PRIME MINISTER
EMBARGOED UNTIL DELIVERY CHECK AGAINST DELIVERY
FUND RAISER FOR THE MACQUARIE ELECTORATE CAMPAIGN
2 APRIL 1987
David March, Ladies and Gentlemen.
over the last week or so, David, you and your Macquarie
electorate campaign team may have been wondering whether
tonight's dinner was about to assume a somewhat larger
national significance.
But yesterday as you know I announced my decision not to
call an early election and thereby deprived you of the
pleasure of hearing my first campaign speech in our quest
for an historic Third Term Labor Government.
However tompting the option for an early election was and
it was very tempting and however confident I was of
winning and I was very confident I decided that the
national interest would best be served by allowing
Parliament to run its full term.
It was not an easy decision to make because the opportunity
which the opposition parties threw in our laps was a
dramatic and significant one.
Let me remind you briefl$' of the elements of that
opportunity. First, the opposition has decided to use their Senate
numbers to reject for the second time one of the
Government's central legislative initiatives, namely the
Australia Card Bill. We see this Bill as a fundamental
instrument of economic management an invaluable tool for
dealing decisively with tax cheats and welfare frauds who
are ripping off the system.
The Australia Card is a simple remedy, it is an effective
remedy, and it is recognised as such by the overwhelming
majority of the Australian people.
In frustrating the Government on this issue and in rejecting
the Australia Card, the opposition parties are displaying
once more the traditional philosophy which Australian
conservative Governments have made a hallmark of their style
-the philosophy of protecting the privileged few while
increasing the burden on the honest majority of the
Australian people.
Their opposition to the Australia Card is not surprising.
After all, they are the parties which seek to return to the
wealthy few the privilege of tax-free capital gains. They
are the parties which seek to remove the assets test for
pensioners so that millionaires once more may draw their
pension from the public purse. They are the parties which
seek to scrap the Fringe Benefits Tax, and thereby allow the
wealthy eligible few their expense account lunches and their
company cars.
So the Australia Card debate, highlighting as it did the
opposition's dedicated commitment to the privileged few, and
its determined campaign to frustrate our legislative
program, inevitably led to speculation about whether there
should be an early election.
But the Opposition's reactionary attitude on that Bill
pointed as well to an even more profound problem afflicting
conservative politics today: the vacuum in the leadership
and policy areas of both the Liberal Party and the National
Party. This created a second temptation for an early election. The
division and instability in the Opposition's ranks literally
threatens the very principles on which Parliament must
operate. The House of Representatives is currently
operating without an effective Opposition or to be more
precise it is operating with several ineffective oppositions
which seem to be as opposed to each other as they are to the
Government. The tribal warfare among the Nationals, and the
protracted leadership instability among the Liberals, and
the dissolution of the coalition, have made it impossible
for the Australian public to establish with any certainty
who is the alternative Prime Minister and what are his
polices. It is inconceivable that the divided and disunited
opposition parties shoulld be allowed to inflict their
self-destructive urge on the nation as a whole. I was faced
with the temptation of deciding whether the Australian
people should be given the opportunity comprehensively and
decisively to reject the politics of privilege and the
politics of confrontation and to endorse the strong and
stable leadership which we have provided to the nation in
the last four years.
And of course the evidence that our leadership is producing
the desired economic outcome is steadily mounting.
We are starting to see the evidence of economic
restructuring as entrepreneurs take advantage of our more
competitive trading situation. Our wages policy, thanks to
the magnificont co-operation of the Australian workforce has
produced necessary restraint in the past and, under the
two-tier system, must continue to do so. Our budgetary
policy has seen unprecedented Government spending restraint
which we will continue to exercise in the May statement.
Only yesterday the nation's newspapers were reporting that
no lesser authority than the Organisation for Economic
Co-operation and Development had endorsed the Government's
economic policies.
The latest OECD report predicted growth would rise to more
than 3% next year, the current account deficit would shrink
to around 4.5t~ of GDP and inflation would fall to around
or 5.5 by the middle of next year.
So these three factors the rejection of the Australia Card
Bill, the opposition disarray and the relatively favourable
economic outlook gave me complete confidence that we would
have won an early election.
But despite th~ is confidence I decided that the Government
should not go to the polls early. The temptation, however
strong, had to be resisted and the opportunity, however
favourable it seemed to our electoral prospects, had to be
turned down. Let me tell you why I made that decision.
There was no hidden motivation or secret insight which I had
available to me. My decision was based on the same economic
logic, the same commitment to restructuring of the economy,
and the same determination to build a prosperous society
which has informed all our decision making in the entire
four years we have been in office.
in the final analysis, it was more important that we
continue to demonstrate our resolve and our capacity to meet
the nation's economic challenge than that we should seek to
take short term political advantage from the failures of our
opponents. If we had sought an early election that decision would have
created a two month period during which the economic
management of our country would have taken second place to
electioneering. The risk to the nation's economic recovery
would not have been worth it.
of course this is a logic which would be quite
incomprehensible to our conservative opponents. For them
economic management is nothing more than an auction in which
the different conservative factions bid for votes by
offering voters ever more enormous but ever more spurious
handouts in the grand tradition of their notorious fistful
of dollars cl~ aim.
The Opposition's profligate promises on tax and spending
unrepudiated to this day by Mr Howard saddle him with a
$ 16 billion credibility gap. And this is before we have
even started an election campaigni
Against that kind of ' Alice In wonderland' arithmetic, the
Labor Government has provided honest, sensible, effective
and relevant solutions to the real economic challenges the
nation is facing. Unlike the opposition, we have not
adopted the head in the sand attitude to the collapse in our
export prices which has seen the nation's income slashed by
more than $ 6 billion the equivalent of $ 1500 for every
Australian family.
It has been our challenge, and our achievement, to manage
this externally imposed crisis in ways which are both
effective and entirely consistent with our traditional Labor
compassion and commitment to equity.
I do not pretend that these policies have not required
sacrifices But I do believe that those sacrifices have been
shared fairly.
And I also believe that the Australian people have
underst-ood and have accepted the need for these sacrifices,
and that they are now seeing the evidence that the
sacrifices have been worthwhile.
The Australian economy is on the mend.
We are building a more competitive and diverse manufacturing
base. We are seeing the benefits of a deregulated financial
market. We are seeing continuing growth in the number of
jobs more than three quarters of a million new jobs have
been created since we came to office. In'short we have
demonstrated our preparedness to take the hard decisionc in
the interests not of short term popularity or narrow
electoral gain but in the interests of the national economy
and in the interests of building a society based on sound
and sustainable economic growth.
We are the Government for the long haul. There are no quick
fixes and no short cuts.
There is no room for voodoo economics or self-indulgent
fantasies that we can somehow turn the clock back.
I have said on many occasions in my Address to the Nation
and since that I would'be prepared to lose office rather
than go soft in economic decision-making. That commitment
remains unaltered.
A relaxation of our firm economic management would not just
threaten today's Australians. It would not just risk the
jobs of today's workers and threaten the livelihood of
today's pensioners. It would place in question the security
and prosperity of the generations of Australians who will
inherit the nation from us.
That is a risk I was not prepared to take.
Having decided against an early election, let me make it
clear that our commitment to a tough and responsible May
Statement remains absolute.
Some of those who were in favour of an early election put
the argument to me in these terms: that a victory in an
election now would have given us a renewed mandate to take
the harsh economic decisions which are necessary.
That line of argument was forceful but it was not
persuasive. This Government already has a mandate, given to
us in unqualified terms by the Australian people in 1983 and
renewed by them in 1984. That mandate still exists, and it
will be the basis for our economic decision making
throughout 1987. * Those economic decisions and the fruits
they are bearing will in turn be the basis of our request to
the Australian people to renew the mandate when we go to the
polls towards the end of this year or early next year.
Because the evidence is growing that our policies are
starting to pay dividends. We expect inflation will fall.
We expect interest rates will fall. We expect jobs will
continue to grow.
we will be able to go to the voters and say, we have not
only overcome the greatest recession in 50 years the
Fraser Government recession of the early 1980' s -we have
also set in place the solution to the dramatic collapse in
our terms of trade and the structural weaknesses in the
Australian economy that have existed for three decades. we
are conducting the most massive restructuring of the
Australian economy ever undertaken, and by the time we go to
the polls I am confident that the benefits of these policies
will be evident to all.
Economic reconstruction is not a notion plucked out of some
economics textbook.
It is the only solution to the challenge we face; it is the
only genuine means of securing higher living standards and
increased cmployment for all Australians.
Let me expla" In this economic reconstruction in this way, by
reading to you the list of Australia's top ten exports
today. They are: coal, wheat, wool, iron ore and
concentrates0 alumina, beef and veal, crude petroleum oils,
refined petroleum products, aluminium, and gold.
All of these exports are based on agriculture or mining.
All but two of them are unprocessed primary products. Most
of them are susceptible to the dramatic slumps in world
prices which we have seen recently in the commodity markets.
The simple fact is that Australia must break its heavy
dependency on those products we can dig up or grow or shear
off the sheep's back.
Australia's great farms and mines will doubtless continue to
be major export earners. But they must not be our sole
export earners.
We must make sure that manufactured goods and service goods
and knowledge intensive industries play a much greater part
in earning our national income, and providing jobs for our
workers. And we must ensure that we find and exploit new
overseas markets for these industries.
So this task of economic reconstruction lies before us as
the first and principal task which my Government is pledged
to fulfill not just in the lead-up to the next election
but as the country enters the 1990s and beyond.
There are three other elements to our Labor strategy which
will guide Australia into the future.
The first of these is this: we will continue to manage the
economy with fairness and compassion. Where sacrifices and
necessary, they willbe shared fairly; where gains are
made, their benefits will be passed on, with fairness, to
the whole community.
The second element is this: we will continue to manage the
economy, and manage the task of reconstruction, with
stability and strength.
We will continue to co-operate with the union movement and
with business to ensure economic stability; we will
continue to support Australia's established and relevant
system of centralised wage fixing which the conservatives
are pledged to demolish; we will continue to protect the
mainstream of Australian society from the-wreckers of the
New Right.
The final element of our strategy for the 1990s is this: we
will continue to ensure that today's policies not only
achieve goals for today but are so geared as to protect the
interests of future generations of Australians.
That is why we must continue to protect our unique
environmental heritage. That is why we must continue to
seek the best educational and employment opportunities for
our childzen. That is why we must continue to create a
multicultural society in which all Australians have equality
of opportunity. That is why we must continue to seek real
peace and effective disarmbament without which all our hopes
and plans can founder.
These then are our aspirations: reconstruction of the
economy, fairness in the protection of living standards,
stability in Government, and care for the future of our
nation. I draw the contrast with the opposition parties. They have
not of late covered themselves with glory in the area of
informing the Australian electorate abut their policies.
But the reckless and reactionary nature of the policies they
have revealed shows us at least this much: they not only
cannot provide the answers to Australia's plight, they do
not even understand the problem.
So, sure, we would love to have been able to do more, and to
achieve our goals more rapidly.
7
But I'm proud of what we have in fact done, in the difficult
circumstances imposed on us by the collapse in our export
prices and the consequent fall in our national income.
Moreover I'm totally certain that our record stands in the
starkest possible contrast to the conservative forces, with
their spurious promises and disunited leadership and
single-minded determination to restore the privileges for
the well-off few in place of the shared benefits we are
delivering to the whole Australian community.