A* 1?"
PRIME MINISTER
EMBARGOED UNTIL DELIVERY CHECK AGAINST DELIVERY
SPEECH FOR THE PRIME MINISTER
T. J. RYAN MEMORIAL LECTURE
" THE DIRECTION FOR AUSTRALIA"
24 September 1985
Distinguished Guests, Members of the Queensland University ALP,
Ladies and Gentlemen.
I am deeply honoured that you have invited me to deliver the sixth
in a series of the T J Ryan Memorial Lectures.
The late Denis Murphy, at the conclusion of his masterful
biography on Thomas John Ryan, observed that Ryan remained
something of a forgotten figure in Australian history.
Thankfully, these memorial lectures, which Denis Murphy did so
much to establish, are redressing this lamentable situation.
The annual lecture has, in fact, done much to promote the
intellectual richness of the great Australian Labor Party.
Occasions such as t-onight, and events such as the Chifley
centenary address which I had the honour of delivering just last
Saturday in Bathurst, contribute considerably to the development
of labour thought, and that is something which is important to the
health of the political process and to our Party's vigour.
Ryan was primarily a highly successful Queen ; land Premier. His was
one of the'most innovatory of social democratic governments. it
was ' a Government based on economic development and stability. It
was progressive, particularly in social welfare and industrial
relations.
Ryan was invited to enter Federal Parliament in October 1919. The
Party's Federal Conference exten~ ded the invitation after
representations from the State Executives of Queensland, NSW, and
Tasmania the only time this has ever been done. He was elected
MHR for West Sydney and later, in September 1920, he became the
Assistant Leader of the Federal Parliamentary Labor Party.
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If Ryan had not died tragically of pneunomia whilst campaigning in
the Maranoa by-election on the first of August, 1921, he
unquestionably would have replaced Tudor as Leader in 1922.
Australia was the worse for his death.
Ryan was a leader in the great tradition of moderate Labor. He
had a clear vision of the direction his government should take,
and he took it. Ryan's was a first class example, in fact, of the
need for direction in government, of the need for reform but
reform with realism rand moderation and the need to face up to
the challenges of a changing world.
There are many parallels to be drawn between the experiences of
Ryan and other grea. E Labor traditionalist leaders such as Chifley
and Curtin, and our-own experience today.
So I want to talk tonight about the direction of * the present
government in the context of both the challenges we face as a
nation, and the achievement of the vision we share for a better
Australia. There is no question that Australia is at a watershed in its
political, economic and social development.
The challenges of the future, the legacy of the past and
imperatives of the present have demanded new approaches, new
methods of dealing with problems and the need for hard decisions
to firmly re-establish our long term prosperity and our objectives
as a nation.
Just on two and a half years ago, the Federal Labor Government
came to office with the promise of a New Direction for Australia
and for the Atistralian people.
It was a troubled period in our history.
At the time, in March of 19.83, we were a nation immersed in
economic chaos, dispirited and paralysed by recession. There was
little hope of quick recovery.
Worst of all, we had a government bereft of inspiration, devoid of
direction and ideas about how the situation c'buld be retrieved;
The turnaround since 1983 has been dramatic. our policies are
succeeding. ours is now a nation of optimism, of growth and
increasing vitality. We have recovered our morale and dignity as
a nation.
Under this Government, Australia HAS been given a New Direction.
But this does not signal the end of our effort our national
efforts to get our economy back on the track to sustainable
economic growth and prosperity, where our people have jobs and
live in an atmosphere of equality and freedom.
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We have achieved a remarkable reconciliation and recovery, but our
task of reconstruction is only just beginning.
But we must also be realistic. We all have our hopes and our
dreams of a better Australia. But we have to accept that we live
in a world of finite resources. We simply do not have the means
to realise every dream, no matter how laudable.
The task of government is to match our hopes with the available
resources, to , ensure that those resources are directed to where
they can be used most efficiently, to bring us closer to realising
those dreams.
This Governme-Kt has been about creating the conditions of
sustainable es~ onomic growth growth which will generate the
wealth we need to implement the changes which will make
Australia a fairer society.
Sustained growth is the prerequisite for everything we want to do.
It is impossible to have fundamental and lasting change in a
static economy.
The evidence-of our economic and social recovery is ever-ywhere.
Remember that in the year before we came to Government 160,000
jobs disappeared and unemployment increased by over a quarter of a
million. Under Labor, in just 28 months, 430,000 jobs have been
created. I do not believe that there has been a comparably important socioeconomic
achievement in Australia for over three decades. Our
success so f~ r places us well on the track to meeting the target
of 500,000 new jobs in our first three years of office.
We have turned the elconomy from a situation in which it was
actually shrinking, to one in which we have now had two successive
years of five per cent growth. We have one of the fastest
growing economies in the world and we are recognised increasingly
around the world for our success.
We have freed our financial sectcr from those regulatory devices
which have proved unnecessary and stifling of our development.
This is a central element in making us competitive with the rest
of the world. We floated the dollar, freed up most interest
rates, and admitted foreign bank' 3.
Industrial disputes are at a record low. We have removed wages
from the arena of direct disputes and employers now have a far
stronger assurance of stability.
Profits have been restored to the levels of the late
the sort of levels which make it worthwhile for employers to
reinvest and to create more jobs. We have maintained the real
value of wages at the same time as inflation has been virtually
halved.
We have simultaneously brought unemployment down from record
levels. And we will bring it down still further.
Underpinning everything we are doing is our commitment to the
Prices and Incomes Accord and to the trilogy. The trilogy
involves our undertakings to restrain our spending, the deficit
and taxation as proportions of GDP. This has given us a definite
yardstick by which to measure our restraint.
No government has ever imposed such a discipline upon itself. We
met these commitments in our last budget the first time in 17
years that any government has done so. The Opposition said we
couldn't do it.
Right from the outset, we were convinced that an effective prices
and incomes policy was an essential vehicle for achieving
sustained, non-inflationary recovery. The opposition said it
would fall apart.
Indeed, the Accord remains at the head of the issues which really
matter to Australians the security of incomes and employment,
freedom from unnecessary industrial disruption, low inflation and
fairness in the treatment of the needy.
it is also the reason why this recovery has taken place without
the sort of wages explosion which has, very often in the past,
snuffed out recoveries before they have taken hold.
The Accord goes far beyond being simply a unique and a uniquely
Australian method of controlling inflation and reducing
unemployment. It is a complex of agreements and understandings
about economic and social goals for the nation as a whole the
goals which are fundamental to Labor's vision for Australia.
And it is this interpretation of the Accord which makes our common
commitment as a Government and as a movement so fundamental to
Labor's cause and to Australia's course. We reject a narrow
commitment to growth for growth's sake.* We embrace growth as the
means to build a better and a fairer Australia.
The value and the significance of the Accord was demonstrated~
again by the recent agreement between the Government and the ACTU
to renew the Accord for another two years.
Under this agreement, the union movement has accepted specific and
further restraint in wages and conditions claims. And the
Government has agreed to a fundamental reform of superannuation
arrangements. As a result of the agreement, up to 100,000 new
jobs will be created because the beneficial effects of the
devaluation will not be lost in a new bout of inflation.
The Accord has also provided the basis for sectoral policies which
have rejuvenated some major Australian industries, particularly
steel, motor vehicles and housing.
I have spoken many times of the need to restructure our industry
and to enmesh our economy with those rapidly developing and
dynamic economies of Asia and the Pacific. Our long term survival
as a prosperous and relevant nation depends upon this.
Australia has been lucky in the past, riding home on the sheep's
back, the wheat grower ' s harvester and on the miner's conveyor
belt. But instead of relying only on commodities, our
manufacturing and services sectors must become more exportoriented.
This involves fundamental changes in the image our
industries have of themselves. We have to look overseas to
expand. The Government is encouraging the appropriate conditions for this
to occur.
Deregulation has made our economy more responsive to market
conditions and reduced distortions relative to our overseas
competitors. We have also placed emphasis on research and development and on
removing unnecessary regulations which hinder the effective
operations of all kinds of industry, and thus inhibit their
competitiveness.
We are encouraging a liberalisation of world trade through our
regional initiative on a new round of multi-lateral trade
negotiations. our emphasis on internationalism in our industry policy is nowhere
more forward looking than in our relations with China. China's
iodernisation. offers the potential of a huge new market.-for our
producers. The possible linkage of our two iron and steel
industries is one example.
Contact between the Australian and Chinese governments and between
Australian and Chinese industcy will become increasingly
important. The China-Australia relationship has enormous
potential to influence Australia's prosperity and our economic
relevance in the world for decades into the future.
Despite our remarkable success so far, we still have a long way to
go on the road to long term economic stability. We cannot slacken
off now.
our policies have been credible because they are relevant both to
the immediate and the long terms.
Many of them have appeared tough, because they have been taken
with an eye to the future as well as to the present.
It is always much harder to apply solutions which will carry us
into the future solutions which will create our future for us.
I have provided a broad overview ' of our record tonight because I
think it is important that our achievements so far should be
placed in their proper context.
We should never forget what the alternative is to our policies and
to our own approach to government.
It is a choice between a government which has brought about strong
growth with significantly reduced inflation and a coalition which
promises only a return to the economic and social chaos of the
early 1980s laced with obsessions and id~ ological hang-ups.
We have produced hope, optimism and growth. They offer a
reversion to the spectres of the past confrontation, economic
stagnation and despair. They espouse the politics of privilege.
They strike emptyapostures which are irrelevant to Australia's
future. It would be pointless to deny that the rnew leadership of the
Liberal Party has put a sharper focus on the Opposition than
previously. But that does not mean that their policies will be
any better or any newer, or are likely to be any more effective
than the policies which were tried by our predecessors in office,
and which failed dismally.
it is the recipe as it was concocted for the seven years before
March 1983. * At the heart of it lay the confrontation with the
trade union movement, the attack on the arbitration system and on
the Conciliation and Arbitration Commission, and the undermining
and subsequent abandonment of centralised wage f ixation.
The result of these policies was a wages explosion, followed by a
new bout of inflation, and the worst recession for fifty years
culminating in zero growth, record inflation, record unemployment
and record industrial disputation.
What we have from the O& pposition that is new is simply more
strident rhetoric to convince us of the merits of ideas which have
been tried and found wanting. They are more fervid in their
polemics, more rabid in their obsessions..
In policy, our opponents this week stand for
deregulation of the labour market
savage and peremptory cuts in spending; and
privatisation of our great national institutions.
Let's have a closer look at these elemtents.
Labour market deregulation would break down the centralised,
national approach to wage fixing which has brought us
simultaneously low inflation and lower unemployment and a
restoration of the sort of profit levels which make it worthwhile
again for businesses to reinvest and create the jobs and growth
which will re-establish our national prosperity.
Far from applying if I could put it this bluntly a laxative to
the labour market, deregulation would create the law of the jungle
in our economy. Neither rational economic considerations nor
Australian social imperatives would be served by a return to that
sort of chaos, which plunged this country into the deepest
recession in 50 years.
our opponentshave also declared that they would cut three billion
dollars off the deficit in each of their first two budgets.
This is a hollow commitment if ever there was one. Never forget
they were the architects of our high deficits. They created them
in a frenzy o-f spending in an unsuccessful effort to avoid losing
office in 1983. our management, in just three budgets, has gone a
long way to correcting this mess. we have halved the deficit as a
proportion of GDP. That is as severe as we could bear without
destabilising and dislocative economic and social effects.
The opposition does not have the courage to nominate the precise
cuts they would make. But the Australian people know that they
would cut in the disadvantaged areas where people really need the
help and support of the nation.
The third element of their policies is their commitment to
privatise some of our greatest and most valuable national
institutions. They have nominated a list of them, including the
Commonwealth Bank, QANTAS and Telecom. They have said they don't
mind if these institutions end up in foreign hands.
our opponents would sell off institutions which have been built up
over generations. They should be left to serve our children as
well as they have served our parents.
What would happen if they were sold off? Ask yourselves the
question. Our opponents have already acknowledged the need for
government subsidies to allow the continued cross-subsidisation of
the services these institutions provide. They say the subsidies
would be financed by the taxation of their profi-ts.
So on the one hand, we would have the privatisation of thie
profits. And on the other hand, the government's revenue -which
should be applied to social needs would be' used to subsidise the
private activities that our opponents would tell you are far more
effectively conducted by private enterprise.
There are some national activities which can only be undertaken by
government. We are concerned with securing the most efficient use
of the resources which must be applied to them in the national
interest.
The key elements of our opponents' propaganda are unworkable and
empty. They are unnecessary and unwanted. If they were ever put
into practice they would cause damage to the entire community and
leave ordinary Australians far worse off. What the coalition
advocates is socially offensive.
We are a Government and a Party with stron~ g traditions as adopted
by great figures such as T J Ryan, John Curtin and Ben Chifley.
We are concerned with social justice. We take the view that we
have a national and a natural obligation to help the disadvantaged
in our community to realise the aspirations for their own personal
development which the more privileged take as a matter of course.
Unlike the Opposition, this Labor Government does not treat people
as stereotypical economic units. We have defined a program of
social security and social justice which is compatible with the
broader objective of economic growth. The two goals are
inseparable. You,, cannot achieve only one unless it is at the
expense of the other.
Government has always been about blending economic rationality
with humanity. Most governments err to one side or the other. We
are achieving the fairest and most realistic balance seen in this
country for decades.
in our first three budgets, the government has directed to the
disadvantaged in our community almost $ 1.5 billion in new and
increased social security benefits over and above those resulting
from establis~ hed indexation arrangements. Wle have in most areas
recovered and even substantially improved upon the ground lost
during the seven years of conservative rule.
These are extraordinary advances in an economy still suffering
very much from those dark years. But we have managed it without
dislocation because we have implemented our policies gradually and
directed benefits to those most in need.
The best way * 1 can illustrate our achievements how we combine
our obligations to the economy and to ordinary people is to
refer to two areas of current activity and they are taxation
reform and our new initiatives to help our young people.
It is true that the taxation reforms which have now been announced
are not as extensive as we had originally intended. We tried.
But we could not attract the widespread community support which is
required for any political reform to succeed.
That was the decision of the Australian people.
But that still leaves us with a series of significant reforms to
our taxation system. We have dramatically reformed personal
income tax scales, broadened the income tax net to catch those
people who have been avoiding tax for years and forcing heavier
burdens on to lower income earners. We will make sure that
everyone meets their proper taxation responsibilities.
We will implement changes which are long overdue changes which
were not made in the past because previous conservative
governments lacked the courage to tackle them.
our taxation reforms will institute a realism and a fairness in
the taxation system with substantial social benefits. They will
stabilise the revenue base from which governments work to provide
the services that all Australians need.
Our initiatives in youth policy are also directed at the future
at our. future as a society arnd at our future as a nation equipped
to meet the ecconomic challenges of an increasingly competitive
world. Australia's future is in the hands of our young people. They are
our greatest-~ asset. But they were left by the wayside over the
years of recession. If our young people have no future, then
Australia has no future.
The coalition presided over a situation where teenage employment
fell by 19 per cent in their last five years. Their response to
the tragedy that they created is a simplistic call for cuts in
youth wages.
We have been painstaking in our development * of a solution to this
problem. It is a multi-faceted approach to improve our young
people's job prospects by making sure they have better
opportunities to be trained in relevant skills.
This involves a traineeship scheme which will complement the
apprenticeship system. It will allow young people to receive
training at the same time as job experience. It involves support
for employers to encourage them to help us achieve these
objectives. Our proposals, involve income support for young people to encourage
them to remain in f-ormal education if they wish, so they are not
forced to drop out of schoo). through economic or social necessity.
And we will increase the positions available for young people at
TAFE colleges.
Our proposals represent a comprehensive and integrated approach to
solving the problems of the people who will inherit our & ountry.
The effect is not simply to improve their chances of getting a
job. The result will be a better trained, and a far more capable
and productive workforce for all of Australia. It will mean a
more secure place for Australia in the world. We will not be
confined to the economic backwaters because we will have a
population and a workforce capable of meeting these challenges.
it is the difference between nurturing the talent, the energy, the
creativity of young Australia or letting that talent and
creativity wither on the vine. And Australia's future would
wither on the vine alongside them.
our programs are aimed at our long term future. They are aimed at
creating an economically secure Australia, as well as a secure and
peaceful world. Testimony to this is our support for the
international non-proliferation regime, for disarmament measures
and our successful advocacy of the South Pacific Nuclear Free Zone
Treaty now made even stronger by Papua-New Guinea signing the
Treaty during my visit to Port Moresby a week ago.
Unless people, and we as a nation, are able to live in an
atmosphere of peace and security, we will not be able to devote
our energies and our resources to our economic and social
security. our gradual change will leave Australia as a stronger, a more
stable society. Our people will not be divided by such
destructive and negative motivations as unequal opportunity, by
elitism or by envy. They will aspire to self-improvement, not at
the expense of their neighbours but in co-operation with them.
Their opportunities * to realise their aspirations will be fairer
unlike the past, when privilege and opportunity were unequal, and
unlike the attitude taken by our opponents, which would entrench
privilege and power in their existing balances.
This is really the essence of the campaign being waged by the new,
so-called drier leadership of our opponents. They are obsessed
with what they call " corporatism". Their campaign is to destroy
what they describe as the " corporate alliance" between " big
government, big unions and big business".
This is a sinister and a cheap means of deriding the co-operative
relationship, the partnership which has produced the most
remarkable economic turnaround in the world today. Of course the
conservatives object to it. It has kept the Labor Government in
office, and it has kept the conservatives out of office.
The difference between the two sides is really over whether we
together take a national approach to issues and problems which are
essentially national issues and problems, requiring national
solutions. The essence of the conservatives' approach is that they would
break down our national approach into a hotch-potch series of
cheap little deals, with every self interested group of workers or
bosses in every enterprise or industry, and every social group in
Australia fighting each other to get the most that they can.
It would be dog eat dog in its crudest form.
Far from giving little people more power and more choice, this
sort of approach would serve only to break down the national cooperation
which has worked so well for all Australians. It would
do nothing to advance the cause of our national economic and
social well-being. It would leave the strong stronger and the weak
weaker.
If there is one thing that the success of our co-operative
approach has demonstrated so far, it is that none of us can be
winners unless we are all winners. And so far, we ARE all
winners. It is the difference between national compassion and action on the
one hand, and the abrogation of ndtional government responsibility
on the other.
It is easy to see why our opponents advocate their particular
approach. After all, they are the representatives of entrenched
inequality. They represent a party that was set up primarily to
oppose Labor, tc? protect their own1 already comfortable, privileged
positions. And'we should never forget that.
The Labor Party has always been the party of ideas in Australia.
It has always been been the the party of compassion and humanity.
Labor has tried to blend the twin objectives of economic and
social well-being, of fairness and justice.
Labor has fought the fight for moderate reform with concern for
all the people of Australia. We are not a sectional party. We are
a party for all Australians, delivering the growth and the
policies which benefit all Australians.
It is every person's legitimate expectation that they should be
able to live their lives the way they want to live them, free from
government interference, and subject only to the constraint that
they should not, in the process of living their lives, infringe
the rights and freedoms of others.
We have no interest in cutting down the achievers in our society.
Far from it. * No society can thrive without the positive
contributions of those'who stand out. We are intent upon
encouraging achievement.
But we are also concerned to create the conditions to ensure that
everyone has the opportunity to develop their own skills and
potential, to take a full, creative and productive role in society
to become an achiever should they possess the talent and the
inclination to do so.
They should not be barred by accidents of birth, by accidents of
race, of social status or of location.
Our task is to create a society in which opportunities are open to
all, in which mothers and fathers will not worry for their
children's future, because their future will be secure from the
threat of unemployment, destitution and discrimination and as
far as possible free from the threats of war and violence.
This is our way. It is the way of the vast majority of the
Australian people. It is the true Labor way, in the great Labor
tradition. It is up to us as a government to create the conditions to make
sure that these goals can be met.
We do not believe in Big Government. We do believe in efficient,
compassionate and responsive government. We believe in government
which is equipped to provide the services and support that we all
need to realise the hopes and dreams that we all have.
We have much in common with such great Labor figures as T J Ryan,
who had an abiding confidence in the tolerance, judgement and
intelligence-of the Australian people. Ryan held a view of
humanity which I share. He believed in the essential goodness of
people and he understood their aspirations.
Ryan's hallmarks were his intelligence,. his capacity for hard
work, and his abifity to understand people and their problems. He
understood the particular nuances of the ALP. He was prepared to
stand his ground and not to be intimidated by his opponents.
These characteristics, I believe, are also those of the current
Australian Labor Government.
Under this Government, we have emerged once again as a nation to
be respected in the world. We have rejected conflict and
confrontation and replaced it with co-operation and compassion.
We have ended the drift, the division, the lack of direction, the
loss of confidence, the absence of leadership and the blindness
about where Australia was headed and what we could achieve
together.
We are creating a better, more caring, more tolerant, more
diverse, and more realistic Australia. It is a more cohesive,
richer and enriched Australia an Australia of which T. J. Ryan
would justly be proud.