SPEECH BY THE PRIME MINISTER, THE HON P J KEATING, MP
THE UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME AUSTRALIA GRADUATION CEREMONY
PERTH TUESDAY, 8 MARCH 1.994
It is a great pleasure to be here tonight.
I suspect that until you see a graduation ceremony you
haven't fully appreciated what education means to people.
I mean you don't very often see the sort of general and
unmitigated happiness you see on people's faces here.
You don't see all that evidence of fulfilment and hope in
one room very O~ ften.
For me, being with you this evening is also a pleasure,*
because I missed my own graduation ceremony.
Not that I didn't have a classical education but it was in
the Australian Labor Party.
Apart from a few degrees in economics, it afforded me a Ph. D
in Varieties of Human Behaviour.
Tn fact, of all the Primp Ministers since the 1940s, with
the exception of John McEwen, who was in the job for just a
few days, I am the only one not to have had a university
education. My academic education ended at the age of seventeen.
I am quite sure that the great majority of people from my
background in those years would not have expected to set
foot in a university in their lifetimes.
It was beyond reach -or at least seemed to be.
It is true that with application and intelligence the sons
and daughters of working people aQ get there.
But not many of them. The majority simply couldn't afford
it. And there were not many universities.
However, the physical limits were not the only impediment,
nor perhaps the most important one.
There was a psychological obstacle. A university education
was beyond the reach of our social expectatiohs.
It required young people to think beyond their
circumstances, beyond the patterns of life in their families
and communities. It meant very often leaving those families
and communities.
It required a leap of the imagination which most of us could
not make.
Most did not expect to go to university or even finish
secondary school indeed, just a decade ago only three in
ten Australians were finishing secondary school. That is in
1984.
And so long as jobs were available we were not very
concerned. In the 1950s and 1960s jobs were available: not particularly
interesting jobs but jobs. Jobs like the one I took, aged
fiftaon. AA nlrk in thp Svdnpv Cnntv Cominil.
DuL 1.1tiL JIL1IJ lAtLi IJLLV~ tLe2I. A I. M TILuiI. iiji. v, aJiL T iL
WnauP UZI&* CA: 0 V; FL Qur nxaowy X0 M. L anum.
All over the world in modern economies like this one, the
old low-skill jobs are going. All over the world the story
is education and training.
Personal opportunities depend on it. The success of nations
depends on it.
Now, I suspect that it is customary for politicians making
these addresses to speak on one of two or three themes
themes from which some lesson can be learned to guide you
through your lives.
For instance, I could tell you that while your formal
education is a very good thing, your real education is about
to begin in life, in work, in the school of hard knocks.
I could tell you there is no substitute for experience.
Or I could tell you that we're delighted to see you all
graduating today at this lovely new university but, in
all modesty, you owe it to us, for really we made it all
possible. I intend to spare you a speech on these themes today, but
there is a little truth in both of them.
On the second one, I cannot refrain from saying that my
pleasure in seeing these young people graduate today is
appreciably greater because I know that, in the course of
the last decade, tens of thousands of young Australians have
been given an opportunity to study and earn degrees at new
universities and colleges.
Since the 1980s, the equivalent of twenty major universities
have been added to the system by the Commonwealth Government
Commonwealth Labor Government.
This expansion of our tertiary education has not only
delivered new opportunities to countless individuals, but it
has made it possible for people to get higher education
without leaving their communities.
My pleasure is greater because the Government, and
particularly John Dawkins, played a part in it. If you
like, the milestone you reached today is something of a
milestone for us as well.
Where people from working class suburbs and poorer ru~ ral
areas not so long ago never imagined that their children
might go to university, it is now one of their life options.
The lesson is: look what can flow from engagement in public
life, look what this democracy can do, look how we have it
in our power to change.
Look how, like the graduates here today, we can imagine
something better and turn it to reality. We can do it as
individuals, as communities and as a nation.
As for the first of the familiar themes it is true that
the very best of formal education is still no substitute for
life lived. It is true that in this life one is constantly
learning. But no one today would stand here now and discount the need
for a formal education. The fact is young Australians need
one as never before more than one, because it is a
statistical certainty that the majority of people graduating
today will be re-trained at least once and probably twice in
their lives.
So what is the lesson? Be open to change. Believe in your
capacities to understand the contemporary world and
confront the challenges. Embrace the future, don't retreat
from it.
Which leads me to a third cliche of these addresses: it is
to say that in your hands the future of Australia lies.
I suspect this has most often been said by politicians who
didn't care to have the future in fheir hands.
It is a half-truth.
It is obviously true that the future depends on young
Australians, but I have to tell you my generation is not
quite ready to hand over responsibility.
It is my generation on whom the responsibility falls: we
hold the instruments of power in the national parliament,
in the states, in the community.
And your generation should judge us all by the same
criteria: Are we prepared to confront the necessities which
face us? Are we prepared to make over those elements of our
national life which need making over?
Or are we prepared to let things drift?
The temptation in politics is alwys to let things drift.
It is very easy to decide to play safe and manage your way
through. It is much harder to imagine reforms, set them as goals and
go for them and trust that the momentum which comes from
the pursuit will carry you through.
It is also easy to become preoccupied with the day to day
business of politics warding of f aggressors, pursuing a
more potent media profile, handling the little crises which
dog all democratic governments.
Sometimes political life is a bit like being inside a
pinball machine: with balls whizzing around all over the
place, you can find yourself with your eyes closed and your
hands over your head adopting a crouch as a permanent
political position.
You can preoccupy yourself with every missile, with every
seeming necessity, with every process, with every ritual and
think you're playing the game, yet forget that the game is
ultimately about getting done what has to be done.
The lesson is: power is for using. It is not to be wasted
or feared or despised. It is to be used to deliver our
democratic ambitions in my case, our gnnial democratic
ambitions. Which brings me to MX theme for tonight.
You will have heard, I'm sure I sincerely hn~ you have
heard those terms which have become watchwords of the
Australian economy, and for that matter, Australian society.
I mean words like " competitive", " internationally
competitive" -" an internationally competitive economy"
You will have heard a lot of talk about " productivity".
These were the words which emerged to describe our economic
ambitions in the 1980s. In the 1990s, we can safely say,
they describe much more of the reality.
What you might have heard less frequently are the words
which describe our Anial ambitions.
Yet we pursued them with equal energy. We were determined
from the start to make the Australian economy
internationally competitive, yet no less determined to see
that the principles of a competitive economy did rnot flow
over, as it has in some countries, into a creed of
selfishness, or a justification for abandoning our
traditions of social fairness.
Because if you abandon these, you abandon opportunity and
thereby abandon talent. And you abandon the social cohesion
on which national success depends.
In the nineties, I think it is essential that we maintain
the momentum of our economic reform while also maintaining
our determination to see Australia emerge as one of the
truly advanced social democracies of the world.
This was our reputation at the end of the last century. I
have absolutely no doubt that it can be our repaliit. y at the
end of this century.
We can do it through continuing to make our economy and our
federation more creative and efficient, and at each step in
that process ensuring that the benefits flow to the whole of
the country and all of the people: making the safety net of
social services more effective and sophisticated, extending
the reach of opportunity and assistance to communities and
regions which have been denied them.
I am talking about dealing everyone into national recovery
and national prosperity and making everyone feel part of
the national equation.
There is no intellectual copyright in political life only
the satisfaction which comes from having persuaded the other
side of politics to one's own view.
So it is deeply satisfying, not to say flattering, to hear
Dr Hewson talking about remaking Liberal Party policy into
something more socially " inclusive" in other words
something rather like L. AQnr Party policy.
For, in fact, it will be no bad thing if there emerges a
general consensus on the need to share in Australia's
future, because there are extraordinary opportunities for
Australia in the modern world most particularly in modern
Asia. " Asia" is another word you hear a lot of these days, and
often in the context of " competitiveness" and
" productivity".
For Asia does set us these same economic imperatives: and
meeting them successfully translates into words like
" opportunity" unrp( rPcented opportunity to build a rich,
creative, complex society and set up generations of
Australians in the twenty-first century.
The truth is we have never been in this situation before:
riot with a chance to make it on our own, in our own region,
by our own genius and endeavour.
But it is essential that in doing this we make sure that
these opportunities the chance to benefit and the chance
to contribute are extended to Australians wherever they
come from and whatever their social and economic
circumstances may now be.
The economic and the social are not separate categories.
The major issue now facing us, long-term unemployment, falls
into both.
We have to tackle long-term unemployment for reasons of
social equity,-for reasons of compassion, for the reason
that we will never be able to say that we have succeeded as
a nation so long as we have several hundred thousand men and
women and their families unable to find work, and with it
dignity and hope.
But it also has to be understood that unemployment has
economic costs as well: we lose the productive output that
they would otherwise create, we lose their talent and
energy. And we lose again, because we need to support them
when they might be supporting themselves.
Now there are some people who will say that the way to make
Australia more competitive is to reduce wages. They believe
that a less equal society is a more efficient one because
the labour market is more competitive. For which read
more desperate, more " do or die".
This is the path that some countries chose in the 1980s.
It is emphatically the wrong one for Australia.
The human and social cost of privation and uncertainty is
too high. The cost of inequalities to efficiency and
cohesion is too high. The cost to Australian ambitions to
our Sense of what it means to be Australian is too high.
In my view it would betray not just our century-old
traditions of social justice, but all we have done in the
past decade to make Australia a country which can profitably
make its way in the world.
The acceptance of a low wage society would be to deny our
capacity to improve. It conveniently takes the pressure of f
our efforts to create a better country here a low wage
society for instance, has less need to provide educational
opportunity for all.
The alternative the only alternative is to improve
productivity: improve the quality of everything we do from
the workplace to the boardroom, our farms, our schools,
colleges and universities, in government, be it local. State
or Commonwealth.
And this is where you come in the graduates here tonight
and their families.
This is where every Australian comes in.
Higher levels of productivity are only possible with high
quality human resources high quality people.
If we are going to be competitive, we need a skilled, highly
educated population.
The future belongs to societies that organise themselves for
learning. What we know and what we can do now holds the key
to our economic success, just as our command of natural
resources once did.
Because we are so rich in natural resources, it has often
been said that for much of our history we have tended to
believe that our country would always deliver us. Now there
is no question that we have to deliver our country.
Our mining and pastoral industries, like the great freedoms
which Australia's space and environment provides, will
continue to enrich us.
But only if we match it with human creativity, engagement
and ideas. Only if we do things and make things which in
one way or another wear the badge of Australian learning,
imagination, confidence and endeavour.
As I said, that is where you come in.
Where once the great majority of Australians left school to
do work that required few skills and little knowledge, and
had no reason to expect that they would ever need them;
where once it could be safely said that the best school was
the school of experience, now the acquisition of skills and
knowledge must be inseparable from that experience.
It therefore must be the duty of my generation, and
especially the duty of those of us in positions of power, to
deliver to the generation of people represented by those who
graduated here tonight educational systems which make
learning part of our national life part of the experience
of all Australians.
I said a moment ago that these remarks applied not just to
the new graduates, but to their families.
And of course it is true. The most fundamental learning
begins with them: it is where our attitudes are shaped, our
aspirations and expectations formed.
We get our approach to learning from our families. They can
teach the value of work and faith in the future. They can
teach us the value of ourselves and others.
They can also fail to do these things.
8
But when they do them, they do for Australia everything good
governments strive to do. I mean they provide security
nets, education, health care, cohesion, certainty, identity,
ambition. And the truth is, they do it so much hZtt~ than
governments. It would be inappropriate to conclude this speech without
saying something abo~ ut Notre Daime Univel3ity. The le s I
can say is how impressed I am.
Impressed, yet not so terribly surprised. When we are
talking about extending educational opportunity to everyone,
we are talking about extending human dignity. I am very
well aware of just how powerful a motive this is in Catholic
education. And so long as I am in the Australian Labor
Party, it is quite impossible to forget it.
I began by talking about how opportunities for tertiary
education were largely denied to most Australians in the
days when I was growing up. The great change which has come
over our education system since then has been reflected in
virtually every element of Australia's life.
Those new educational opportunities for people of working
class backgrounds were vital in the transformation of the
union movement and the Labor movement in general. They were
vital to a generation of migrants and their children. They
were vital for women. They have been vital for business and
the public service.
The confidence and capacity to transform ourselves as an
economy and a society in this last decade has been
substantially derived from the transformation in our
education system.
It seems to me that in the 1980s, for the first time in our
history, Australians had the confidence to take on the
world. That has been the task of my generation. It will
also be yours.
In this, the education you have had here at Notre Dame will
serve you well but as an old De La Salle boy, and a Labor
Party man, let me tell you that while education is essential
to your lives, and always will be, there is no substitute
for faith.
That's my lesson: believe in yourselves, believe in your
generation, believe in your ideals, believe in your country.
Keep the faith.