/ b
PRIME MINISTER
EMBARGOED 6.3OPM 29 MARCH 1995
* AS DELI VERED*
SPEECH BY THE PRIME MINISTER, THE HON P. J. KEATING, MP
SIR JOHN MONASH MEMORIAL LECTURE, REGENT HOTEL, MELBOURNE
29 MARCH 1995
Thank you very much, Race, for inviting me to give this lecture.
Sir John Monash stands among the highest order of Australians and I count it as
an honour of the highest order to deliver the lecture which bears his name.
Let me also add my voice to Kim Beazley's when he gave the inaugural address
last year, and say how pleased I am to see the Monash Graduate School of
Government up and flourishing.
It is mandatory these days to judge the worth of things by the degree to which
they increase a nation's " competitiveness". I will not take issue with this. You
will hear me use that word more than once tonight. We do have to be
competitive world competitive and we cannot be that without an efficient
government sector.
But let me also say that an efficient government sector a knowledgeable,
professional, imaginative government sector is equally essential to the creation
of a good society; and, because it is an investment in our human resources and
is bound to make us stronger and more cohesive, it will in itself make us more
competitive.
And let me just say this I hope the direction of your thinking is pragmatic. I
hope it is about imagining what might be done and how to do it. I hope it is
about what can be done, not what can't.
The world and especially bureaucracies. public and private is full of people
who learn first to cover themselves off against all misadventure, and only
afterwards address the task. And, of course, the worst misadventure is to have a
mistake pinned on them.
This is a very conservative and debilitating phenomenon.
It is a short step from avoiding risk, to avoiding responsibility, and a very short
one then to avoiding doing anything at all.
The disease of carefully disguised inactivity or professional nay-saying can
afflict any organisation, including political parties. It is no better or less irritating
than professional idealism that is the habit of talking loftily without the faintest
intention of acting practically. That is why I say I hope that the Monash
Graduate School of Government will inject into the culture of government an
ethic of doing. Not finding the obstacles to achievement, but the paths to it.
Dare I say that I have a strong feeling that John Monash would have approved of
nothing less.
Monash was nothing if not a doer. He was a man of true greatness. He made a
mighty contribution to our military history, of course, and in doing that he was
one of those who forged the great tradition of the first AIF
He remains Australia's most famous soldier.
When we ask why did he succeed in so much? we can find all kinds of
reasons. Clearly he had a powerful, logical mind and superb gifts as an
administrator. Lloyd George called him " the most resourceful General in the
whole of the British Army", the " greatest strategist" and said that he would have
and should have become Commander-In-Chief.
Yet for all his success as a soldier, few gave the country more than Monash
gave us as a civilian.
In fact, it is difficult to think of another Australian who left behind such a unique
combination of memorials to his work. I doubt if anyone ever left so many in
such a small area.
There is the Anderson Street Bridge which he built across the Yarra and, within
a mile of it, a statue commemorating his service as a military commander. Then,
within the same small precinct, there is the Shrine which he helped to build. All
of this just down the hill from the Richmond school he attended. And all of it
connected to the power supply he founded in the 1920s at Yallourn.
Now, of course. I wouldn't venture a guess at what he would make of the plans to
privatise his creation, but I have a feeling that he would not let sentiment or
ideology stand in the way of the most practical means of delivering electricity to
Victorians. He seems to me to have been an eminently practical man, and I imagine quite
immune to ideological fashion. I can no more imagine him in the New Right than
in the Old Left. I suspect he was of the camp which says so long as It is a
useful idea which will help us meet our goals, it does not matter what we call it.
Of all the things John Monash bequeathed us, I'm inclined to think that at this
stage of our history none is more important than his pragmatic philosophy.
In fact, we can safety infer from his remarkable achievements the qualities which
must have most distinguished him: self discipline, the courage of his convictions,
an enormous capacity for work, vision, decisiveness.
Seen from our vantage point what strikes us most about the man is something
like an absence of doubt.
I dlaresay there have been many Australians whose intellectual powers matched
Monash's and whose ambitions were the equal of his.
But very few achieved what he achieved.
I hope you get my drift. In Government one is always trying to narrow the gap
between vision and realisation, between policies and implementation, between
ideas and their concrete manifestation in effective and useful reform.
So when we look at a career like that of John Monash, we ask what lessons can
be drawn for government, for public policy in the modern era.
Now I might say, inter a/ ia, that I was struck by something he said in a letter he
wrote as a young man to his first love. He said that many people had tried to trip
him up, tried to stop him in his youthful ambitions, and that he had been forced
to leave those so-called ' friends' behind and had become unpopular. There will
be others in the room who have had this experience.
Of course the problems of governments is that they can't afford to be unpopular
at least not for too long. But nor can good governments afford to merely pursue
that which is popular.
Good policy is not always popular not at first, at least.
Yet I suspect more general and more productive conclusions can be drawn than
this one.
Ever since the war in which Monash played so illustrious a part, the same
question has been asked: how different would the world be if all that youthful
ambition, energy and intellect had not been wasted on those battlefields? How
many scientists and engineers; how many artists and philosophers; how many
leaders were lost?
How many Monashs?
Of course, it is not so much a question as a melancholy reflection. It is really a
statement of despair.
A more useful question for our times might be what gave Monash that certainty
what gave him the confidence which enabled him to achieve so much? What
gave him the ability to inspire the same confidence in others?
All sorts of largely imponderable psychological possibilities aside, we might
reasonably conclude that this characteristic flowed from a clear set of values to
live by: from an unshakable respect for the democratic institutions of this country
and for the cultural traditions Australian, British, Prussian and Jewish he
inherited; from a profound sense of civic duty; and an equally profound belief in
his country's future.
Marry these beliefs to talent and ambition, and you have at least the beginnings
of a great nation-builder.
The question begs to be asked can we, in the altogether different country we
now live in, marry them to the talents and ambitions of contemporary
Australians? Can we put the same certainty, the same absence of doubt, into the lives of
young Australians?
I don't know the answer to that, but I believe we must try.
For example, if you ask me what is my best reason for replacing our present
Head of State with an Australian, it is that the affections of young Australians for
the British Monarchy are not what they were in Monash's day or my father's
day. And they will diminish further we can be sure that within the space of half
a generation the affection will not be as great as it is today, our day.
But Australians will continue to need a Head of State who inspires their respect
and affection. They will need someone who embodies the nation's ideals and
aspirations.
Someone who is to their generation what Monash became to his. He would, of
course, have made a splendid Governor-General. His equivalent today would
make a splendid President and you will forgive me for making the observation
that it is hard to imagine him contesting a general election for the office.
The move to an Australian Head of State will of course help to define us to
ourselves and to the world.
And it is important to define ourselves just now.
Some of the reasons for this seem to me self-evident. We are living in an era of
extraordinary change both within Australia and in the world and in our
relationship with the world. Knowing who we are and letting others know will
surely be a useful aid to our success.
We are not talking in terms of the ideology of 19th century nation states or
century nation states for that matter.
We are talking about drawing a line around the loose, pluralistic, federal
democracy which is contemporary Australia and having that line define our
loyalty, our values, our identity.
We are talking about a definition of ourselves which embraces not just the
multicultural facts of our contemporary existence, but our increasing integration
with the cultures of the region and the world, and with their economies.
We are talking about definitions of a people who are in many ways more worldly
than their predecessors, whose tastes and values are less vigorously defined,
and whose greatest need in the 21st century may well be the capacity to cope
with change.
Most of you will know that last year we commissioned an expert group to provide
us with a report on civics education in Australia on the community's
understanding of our democratic values, institutions and history and on the best
means of increasing it.
We received an outstanding report which left us in no doubt that we should
proceed to adopting civics education on a nationwide scale.
It is reasonable to think that by this means we can invest Australians not only
with more knowledge of their country but with more faith in it who knows, with
some of the certainty that Monash and his generation seem to have felt.
But again we would stress that the values will be different to those of earlier
generations. We can and should teach our best traditions the democratic,
egalitarian traditions. We should make sure that our great institutions are
understood, respected and appreciated.
We should teach our history and give all Australians the means by which they
may understand themselves as part of the Australian story.
But some elements of the old tradition will be left behind, or at least the
emphases must change. Some of our old traditions, for instance, cast women in
a roles which are entirely unacceptable and inappropriate today. Some do not
speak of the tolerance which underpins modern multicultural Australia.
The creation of this extraordinarily diverse contemporary Australian culture is
perhaps our greatest post-war achievement, and I believe we should enshrine
the values which sustain it for the generations of today and tomorrow.
Monash and his generation felt an attachment to the British Empire and British
civilisation which we can neither share nor emulate.
Yet I'm inclined to think that, properly understood, our contact with the world at
large and our increasing ability to understand and communicate with different
cultures offers a future which is just as fulfilling.
We will never feel about our region what earlier generations felt about the
Empire; but there is a growing sense of excitement about Australia's Asia-Pacific
future which matches the promise it holds. If it is true that earlier generations of
Australians felt it was a blessing to have inherited the Empire and its institutions,
the next generation might yet see their own region as conferring something
similar on them.
I think I hardly need to say again that this is why we have pursued the goals of
APEC with such determination.
I said after the Bogor Declaration last year that this was something which future
generations might thank us for. It was not something which had to happen: it
was something we decided to make happen.
It will mean greater prosperity and more jobs in the future. It is a big step
towards setting Australia up in the 21st century. It is a big step towards setting
the countries of the region up. Yet it should be recognised that the benefits are
by no means all in the future.
They have already begun to flow. most importantly in the fillip that the process of
developing APEC has given to a regional consciousness. In Australia I think this
has been a quite profound development. Just three years ago to talk about our
future in Asia still produced scepticism and even hostility. It doesn't any more.
Two years ago to talk about getting all the heads of government together, from
Washington to Tokyo to Beijing to Jakarta, was commonly met with cynicism. To
suggest, even just 12 months ago, that at Bogor those heads of government
would agree to free trade between the developed countries by 2010 and
between all by 2020 was to invite derision.
But these things happened and Australia played a leading role in making them
happen. That in itself should give us confidence. But nothing comes close to
the confidence we can draw from the burgeoning business we are already doing
in the region and, especially as APEC develops, the limitless potential for doing
more. If John Monash set one example it was that each generation has a responsibility
to the next.
Yet that heroic generation of Monash's did not see Aboriginal Australians as part
of the country's future. We do. And it seems to me that the next generation
could reasonably ask of ours that we do all we can to finally set things right with
the original inhabitants of this continent. So we are doing it with Mabo; with the
Land Fund, with the process of reconciliation; and, by every practical means at
our disposal, with solutions to the problems of Aboriginal health.
On the other hand, Monash's generation did not have a moment's doubt about
projects which were deemed to be plainly in the national interest. Irrigation
projects, land clearances for farms, forest industries all proceeded without
hesitation or impediment. It is not so now and we should be thankful that it's
not: even if it means we must accommodate the rather unsettling thought that
our generation might have thwarted Monash's efforts to develop the brown coal
resources in the La Trobe Valley it certainly would not have happened without
an Environmental Impact Study.
But the truth is we can no longer pretend that the pursuit of ecologically
sustainable development is an option for Australia rather it is an imperative, a
challenge we have to meet, an obligation we have to the Australians of the 21st
century. Now there are a lot of commentators out there some incessant, some periodic
who say that all these government concerns are only marginally legitimate.
In waves they descend upon the political debate saying we must only address
the economy. Everything else, they say, is a diversion or an indication that the
Government has jumbled its priorities.
It is humbug of course. We cannot successfully attend to the needs of our
economy without attending to the social fabric, to cultural and human needs, to
national cohesion.
We delivered an arts statement last year because in the next century nations will
increasingly succeed or fail according to the capacity of their people to think
creatively and creatively adapt new technology.
We delivered it for any number of other reasons, but none were so important as
this and probably none so plainly illustrates that governments cannot separate
the economic from the cultural or social.
These efforts are of the same character as building bridges or power stations or
even shrines of remembrance they are all parts of contemporary nation
building. And all successful nations make these efforts.
But the commentators are right in so far as it is true that we can do none of these
things unless we create a competitive, adaptable, successful Australian
economy and therefore it is no less true that this is our greatest responsibility
to future generations.
If we are talking about putting certainty and faith and belief into the lives of
Australians, we are talking about an economy which in an uncertain world
delivers opportunity and security to Australian families.
Above all we are talking about jobs.
Nothing erodes belief in a society as efficiently as unemployment: nothing
sustains it as efficiently as jobs.
This is something which has not changed. Employment remains by far the most
effective way to distribute the nation's wealth and the most concrete proof that
we continue to take our egalitarian ideals and traditions seriously.
Today it is being put around that the economic recovery is over. It is, we're told,
just a fleeting moment and now the sky is falling in. For those who have fallen
prey to this notion, and have begun to walk around with heads bowed and
thinking tomorrow will never come, let me provide the antidote. I mean the facts.
Let me start with the growth in employment and the decline in unemployment.
The recovery has created 560,000 jobs since March 1993 on average 720 new
jobs every day.
Over 1994, unemployment has decreased by 1.7 per cent, the greatest one year
reduction since the Bureau of Statistics began the Labour Force Survey 30 years
ago, and the second highest reduction last year in the OECD.
Last month the figures were as strong as they have been at any time in the last
two years, with 90,000 new jobs created. So long as we are vigilant with the
macroeconomic settings, the indications are that this is sustainable. And vigilant
and active we are being.
This extraordinary job growth is occurring against a backdrop of restrained
wages growth. Wage inflation is very much under control the last quarter's
data show an overall annual increase of about 4.1 per cent. This is entirely in
keeping with the Accord commitments of the Government and the unions.
It has happened in part because the new industrial relations system gives a high
priority to enterprise-based bargaining an essential response to internationally
changed circumstances which require the Australian labour market to be taken
into the modern competitive environment. Enterprise-based bargaining is one of
the reasons for employment growth.
There are now 1.44 million people covered by certified agreements 56 per cent
of those covered by Federal awards.
These agreements recognise the mutual interests of companies and workers.
They have delivered responsible and mature wage outcomes on average,
increases of 4.2 per cent in agreements signed in 1994.
And those increases have usually been offset by considerable increases in
productivity. These recent changes need to be put in the context of the sustained progress
which has been made in real unit labour costs over recent years.
The story is this: the costs of production in Australia have fallen from what was
close to a record high in 1982 to less than the average of 1966-73.
Real unit labour costs today are 13 per cent lower than they were in 1982. So
long as we maintain the momentum towards enterprise based bargaining and
other structural economic reform, the sustained low level of labour costs since
1986 will continue into the future.
In other words, we have seen long term gains. And we are not about to let them
slip. While some people are talking about a change in the weather, what we are
experiencing is in fact a change in the climate.
The move to enterprise bargaining is occurring in a climate of industrial peace.
In the period between 1975 and 1983 the average annual number of working
days lost per 1000 employees due to strike activity was 590. Since 1983 the
figure is 208 a reduction of 65 per cent.
From 1988-94 the era when formal enterprise bargaining began the average
was 185 days.
These figures are well under the OECD average and the rate of reduction is very
much faster.
In short, we used to be seen as a notoriously strike-bound country. That is
emphatically no longer the case.
As I said, the whole climate has changed. We have seen and we will continue to
see structural change which will deliver to the next century an Australia with a
modern, flexible, competitive industrial relations system an essential
underpinning of a modern, flexible, competitive economy.
I won't recite in detail the other major structural reforms to the Australian
economy of the past decade which are fundamental to our present
competitiveness and which set us up to be competitive well into the future.
It is enough to say that the deregulation of our financial markets, the lowering of
tariff barriers, the relaxation of exchange controls, and the floating of the dollar,
were essential steps. The effects on our competitiveness have been both
profound and irreversible. So long as we follow through what has been both
profound and microeconomic reform, we will have sustainable growth into the
future. No microeconomic reform we have undertaken has been more important than
our investment in vocational education and training.
You will hear it said these days, usually by the same people who insist that the
sky is falling in, who are generally the same people who insisted that we were
about to have a double dip recession or a depression, that the Government has
lost its enthusiasm for microeconomic reform.
Of course to say that we haven't even to point to proof of our endeavours is to
invite the charge of complacency. It is a serious charge. But it cannot be
sustained.
Not if you look at the introduction and operation of the Industrial Relations
Reform Act. And not if you look at our investment in vocational education and
training. I won't go into training in detail. But the future is the focus of this address, and
the future depends on education and training our economic success vitally
depends on it.
The information highway is already here. A revolution in work is occurring before
our eyes. By early in the next century as many as a third of all jobs will be in the
so-called knowledge-based industries.
Today, without question, knowledge is the most valuable resource a nation can
have. And the knowledge keeps changing: in the German metals industry it
turns over every five years; in their information technology industry it is every
two years.
For all these reasons, the $ 1.5 billion the Commonwealth will spend on
vocational education and training between 1993-97 is an essential investment.
We have to move as quickly as our competitors and develop a world class
training system in which employer associations, training institutions and industry
are directly linked.
That is what we are doing. We are working as fast as we can to build the bridge
by which Australians can get from the old to the new into new opportunities,
new jobs, new technology. From school to work, unskilled to skilled, from the
social margins to the mainstream, from manufacturing to knowledge-based, from
unemployment to employment.
We established the Australian National Training Authority in 1992. In Working
Nation last year we established the National Employment and Training
Taskforce; introduced a Youth Training Initiative to enable fifteen to seventeen
years to get into training or jobs through individual case management, and
created the revolutionary Job Compact.
The initiatives are working. There is a major cultural change under way a
change in the climate. By 2001, 95 per cent of 19 year olds will have completed
Year 12 or an initial post-school qualification or be participating in some form of
education or training.
And the shift is towards vocational training. Unmet demand for TAFE places is
now 36 per cent greater than it is for higher education. The proportion of
students choosing TAFE over university has increased from 15 to 25 per cent.
This is an investment a massive investment In our human resources. in what
Peter Drucker calls "' the only meaningful resource today" knowledge.
Training is a wealth transfer. It is a profoundly democratic and just investment
and in the times which are coming it is essential to the maintenance of the social
fabric. It is probably the most important initiative we can take to redress lifetime
income inequalities.
It is also essential to a healthy economy. A better trained workforce is a more
productive and more innovative workforce. Skill formation begets technical
change, and technical change begets productivity and on productivity depends
the competitiveness of companies and nations.
Microeconomic reform continues with the recovery. And let's consider the shape
and size of that recovery.
Last year the Australian economy grew faster than that of any other developed
country. And it grew with low inflation. Job growth, as I have said, was
exceptional beyond the most optimistic forecasts. And only Canada recorded a
fall in unemployment at a rate faster than Australia's.
When I was in Europe recently I was able to point out that, under the
convergence criteria set down under Maastricht, we would meet the targets for
economic and monetary union where every other European country, with the
exception of Germany and Luxembourg, would fail.
The criteria concern inflation rates, interest rates, deficit ratios and government
debt. At present Australia meets every one of those. And it is worth looking at the
comparisons of government debt. Only one European government has debt
lower than 50 per cent of GDP that is France with 49.5 per cent.
Australia's government debt is 34 per cent of GDP. It is very low.
There is a lot of scaremongering around at present. This is utterly predictable
and totally familiar behaviour, but it does create anxieties in the community
which are very often baseless. And it does deny to Australians the confidence
they are entitled to enjoy after the work they have put in. And I believe it also
makes it significantly harder to efficiently deal with the real problems which
remain.
And there can be no doubt that the real problem remaining for Australia is the
current account deficit.
Yet the fundamentals of the economy are strong, and that the medium term
settings and underpinnings for a sustained recovery are well in place.
The uncertainty, the apprehension about the basics, the notion that the good
news may not last for long derives almost entirely from the recent increases in
the current account deficit.
I want to devote most of the time that remains to addressing this subject.
As a percentage of GDP the current account deficit is now at a high level, but not
the highest historically. In fact Australia has always run a current account deficit
for the simple reason that the investment opportunities here have generally
outweighed our savings capacity.
Our increasing integration with international financial markets in the 1980s has
increasingly encouraged us to call on foreign savings rather than our own, and
as a result we have seen the current account become not just a fact of our
economic life but frequently a problem in it.
The actual size of the current account deficit should not be the sole focus of
debate about our external position. What matters are the much more
complicated issues of the composition of the current account, the circumstances
that have led to its change, the confidence of overseas investors in Australia's
economic fundamentals, and the outlook over the medium term for both exports
and imports.
We cannot deal with the problem without an understanding of these issues.
As far as the recent large increase in the current account deficit is concerned, it
has to be understood that now, as at such times in the past, the growth is
stemming in large part from a surge in imports of capital equipment. It is, of
course, part of the general surge in productive investment.
The data are instructive. In the first 7 months of this financial year the current
account deficit grew by $ 6.1 billion compared to the same period a year earlier,
with capital equipment imports increasing by 23 per cent. By comparison
intermediate goods imports grew by about 10 per cent, and consumption imports
by around 12 per cent.
Increased capital equipment imports reflects a general view that the prospects
for growth are excellent and that the fundamentals for future prosperity are in
place. So the increase in part reflects our economic success and the confidence
it has created. At the same time, to some extent it contributes to further
economic success.
The productive investment we are experiencing is crucial to the continuation of
Australian structural reform, to the modern isation and expansion of our
underlying private economic base.
It also should be noted that when strong investment surges have dissipated in
the past, so too has the level of the current account deficit decreased.
Nor can we ignore the fact that foreign business has been willing to finance the
relatively high deficits, and they are doing this because they believe it to be
good business. At this juncture, with our strong credit ratings intact, the
financing of the deficit can be understood to have a sound financial basis in
which overseas lenders fully expect to receive healthy returns.
In other words, financing the deficit reflects continuing financial market
confidence in Australia.
But it is not confidence the Government takes for granted. It is not something we
are complacent about, It is a continuous, hands-on process. Maintaining
confidence in our external financial situation depends on having policies which
deliver sustained and balanced economic performance.
At the same time it needs to be recognised that there are structural reasons for
the increase in the current account deficit. Some of these the Government can't
influence, but there are important ones we can.
To begin with, over the last several decades Australia's terms of trade have
been falling with world commodity prices. This means that without structural
progress on the export side it becomes increasingly hard to balance our trade.
And there have been significant developments on the export side. The
proportion of GDP coming from exports has increased from 13 per cent in 1982
to 22 per cent today.
Again, it is important to understand the composition of economic data, since in
large part this increase is due to a highly desirable change in the make up of
exports. Our traditional export base, of rural and resource commodities, has declined as
a percentage of all exports from 62 per cent in 1983 to 46 per cent last year. By
contrast, our exports of Elaborately Transformed Manufactures have increased
from 10 to 17 per cent in the same period. This last area is one which will
become of even greater significance as world economic development proceeds.
As an exporting nation we are now much more solidly placed than we were in the
past. This has come about in part from an extraordinary improvement in our
international competitiveness.
The index of international competitiveness has risen by 40 per cent since 1983.
You will forgive me for making the point that in the eight years before 1983 there
was no change in the index in other words, we were no more competitive in
1983 than we had been in 1975.
You see what I mean when I say that these are not fleeting changes. they are
long-term structural gains sea-changes.
As with the fundamental developments in the labour market, the reorientation of
our export base enhances our capacity to grow and deal more confidently with
adverse international economic circumstances.
As I suggested earlier, another factor contributing to current account pressures
has been significant international moves towards financial deregulation. World
capital flows are much greater these days, and it stands to reason that more
financing in Australia will be drawn from overseas funds.
We should not forget that this is a two-way flow. We opened up the Australian
financial system to the world in 1983/ 84, and now about $ 76 billion of Australian
private capital is invested abroad. This phenomenon is rarely mentioned, but it
is a significant consideration in any useful interpretation of our overall
international financial situation. Seventy-six billion is not an insignificant amount
when the net debt is around $ 160 billion.
Another fundamental but complicated issue when it comes to understanding the
current account challenge is the distinction between the short and medium term
prospects for both exports and imports.
As a percentage of GOP our current account deficit is high and it is not likely to
decrease for some time. But decrease it will and for several reasons.
One is that recovery from the drought is bound to increase our export revenues.
It will also decrease some of our recent imports caused by grain shortages.
Another is that some of the countries which are significant importers of
Australian goods are recovering from recession and we can expect our exports
particularly non-rural exports to grow as they do.
Finally, partly in response to current account pressures, the Government moved
to dampen domestic demand at the end of 1994. When these effects flow
through we can expect significant decreases in the growth of import demand.
Yet nothing in the circumstances I have outlined diminishes the Government's
responsibility to manage our external position. The current account deficit has to
be addressed.
Perhaps the major issue is that the larger our foreign borrowings the greater our
exposure to fluctuations in economic sentiment in financial markets abroad.
The advantages that come from overseas borrowings need always to be
weighed against the adverse possibilities arising from changes in market
perceptions and activities.
The obvious way to diminish these risks is to increase national savings. We
have been concentrating on this for some time. You will recall the introduction of
the Superannuation Guarantee Levy in 1992.
Our policy commits us to increasing the overall level of Australian
superannuation contributions to 9 per cent from employers and 3 per cent from
employees by the year 2002/ 3.
Obviously these savings increases will promote the potential for financial capital
needs to be met from domestic sources, and the risks associated with borrowing
from overseas will be proportionately decreased.
National savings increases through superannuation also mean that it will
become easier to meet the financial needs of Australian retirees, whose
numbers will swell in coming years.
We take the issue of the current account deficit extremely seriously. We are
consistently assessing policy and in the forthcoming Budget we will be
addressing elements of structural change which have the potential to reduce
both internally and externally derived pressures.
There should be no mistake about our intention to use the Budget to resolve the
outstanding issues in economic management. It is an excellent opportunity to
fine-tune the recovery and put in place longer term reforms which are consistent
with our needs for sustainable and balanced economic and social development.
As I said earlier in this address, we are living in a period of unprecedented
change. It is much more likely to accelerate than go away. Change breeds
change, but it also breeds success in turn it develops the capacity to cope with
and even lead the changes.
But that does not alter the fact that in times of change there is uncertainty. And
let me say that every effort of the Government is directed towards removing that
uncertainty creating in every way we can the elements of a national life in
which all Australians can find a place.
17
A job, training, health and education services, security, a sense of belonging and
a sense of loyalty to the country, dare I say it a sense of excitement about
Australia these are the goals.
Inevitably the whole picture of our intent fades from time to time. But I can tell
you it does not vary.
And I can also tell you that we know we won't get there if we allow our the
political culture to be clogged with timidity and prevarication.
As a Government we know that we won't do anything for the cause of certainty
by allowing opinion polls or media opinion to drive policy. Governments which
do not listen are not good governments. Governments which only listen are not
good governments either.
I think the same sort of spirit Should pervade the public sector. The task of
government is to make good policy and deliver it. It is to anticipate necessity,
not wait for it to dictate the terms of our existence.
I have a very distinct feeling that John Monash would have offered similar
advice.