TRANSCRIPT OF THE PRIME MINISTER, THE HON P J KEATING MP
SPEECH AT THE ALP BUSINESS DINNER, WREST POINT CASINO,
HOBART, 15 JUNE 1995
E& OE PROOF COPY
I am delighted to be in Tasmania again and I am particularly delighted to be
here with Michael Field. We were just saying some nice things about him at
the table. He wasn't hearing them, but we were saying nice things about him.
And what we were saying was that when Tasmania was really facing a great
difficulty just a few years ago with a tremendous problem in terms of its
expenditures and its receipts, in short its Budget, there were very few people
in the system, anywhere in this country, who could have taken that by the
scruff of the neck and made the sort of changes that this State really needed
to make and I think that the Tasmanian community is starting to appreciate
that now.
And I was Treasurer at the time and I certainly did and I can assure you that
when one went over the litany of State indices, by far and away the greatest
change in that period was under the leadership of Michael Field and I am
delighted now that we are seeing the polls changing here and they are for
one reason that is, that the Coalition Government here, the Liberal Party, is
again showing that if you end up with a Government adrift, the State goes
nowhere and I suppose that is best demonstrated by the fact that if you take
the employment in Tasmania that is here as a consequence of the
Commonwealth's programs, you take that out, in terms of, if you like, private
sector employment, employment has actually shrunk in the period of the
Groom Government and that is against that very big increase in employment
nationally.
We have had 630,000 job growth since the election of 1993. So it is an extra
special trick to make it go backwards. You know you haven't just got to be
mediocre to make it go backwards, you have really got to excel yourself. And
that drift, you know, all process and all show but no substance and no
change.
I mean public life is only about change. I mean Duncan ( Kerr) was very
kindly paying me a compliment about change. But I do believe in change and
I just think we are only here for the changes in public life because the system
runs itself. I mean to be up here as a Minister saying well " here I am, I am a
Minister, I have got the car and I have got the office and the title but I am not
doing anything". You know what a way to live, what a way to live. But that is
how some of these characters live and in the Tasmanian Government that is
how they all live.
So public life is about public policy and about public change and if you are
not in the change business, well get out of the road and let someone more
enterprising, more ambitious, more courageous have a go. That is what
should happen here in Tasmania and that is what I think will happen. So I am
delighted, as I say, to be here tonight with Michael and I do really look
forward, sincerely, to a Tasmanian Government, under his premiership,
working with the Federal Labor Government because this State deserves
better than it is getting. It has got obstacles, but it has got very strengths,
Tasmania, and it deserves much better than it has had.
It wasn't that many years ago, 25 or 30 years ago, this State led the
Commonwealth just about in most things in industry, in labour, in most
things. This is not true today and there is no cause why that should be so.
So I am even more convinced of the need for the Federal Government's
programs to be operating here in Tasmania and we look at things Duncan
mentioned a couple of those statements, Working Nation is one. Getting the
long term unemployed back into work. Case managing people, getting to
understand their personalities, getting their confidence, understanding their
aptitudes, finding a place for them, giving them a subsidy, getting them back
into structured training.
These sorts of things are the things that will deal with problems of
communities that don't have that natural buoyancy and strength in
employment and where we owe this most particularly, of course, is to our
young people and I know in parts of Tasmania here youth unemployment is
very high and any community that is prepared to sacrifice the well being,
prosperity and peace of mind of our young people, isn't one that has a lot of
interest in its future and, therefore, I think again the things we have been able
to do, and I say we the Federal Government have been able to do, are
important. By the way, they are the very things that our opponents want to cut out:
labour market programs, the enormous spending on TAFE, all the things that
really go to the heart of communities in a position of economic disadvantage,
seem to be the things they want to be rid of. But they are the things, in
places such as this, in parts of this State where we need most.
You know I was talking this morning to a couple of officers who were
managing a couple of the Commonwealth programs, when we were looking at
this Landcare project this morning, and they were talking about their
experiences and how successful they are in getting long term unemployed
people, including young people, back into training and back into work.
But nothing is ever going to take the place of entrepreneurship, of investment
and the raw employment that comes with it and I think all that means turning
around the sort of sense of self importance that Tasmania has, that sense of
prosperity about itself, and not being fed the line by sort of conservative
politicians that the State is in some way a victim of circumstances. It has got
every opportunity to really I mean you look at all the innovative things that
are done here, there is no reason why there can't be more of it and it doesn't
need to be fed patronising lines by politicians without ideas, as though the
State is in some sort of position of being, you know, victimised in the
Federation or not being supported nationally. It has every opportunity and,
in fact, the national Government the more it can sensibly do here, the better.
So, once again as I say, I look forward to having the opportunity to work with
Michael and really seeing it kick along and I thank you for joining us tonight.
I have the opportunity, obviously, with you to go over more generally some of
the directions that we are taking and why I think we are at a most exciting
time in our history. I mean a century ago, in this decade a century ago, was a
period of the greatest depression, the greatest drought and yet the greatest
sense of the nation, the greatest well-spring, the welling up of Australian
nationalism, of Australian endeavour, Australian identity and that went on,
of course, until it was snuffed out by the First World War and I only
reappeared again, briefly, in 1972. I hope it has reappeared more strongly in
this decade, one century later.
Because now, here we are at the foot of the fastest growing markets of the
world, we have never been in that position before. Our markets were
traditionally in Europe, with Britain, or in North America a long way from
here. We are now with them at the foot of these very large markets in a
country which is now so much more economically competitive than it used to
be. Australia today is 40 per cent more competitive than it was in 1983, that is by
the exchange rate, wages and inflation 40 per cent. That is a phenomenal
number. Not 4, or 14: 40 per cent more competitive and, essentially, that is
what is driving our exports. A decade ago we exported 13 per cent of our
GDP. This year we are exporting 22 per cent and I was having a little
tete-a-tete on the radio tonight with a commentator at the ABC and he was
asking me about this and I said " well this year GDP is $ 500 billion. We are
exporting 9 per cent of GDP more, than we were before this Government
came to office. And 9 per cent of $ 500 billion is $ 45 billion." Just imagine
where our National Accounts would be if we didn't have that $ 45 billion in
there. We are now running a current account deficit of around $ 25 billion a year.
Just imagine where we would be without that growth. But just imagine the
innovation that has been put there to make it happen and you can see it
happening right across the country in all sorts of things and the greatest
growth, of course, is in elaborately transformed manufactures. Things which
have innovation about them, have creativity about them, because one of the
country's great strengths, and I think our greatest strength, is our education
system and it is something that this Labor Government has put its back into
since 1983.
In 1983, only three kids in ten completed secondary school. This year that is
over eight in ten, which is a revolution really in education. We are streaming
per cent of those through universities, which means we have added to the
system about 18 or 20 universities of say 10,000 average campus size.
In other words, the capital city universities, we have added the equivalent of
18 to 20 of those to the system since 1985-86. And we have now in the One
Nation program, put about $ 1.2 billion into Technical and Further Education,
or vocational education, since 1992. So we are now seeking to build beside
the universities a competent and mature vocational education system so that
those 60 per cent who didn't go, who have never gone through and won't go
through, into tertiary education can find a place for themselves in the labour
market in vocational education.
And it is that, essentially, which will be driving and is driving our product
innovation. But it is driving it because we have got a country where we have
got a better alignment of profits and wages. Where we have got a
competitive exchange rate system in place. Where we have now introduced
a productivity culture which is naturally producing a naturally low inflation
rate. Just remember this, we had a recession in 1991-92 and we had a recession
in 1981-82. At the end of the 1981 -82 recession, we came out of it with just
on 11 per cent inflation. We came out of the 1991-92 recession, with 2 per
cent inflation. And the reason for that is because we have now got
productivity naturally occurring in the system and we have produced by low
tariffs, a contestable Australian market that actually for the first time probably
in our history, a really toey, competitive, contestable Australian market and
that is producing natural productivity which is holding the inflation rate down.
It is not being held down through a draconian monetary policy. It is not being
held down through high interest rates. It is not being held down now in a
recession because we have got growth running of the order of, you know, 4 to
per cent. We have had it there now for three years and yet we are still
producing low inflation and that is coming because we have made a
breakthrough in the whole competitive structure of the country.
And this is something. When I first went to Parliament, our Tory friends used
to put themselves up as the sort of managers, the money managers. You
know there was the Labor Party over here and there was the pin-striped suit
brigade over there. But, of course, once inflation hit, they were absolutely
dumb-founded and dumb-struck.
When double digit inflation arrived, they had no grip on wages, they had no
grip on costs. Is there any wonder that the capital stock fell apart in the
middle 70s and we started with a very large current account deficit. We had
a current account deficit of 6 per cent of GDP in 1980, three years before this
Government came to office. The debt, the nation's debt, had moved from
virtually nothing to 30-odd per cent of GDP within three years of the.
Government coming to office as a result of the neglect of the 70s when
J W Howard was asleep at the wheel. You know giving comments, cocky
little comments, on the way into Parliament House up the steps like a radio
jockey every morning, commenting on his own work.
But that is when it all happened. That is when, about the time, that
Malcolm Fraser became Prime Minister was really when the weights were on
in terms of national economic change and he and Howard threw the pass and
as a consequence it was left to a Labor Government to turn Australia into a
market economy.
But we have turned into a market economy and produced this enormous
change, including in the labour market, and let's record this fact that we have
had now 26 per cent employment growth since 1983. In 1983 we had a
labour market of 6 million, we have now got a labour market of just over
8 million. We have had, outside the United States, the fastest rate of growth
in employment of any OECD country and per year we have had five times the
rate of employment growth that the Fraser/ Howard Government had in the
late 70s and early 1980s and we are still keeping it up.
In fact in the last year we had the biggest fall in unemployment we have ever
recorded. And, as I said to you, we had 4 1/ 2 per cent employment growth,
which I think is beyond any other country in the OECD, maybe the
United States is in there with us. That is in employment.
Household disposable income has risen by 40 per cent since 1983 and the
reason for that is there is more people in households in work and that is a
phenomenal change. And, of course, in the social wage if we take another
measure which is probably the most accurate measure of all because,
you know, we have had this debate, we have had in the last year were a
couple of phoney debates. One of them was John Howard told us in his
headland speech, " the Liberal Party have been battling for battlers for a
week". And I said " well that's interesting, we have been battling it for a
hundred years". And I am not misquoting him.
But the best measure of all this is real household disposable income
per head, per capita and it is the best measure. The reason it is the best
measure, of course, is it includes wages, salaries, supplements, pensions
and social security benefits. It includes the lot. It is adjusted for changes in
the size of the population, it is after tax and it is adjusted for changes in
purchasing power. So in Australia in the period 1983-94, real household
disposable income per capita increased by 16 per cent real. That is a real
increase 16 per cent in people's household disposable income and that,
I think, is the measure of how important social progress and the social wage
is.
And I made reference in the Parliament recently that very telling remark by
the US Labour Secretary Robert Reich at an OECD conference on
employment and the social wage and he said " in the United States we have
had enormous employment growth and now in a period of high prosperity,
high profitability, a very high profit share in the economy and quite strong
economic growth, the median wages of Americans are still falling, still falling,
and they have been falling continuously for 15 years." So he said " you have
got this terrible choice, an American style economy which has got high
employment, but low wages, or a European economy which has got high
wages and low employment. What a choice," said Robert Reich.
Well in this country we have come right up the middle. That is, we have got
high employment growth and we have also had strong income growth and we
have got a social wage underpinning it with such things as Medicare, with of
course access and equity in health, in education. And in terms of payments,
just let me give you an indication, I have just got a couple of interesting little
numbers here. Let's take somebody.. well the social wage gives
considerable assistance to families. We estimate that a family with two
children is worth $ 200 a week. That is when you look at additional family
payments, Medicare, the lot.
Under our Government, spending on the social wage increased by 73% in
real terms, or more than $ 700 per year for every man, woman and child in
Australia. And what our research is showing is that this has narrowed the
gap of the social wage quite considerably. This is including strong increases
in the pension a single pensioner is receiving an additional $ 18 a week
more than if we had kept pensions for them in line with inflation $ 18 a week
more. An unemployed couple with 2 children, renting privately, under Labor
this family is $ 96 better off in real terms than when we came in office. So, it's
an indication I think let's take a single-income family with 2 children, and at
two-thirds of average earnings about $ 25,000 a year under this
Government, the disposable income of the family has increased in real terms
by $ 52 per week. Their income tax has fallen their family payments have
increased by $ 36 a week. Now, that's really helping battlers people who
need assistance, and why I think we have got this magic mix of a strong,
efficient, low inflation, high productivity economy, grafted onto an equitable
social wage, and it could have only come from a Labor Government. And I
think that's why I think when you see that sort of sense of you know, you
can't produce good policies without good motivation, and just talking to
people today about the way in which the labour market programs are helping
the disadvantaged and the long-term unemployed these good things come
from good aspirations, good inclinations, good feelings. And the Labor Party
has traditionally had these. It's always had them, because it is of the
community, and that's why, I think, only a Labor Government could actually
produce this mix and advance the country, but do it fairly. And that is what I
think is happening.
We have got people trying to misrepresent us. John Howard is running
around all the time trying to talk about all these things but let me just run a
couple of things past you. In the last month look at what, in the last month,
the Government has done:
It has delivered a Budget in surplus, and in surplus for years to come;
It has established a national superannuation policy, which will at least
double the retirements incomes of Australians, and create by the year
2020, a pool of national savings of $ 2 trillion $ 2000 billion;
We have created a new maternity allowance;
We have delivered $ 158 million Justice Statement amongst other things,
with family service programs, extending Legal Aid and legal services, and
establishing a national women's justice strategy;
We have realised a century-old Australian dream to have a single gauge
railway linking the capital cities of the mainland that is, we saw the One
Nation train go from Brisbane to Perth via Melbourne, for the first time in
our history a week ago;
We have launched a $ 25 million national Civics Education Program for
our schools and communities, to tell our young people about the nature of
our constitutional arrangements, and their history;
And we have announced our proposal to make an Australian Australia's
Head of State, and for Australia to become a republic by the year 2001.
In one month. In one month a surplus Budget, a new national retirement
income policy 15% of all Australian workers put away $ 2 trillion in savings
by the year 2020 a maternity allowance, the Justice Statement, the One
Nation railway, the Civics program and the republic in one month.
Now, that's more on a month than the Tories did in the whole of their
Governments. Really. And I'm saying this advisedly. I used to be there
and I remember being there during the McMahon Government, and I was up
playing tennis with a journalist I knew, and I said " how are you going?', and
he said " oh well, it's been pretty boring", he said " you know, the Government
has put out one statement in 2 weeks", I said " is that right? What was that?",
and he said " to appoint someone to Repatriation Tribunal number And
that was the truth. I mean, people forget the Rip Van Winkle years of the
Coalition. You know, the torpor that Menzies left us in, through this period.
You know, old McMahon and people like that. And then, of course, with great
hope and expectation, the Fraser Government which did nothing. And yet,
in one month, this has changed, and we have got, yet, the Leader of the
Opposition running around saying " don't forget me". When it mattered, of
course, as far as he was concerned, he forgot us he left us with double-digit
inflation, double-digit unemployment, the biggest Budget deficit in our history,
smashed profits. You know, appalling employment forecasts he was sort of
drummed out of public life out of the Treasury in 1983, and now after a
Labor Government has, with energy, foresight and ambition, put this model
together for Australia, and after this Government has done these things in just
a month, he is saying " what about me?".
And there we saw him at his best or shall we say his worst a week ago: we
had the " headland" speech. What was in it? Nothing. One commentator
senior commentator described it as mulch. And it was. you read through it,
and it was just a collection of press statements. You know, incoherent, and it
had no thread to it. The other thing is, they can't even write a decent
sentence. Now I know maybe I'm old-fashioned, but I actually think writing a
nice sentence down has a lot going for it. They can't even write can't even
write. I mean, they are supposed to be the Tories they once had people
from the great doyennes of the Bar, you know, men and women of letters.
And what have we got know? Words incoherence. This is the headland
statement. I mean, it was just all over and done with in a day. Waited, come,
gone finished. Over. Then, a couple of days later came the republic.
Now, the thing is, the thing about the republic I'll just say this about John
Howard: I respect John Howard's right to be an Australian monarchist, but I
do not respect his pretending for several days to be something other than
a monarchist. I don't respect him blowing in the breeze. Whatever else he
might be, he's supposed to be a Leader he's nominally and notionally, the
Leader of the Opposition. And least of all do I respect his attempt in the last
week to confuse and misrepresent the issue to cover his own indecisiveness
and divisions within his own party, and those divisions, of course, are very
evident here in Tasmania. Mr Howard has been talking about a " people's
convention" half of it appointed by him. As if another committee, as Jeff
Kennett called it, could help the process. Then you had him talking about a
plebiscite he began talking about options and choices, and the only choice
he didn't talk about was the one which the debate is really all about whether
an Australian should be our Head of State. But here is what he said the day
before yesterday I'll just read it to you: " Now, we are putting up a
convention a people's convention. If a consensus comes from that, we will
put it to the public for a vote for a referendum. If there is no consensus, we
will also put the issue to a vote, but in those circumstances, we would have to
offer people a range of choices, and we would have to say do you want this
or that?". So, " do you want this, this, or this?". Well, in other words, it is
down to this it's down to pretending this mind-numbing business of process,
rather than the simple issue. He can only try and survive the debate -I
mean, this is what this week showed that John Howard can only try and
survive the debate he can't constructively engage it. He is trying to survive
the debate by pretending that a referendum is a denial of choice, or that the
question is more complex than it really is, or that the Government which has
found support with a lot of people in the Liberal Party is up to some kind of
villainy by creating the conditions in which Australians can debate, and then
decide whether an Australian will be our Head of State in the 21 st Century.
We have got Bronwyn Bishop of course she's out there saying it's a
communist dictatorship. We have got them saying that Keating wants to be
President. Well, let me tell you the day that Parliament gave me a twothirds
vote would be the day I knew that I had lost my political virtue. I only
want two things when I retire from politics one, I want to live in an Australian
republic, and two, I want a private life.
So, anyway, the Government's proposal is designed to ensure that the
position of President will not be filled by a politician that it is above politics,
and it will be filled by people who are universally esteemed by their fellow
Australians. The conclusion I draw from Mr Howard's behaviour in the last
week does not really concern the republic at all the conclusion that I draw is
this: I think the last week has demonstrated how sad it is that at this stage in
our history, the Liberal Party has resorted to a Leader who will not lead. As
one commentator put it this week " Mr Howard's leadership principle is " I'm
your Leader please show me the way". " I am the Leader I will follow"."
Remember this it's worth remembering that John Howard had two and a
half years to prepare himself for this debate he actually prided himself on
being a monarchist champion within the Coalition. This was one of the
subjects he understood. When he was running around needling and knifing
Downer, he was saying " I am one of the people that can understand these
bigger subjects like the republic". He had two and a half years to prepare
himself, but when it was announced in the Parliament on Wednesday, he was
utterly unable to coherently respond within three days, his first response
had dramatically changed to another response. I must say, even I was
surprised by his incapacity, and it takes a lot to surprise me about John
Howard's incapacity.
Now, in the last week, we have had people on the Conservative side Ray
groom here in Tasmania, Jeff Kennett in Victoria make decisions and say
where they stand. Even poor old Tim Fischer in his own way has been clear
about his position. But Howard's response has been only to erect a wall of
obfuscation and meaningless process. He is throwing out some fly-paper in
the hope that he will get the republic to stick. Which is, by the way, what
every constitutional convention and we have had many over the years has
managed to do they are uniformly expensive and unproductive. Now, Mr
Howard was saying that he doesn't want the republic to be the main issue of
Australia's political debate. Well, it's not the only issue I agree with him.
But, how does he face up to the fact that in a month, the Government has
produced these changes, as I have mentioned to you the surplus Budget,
the big national superannuation scheme? Imagine them, the Liberals, having
the wit or the courage to get every Australian person to put 15% of their
income away as savings? Or to link the country up with a national rail
system, or to launch te Civics Education program, or to indeed, launch the
republic? So, this is the thing the Government has that vitality about it, and it has the
bigger view. And let's just take that view in that month the one thing I didn't
mention was the visit I had to Japan, and the very successful meetings I had
with the Government of Japan, and the statement I came away with endorsing
the relationship between Australia and Japan, with the government of Japan
saying that Australia was an indispensable regional partner of Japan this is
the second largest economy in the world, and our largest major trading
partner. We developed these bilateral linkages. At the same time, we are
developing the multi-lateral ones, like APEC. And part of that conversation in
Japan was about the value of APEC. I saw the Chinese Vice Premier in
Sydney yesterday, also talking about the value of APEC keeping the United
States strategically engaged in Asia, opening up markets around the Asia-
Pacific rim these and other things have come from the Labor Government.
So, not only developing the structures at home, developing them abroad.
Could you imagine I mean Gareth and I are working on these issues could
you imagine Alexander Downer working on APEC? ( No. No.) He's telling us
to send a gun-boat to Mururoa. I'm sure he still has battleships in the bathtub
with him, to sort of, create his own view of the world, you know. He would
have the Repulse or the Renown floating past his toe, King George V just
going over the ankles.
But, the thing is the truth is they faced up to any of it the big economic
model, with the graft of the big social wage, or any or the big social
outreaches be it participation in education or in health or the big foreign
policy gestures of the Government in APEC, or in chemical weapons, or in
Cambodia or in the big bilateral relationship with Indonesia or Japan they
can't get near the Government. And you can see that in the headland
speech. It came to nothing. It was his big moment, and what was it? A
complete fizzer. two nights later, the republic a bigger fizzer. So, this is
why we believe that the Labor Party it listens, it is of the community, it
understands community sentiment. But it has also got invention, and
creativity, and imagination the Labor Party has got that one ingredient the
Coalition has never had imagining something something better, and going
after it. and the other thing is, we have got also belief in Australia, belief in
Australians, and the notion that we believe that we will never be never truly
represent ourselves, or adequately express that which we have become,
unless one of us is our Head of State. Now, these are all things which are
the mark of a Party with imagination and with a vista about what Australia is.
And including, those big social questions, like reconciliation with our
indigenes, a greater role for women in our society, improving the status and
the participation of our women John Howard said we were falling prey to the
special interest groups the environmentalists, Aborigines and women. Well,
if they are special interest groups, if we don't respond to them, what sort of
Party would we be? That's why we are going to keep this growth sustainable:
you can see it now, 3 3/ 4% GDP growth, with modest inflation we are about
to put another Accord together with the ACTU to guarantee wage restraint
over the next 3 years, and good inflation outcomes. We are going to
continue with our education system adding to that program of innovation to
our exports, we are going to continue to build those relationships outside of
11
Australia, and we want to do it holding our head up as Australians. All that is
a formula John Howard can't match.
And that's one of the reasons I will be working with Michael Field as Prime
Minister and Premier after the next election ( hear hear) ours and his, to see
the great craft of the Labor Party working again fully here in the state of
Tasmania as a full partner in the federation of this great country. Thank you.
ends.