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FOR MEDIA SATURDAY, 15 MAY 1982_
FEDERAL COUNCIL
I would like to thank my colleague Prime Minister Ratu Mara
for coming here and being our guest of honour okt this
occasion. He has been a good friend of Australia and relations
between Fiji and Australia have grown closer and closer over
recent times.
I will be' saying a little more about John Atwill this
evening. Seven years of presidency is a long time, it is
a record. He served this Party faithfully and well. Bob
southeyl6 years on the Federal Executive, earlier on the
Victorian Executive has served theParty very well and over
some very difficult times. Jim Samson, 11 years as Vice-
President and he again has given great service. Jim has
always spoken his mind, as has everyone in this organisation,
but he does it with a bluntness and a forthrightness that
always commands respect.
I would also like to thank Phillip Byhch for being a great servant of
the partyand a great deputy to me over the period of this
Government and John Howard has deserved very much the support
that the Parliamentary Party bestowed on him a
few weeks ago. These are people who have served the Party
well over long periods. They are the kind
of people that make this Party great.
I believe that you would want me to say good luck to Robin
Gray in Tasmania. We expect to hear a little more good
news this evening. He has run a great campaign and he
deserves support and Tasmania deserves release from the
socialist government that has held it back and damaged its
future over recent times. There is somebody else that I believe
that we should send good wishes to and some words of thought
to at this present time.
Margaret Thatcher has been a good friend of this Council.
She has been before us on more than one occasion and I think
in very difficult days for her, it would not hurt to send
from the Council a message of good wishes and of courage. / 2
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We have a great responsibility to proclaim Liberalism, what
it stands for, how it affects the lives and the well-being
of Australians and Australian families. It is not some remote
philosophy that people talk about in the cloisters. Liberalism,
to us, to Australians is a way of life thatgoes out to the
hearts and minds of people. It affects people in their homes
in every part of this land. Under Liberalism Australians have
had and will have a better life than under any other philosophy.
There have been rising living standards. Our policies have
released the energy, the creativity of Australian people.
There has been much achieved and much which Australians can
take pride in.
It is not what we as governments have done, it is what we
through our policies have made possible. It is Australians
who have done the building, it is Australians who have done
the creating. Governments only set the policies and unleash
the energies of the most imaginative and creative people
that the world knows.
I believe that sometimes young Australians don't understand how
much their fathers have in fact achieved over the last
or 30 years, but if they can -think back and look to the measure
of that achievement the rising living standards, the better
homes and houses, better equipment in those houses then they
will see what their fathers have built during their lifetime.
There is much in which they can take pride for that achievement.
As a Liberal Party we have great obligations and great
responsibilities, we have common purposes, a common philosophy.
We obviously don't agree on every item of policy. The purpose
of this Party, of this organisation, of the Party room and
the Party committees is to enable us to talk about our
policies, to see whether adjustments need to be made, to see
whether changing circumstances or the interactions of Australia
and countries overseas require some adjustment, some trimming
of the sails. But we have common purposes, we have a great
obligation to act as one team, as one group committed to one
thing only: not to the advancement of this Party, or to the
people in this Party, but to the advancement of the people
of Australia and to their well-being. That is our purpose.
I believe that since 8 April, which is not a very long while
ago, there is a new reality about the Liberal Party, a reality
of the Liberal Party acting as one team with a common purpose,
a common sense of direction an a total and absolute commitment
to winning that next election and winning seats back that we
lost at the last election.
The revitalised Ministry: Ian Macphee in Industrial Relations,
the appointment has been applauded; Neil Brown, great challenges
ahead of him in Communications with the great technological
changes that are upon us; Jim Killen, to try and re-instil
and re-establish respect for the institution of Parliament
and surely that is very much needed and there is nobody / 3
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better suited to do it; Ian Viner, to be a voice for industry
to make sure that we can maximnise defence purchases from
Australian industry rather than from overseas; Wal Fife,
Education; Ian Wilson, Aboriginal Affairs; Jim Carlton in
Health; John Hodges in Immigration and Ethnic Affairs. These
are not all the changes, but changes which have been applauded
and the Ministers will be acting in their tasks with great
vigour and with great energy.
I do not want to speak about the Labor Party on this occasion,
except to make one point. We all know that Labor's policies
would be disastrous for Australia. The obligation on us to
make sure that our policies are understood to make sure that
our policies are right, and their merits are understood and
accepted right across Australia rests not just with me and
John Howard and my Parliamentary colleagues, but on all of
you, on every member of the Patty. That is the great
task ahead of us over the next 18 months.
We live at the present time in a somewhat unhappy world.
There are very great difficulties. Last year for the first
time in 20 years world trade actually fell. It has been the
growth of world trade over the last three decades which has
been the engine of the progress; the liberal system of trade
and payments which has made possible the rising living
standards of Australia and of other countries right around the
world. It is not generally understood that there has been
negative growth in the last recorded quarter for industrial
production in 6 of the 7 major countries of the world: in
the United States, where it is not just one quarter but two;
in Germany, Japan, Canada, France and in the United Kingdom
negative growth in all those major countries. And it is not
surprising under those circumstances that unemployment in the
OCED area has risen to nearly 30 million, and is expected to
go beyond 30 million twice the total population of Australia.
The President of the European Commission, when he was out here,
was suggesting that the degree and extent of the economic
hardship and of unemployment could lead to real social instability,
major political instability, in some countries of Europe in
the period ahead of us. I think we sometimes find it hard
to understand what has happened. We get concerned when new
homes starts fell by 12% and we are right to be concerned.
But in the United States the building industry is running
at 35% to 40% of what it was only a short period ago. Instead
of producing 15 million automobiles, the U. S. is producing
about 71 million automobiles: measure that in terms of
hardship and unemployment and damage to an economy.
We have been told that in 6 months time there will be a
recovery. Certain economists have been telling us there
will be a world recovery so often over the last period it's
always six months ahead, it's always around the corner that
I'll believe when 1 see it and I don't believe it can
yet be guaranteed.
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There are somne optimistic signs. In the United -States inflation
has fallen dramatically, and that is certainly a great gain. But
interest rates remain at historically high levels, historically
damaging levels. I think we are all conscious of the damage that
is done when interest rates stay at these high levels for a
prolonged period. It is not just small businesses and
farmers or people who might want to buy a house who are damaged
as a consequence. It is also the great corporations who find
themselves in difficulty if these historically high interest
rates are sustained for too long a period. There is no
universally agreed solution to these particular problems.
The Ministerial Meeting of the OECD, held last week seems to
have run in every direction. There were some promoting policies
that we believe to be right: restraint in expenditure,
bearing down on inflation. But in France they seem to be
taking pride in trebling their deficit, even though they have
14% inflation and it is likely to get much worse under the
policies that they are pursuing. There have been countries
that have said that Germany and Japan should ref late in
other words perhaps damage their economies so that the
weaker economies will have a greater chance of competing..
That hardly seems to be a solution.
Australia is affected by this situation; we find that we
are affected by changes in commodity prices; by the downturn
in trade; and the longer it goes on the more damage there is
likely to be to this nation, the harder it will be for the
Government to insulate Australia from the worst effects of
the world downturn. We need to be conscious of that, conscious
of what we need to do. We need to be particularly careful
that in those areas where we have done so much over the last
12 months we do not damage ourselves as a nation; strikes that
were not necessary; additions to costs and wages, that in the
world environment in which we have to trade and sell, have
been quite unreasonable; and because of shortages and
difficulties in the waterfront, especially in New South Wales
and especially in the coal exporting ports, our reliability
as a trading partner has come into question in certain
quarters. Australians also damage themselves by maybe at this
time last year having had undue optimism, incapable of achievement:
the 1980' s, with the resources boom, where the sky was the limit.
But earlier theis year, with one or two unfortunate economic
statistics, the pendulum swung very much in the other direction
and people seemed to be filled with despair. The truth, of
course., is in between. It was never as good as some seemed
to think, and certainly is not as bad as some people have been
writing over the last few months.
There are great strengths in this economy, and Australia is
marching forward while other countries are shrinking, while
they are not producing more. Australia in .1981 produced
more on revised figures very significant growth indeed.
Investment in 1980/ 81 rose at a 30 year record, up 21% in real
terms; it will be up very much in theis year again somewhere
between 10% and 15%; and while the increase for next year might
not be as great, it is still projected to rise and rise from
a high base.
And the business investment that has taken place in Australia
is establishing a secure base, a strong foundation on which
Australia will be able to build whenever the inevitable
world upturn comes at some point. It will be our factories,
our mines, our people who will be standing ready to take
advantage of those opportunities.
And while in other countries, employment has fallen, in
Australia employment has grown by over 400,000 in the last
three years. The motor industry has had record sales, record
for all times, over the last year and that doesn't get on the
front pages of the newspapers you find it on page 26
in small print if you look hard. In the 1a-3t few weeks,
the interest rates on John Howard's Treasury notes have
come down by 3% or a little better. That doesn't necessarily
get on the front pages either, and I don't write too much
into it. I think we all learn from past predictions, and
I am making none, but at least it is some kind of a pointer.
It is certainly significant. The consumer price index of
1.7% in the March quarter was the lowest quarterly index
since 1979. What does that say to those people who were
suggesting, only a short while ago, that inflation was
running out of control.
And the wage decision that was announced yesterday, while
maybe giving Ian Macphee some difficulties in diplomacy
early in his term of office is certainly the best wage
decision for many years, and maybe the best decision since
we have been in office. Because that decision will give us
breathing time, an opportunity to absorb the increases of
last year which were too high, an opportunity to accommodate
the reductions of hours which came at an unfortunate time.
And that being so, we will be able to maintain and reestablish
Australia's competitive position in the world.
We need to know that our policies are on track. We need to
know and understand that the well-being of Australian
families is being protected and enhanced by those policies.
In the 1980/ 81 year, the after-tax disposable incomes
of Australian households rose by nearly $ 3 billion and
that is a substantial amount. There will be more than a
increase in wages through this year, but even a
increase in wages increases the income of Australian
households by $ 5 billion after tax. That is one of the reasons,
obviously, why some areas of consumer spending are running
high. But the outlook for the future is plainly flatter
than it has been over the last 18 months. Flatter for us,
it is flat, much flatter still for the world. / 6
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We need solutions to be shrinking of world trade; we need
solutions for the problems in the major economies because they are
the engine of growth and progress around the world; and I
believe that we need more than just more of the same. We need
more than just the same suggestions that we need to be restrained
in government spending, to bear down inflation and be responsible
for all those areas that you have heard us talk about so much
over recent years. Those policies are right, and while they can
always be adjusted at the margins, their main thrust is
secure. It is quite plain that for whatever reason whether it is
difficulty with internal politics or whatever a number of
countries around the world have found it difficult to apply
those policies adequately to achieve the advances that are
necessary to lower world unemployment and to achieve a wider
living standard for their own people, to achieve a growth
in world trade.
It is against that background the two meetings that are
going to be held in Europe next month take on a very particular
importance. For six or seven years there has been an economic
summit involving the seven major economies. The next economic
summnit is going to take place at Versailles early in June.
That will be followed by a NATO heads of government meeting in
Bonn a day or two later and that is unusual because NATO heads
of government don't often meet.
I believe that it is not going to be good enough for those
seven major economies to come out with some anodyne communique
which wraps all the difficulties up on cotton wool and pretends
that the world can march on as though nothing had happened.
There is the shadow of those 30 million unemployed in OECD countries
and quite plainly that poses a problem of immense human
proportions. There is-a responsibility on those seven major ecnomies, a
responsibility to give a lead. Some kind of circuit. breaker
is needed. It is worth recording I think, that once before
when there was great -concern once before when there was very
real fear abroad in the world, major leaders were able to come
together with imaginative proposals which led to the
greatest period of growth and progress and of rising living
standards in all countries that the world has ever seen. In
the days just after the World War, world leaders were then
enormously concerned that with the demobilisation of millions of
people, with the transfer from the war time to a peace time
economy, with -the fall off in massive proportions of defence
orders, thatthere would he a reversion to the Depression and to
the unemployment and hardships of the 1930s.
So, they came forward with proposals. With extraordinary
generosity, the Am~ ericans launched the Marshall plan. Through
the Bretton Woods Conference, the formation of the International / 7
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Monetary Fund, and the World Bank, the liberal system of trade
and payments was established. And it led, to the greatest
period of growth and trade, growth in living standards, that
the world has ever seen. It may be some of the same imagination
is needed in present circumstances.
I valued the opportunity that I will have to speak with
President Reagan and Prime Ministers Trudeau and Suzuki
over the next week. I am sorry I am leaving in the middle
of this Council later tonight, but there are some views that
Australia wants to put forward, there are some views that we have,
that we believe may help to act as a circuit breaker in
these circumstances. They have been discussed by the Government
and I will be speaking to 3 of the Heads of Government who will
be at that economic summit.
It is not only economic matters that offer us some concern,
because if countries are arguing about economic directions,
if there is bitterness about high interest rates, or
falling trade or growing protection, it is obviously going to be
much harder to get the unity within the Western Alliance
that is needed at the present time. There have been strains
within that Alliance: how to respond to Afghanistan; how
to respond to the problems of and repression in Poland. And so
often the Alliance talks about the nuts and bolts of military
arrangements without realising without necessarily understanding
that new generations have grown up who knew nothing really of
the reasons why the Alliance was first born. Perhaps there
is a need for Western leaders to argue the need fo r the
Alliance to argue that it needs to be in place so that
free societies can live and breath and create and gb'-about
their business in security.
There are new generations who did not understand, or who were
not part of that earlier history. There are massive peace
movements in Europe who would like to subvert the Alliance and
I have got no doubt at all that,-some part of those movements
are engineered from the Soviet Union. I also have no doubt
that there are well-meaning people within those movements
who want only peace, but who don't understand that you will
not secure peace by unilateral disarmament faced with a
country like the Soviet Union. There is need to expl~ ain, there
is a need to argue. It is not good enough-' to say the truths
are so old I have forgotten how to argue them.
The conjunction of these two sets of meetings the economic
meetina~ which will mean so much for the'living standards of
all of us, alongside the strategic meeting are going to
be of vast importance tothe-whole free world. Quite plainly
their outcomes will affect Australia, just as they will affect
other countries / 8
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We have to speak very often about economic matters because
economic matters have been paramount in people's minds in
recent years. But in the last 6 years of government there
are many other things that have concerned the Government.
There are many other achievements that we as Liberals need
to remember and to proclaim.
In world affairs within the Commonwealth we fought for
justice against racism, for the rights of ordinary people.
We have co-operated, and sometimes have been a catalyst,
in peacekeeping arrangements and what has happened in
relation to the Sinai is an example of that.
We have accepted an obligation to improve and enhance Australia's
defence capability. How the media can suggest a 19% increase
in defence spending is a cut in defence spending I fail to
understand. I don't know how a journalist would get on if
they went to their editor and said that 19% increase in
salary you gave me is in fact a cut. I don't think it would
be accepted with great credibility.
Our forces have high capability. There has been a rescheduling
of some major purchases, but the forces have high morale and
great capacity. We have co-operated more with South-East
Asia, with Malaysia, with Singapore, with New Zealand under
the five power defence arrangements; and our co-operation
with the United States is deeper than it has ever been.
We have also done much to protect the environment for future
generations. we don't own this country at this-time to exploit
it; we hold it in trust to maintain it, to improve it, our
future generations.
For migrants, for ethnic communities we have established a
range of unequalled services which perhaps should have been
established 10 or 15 years ago. But it was the Galbally
Report, and this Government, that established those services.
There implementation is under review: the government will have
the review in hand shortly and it will act upon it. It was
we who also established as a world first multicultural
television, which has even won some of its critics to its side
since it started operating.
We have established the Australian Institute of Sport and
with the energy that he always shows.. Michael Hodgman might
even get the next challenge round of the Davis Cup to be
played in Canberra at that Institute. That would enable
all Australians to see what we have built in that particular
Institute. It gives opportunities to Australian athletes
to achieve the best training possible in the world and they
will have the opportunity to show how that training pays off
in the Commonwealth Games that will be held, without boycott,
in Brisbane. / 9
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We have done much to support Australian culture and the arts
the great flag carriers that have taken Australia's name
around the world with pride and with enormous talent. We
also have some of the best medical research teams in the world
that have been backed by sbbstantial increases in funds. We
are supporting centres of excellence in Australian universities.
We have established imaginative programs to assist young people
move from the difficult period of school to work. We have
been supporting excellence, we have been supporting Australians
in their desire and will to achieve throughout the last six
or seven years. We have done much in legal reform: the
Ombudsman; the Human Rights Commission; the changes in
Administrative Law; Freedom of Information legislation and
there are sound reasons for these things. In the days of
growing, large, encroaching bureaucracies it is important to
make sure that ordinary citizens have adequate access to means
of redress when they believe they have been wronged or not
been able to achieve what is rightfully and properly theirs.
We have also announced we are willing to hold a further
Constitutional Convention if the States are willing to
participate in that.
Ladies and Gentlemen, much has been achieved, but there is a
great deal still to do. There will always be difficulties,
always problems before a government, but I believe that what
we have shown we have been able to do over the last six
years gives us the right to claim that whatever the difficulties
are for Australia in the future, we can handle them and meet
the challenge.
In this Council, there will be a new Platform. I hope you will
endorse our Liberal principles and go out to proclaim them.
There are Liberal strengths never to be forgotten; Liberal
achievements to be voiced abroad. Over some recent weeks,
there may have been a certain amount of euphoria in the Labor
Party; well let them have their moment of euphoria, because
it is all they are ever going to have.
Working together, having faith in ourselves, having faith
and good judgement in our policies, and trusting in the
good judgement of the Australian people, we will never fail
them and they will never fail us.
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