 1,000 workers. Yet within two weeks all but 50 of those
workers were placed in other jobs. That fact just as important
as the original sackings received almost no attention from the
media. Again, when the recent consumer price index for the June
quarter was issued it quite properly received wide coverage in
the press. I do not quibble with that.
9-
I would have hoped however, that the same wide coverage might have
been given to the subsequent news of a fall in the food price index
the first since we came to power. That was largely accounted for by
a drop in meat prices. It was a result of a concerted and consistent
attack on meat prices by the Government over the past year. Our
actions were successful, but successful policies are unfortunately
less newsworthy than difficulties or problems.
The battle against inflation continues but it is not the only
battle. The Government's measures-to retard inflation will continue,
but they are not our only measures. Our opponents and some sections
of the press seem to suggest that every sphere of government activity
must come to a halt, that our every effort towards building a better
and stronger Australia should be set aside until Australia and all
comparable countries have solved this one problem of inflation.
This is self-defeating nonsense. Just as Australia's problem of
inflation cannot be taken out of the context of the world economic
situation so our efforts to combat inflation must be seen in the
context of our total effort, social as well as economic. The
business of government goes on and that business cannot be
confined to a single economic problem.
The deliberations of Cabinet last week must be seen in that
perspective the perspective of implementing our whole program.
Decisions of the highest importante are being made all the time.
In a single week just last week we have made decisions and
announcements of the greatest importance in addition to deciding
the framework for the Budget.
We approved the first grants ever to be made to reduce
inequalities between local government-areas in Australia. For the
first time since its creation in 1933, the Grants Commission has
recommended grants for local government areas. Our government,
which last year empowered the Commission to-recommend aid for local
government as it has always done for States, approved the granting
of more than $ 56M.
At the special sitting of the House of Representatives on
Friday we at last secured the passage of restrictive trade practices
legislation to prevent collusive price fixing. Because of the stalling
and obstruction of the Opposition, this law has been before the
Parliament for 11 months almost a year. It has been debated four
times in the Senate. But for the Opposition, it could already be
working effectively to reduce prices.
Again on Friday we were at last able to pass the law to provide
the basis for a national highway system and to involve the national
Government in planning for and paying for roads in our cities.
These are all decisions which, quite apart from their intrinsic
value, have a close bearing on the economic situation. They are all
part of our program to build a fairer and stronger Australian economy.
And this is our goal; this is the direction towards which we are
leading Australia towards building a fairer, stronger Australia,
an Australia providing greater equality of opportunities for all its
people and a greater abundance of these opportunities. We are not
going to be deterred from those goals, the goals set in the policy
speeches of 1972 and 1974, the goals adopted by the people of
Australia in 1972 and 1974. We are not going to be stampeded.
We are not going to be panicked. We have to recognise that there are
groups and interests who have a vested interest in spreading panic,~
10
suspicion and division. Rumour-mongering and scare-mongering is
their stock in trade. We saw appalling examples of it last week.
The hysteria of our opponents who cannot accept their double
defeat must not be allowed to infect the Australian community.
We are certainly not going to allow it to infect the Australian
Labor Government. We do have serious problems. We share these
problems with all comparable countries. We are better placed than
most comparable countries to overcome these problems. We are going
to do so. It won't be done by grand-standing. it won'It be done
by panic, it won't be done by hysteria. It will be done by a cool,
steady, confident government given the co-operation of an
intelligent, responsible community. It will be done by this
Government, this Labor Government which you all have worked for over
so many years and which, given your help and co-operation, wvill lcng
corti. nue to vrork for the true advancement of all the Austral ian
peop 0.. In December 1972 the Labor Party and the entire Labor
movement won a great victory a deserved and long-awaited victory.
Just over three months ago the result was conf~ irmed by the Australian
people in the election of 18 May.
Let us remember why we worked for those victories, and why
the people gave us their support.
I ask you to remember the kind of society we rejected.. in
December 1972 the attitudes and habits we put behind us*.
We rejected complacency. W-e rejected inequality. We rejected
poverty, injustice and fear. We rejected the chronic stagnation
and ' impoverishment of our schools, an unjust and inefficient health
service, miserly pension schemes and social service handouts
that condemned thousands of Australians to hardship and indignity.
We rejected dikapidated cities, antiquated public transport, and
the pollution and destruction of the natural environment. We rejected
Vietnam and conscription. We rejected unemployment as a deliberate
weapon of economic policy. We rejected penal clauses and the whole
apparatus of union intimidation. We rejected the long history of
neglect of the weak and deprived the pensioners, Aboriginals,
migrants and working women. We rejected the takeover of our industries
and resources by foreign interests. We rejected a foreign
policy that stifled our national independence and bound us to
military entanglements and cold-war ideologies.
Such were the attitudes and philosophies we put behind us.
For the millions of Australians who supported us, the election of
December 1972 was indeed a vote for change, for new directions, for
new policies. For those of us in the Party, however, it was more
than that. It was the fulfilment of long-cherished hopes and
dreams, the culmination of years of work and planning by devoted
men and women who were determined on a better and brighter future
for Australia. We must keep those goals before us. By working together
and only by working together we will achieve them.