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SPEECH DY THE PRIME MINISTER, THE MON P. J. KCEATING MP,
PRIME MINISTER' S NSW BRANCH ALP STATE CONFERENCE
SYDNEY TOWN HALL
SATURDAY, 6 JUNE 1992
Ladies and gentlemen
In this next year, if we are bold, if we are astute, arnd
if we are united, we can retain government.
If we retain governmnent, we can do many of the things
which, in the last one hundred years, the men and women
of Labor have dreamed of doing.
Which Australians have dreamed of doing.
We can come out of the recession stronger and more
independent more truly one nation.
We can make the Australian community strong and cohesive.
We can inspire a sense of common national purpose.
We can ingrain more deeply in our society that
characteristic of all good societies the degree to
which we care for our fellow Australians.
We can make it the model of individual opportunity and
social security which it should be -and which in the
eyes of the world it was, in the first decade of this
century. We can re-kindle an Australian democratic spirit.
We can set those goals.
And so long as I am Prime Minister they will be pursued.
We will go for them.
And we will achieve them.
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We'll do it by building on our strengths, and I mean much
more than our economic strengths.
I mean our care for this place and our fellow
Australian. I mean our traditions, our strong social f abric, our
democratic spirit.
I mean our willingness to embrace change.
I mean harnessing the energy and aspirations of all
Australians by extending opportunity and encouraging in
all Australians an intelligent belief in the nation and
its national values.
We will do best if we do all these things.
Our economic strengths, of course, will continue to be
crucial. And we can say that, for all the problems along the way,
and even despite the recession, we hAve laid the basis of
a stronger economy.
A manifestly more competitive and robust economy and a
much more internationally integrated economy.
That is one reason we can do it economically speaking,
we have given ourselves a chance in the world, and thus
given the next generation of Australians a chance.
We have great strengths and should not forget them: we
are rich in resources, we have things the world wants to
buy, in our'unequalled natural environment we have things
which they want to see; we are making great strides in
manufacturing and services.
We shouldn't forget how dramatic the changes have been
manufacturing and services now earn more export revenue
then raw materials and agriculture. it was unthinkable
ten years ago.
We have more than doubled our secondary school retention
rates. We have created the equivalent of twelve
universities. We have quadrupled our child care.
We have developed levels of social security with few
parallels in the world.
Under Labor we won't lose them we will build on them.
We have learnt things we had never heard of in the 1970s.
Like how to run a tourist industry from the ground up.
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Like how to work to a cooperative ethic rather than an
adversarial one.
We are a nation capable of change.
Remember we have gone in the space of a generation from
being a country notorious for Insularity and xenophobia
to a country which earns the admiration of the region and
the world for the tolerance and openness manifest in
* ultioulturalism.
Similarly we have learned come economic truths:
we've learned that we must be less dependent on
commodities. we've learned about the historic opportunity that
exists for us, the historic necessity of our
economic integration with Asia and the Pacific.
we've learned terms we had never heard of in the
1970s: like value-adding and downstream processingterms
which describe economic imperatives. Things
we must do.
We are in 1992 what we most certainly were not in 1982-
one of the more economically literate countries of the
world. These things our economic and social base, our capacity
for change, or willingness to change -give me great
confidence in our future.
Our opponents are weak.
The Coalition is a coalition in name only. It papers
over large cracks in some very old and mouldy plaster.
Admittedly there's some new plaster there these days but
most of it's as flaky as the old stuff.
Fightback. is a sterile document informed by a
reactionary ideology whose principle characteristic is a
loathing of ordinary people.
It was built on the discredited and generally repugnant
philosophy of the New R~ ight.
Fightback is a throwback to the late seventies. it's an
anachronism in the nineties. Like the dodo or the
Hindenburg. It won't survive.
They stuck an exclamation mark on the end of it in an
attempt to give it life but if you take it away it
turns up its toes.
Our opponents have no heart. Their Australia would have
no soul.
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These days in Parliament they sit in their desks, like
schoolchildren, with bunting beside them to prove that
they are Australian.
Because they think that you can win in politics by
resisting history rather than making it, because they
think that the people of Australia have no more spirit or
faith than they have, they send me letters saying what an
abomination I am because I think we should not have the
flag of another country on ours.
They gather In Town Halls to sing God Save the Queen, and
tell each other that Australia must not change, must not
grow towards its separate destiny.
They spin tales about the idle pleasures of the past
the Menzoid Golden Age, when the country dozed, and the
best minds left along with the minerals and wool, and the
world largely passed us by.
They always want to go back. While the people of
Australia, with hope in their hearts, march bravely
towards the future, John Howard gallops about urging them
to retreat to the rear.
Back to the fifties, he shouts. Back to the dead end
jobs. Back to the massive inefficiencies. Back to the
quarries. Back to the sheep's back. Back to Britain.
John Howard leads the national reverse thrust.
But the rest, including his Leader, have engaged the same
gear. Back they go.
They are regressive by nature.
Anid nothing is so regressive as Fightback.
Fightback, as Ralph Willis put it, is socially regressive
and economically perverse.
Fightback is not a policy. it is an excuse for a tax.
A tax that we will re-ignite Australian inflation.
just as we get inflation out of the system the Tories
want to put something in the region of 6 percentage
points back into it.
out the vandalism doesn't stop there.
After a decade of unprecedented peace and cooperation in
industrial relations they want to back to the jungle.
And in a society with one of the most sophisticated and
effective social security systems in the world, the
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Tories want to introduce measures characteristic of
societies in decay.
they will push Medicare towards the American system
which offers care to only 80 per cent of the
population end at 50 per cent greater cost. They'll
cut the rebate from 85% 75t and they'll abolish
bulk billing except for those on benefits.
the unemployed are to be knocked off benefits after
nine months.
the waiting for sickness and unemployment benefits
will be increased from one week to three.
the job placement services of the CES will be
contracted out. Effectively CES will be abolished.
they ' 1l throw 40,000 people off supporting parents'
benefit by cutting off the pension when the youngest
child reaches 12, not sixcteen.
they'll make migrants wait two years before they can
claim benefits of any kind.
Everyone will be a winner under Fightback, the propaganda
says. if you want to send your kids, or yourself, to
university It will cost you an estimated $ 24,000 for
an arts degree up to $ 150,000 for medicine.
families with Income levels about $ 7000 under the
present limits will lose the Family Allowance.
That's 100,000 families.
they'll cut $ 10 million from legal aid. The
cumulative effect of funding cuts and the GST will
mean more than fourteen thousand cases will not be
funded by legal aid. Those cases of course will
involve the most vulnerable In the community.
Fightback compounds injustice.
they'll cut overseas aid by nearly 16 per cent in
real terms, making Australia number 14 of the OECD's
18 donor countries. Emergency refugee programs will
be slashed by more than half.
they will abolish the Youth Bureau and the Youth
Access Centres which provide information and advice
to more than 200,000 young people each year, and
which a recent evaluation shows are successful in
delivering employment, education and training.
despite the findings of the Royal Commission on
Black Deaths in Custody that a substantial increase
in funding was necessary, and despite the feelings
of all decent Australians that this must be the
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decade when we end the national disgrace, the Tories
will cut $ 90 million from outlays on Aboriginal
programs.
Yet they say, everyone's a winner under Fightback.
Under Labor, working women have made significant steps
towards achieving parity with men. We have legislated to
protect women against discrimination in the workplace,
and our affirmative action policies are encouraging
employers to promote women to a wider range of Jobs.
Under our equal pay strategy the gap between men's and
women's earnings has narrowed to from 33 per cent to 17
per cent.
Our National Agenda for Women reaches out to women of all
ages and vocations, including women in the home.
We are committed to constantly evaluating our overall
policies to ensure fair and equitable treatment of women.
There is still a lot to do, but we are proud of our
record and you will see us build upon it.
But the struggle to improve the status of women in
Australia would end with Fightback.
the Affirmative Action Agency, the Equal Pay Unit
and the Work and Family Unit will be abolished.
the Human Rights and Equal opportunity Commission
which includes the Sex Discrimination Commissioner
will have its expenditure cut by an unspecified
amount. the public sector will be cut back, privatised,
abolished, contracted out or " rationalised" in the
areas where women work in service delivery areas
like nursing and caring. And in clerical, cleaning
and catering services.
Dut everyone, they insist, is a winner under Fightback.
Fightback will unpick the social fabric. It expresses
that sentiment of selfishness that loathing of the
unfortunate and vulnerable which characterised the
regimes of Reagan and Thatcher.
In Australia it was resisted in the market-driven years
of the eighties. We held it of f.
It would be tragic if now It were to take hold In the
form of a Hewson governments
it is repugnant to Labor. And we will fight it to
extinction.
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The Treasury analysis of Fightback under which everyone
is supposedly a winner shows that 70 per cent of wage
and salary earning households will be worse off under a
Howson government.
It shows that 60 per cent of farm and self-employed
person households will be worse off.
I haven't yet mentioned the consumption Tax. The jewel In
the crown of Fightback.
Treasury estimates that food would rise by 8.9 per cent.
Clothing by 11.2 per cent.
Electricity by 10.7 per cent
Health services by 22.6 per cent
Newspapers and magazines 10.5 per cent.
Urban public transport 6.6 per cent
Post and telephone 8.1 per cent.
A Ferrari will cost $ 15,000 legs.
Everyone's a winner, Dr Hewson reckons, under Fightback.
Like smell business. Consider the remarks from Mr
Cedric Stanford, a leading British authority on
value added taxes. He did a detailed study of the
costs to business and found
The compliance costs of the small firm were 260
times those of the largest firms. Where small firms
are competing in the some market with large firms",
he found, " they are being put under a state-created
disadvantage."
Indeed, he found that " compliance costs.. became a factor
in helping to push small firms out of particular
markets". Or take the comments of a New Zealander, Mr John Marine,
in the January issue of Australian Small Business and
investing. He gave Australian small business people an
explicit warning based on experience about, the GST.
your personal stress level will rise sharply.
Sunday at the beach will be a thing of the past.
You should consider how you will cope when you lose
one day a week to OST, whether your business will
survive and what you are going to do about it."
To small business GST stands for a Great Shrinking of
Time but what Is time to a man in a Ferrar17 TELj: u6n .92 11-t: i F''. YJ
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Everyone, Dr Hewson says, Is a winner with Fightback.
But not if you happen to be at the vulnerable end of the
labour market.
Perhaps the most insidious and potentially the most
devastating aspect of Dr Hewsonus program is his
Industrial Relations policy.
Nothing reflects so well the right wing ideology at the
Core of Fightback. Nothing is so perfect an expression
of their contempt for the weak.
Industrial relations policy is the policy which most
generally defines the relationships between one
Australian and another.
We have seen In the last ten years that relationship
reach a new level of intelligent cooperation.
In Burnie we are seeing the Tories'I idea of how
Australians should relate to each other.
Their industrial relations policy is a policy of social
intimidation. There is only one thing to be gained from the dispute in
Burnie it has exposed the philosophy of John Howson
and John Howard, and it has given Australians a glimpse
of what life would be like under a conservative
government. The gains which flowed from the development of an ethos
of cooperative workplace reform, the spirit which has
seen disputation fall by 60 per cent in a decade, the
increase in productivity experienced by companies where
agreements have been negotiated with unions and
management, the inflation gains brought about by the
Accor all these gains will be killed stone dead.
The Opposition plans an assault not just on the unions
and the principles of unionism they plan an assault on
the principle of the Umpire, of social and industrial
justice.
They want to drive Australian workers on to contracts
where they will then be exposed to what John Howard is
calling a " floor wage"
The " floor wage", John Howard says will be somewhere
between the dole and the existing minimum award.
Now they introduced an Employment Contracts Act in New
Zealand last year it is the same Idea.
It's Hewson and Howard's safety net. Australian workers
especially the most vulnerable, including women,
migrants, the unskilled these workers should know that
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the " floor wage" in New Zealand has been set at AS175.0
a week, or A$ 9153.00 per annum.
For employees under 20 years of age there is na minimum.
There are many questions which should be put to Mr Howard
and Dr Hewson about their industrial relations policy and
over the next six months we will be putting them.
For instance: How will you prevent workers being forced out of the
protection of the award stream by an employer who
wants to put the employee on a contract?
How will scrupulous employers compete with the
unfair advantage that is offered by Dr Rawson to
uinscrupulous employers?
With no more National Wage Cases, how will workers
in weak bargaining positions ever get a wage rise?
If industrial disputes are to be dealt with under
common law instead of the Industrial Relations
Commission, how will ordinary workers have the time
and the resources to take their employers to court?
How long will it take the courts to hear the cases?
N ow will the Hewson and Howard model of industrial
relations protect living standards?
How will It make everyone a winner?
We should ask these questions. All Australians should
ask them and I believe they should ask themselves if
this policy is the hallmark of a civilised society?
Does it express our values and goals? Is it a social
advance to drive the weak down?
Is Burni our industrial and social model for Australia?
For John Hewson and John Howard It is.
As John Howard said himself, on 23 May, the right being
exercised by APPM " is basic to the new industrial
relations system the Liberal and National Parties will
bring to Australia after the next election"
I say, like hell they will.
I said Fightback will unpick the social fabric. It will.
The Tories you know are very big on values and traditions
they're big on holding on to what is there. Like the
Union Jack and their interpretation of our history.
ILL-L
They get very cranky if we say they don' t have a mortgage
on our history any more than they have a mortgage on our
future.
The truth is that their blueprint for the future
Constitute$ the most savage attack on our traditions we
have ever seen.
Xt attacks the tradition of fairness anid equity.
It attacks the tradition of progress towards civilized
social goals.
It attacks the tradition of care for the underprivileged
and vulnerable for protecting the weak against the
strong. These traditions are built in to our society -they shape
the way we think, the way we go about our lives.
In large part they derive from the last decade of the
last century from the rise of the Labor movement and
the emergence of a new national spirit.
But they were values shared by liberals by non Labor
Australians. They were widalm shared.
They are not shared by today's anti-Labor forces.
Don't let them tell you that this government is hostile
to tradition, or that it's re-writing the past.
It's the future we're concerned with and we're building
it on the best of Australian traditions.
We are determined to equip Australia for the next
century. To do that we have to make bold policy decisions. We
have to be willing to meet the challenges head on.
As I said at the beginning, we are building on solid
foundations laid down in the last decade of Labor
government. And as I said, we are also building on the foundations of
our best traditions our best sympathies.
our social goals are equitable ones. Our aim is fairness
as well as strength.
The strength will not only come from economic policy, it
will not only be measured by economic success.
Our national spirit, the degree to which we identify as
Australians and declare our first loyalty to Australia
wherever in the world we have come from; the degree of
care for each other as Australians; the degree to which
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we are prepared to take a national view and pursue
national goals all these will give us strength.
And in the coming years we will measure our success by
how truly we can say that we are One Nation.
The Tories don't understand this. WJe will have to teach
them. We'll teach them by the sorts of bold Initiatives we took
this week by our example.
Revolutioniuing the airline industry is a major Labor
breakthrough it has profound implications for the
tourist Industry, and therefore profound long term
Implications for our economy and employment.
Introducing Pay-TV on the basis that we have, getting
optimal outcomes from the new and available technologies,
was a milestone in the transfer of information technology
to Australians.
The decision we made this week will be the key to what
Australians will be viewing in their homes, businesses
and schools, and how they will be commuunicating with each
other over the next quarter century.
we also gave the ABC an historic opportunity to break
from its national free-to-air charter into the almost
limitless realm of sophisticated information transfer.
Getting TAFE into the high quality, high status shape
that it should be will be a profound reform, with
profound benefits to our economy and society for
generations to come.
Extending occupational superannuation to all is a
fundamental reform, an imperative if we are to achieve
our goals of better incomes for the retired aged and
greater national savings.
Infrastructure spending on rail, road, airports, ports,
electricity is essential, not only to recovery and to
employment in the short term, but to the long term health
of the economy. It's essential to our keeping up with the
world. Moving, as we have this week, to develop strategies for
youth training and employment in conjunction with our
TAFE reforms and our existing labour market programs, is
essential if our young people are to have the
opportunities they deserve.
Our goal is to involve business, unions and the wider
community in creating a national response a national
effort.
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These initiatives must be taken if we want young
Australians to believe in this country and it is no
exaggeration to say that, without that belief, we will
never be the nation that we can and should be.
We are doing the things Labor governments must do.
The Tories never do them. They'll never understand.
What you will hear from them are the sounds of scare
campaigns. And smear campaigns.
They will call urn traitors for wanting unequivocal
symbols of our nationhood just as they so often called
u~ s traitors during the Cold War.
They'll grub around looking for dirt like they have been
doing for the past few weeks just as they have so of ten
done in the past.
They'll rush outside and shout " anarchy" and " mayhem" and
accuse US of not having respect and they will go around
the homes of elderly Australians with bizarre, vicious
and entirely inappropriate propaganda they knocked of f
from the Republican Party of the United States.
Propaganda which was fomented in the prejudice sheeted
homes to black America and in the gun culture of that
country. Propaganda whose use here constitutes a dramatic lapse In
standards of political behaviour, and, I believe, a
serious misjudgement. of Australian values.
Yet this is just a variation on the things that they have
always done.
But they will fail.
They will go on being what they are spoilers.
And we will go on being what we are builders.
And we will win.