PRIME MINISTERI
TRANSCRIPT OF THE PRIME MINISTER, THE HON P J KEATING MP
OPENING OF CAMPAIGN OFFICE FOR BILL KARDAMITSIS, WILLS
ELECTORATE, MARCH 10 1992
E& OE PROOF COPY
Bill, Haroula, ladies and gentlemen, we know this will be a
difficult el. ection for Labor but we believe we can win it.
We believe we can win it because it will be a test, in many,
respects, about the way Australia runs whether or not the
Government should be involved in a recovery, the Government
should be inLvolved in the economy, or whether it should be a
policy of Government withdrawal as our friends in the
Opposition wish. That is, that the Government sits on the
side lines and lets the economy just simply move at its own
pace, to not accelerate a recovery, to not try to make
things better for Australia, and then to not try to make the
economy more efficient and society better.
So this contest is going to be one where the style and
policies of the Labor Party, the policies about partnership,
about people working together, about co-operation, are in
the vogue or whether it is policies which are about
confrontation, about survival of the fittest and loser take
the hindmost.
And it is about those issues that I think we will be
campaigning. And Dr Hewson should tell us, as he called our
One Nation Statemnent irresponsible, he should tell us why he
is opposed to the Western Ring Road around Melbourne, why he
wants traffic running through these suburbs, why he is
opposed to the expansion of Tullamarine Airport, why he is
opposed to the building of a standard gauge railway line
between Melbourne and Adelaide to lift the commerce of this
city, why he is opposed to putting our young childre~ n into
technical and further education so that they have the
opportunities in TAFE that others have had in universities
why he is opposed to these things. Why he is he opposed to
one-off payment to families, why he is opposed to on-going
payments to ' the low paid and the families of the low paid.
These are the things that he should tell us. And he. should
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tell us how Australian women are going to wear the burden of
the goods and services tax. He should tell us how they are
going to carry that 15 per cent impost in their grocery
bills, in their dry cleaning, in their clothing, in all of
these other things. He should tell us about transfers
within famil'. ies and how women who run households will get
that 15 per cent transfer in their household budget to make
the system work. He should tell us those things as well.
And he shoul. d tell us particularly about why he believes a
tax on our Kelloggs and our clothes and our shoes and our
newspapers and our dry-cleaning and everything else is going
to really make a dif ference to the way we live how it'Is
going to fix: the railways, how it's going to fix the ports,
how it's going to make the factories more efficient, how
it's going to change the enterprises. These are the things
which, of course, he hasn't been able to say because he
knows that a goods and services tax won't fix these things.
So, Labor will stand again for the sort of society it has
always stood for progress, bringing the nation together,
co-operation, looking after the disadvantaged, looking after
low paid families, looking after families in general,
looking after children and giving them their chance in
secondary school, and beyond. These are the things we have
always stood for and the things we will continue to stand
for. And particularly now, inducing the recovery, having
the Government get off the sidelines and into the action to
promote a recovery in Australia, to bring employment and
jobs to Australians, rather than sit on the sidelines
offering tax cuts to the wealthiest people in society.
That's what this battle is about and that's why I'm glad
Bill is at my side in this by-election, as a person of
substance in the electorate of Wills, a person of the
community of the electorate of Wills, that people will
relate to himi, people will relate to him as someone who has
taken an active role in this community and as somebody who
stands for al~ l of those ideals of Labor which we think are
going to be important to Australians, now and always.
ends