EMBARGOED: Against Delivery, 8pm
SPEECH BY THE PRIME MINISTER, THE HON P. J. KEATING, HP
NATIONAL TR~ ADE AND INVESTMENT OUTLOOK CONFERENCE
MBLDOURNE, 24 NOVE10ER, 1993
Some of you here will have heard these opening remarks
before, many of you will know the truth of Lhem.
But I would like everyone to know and chat is enough
to warrant repeating them once more.
The imaege of Australia as an extended sheep run and
quarry is false.
The idea that Australians5 enjoy the comforts of
sophisticated contemporary life principally through the
proceeds of pastoralism and mining is false.
The idea that we cannot compete with the world in the
business of making things and selling them at the
sophisticated end of the international market is false.
We hear an echo of these ideas from time to time, but
they are curiosities not realities.
They linger because they were sufficiently true for lonig
enough to leave a residue.
Only a decade ago the suggestion that we Might-Lrade
competitively in manufactured goods and services, as well
as in minerals, energy and primary products that we
might be able to create and SuSLain a more diverse,
creative dnd sophisLicated economy was scarcely
entertained. This National Trade and Investment Outlook Conference is
one indication among many of how much that way of
thinking has changed.
And how much the reality has changed.
Now we know that the only way we can maintain and improve
our standard of living, create employment and reduce
unemployment, and share in the wealth of a'rapidly
changing world, is by means of a diverse, flexible,
creative, operi and sophisticated economy.
The Australian Government knows this, most Australian
companies know this, most Australian workers know it.
indeed there are few countries perhaps none where the
process-of economic education has been so rapid and so
general as it has been in Australia in the past decade.
Not that this evening we shouldn't repeat some of the
injunctions once more; exports mean employment and
prosperity. Exports mean growth.
Exports mean a share of the excitement, a share of the
good jobs and the good life in the years ahead.
Exports are what it is all about.
We know how far the frontiers of trade have widened. We
are very much aware that we live in the fastest growing
region in the worl. d the Asia-Pacific region which now
accounts for about 80 per cent of our exports.
We know how rich is the potential.
How demanding the challenges.
We also know how deep our resources run, and that what we
need principally is the resolve and ingenuity and that,
I presume, is the business of this conference.
Those of you who have heard me say these things before
and, it's true, I have been saying them for a decade
will quite possibly have also heard some of these figures
I am about to quote.
I confess to this as well in the-past twelve ionths or
so, as the pattern has emerged, I have not been backward
in describing it.
And I see no reason to make tonight an exception.
Because I wani. to demonstrate that more than our thinking
has changed the reality has changed too.
Australian exporis as a percentage of GDP have grown from
13 percent a decade ago to 20 percent today.
Today exporLs of manufactures now exceed exports of rural
products aiid minerals and fuiels.
As I said, what. remains of the old image of Australia as
a farm or a mine may now be jettisoned for good.
A decade ago, in 1982, exports accounted for 14 per cent
of sales by Aust. ralia's manufacturing sector.
Today the figure is 24 per cent.
in other words, almost one quarter of sales earnings by
Australian ianufacLurers came from overseas.
Manufactured exports increased by an average of 12.5
percent a year between 1982 and 1992 more than four
times faster than growth in agricultural exports and
slightly faster than growth in mining exports.
in the fastest growing component of world trade
services our exports have grown threefold since 1983
and now account for almost a quarter of our total
exports. This conference, then, takes place within a context of
dramatic change in the structure-and direction of the
Australian economy and a parallel change in Australian
consciousness. A change in the outlook of Australian business and
industry, Australian workers and Australian governments.
All of them now take it as given that we can and mus
export and I don't know anyone who has credibly pointed
to the limits of our potential to do so.
Of course, the outstanding fact in any consideration of
Australia's trade and investment potential is our
location in the Asia-Pacific.
We live in the mosL dynamic region in the world and that
gives us* the greatest opporLuflity we have ever had.
There is no doubt we have the resources to succeed, and
not only in the ' traditional areas of minerals and energy
and agriculture.
There is no question about our capacity for technological
invention and innovation.
This country develops and produces world class products
at the forefront of medicine, science and technology in
the field of microsurgery, IVF, the cardiac pacemaker,
plant genetic*.
Australian-made h ' igh-speed ferries ply their way through
European waters; Australiani-made engines and automotive
components are found in European cars; Australian
software manages some of the most advanced airports in
the world and the Swiss Stock Exchange.
We have a highly educated and skilled workforce. The
Goverrnent has made education and training an absolute
policy priority. N
We have raised the number of young Australians
completing secondary school from 3 in 10 to 8 in
A higher proportion of Australians leaving school
now enter university than in Germany, Japan or the
United Kingdom.
In AuStralia today over 40 different languages are
taught in our schools the Federal Goverrnment
spends about $ 22 million a year on Asian language
education and studies.
We are making training more responsive to industry,
increasing capacity in our training institutions, and
promoting the relevance and quality of that training.
We have the human and material resources. We have the
awareness and motivation.
The task is to clear the way for business to exert its
genius and muscle.
I think it can be safely said that in the past 10 years
no Government has done more to both raise awareness of
the economic imperatives arid to make the practical
changes necessary to meet them.
We have opened up the economy, floated the exchange rate,
reformed the waterfront, rail and road transportation,
aviation and telecommunications.
We have established an orderly and manifestly effective
program for reducing tariff protection, and improving the
capacity of the economy to respond to the challenges of
the international marketplace.
We have introduced industrial relations reforms which
will increase labour market flexibility and productivity
growth by widening the spread of enterprise bargaining.
The fruits of these reforms should now combine with other
favourable conditions to-attract investment and growth.
Interest rates are now at historically low levels.
Inflation is low and under control.
We are seeing solid productivity-growth.
In addition, the recent business tax initiatives have
ensured that the competitiveness of our system is on a
par with comparable OECD countries; and the reduction in
Australia's corporate tax rate to 33 per cent makes it
competitive with most of our tLading partners.
Partly through Government encouragement, growth in
research and development has been the second highest in
the OECD, and Australia now employs more research and
development Personnel than most counLrie5 in our region.
we have introduced a development allowance, a general
investrnenL allowance, a substantial acceleration of
depreciation provisions and concessionally taxed pooled
development funds.
The Australian economy is now around 27 per cent more
internationally competitive than 10 years ago.
it is a more diverse, more flexible and much stronger
economyr. Despite subdued world trading conditions, Australian
export earnings have reached record levels.
An export culture which we have developed in the last few
years is now growing new small to medium sized businesses
whose entire reason for being is export.
It is high value-added products they export, and more
oftLen than not it is to the ASia-Pacific they go. Indeed
these companies have been instrumental in achieving
average annual growth of 15 per cent in our exports of
sophist icated mariufacLures.
Australia's advantages have been recognised by a growing
number of multinational companies who have selected
Australia as a base for activities in the Asia-Pacific
region. Lexmark, Cathay Pacific and Tandem Computers incorporated
to name a few.
We encourage the establishment of regional headquarters
in Australia.
My Government is willing to be responsive in addressing
issues impacting on companies' location decisions.
The Australian government takes the view that that its
principal role is to create an environment in which
business can be flourish in which established
businesses can grew and new ones be born.
But. we remain a governxnent -which also believes in working
W11 industry: to open doors and build new relduionships.
We are assisting exporLers. In the telecommunications
area, for example, the Government has established a joint
body to ensure closer collaboration between the industry
and Government in their export efforts.
Earlier this year, the Government launched a processed
food export drive, one of the largest and mostcomprehensive
single campaigns of its kind aimed at
tapping the quality of Australia's food industries.
Australia is an extremely efficient agricultural
producer, but there is enormous scope to develop the
industry further and exploit the rapidly expanding market
for high quality clean food.
My Government has also recognised that enormous
opportunities can be created by tapping into the
potential lying in the skills and abilities of those many
Australians who have come from oLher countries and retain
personal and cultural ties with their homelands.
The continued growth and stability of the APEC region arid
its continuing integration is crucial. to Australia's
expansion and prosperity.
This is particularly true given the disappointing failure
of the US and the EC in their most recent meetings to
produce a breakthrough on the market access issues
necessary to move the Uruguay Round to conclusion in the
middle of next month.
Over the nexL two years increased exporcs to APEC mernberb
will create more than 70,000 new jobs in AuStralia. good
skilled jobs with good wages and a good future.
Over the next two years increased exports to APEC members
will account for around a third of our total increase in
AusLvalian production.
At the end of those two years Australian exports Lo APEC
will account for around 15 per cent of our total output
of all we do, all we make, all we sell.
Sixty six billion dollars worth of exports to Lhe most
dynamic and the most rapidly growing region of the world.
It is already the case that APEC has a higher degree of
trade integration than the EC.
just on two thirds of our exports by APEC economies are
to other APEC economies.
I have just returned from Seattle where leaders from the
Asia-Pacific region met to discu. ss ways of working more
closely to assist the free flow of goods and services.
I went to Seattle not knowing, as I to~ d an audience in
California, what exactly would happen when fourteen Asia-
Pacific leaders, with no staff and no formal agenda, got
together on Bl~ ake Island in Puget Sound.
It was the first meeting of its kind and it no easy thing
to predict the interaction of such different people, from
such different countries.
But the result was I thought very powerful evidence that
the leaders of the, Asia-Pacific economic community are
developing a stronger and stronger sense of the
importance of things which we can do together to advance
the prosperity of the region.
We came away from that meeting with some substantive
understandings. we agreed to ask our officials to get to work on an
investment code for the region, which would allow us to
define some common approaches to the vast movements of
funds, technology, and techniques which are proceeding in
every direction in the region, and which ar'e doing so
much to transform it in ways we are only beginning to
comprehend
We agreed to greatly increase the importance of businessin
the APEC process by creating a council composed of two
business leaders from each country.
Its job will be to suggest ways APEC can help business in
trade and investment, to become engaged in the work
program of officials, and to urge us on to do whatever
governments can do in concert to enhance regional
prosperity. We also agreed that harmonising product standards was a
worthwhile goal for APEC, and endorsed the work of our
ministers in agreeing to a trade and investment framework
document which formalises the APEC structure.
We also agreed that harmonising product standards was a
worthwhile goal for APEC, and endorsed the work of our
ministers in agreeing to a trade and investment framework
document which formalises the APEC structure.
We agreed that finance ministers would meet early next
year to commence an exchange of information-and views
about the regional economy, and the lessons we can share
in tAcroeconomic policy making.
The most important of our agreements was to meet again
next year in Indonesia.
This means that the whole work agenda of APEC officials,
the whole series of meetings on customs, standards
harinonisation, investment rules and on the regional
economy suddenly takes on a new significance, a new
weight.
For the first time the results of all this work will
ultirnaLely come under the scrutiny of leaders, and roLr
that reason it will have a little more urgency, a little
imore consequence.
So the formal outcomes of the Seattle meeting were
important, but I think the informal outcome was much more
importanlt. This outcome was simply the chemistry of the meeting
the excellence of the personal rapport which was present
in this first ever meeting of Asia-Pacific leaders.
it is a remarkable thing that in this age of faxes and
telephone calls, of instant electronic communication,
face Lo face mectings still matter.
But in my experience they do they matter tremendously.
We didn't create a new community in SeaLLle.
Instead, wc begjan to think of ourselves as the community_
we have already become.