AJUSTRL IA L
PRIME MINISTER
FOR MEDIA 227A TURDA,
ADDRESS TO SOUTH AUSTRALIAN STATE COUNCIL
DELIVERED BY HON. A. A. STREET.
MINISTER FOR INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS*
I welcome this opportunity to visit South Australia yet again
in the wake of the stunning victory by the Tornkin Government
on September 15. I am even more delighte~ d because I have the
opportunity today to speak to those peCople who were the
architects of this success.
The victory of David Tonkin and his team was not only a
confirmation of the need to put economic growth first in
South Australia, but also it was an emphatic assertion-by
the electorate here that under Labor significant progress
had been denied to South Australians,
The memories of the Playford era are still present amongst
those of us who desire progress from Covernemnt. Under Playford
rule, South Australia experienced a degree of industrialisation
that it had not known and has not since experienced.
In the manufacturing sector it had unparal~ leled success in
keeping costs low making manufactured goods attractive to
Eastern Australian markets. The tight control over Government
expenditure under Playford, placed the onus on. private
enterprise and personal achievement.
Under his Government, population grew and South Australia
experienced a rise in the standard of living comparable with
its growth.
The Tonkin victory means the end of the Dunstan era, but riot
the end of the problems created by the Dunstan era. It is the
beginning of the challenge of re-building the economy of
South Australia.
The Dunstan-Corcoran legacy is the legacy of all Labor
socialist governments. We are all too familiar with the fact
that unemployment in August under the Corcoran Government was
running at 8.2% of the ful~ l time work force, compared to
the Australian figure of 5.8%. / 2
2
The Dunstan era saw employment in the Government sector
increase by 26,500 while employment in the private sector
remained almost at a standstill with an increase in the
same period of only 1,800. Firms, strangled by Government
regulation and control began to move to other States.
The defeat of the Labor Government came it a time when
South Australia with 9% of the national population could lay
claim to less than its fair share of investment in mining
and manufacturing in Australia which is either committed
or in the final feasibility stage.
South Australia under Dunstan and Australia under Whitlam. are
classic instances of what can happen to an economically
advantaged country when high spending proponents of big
Government are voted into power.
Yet today, by his own admission, Mr. Hayden would do it all
again. He argued in March this year that: " There was nothing
revolutionary or even particularly radical about the
Whitlam programmes."
We must all be warned. The labels on the prescription may
be different but the Labor medicine is still the same.
The recent A. L. P. Conference here in Adelaide offered us
a socialist blueprint for the 80' s, no different in substance
of style from that of the Whitlam days. It must be analysed
and rejected: debated and defeated. It advocated
Government intervention in typical socialist style through
nationaisation and extending public ownership.
It advocated a return to big spending by: " The abolition of
staff ceilings" in the Public Service; the re-incarnation of
the R. E. D. Scheme as a Community Youth Corps, which could cost
$ 600 million, raises phoney short-term employment expectations
but makes little contribution to long term job creation;
employer subsidies which on some calculations could cost
$ 1,000 million or more a year, would largely subsidise staff
who would have been employed in any case. Yet again, such
a Scheme merely acknowledges that there is no short term
solution which will rectify imbalances in the economy. The
promise to re-introduce Medibank I would return us to the
extravagant days when health services were abused at a
cost unacceptable to the taxpayer. In the last financial
year in which Mr. Hayden was Treasurer the Commonwealth
Government's contribution to health costs in Australia rose
by 113.6%. Such an advocacy of big spending has won predictable
support from leading union spokesmen.
At a tire when we are at last seeing the benefits of reducing
the deficit to manageable dimensions namely a new confidence
in Australia, here and abroad the Budget submission by peak
union councils, including the ACTU, advocated a Budget deficit
of $ 3.5 to $ 4 billion.
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Mr. Hayden's own shadow Budget could lead to a deficit
of $ 4 billion or more. There just seems to be no
understanding by Labor spokesmen of the inevitable effect
this would have on inflation; on wages and jobs; on
interest rates; on the Australian currency; on confidence
in Australia and on willingness to invest in Australia' s
future. To add to this, the Labor Conference not only accepted
the principle of full wage indexation but affirmed the
right of Australian workers on top of this, to " collectively
bargain and strike". It is impossible for the
Leader of the Opposition to deny his commitment to these
Conference demands. In all the Conference, nowhere was
there any debate about the role played by increased
Government expenditure in promoting inflation.
Labor increasingly boasts a commitment to high expenditure
and more taxes but more taxes minimise individual freedom
and increase the Government's direction over people's lives.
Mr. Hayden stated clearly in the F. E. Chamberlain Lecture
in March this year that:" The challenge to socialism is
the rapid spread of philosophies based on lower taxes and
smaller government...". It is no wonder that the opposition
Leader was subsequently able to protest " that considerable
suspicion of the Labor Party and of Labor Party Governments
remains in the electorate."
For there is no fundamental difference between Mr. Hayden's
economic madness and that practiced by the Whitlan Government.
It is valid to remember that during three years of Federal
Labor rule taxes from personal income increased 125%.
The Adelaide Conference told us, we are to have " taxing
of accumulations of personal capital". We are told
that " this is to be reviewed regularly".
People need constant reminding that the Labor Party is the
Party of high taxation and new taxation. But this time we..
can at least say we have been warned.
In February this year, the Opposition's spokesman on
economic matters, Mr. Ralph Willis, when asked " What is
your attitude towards taxation?" replied: " We haven't
just talked about increasing Government expenditure, we've
talked about alternative policies of raising revenue as
well we'ye talked about the need for new taxes..
resource rent taxes or super profits taxes and some form
of tax on capital". In fact in June 1978 Mr. Willis
committed himself to the " mammoth task in re-building the
public sector in convincing the electorate that it should
pay a higher level of tax to enable us to do so".
Such measures assert the view that the Government knows best
what we should do with our money. This economic thinking must
be firmly resisted. / 4
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When taxation measures, specifically p-rmsed by the
Labor Party, seek to redistribute resources from individuals
to Government, the capacity of individualsito make
decisions is severely restricted. Because of this we have
effected reforms in the taxation scales.
In this financial year we will collect $ 4,000 million less
in income tax than if the Hayden tax scales had applied.
Put another way, a taxpayer with a wife and two children on
average weekly earnings will be over $ 1,000 a year better off
after the 1st of December this year than he would have been
under the Hayden tax scales. Such a move towards lowering
the taxation burden enshrines our Liberal pr ' inciple that
Australians must be given the capacity to determine their
own priorities in life.
The Labor Party seeks to move in the opposite direction.
To add to this the Labor Party is bent on increasing union
power and will legislate to that effect.
Its platform from the Adelaide Conference specifically commits
a Labor Government to " Supply information gathered by the
trans national copporation monitoring agency to the relevant
trade unions and appropriate international trade union
organisations". It further argues that a future Labor Government
will allow unionists to " strike in the course of ( their)
activities immune from any pain or penalties directed against
unions or unionists." This is simply capitulation to the
union movement and a prescription for community chaos.
The complicity of the Labor Party in industrial chaos can no
longer be tolerated. On the 20th of September this year the
Leader of the opposition was reported as arguing that the
Labor Party and the unions were " two separate bodies",
that he " could not possibly endorse" the " foolish behaviour
of some unions". Yet confronted by serious strikes and
disputes in recent months the Telecom dispute, Australia Post
disputes, the current Queensland power dispute, the
transport strikes in South Australia, Victoria and New South
Wales Mr. Hayden Was silent.
How often do we hear Labor leaders defend the community
interest when it is being undermined by militant union
leadership. The usual silence of Mr. Hayden and Mr. Hawke is
a most forceful commentary on the relation between the
Labor Party and the unions. They are not separate bodies
at all. They seem hand in glove in attempting to distort
the social and economic face of Australia. Any doubt that
this is so was dispelled by the response of the opposition
parties to the Government's recently amended legislation
designed to minimise industrial disruption.
Mr. Clyde Holding, the Member for Melbourne Ports, by his
own admission, based his speech in Parliament on material
provided by the A. C. T. U. Does this mean that the union
movement is now writing some of the Opposition's speeches?
This is a tangible-demonstration of the subservience
of the Labor Party to the needs of the union movement.
We should not be surprised by this. Mr. Hayden is on record
as saying of the union movement: " They are very important
to us historically. Without the financial support they give
us we would wither and go into extinction or we would have
to obtain funds from other sources."
Labor's attitude in recent weeks is consistent with its
approved policy. The Adelaide Conference yields untrammeled
rights to union leaders to bend their own members, employers
and the public to their will without reprisal. This leads
to justifiable fears that Labor in Government would be
the mouthpiece of the union movement just as Mr. Holding
was the mouthpiece recently of the A. C. T. U.
So much for Mr. Hayden's claim in September this year that
the connection between the Labor Party and the union
movement was " largely an illusion". We will always assert
that Governments must be accountable to the community at
large not to powerful sections of it.
Indeed Governments' responsibility is to create a suitable
economic climate in which goods and services are produced,
where jobs are available and incomes can be spent by people in
accordance with their own wishes. It is not the function of
Government to set specific goals for all Australians: to
prescribe for society what it believes society should have.
These decisions in the end must be taken by Australians
themselves. Everything a Government does must aim to place economic
activity at the service of people not Governments. To
secure continued growth and individual freedom in the
we need to win the fight against authoritarian planning
advocated by socialist governments throughout the world.
Woodrow Wilson summed up the continuing position well when
he said, many years ago: " Liberty has never come from
Government. The history of liberty is the history of the
limitation of Government power not the increase of it."
We must strive in the 1980' s to write another chapter into
that history.
We enter this period with a record of Australia becoming
economically healthy once again. over the last four years of
Liberal-Country Party Government in Australia, the objectives
for re-establishing economic growth have been maintained.
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The Government's consistent policy has been to keep
downward pressure on the rate of inflation. As a result,
inflation in Australia is now lower than in most other
Western countries and there has been a greater increase
in our international competitiveness. Labor inherited
in 1972 an inflation rate of 5.8 per cent, their legacy
to our Government was an inflation rate of 15.1 per cent
which we have been able to reduce to single digit
figures. We have controlled the size of the public sector.
We have held Government spending over the last three
years to a near constant in real terms. By contrast,
in one year 1974/ 75, under the Whitlam Government,
Commonwealth outlays rose by 46 per cent. The domestic
deficit this year of $ 875 million is less than half that of
last year. In 1978/ 79 the volume of manufacturing exports
was up 21 per cent. Real private business investment
rose by 9.7 per cent.
The Australian Government has been in the vanguard of major
industrialised countries in espousing the view that the
defeat of inflation is a fundamental pre-condition to
lasting economic growth. Only this way, can business
confidence grow and profitability increase and then,
and then alone, will long term increases in job
opportunities occur. There is rno room for complacency.
Much remains to be done.
To go forward into the 80' s with vigour and vision we
must capture the innovative and competitive spirit of
all Australians. Through Liberal Government, individual
Australians have the chance for success born of initiative,
the utilisation of resources and hard work.
If we maintain our quest for excellence in fields of
scholarship, business, the arts, and sport we enhance
our capacity to strengthen national morale-and confidence.
Much is being said internationally about resources
these days. Let that debate not obscure our faith in
Australia's human resources. The capacity to strive to
seek to find, and not to yield, is possessed by all of us.
No doubt, from time to time, there will be those who dampen
our creative impulses by cynicism; who obscure our
enthusiasm with negative thinking. But we must rise above
these obstacles. A Liberal Government will always aim to
push the frontiers of individual achievement further
and further out.
Any Party can assert its dedication to individual freedom.
But a Party expresses that freedom only when it recognises
that individuality and diversity are central to the human
make-up; that from them stem fulfillment and self esteem. / 17
For South Australians this is not a time to be timid and
tentative in the steps we take. There is cause for confidence
and already the first signs have emerged. Now that the
South Australian election is behind us, the development
of Roxby Downs can proceed. The project is no longer being
blocked by a Labor State Government: the Liberal State
Government in South Australia stands behind it.
For its part, the Commonwealth, under its foreign investment
policy, has approved B. P. and Western Mining undertaking
exploration and development of the prospect. Of course,
there will have to be environmental studies, but the way is now
open to explore the possibilities of this unique resources.
The Roxby Downs project could be of the size of Mt. Isa,
a $ 600 million a $ 1,000 million copper, uranium and gold
investment that could, when developed, add to the workforce
some 4,000-5,000 jobs.
All this means that South Australia is now firmly placed to
complement the progress being achieved at a national level.
The decision made last September 15 by the South Australian
electorate has given a further impetus to the developing
momentum of Liberalism in this country. The onus is on us
all, with resolution and commitment to defend unapologetically
what our Party stands for and the principles to which
it gives expression. 000---