ADDRESS BY THE PRIME MINISTER, THE MON P J7 KEATING, MP
SOUTH AUSTRALIAN FOOTBALL LEAGUE LUNCHEON
FOOTBALL PARK, ADELAIDE
MARCH 19912
Ladies arnd gentlemen.
This is my fourth visit to Adelaide in as many weeks,
and it is a. lways a pleasure to be here.
This is a remarkable city by any standards, I always
think of it as a brave city a civilised and cultured
place at tha bottom of the world between the desert and
the deep blue sea.
The Adelaide Festival is the great measure of that of
course. It is one of the great arts festivals of the world.
It's a statement of confidence in ourselves the kind
of confidence which looks outward to the rest of the
world and welcomes the world in.
I came over for a couple of days a fortnight ago and
while I was here I spent an hour in the Adelaide Art
Gallery which is probably the best small gallery in
Australia. Look around in there and you will see how the idea of
Australia, and ' what it is to be Australian, has
developed over thi past two hundred years.
You can see howj this place was first seen through
European eyes, and how those eyes steadily opened. You
can see the vision grow stronger and our regard for the
place grow deeper.
Until you see in those fantastic canvasses of Roberts
and Streeton 100 years ago an image of Australia which
could only be Australia.
The image continues to be our own today.
Keep looking in the gallery and you will see twentieth
century images-of Australia and Australians all of
them Influenced by European styles and taste, but all of
them ultimately, expressing something quintessentially
Australian. It might seem strange to begin this little speech by
talking about art, but I think there are a couple of
broad contemporary lessons in there for us.
To begin with, the Adelaide Festival and the Adelaide
gallery both tell us that it is futile to be parochial,
to close ourselves of f to overseas influence. We need
to keep the windows open so we can see out, and the
world can see in.
Broaden the vision. Don't be frightened of the light.
That's how we grow.
The second lesion is the other side of the coin.
You know what the critics said about the first Roberts
and Streetons. They said they were awful a " pain to
the eye".
They said as their predecessors had said, and even as
their successors were saying well into the twentieth
century, that Australian subjects were basically not fit
for great paintings, and that the modern way of seeing
things was horrible and to be resisted at all costs.
I could point to many other examples of this ancient
cultural cringe but I will attempt to put it in a more
positive way.
There was bound to be a tendency in Australia to shrink
from our owin reality, from the uniqueness of the place
just as there was bound to be an equal tendency to
exaggerate our virtues and achievements.
Both jingoism and cringing are debilitating
afflictionst. I
But in the quest for national growth in the effort to
realise all our potential and make this country as great
as it can and should be I would prefer to err on the
parochial side.
I'd be the last to say that we should reject our
European heritage.
But I do have a complaint against those who have allowed
themselves to become less than whole-hearted in their
commitment to this country.
The fact is that over the years we have been damaged by
the people who have talked us down, who shrink from the
Australian reality, who resist change even when change
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is imperative, who hesitate who say, but what will our
old masters think?
There will tie chaos.
You know, mayhem and anarchy like an Australian Rules
Football match.,
It's a peculiar game, Australian Rules to an English
person or a Sydneysider, very peculiar at first.
As it evolved from the marriage of the British and Irish
to Australia there have always been those who despised
it as a rude colonial thing.
Many of these disparaging types, I confess, lived in
Sydney. But you're : looking at a convert.
It is a definitive Australian game the unique one.
Mainly skill but with an element of chance and all
played out on a great broad slice of turf of
indeterminate dimensions.
It's a measure of our character, our spirit and our
capacity for invention.
I like the hip and shoulder in Australian Rules Football
-I like it because I do like to keep my own shoulder
against the door keeping the pressure on for change.
I believe we need to do that in Australia.
In our post colonial culture there are still a lot of
people whose instinct is to resist change who would
watch opportunity, even necessity, pass them by rather
than make the changes necessary to grasp it.
In 1992 we have to grasp these opportunities.
That is why-, as we continue with the changes we started
in the eighties, as we implement the strategies for
recovery and growth in One Nation as we take these
necessary structural steps, I have also been arguing for
a more robuist independent outlook.
Dr Hewson is wiong when he says that this is a
distraction. He could not be more wrong.
He is also wrong when he says that the drive for an
Australia which speaks with a mature and unambiguous
voice will not create jobs.
Not one job, he says.
I do not believe that business people will agree.
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Unless they believe that ambition, confidence, pride,
common goals; firmly held, cohesion and cooperation,
enthusiasm unless there are business people in
Australia who think these things are not important to
success, Dr Hewson will not find many people to agree
with his assessment that I have been creating a
distraction. These things are essential in business, as they are in
football. They are essential to the success of
Australia. To speed the recovery, to make the most of our
strengths, to come out of recession stronger than ever
before and we can do all these things we need
confidence iLn ourselves.
We have every reason to look forward to the future in
this country but we won't make the future as good as
it should bia if our view is obscured by a patina of old
protocols, and our energies dissipated in reflexive
salutes to other countries before we salute our own.
We must not let the faint-hearted, or the knockers, or
the whingers and the cringers, get in the way of the
future.
One Nation is aboutñ the future.
One Nation is a program for recovery which calls on
Australians to pool their resources, to enter into
partnerships with each other, to commit themselves to
cooperative enterprise.
By investment in major infrastructure projects,
particularly road and rail, in the reform of aviation
policy, in seeking cooperative relationships between
business anid unions, the states and the commonwealth,
the private! and the public sectors in these various
ways it seeks to close the gaps between Australians.
It seeks to stimulate the economy, and to make
investment in the sorts of businesses Australia needs a
much more attractive proposition.
It seeks and will deliver low inflation growth over the
next decade,. It will deliver tax cuts equivalent to
those promised by Dr Hewson but without a consumption
tax.
One Nation is a document of inclusion.
For instance, huge amounts will be invested in technical
training to bring this third strand of education into
line with the other two that is to say, giving more
kids many more kids life opportunities by
participating in education. This same step will of
course be of great long term benefit to business and
industry.
There is a certain deliberate chemistry to One Nation.
We consulted with business so that we could find the
most practical solutions, the most effective ways of
getting the recovery going and seeing that it was
strong.
We consulted with unions, states and the community for
the same reason and to maximise the level of national
commitment. It is a social document as well as an economic one it
recognises ' how essential it is that everyone contributes
to the recovery and everyone shares in its rewards.
Ladies and -gentlemen.
South Australia will share in the benefits of one
Nation. It will share in the programs designed to bring benefits
to all Australians programs like the overhaul of TAFE,
the reform of aviation, labour market programs and in
specific programs in this state.
To mention three of the major ones:
As I am sure by now you are aware, one of the major
undertakings in the infrastructure program will be the
conversion of 775 kilometre Melbourne-Adelaide railway
to standard gauge.
As you also know, we have offered to take over
responsibility -for substantially upgrading the Sydney
Adelaide road link, which, together with the Melbourne
Brisbane link will provide a high quality highway
network between our four largest cities.
We have provided SO million for the construction of the
rail loop at Outer Harbour, as part of a $ 100 million
upgrading of the port directed at handling timesensitive
cargo between East Asia, Sydney and Melbourne.
All these projects, along with every measure in the One
Nation document, are designed to bring on recovery,
create jobs, build our strengths and deliver to all
Australians hope arnd opportunity.
With low inflation locked in, with a vastly improved
industrial culture, with manufacturing exports rapidly
growing, with a much more competitive and efficient
financial and business culture we can come out of this
recession much stronger than we have ever been.
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One Nation is designed to assure us that the recovery
will be faetter and stronger.
That our economy will be strong, and not least because
the nation will be strong.
it's appropriate on this occasion to borrow an image
from football the strongest team is the one which best
uses it strengths, which develops its skills to the
highest level and deploys them most effectively, which
works cohesively with a common desire for success, and
which does not let the bumps and misfortunes along the
way, knock them of f their stride.
That is the aim of One Nation. To make us stronger
within so we can be strong in the world.
Ladies and gentlemen.
It seems to me that there are two broad models of
society of how a society best operates.
The first one I believe broadly describes the way
Australia has for too long been conceived and operated.
It is the castle with the drawbridge raised the few
inside attempting to extract by various deceits and
stratagems enough energy from those outside to make the
place economically viable.
Now and then some new measure occurs to them you know,
inviting a few select ones into a garden party to get
them on side: or now as Dr ftewson proposes, they go
galloping out into the provinces to collect a tax on the
food they eat the clothes they wear, and the services
on which they rely.
The other way -and I believe it broadly describes one
Nation lowers the drawbridge.
It's principle is inclusion. It broadens the social
base pool~ s our energies and talents, aims at growth,
encourages wholehearted loyalty and commitment,
cohesion, natio3n building.
It assumes that a popularly elected government is
elected to govern not to pull out of the social
equation.
That is my philosophy. It is the philosophy of One
Nation. If this is more of a republican philosophy than my
political opponents then I am more of a republican.
But that is not the key word: the key word is Australia,
the future of this country and its people.