CHECK AGAINST DELIVERY EMBARGOED UNTIL DELIVERY
PRIME MINISTER
SPEECH BY THE PRIME MINISTER
NUNAWADING BY-ELECTION OPENING
21 JULY 1985
FOR MEDIA
The people of Victoria have made two very significant decisions
over the last eight months. On the 1st of December last year, they
returned the Federal Labor Government in Canberra to a second term
of office. Then, on the 2nd of March less than five months ago
they gave a similar vote of approval to the Cain Government in
Victoria. The reasons for both decisions were simple. In both electioRs, the
people of Victoria were responding to the record of achievement of
both Governments during their first terms of office.
During those periods, Australians ' and Victorians witnessed a
remarkable turn-around in their country's and their own economic
fortunes. And since the polls, the recovery has continued and in
many respects strengthened.
It is due in no small measure' to the fact that the Federal Labor
Government our own Government and the Cain Government of
Victoria have co-operated and co-ordinated their social and
economic policies. This partnership helped to produce a truly
stunning economic recovery which has benefited all the people of
Australia, but especially Victorians.
It has transformed the social and economic atmosphere in this
country and in this State. It has turned bleakness and despair
into brightness and optimism. It has created a future in place of
a sorry past. And it is providing a new security for Australians
where previously there was a lingering threat to their livelihoods
and a gradual erosion of their standards of living.
It is this great partnership between our government in Canberra
and the Cain Government in Victoria which has produced such a
radical change of fortunes for all of us.
our joint achievements stand in stark contrast with the hollow
posturing of the Opposition parties. They have a history of
destructive tactics. They are naturally negative. Their constant,
carping negativism is no substitute for government.
It would be a tragedy if this negativism was to hinder the
success we have all achieved together. It would be tragic if the
partnership between the Federal Government and the Cain Government
in Victoria, which has proved so successful in turning Australia's
and Victoria's economies around, was not to continue.
It is unfortunate that the preoccupations of recent weeks have
obscured the momentous improvements in the lives and prospects of
Australians and Victorians under our two Labor governments.
We must not forget the things that really matter to Australians
security of incomes and employment, freedom from unnecessary
industrial disruption, moderate inflation, fairness in the
provision that is made for the needy, and all the things that
affect the daily lives of our people.
We must not forget that economic growth is the key to improvements
in the living standards of ordinary Australians.
And we must not forget that under 2 Labor governments, growth has
returned to Australia and Victoria after nearly a decade of
stagnation.
The financial year that ended last year was the second successive
year of 5 per cent growth in Australia's non-farm economy.
In the 7 lean years of coalition rule there was not a single year
of 5 per cent growth. And all the signs are that strong growth
will continue. Strong gro ' wth in private consumption and investment
look like making 1985-86 the third year in a row of 5, per cent
growth. This strong growth has created over 380,000 new jobs in Australia
in the 2 years and 2 months since the National Economic Summit
Conference. This is 40,000 more new jobs than were created in over
7 long years of coalition rule.
These new jobs have absorbed the new participants in the labour
force while reducing unemployment from 10.3 per cent in April 1983
to 8.7 per cent last month. And of all the states of Australia,
Victoria has done best. Victoria's unemployment rate is now down
to 7.1 per cent.
Inflation and industrial disruption in Victoria and Australia as a
whole are dramatically lower than a few years ago.
Victorians know what this economic recovery means in practical
terms. In Victoria, motor vehicle registrations in the 3 months to
May this year were 17.5 per cent higher than the corresponding
period a year ago even stronger growth than the 12.5 per cent
for Australia as a whole.
In Victoria, approvals for new home construction have risen 19 per
cent in the year to the March quarter, compared with a national
growth of 1 per cent.
In Victoria, capital investment increased by 11 per cent in the
year to December last year, compared with the national figure of 3
per cent.
These statistics tell an important story.
The choice before you in Nunawading is a clear one. It is a
choice between a party which at the Federal and State levels has
brought about strong growth in output and employment and reduced
inflation, and a coalition which can only promise a return to the
economic and social chaos of the early 1980s, overlaid with their
obsessive ideological trappings.
The Liberals meeting in Canberra last week highlighted the rift in
the Party leadership and between the Party leader and the Party
president. They showed that they really stand for nothing. All
they can do is carp and complain and posture on empty policies
which have no relevance to Australia's economic well being.
The last week has given us valuable insights into what would lie
ahead if the conservatives came to power again. In the last few
days, the Opposition Leader has targetted
TAA, the Australian National Line,
AUSSAT the authority administering Australia's domestic satellite
the Health Insurance Commission which runs Medibank,
the Australian Industry Development Corporation,
the Housing Loans Insurance Corporation,
the Commonwealth Bank and
the Pipeline Authority.
All these are in danger of the sell-off.
The efficient delivery of government services many of which only
government can provide will be sacrificed on the altar of
ideological expedience.
The Liberals ignore entirely the social costs necessarily absorbed
by our public corporations. They would embark on an
indi scriminate attack on a whole range of services generally
regarded as basic to the quality of Australian life. The Chairman
of the Liberals' social welfare and health committee, Mr Ian
Wilson, last week was actually calling for the privatisation of
health and hospitals, schools and universities, as well as income
security and welfare.
This is the logic of his leader's approach it is the logic of a
blinkered, insensitive, totally inappropriate ideological
obsession. All the conservatives really want is to sell off the profitable
areas of government activity, which contribute to public revenue,
leaving even heavier burdens on taxpayers to pick up the slack to
keep essential government services operating.
Picking and choosing in this way is hardly the hallmark of a
socially responsible Government. Considerations of efficiency and
social equity would be jettisoned by those obsessed with
profitability. Social and economic conscience has no place in the
calculations of the Liberals' ideological purists.
What the Liberals are on about is a one-off fire sale, a Sale of
the Century, of your assets the assets of the people of
Australia. They would transfer them into the hands of a
privileged few, to the cost of every one of us. No regard will be
had to the social costs involved.
Let me take the example of the Commonwealth Bank which is one of
our great Australian institutions. It has been built up over
generations by big investors with their corporate accounts and
small investors with their life's savings. Thousands have bought
their homes through the Bank and have mortgages with it.
The Commonwealth Bank does not belong just to any government or to
any particular generation. It belonged to the previous
generations of Australians who started it and built it up. It was
bequeathed to the current generation. And it will be left to
future generations.
It should not be the plaything of a government which is devoid of
practical and substantive ideas for providing the essential
services which the people of Australia need.
Make no mistake. The conservative parties threaten the
continuation of services provided by government across a whole
spectrum of essential activities.
As Senator Peter Walsh, the Minister for Finance, has said
elsewhere, the conservatives see about 25 per cent as the ideal
level of Commonwealth outlays as a proportion of GDP. If suddenly
we had 1.5 per cent unemployment the level of the 1960s and
early 1970s instead of today's level, outlays would fall to
about 27 per cent of GDP without any policy changes at all.
If we assume that public debt cannot be repudiated and it cannot
then to reduce the 1984-85 budget outlays to about 25 per cent
of GDP would have required 2 per cent cuts in spending on defence,
social security, health, education and general purpose payments to
the states, which absorb 74 per cent of outlays.
It would mean cancelling payments for all other Commonwealth
functions, which would mean no payments to industry, the arts,
transport, or foreign aid, and closing down the ABC, the CSIRO,
the Atomic Energy Commission, and the Tasmanian Railways and
this list is not exhaustive.
And it would mean abolishing almost all the Commonwealth
administrative framework, including the Taxation Office and the
Department of Finance. There would then be nobody to collect or
pay public money. Government would be replaced by anarchy.
This is no answer to Australia's problems.
The Liberals passed a resolution at their Council in Canberra a
place which I might say is currently gripped by the same wintry
chills which blight the Liberals' social and economic conscience
they passed a resolution decreeing that a Coalition government
would cut 3 billion dollars off the deficit in each of its first 2
years. We have cut the deficit from a prospective 9.6 billion dollars to
6.75 billion dollars in two years. That is a big cut. But it is
as dramatic a cut as the economy could bear without severe
dislocative social and economic effects.
The Conservatives would have you believe that it is a simple task
to cut out spending and to get rid of some of the great Australian
institutions which provide valuable and essential services to the
people of Australia.
It is not simple. It is difficult and complex and it is fraught
with dangers. It would threaten the security of many, many
Australians. For all their rhetoric, the conservative parties of this country
have in government done economic harm to our families to the aged
and to youth. In government they wrought havoc on all these
groups through the unemployment and inflation generated by their
economic and social policies. Now they are promising nothing
different, other than to further reduce funding in ways that will
hurt these groups. There could be no clearer contrast between
that and what the Labor Party stands for for what John Cain and
the Victorian Government stand for.
In government, at the Federal level, the coalition parties
presided over a situation where, in their last 5 years, teenage
employment fell by 19 per cent. Now their only policy response to
the tragedy tha. they created is to suggest that youth wages
should be cut.
The-Federal Government is now close to finalising an approach to
youth policy which in an integrated way will achieve these
objectives. It will ensure that the benefits of strong growth in
Australia and the especially strong growth in Victoria over the
last 2 years are passed on to our young people, and that they can
contribute to future growth with some pride in their efforts.
In the labour market we have already made a start. We have
achieved a reduction in teenage unemployment of 19 per cent. But
the Government is now looking at the far more compr'Ihensive gains
that can be achieved by a combination of further improvements in
participation rates in secondary and tertiary education, and the
introduction of a traineeship program.
I stand by my previous remarks on this subject as a statement of
an objective which should be integral to what any Labor Government
is seeking to achieve, as well as being clearly in the best
interests of our country.
And it is an objective the Government has good reason to believe
can be achieved by the early 1990s. It is an issue which received
close attention from the recent Quality of Education Committee
headed by Professor Peter Karmel. The Committee reported that
and I quote:
" Increased retention to the completion of secondary school
and the flow on to tertiary institutions can be expected,
under the Committee's scenario, to increase the number of
teenagers in full-time education by about one third. This,
together with the additional 75,000 trainees recommended by
the Committee of Inquiry into Labour Market Programs, could
bring youth unemployment down to a level comparable with that
of the 1960s, while full-time job opportunities for the young
continue their downward trend."
I might add that there are some signs that over the past 2 years
we have been doing better than is required to meet the projections
of the Karmel Report. In contrast with the huge fall in teenage
Jobs in the years before we took office, teenage employment has
increased significantly since mid-1983.
The challenge for us all is to transform the present situation
into one in which every one of our young people can look to the
future with some optimism and hope about being able to enjoy
satisfying and productive employment.
This is not a task which we in Canberra can do on our own. It
requires close co-operation with the states. It is essential that
each of the states has comprehensive and forward looking policies
in place to complement our own.
And this provides us with another great example of how the Federal
and State Governments are together transforming the future for
Victorians.
Nowhere is this partnership between the Cain Government and the
Federal Government's more evident than in our joint commitment to
transform the future for our young people. The Cain Government
has already given you its Youth Guarantee. The Federal Government
will ensure that that guarantee is supported and complemented in
our own youth policy.
It is this partnership which is at risk on the 17th of August.
The Cain Government needs Nunawading because it needs the solid
support of the Victorian Upper House in ensuring that it can carry
out its program unfettered by the Conservative forces of
negativism and confrontation.
We all need Nunawading because we need the Cain Governm~ ent.