PRIME MINISTER
TRANSCRIPT OF THE PRIME MINISTER, THE HON P J KEATING MP
SPEECH AT A RECEPTION HOSTED BY THE HON WARREN
SNOWDON MP, HOTEL DARWIN, DARWIN, 5 SEPTEMBER 1995
E& OE PROOF COPY
Well thanks very much indeed for that very warm round of applause.
I am delighted to be here with Brian [ Ede] and Bob [ Collins] and
Warren ( Snowdon] and Laurie [ Brereton] and our very distinguished
Parliamentary representatives and candidates here in the Northern Territory.
It is true, I think, that Bob and Warren have been a great team and yes they
have wrenched the money off me every time they have come through the
door. I used to say every time when you see that fat guy and the skinny
walking in, it is going to cost me money and they would saunter in all very
casual, but all very effective.
But the thing is it is a great thing for the Labor Party and Bob says we are
years old here. This is the oldest Labor Party in the world and we keep on
renewing ourselves and the thing that always keeps us going is faith in
Australia, faith in our fellow Australians and faith in the country.
Above all else, we have the policy disputes, but they are the things that keep
it rolling along and we keep producing these people that always push the
envelope out, that always enlarge it and make it bigger. And we have got a
double here in the Northern Territory with Bob and Warren and I sometimes,
you know, because you tend to, in Cabinet meetings, study people in sitting
there opposite you because everyone is a psychiatrist in politics, you look
into your little foibles and manners and characteristics, strengths,
weaknesses and you know you get very proud of a group of people like this.
And I was looking at Bob only a week or so ago, I am not saying that..
I mean it is hard not to miss him by the way. I am not saying this because
I am here, but I thought well there he is, he has sauntered in and you know
he is in an open neck shirt and I thought well look at the change he has
brought to Australian agriculture.
The previous week I was in Queensland at the. Graingrowers Conference and
there was great warmnth toward& s the Labor Party from an area which has
2
been traditionally a non-Labor voting and supporting group and it is because
with the drought, and the severity of it, this Government has kept income
support under that whole community. Now 10,000 farm families get income
support from the Commonwealth to tide them through this drought. There is
also funding under the Rural Adjustment Scheme and these are the sort of
props we put in to keep agriculture in place while the drought was on and
Bob has done an absolutely original and first rate job in putting all of those
things into place.
And you think well remember him in the Assembly, he goes to the Federal
Parliament as a Senator you take your chance in the lucky dip of the Federal
Caucus. He bobs up in a ministry, in a number of ministries where he has
done important jobs in transport, in communications and in agriculture and
we keep on producing people that do these things, that do good things for
Australia, understand the ethos, really love the country and want to advance
it. You know the others just don't breed them like we do. They just don't.
So he is almost tailor-made for the job of Minister for Agriculture. Bob is out
there, sort of you know, chews the fat with all these farmers and he
understands, of course, well. And the same I can say about Warren. I mean
Warren is a terrific Member of Parliament, a great constituency member.
He genuinely represents the place, understands all the balances, pushes the
envelope when he can, knows when not to, tries to get the best right and
I think this is most obviously true during the Mabo discussion, the Native Title
Legislation, which was a year long, tooing and froing over little details of a
complex piece of property and cultural law, which we had to build from the
ground up.
And this sort of value for the Labor Party.. you know it is not a huge
financially strong organisation, it's a collection of ordinary Australians who
have come together for the public good of it because of their commitment to
the country and we have produced Members of Parliament and Senators and
they go on to the Government and they make a tremendous contribution.
Whatever people might think organisationally about the Labor Party in the
Northern Territory, or in any of the other States, here you have produced two
cracker representatives who really are doing you proud let me assure you.
I am delighted to know them and to be in a Party with them and to be
colleagues of them and Laurie, of course, followed Bob in the transport
portfolio. And they have extended you know we were down today opening
the international terminal at Brisbane airport which we did in 1992, I think.
You turned the sod? He is a good sod turner. Turning over sod is an
accomplished art, I can tell you, and of course Laurie is here today as the
Minister presiding over the opening. So you know, again, it is just another
milestone in the great aviation story of Australia of course which the north
has played such a role in of course as we know Queensland with Qantas in
particular. So these are the things that make you proud to be in the game and, you
know, standing. here with a fellow like Brian who is a good leader, with good
values, you are~ proud to belong to the same Party as these people. I am
very proud indeed.
When I came across today we took off from a very nice ceremony in
Brisbane, where again you see one of the principal gateways of the east
coast of Australia to Asia, you think of the way in which the country has
changed. And we flew over across the north, across Cape York, up through
the Gulf, some of the most beautiful landscape you could imagine on the way
down into Darwin. You think how big it is and how beautiful it is and to think
that it was held in trust for the rest of us by the Aboriginal community all those
thousands of years and that is why we owe it to them and to ourselves to
make a decent fist of it.
To know what a great thing we have been, a great bequest it is that this
ancient continent has been left to us to enjoy, to live from and to protect,
to protect this place and to understand that you almost have to live half your
life, if your a non-Aboriginal Australian, to understand a little bit about it and
to appreciate it more and there is something about the ancient quality of it.
It gets to you as you get into your middle years, I think.
I don't think I understood it as well when I was young. But I understand it
better now and you feel the ancientness, if I could use the expression, of it
and you know what an absolutely enormously rich bequest it has been
because there is no continent reserved for any other group our size and here
we are with these old societies like Indonesia, near us, and the great
emerging country of China, an emerging economy of a billion people and
these old proud societies like Japan and Korea in the region.
We are now part of that region. We are part of that family of nations.
We turned over the leaf from 20 years ago, when we were selecting people to
come here on the basis of race. It is not that long ago and we have done a
good thing in supporting the High Court, when the High Court -said in an
English speaking country like this, your common law comes from European
custom and tradition and we have now said your common law also comes
from Aboriginal custom and tradition. This is a great change. Because it is
the most honest recognition of the value to the rest of us of Aboriginal life and
custom and tradition and, as Brian has remarked, we have had the pleasure
of giving expression to how that title will be used and awarded in law with the
Native Title Act.
But these things and this opportunity we have in this part of the world, I am
sure they [ in Asia] say of us " show us how you relate to your indigenies and
we will show you how you relate to us" and I think we have made a
psychological leap as a country. We have righted a wrong with terra nullius.
We have engaged the community of countries around us. We don't select
people on the basis of race. We know we have been given a great
opportunity, that we can't squander. But Australia is a different place, it is no
longer a monoculture, it is a multicultural place. It is a lively interesting place
and we are now clear that we have been given this great opportunity.
I think as we have intemnationalised the country, as we have made the leap
with our exports into Asia, as our business culture has changed, as we have
approached these countries, we have changed ourselves. We have changed
our outlook in our culture and we do want to be a part of this community of
countries around us and we do see this as a tremendous opportunity here.
And it has always been true, I think it is completely true because the
Labor Party has always had this belief in Australia and through the
wholesome view it has, it wants to see a happy society here and wants to see
us be a-part of this greater society around us.
I think there is a point of excitement about Australia, we haven't seen, not in
my lifetime, that we are seeing now. You see the bounty and the opportunity
when last week we had the economy growing at 3.7 per cent against the
year, sixteen straight quarters of growth it is the longest phase of growth in
years we have doubled our exports in ten years, we are educating about
three times as many kids as we were ten years ago. Eight out of ten young
people now finish secondary school, that is feeding through our higher
education institutions, that is feeding the product innovation, that is feeding
the exports.
All of these things are making this a much more bountiful and exciting country
and that sense of excitement is out there. I mean the polls might'nt measure
all this. But if you go to Australians today and say " do you think Australia has
a greater future, it is more secure, more certain of itself, more clear of what it
is, more exciting?" I think they would answer in the affirmative. And I think
that is very much what the next election will be about.
John Howard thinks he is being tricky and clever hiding his policies. But he
is not hiding them from me, he is hiding them from the Australian public.
He says " I am not going to show that Prime Minister our policies until it suits
me." That really is just simply cynical code for saying " I am not going to show
the Australian public my policies, until the last moment or if ever'.
Now I think that honesty in politics can only be about policies. It can only be
about policies and where you stand and I take the view, maybe an old
fashioned view, that the public have a right to know from the major parties
what we think the big issues are and what the direction for Australia ought to
be. I mean if they don't have that right, what right do they have? At least for
the party leaders and the party to articulate the visions, the steps and the
future for Australia. That is what we are doing.
But John Howard is not doing that. He is playing a tricky, cynical, little
political game trying to hide his policies because he thinks the public won't
like them and you see this is not, if you like, honesty in politics. They try and
compare themselves with the American Republicans. But at least you have
got to see of Newt Gingrich, even if you don't agree with him, he puts his
policies into the marketplace " that is what I stand for, If we get a Republican
majority in the Congress that is what we will do. These will be our yardsticks.
This is what our sheet anchor will be. You will know where we are coming
from. We will go in there and we will actually do it because we will have your
authority as a community and the constituency of the United States to do it."
What do our conservatives do? No contract with Australia. No honesty.
No policies in the marketplace. No mandate that they can claim. They want
to try and slip under the wire without owning up to what they stand for and
when they get there, without of course a mandate, they will just slip back to
their prejudicial policies of old. And for Howard it will be the old ones
cutting the guts out of wages, straightening up working people, gutting
Medicare.. ( Interjection: And Anti Discrimination legislation.)
Well that too. All the things. You see that is what he will be about. He will
be about back to those sorts of things. You saw them at the last election.
You know there are only two members of the Shadow Cabinet that were not
there when Fightback was put together. Now have they all had a Pauline
conversion on the road to Damascus? Have they seen the light, or do they
really believe in full fees for university students? Do they believe in the
lowest common denominator for wages? They believe in no award
protections. They believe in no support of award underpinnings of a wage
system, that gives all the flexibility in the world. Well, of course, they don't.
They believe in all the things they have always believed in and, of course, the
unspeakable thing that Howard believes in, the three letters they can't utter,
is GST. He really believes in the GST.
You look at his whole career. It has been about three things. It has been
about kicking income up to the highest level income families to income
splitting. It has been about introducing a consumption tax and it is about
what he calls labour market reforms, which is code for cutting the bottom
quarter of the labour market back. That is what he believes in. That is all he
has ever had to say and I mean Australia is a small country. We all know he
goes on. He goes around the board rooms. I don't know whether he thinks
I don't know about these things. I mean in some of these board rooms, I can
hear the ants change step. You can hear the little zings. See the thing is I
know they say: " Look he has no ideas. He has no ideas." He sits there, he
goes there and recites all the old stuff and about mostly how they are going
to nail us.
But, of course, these people are running businesses. They want to know how
they are going to keep their business growing. So he thinks because they
are business executives, they are part of the sort of Liberal Party club, or the
Liberal supporters and when he leaves they are all happy with him. Well
they are not happy with him. They are not and we have some people saying
to us in the media " oh well, Labor has lost the touch with business".
You know some journos sitting constipated on a stool looking at a PC,
tapping away in the Press Gallery. You know never been near a board room
in ten years, telling us we have lost contact with business. I mean the fact of
the matter is, that the Coalition has the same obscurantist view they had back
in the 1970s. Australia has moved on, we are a completely different country,
we have changed, we have made the leap into Asia, we are more confident
about ourselves. Our culture has changed, it is ours now, it doesn't belong to
anyone else. We want it to be like this.
We have made great changes as a country and the public have been right in
there with them and that is the sort of country it is -now. There is a floating
exchange rate. Interest rates are set in the market. Wages are set by
enterprise or collective bargaining. It is not the old tricked up, bolted down,
scene it was when Malcolm Fraser and John Howard were playing
Prime Minister and Treasurer all those years ago and they think they are
going to walk back in and because they think they're the pinstripe suit
brigade-and they are back in business, the people are going to say " oh well
that is it, let's put another five cents on the dollar, you know let's knock a
couple of percentage points off interest rates". I mean they have got no idea
of what it is like keeping all of those balls in the air the exchange rate,
interest rate, wages, inflation, keeping it all up there.
Only a Labor Government has ever done it under a market system like this.
They have got no idea and have a look at them. Howard will be the
Prime Minister and Fischer would be the Deputy Prime Minister. You have
got to say where are we going? And then you have got Costello who does
his you know.. I didn't think anyone could out-snarl Peter Reith but he has.
Look he is one of our great assets. He always earns a round of applause.
Him and Andrew Robb, they are out there.. you know that song " I've got my
mojo working." Well we have got them out there working. Costello and
Robb, every day, every time they are out there, we move up. So there is him.
And then after that you'll say " well who else is there? Who is the education
person?" Well that is.. we always call him Count Yorga Vampire Kemp.
And then for business, there is Prosser. I mean what a side, what a side,
and, of course, this is not lost on the business community. I mean those
captains of industry who are picking up the million dollar salaries, they are
not going to be managed by this crowd. There is a bit of professional pride
there. I mean they may be in the Liberal Party, but they are not going to be
run by them.
So look, the thing is, I think that from our point of view we have got Australia
now growing strongly. We have had 680,000 jobs growth in 2 1/ 2 years.
That is an absolutely phenomenal number 680,000. I mean I made the
point this way recently. It took us from 1788 to 1983 to get to six million and
we have added over 10 per cent more in 2 1/ 2 years. It is unbelievably
strong. I mean we went to the election. What was our principal commitment?
That we would restore the economy to growth and employment. We have
had 16 quarters of growth, we have had enormous employment growth and
there has been complete fidelity in those core commitments we have made to
the Australian public throughout the period.
So we can go and we have taken the big issues on like Native Title, like the
Land Fund, like the republic. All the things that will paint the way Australia
will be in the 21st century. So we can look the public in the eye and say
these are the sorts of things we stand for great initiatives like Working
Nation, that pick up the long term unemployed. Or the labour market
programs, or in education, or in health and we will develop, as always, our
policy stance for the next election. We won't be hiding.
There will be no obfuscation on the part of Labor. We will have our policies
out there in the marketplace. We won't be slipping around and there will be
no business saying am not going to show my policies to John Howard",
because all that would mean is we are not going to show our policies to the
Australian public and we have an honest relationship with the Australian
public. We don't need to be tricky. We have faith in them. We have faith in
them to see through charlatans, people who have no ideas and people who
are not going to be honest with them.
So this is going to be, again, another important election, when it comes, for
Australia. It is going to be to keep the strength of the changes coming
through, to keep the linkages with Asia. Here was Howard last week.
We had down, on his first ever trip to the west, the General Secretary of the
Vietnamese Communist Party, someone running a country of 70 million
fought the French, fought the Americans, fought the Chinese turning it now
into a market economy. He wouldn't see him. He wouldn't see him, he
snubbed him. He wouldn't meet him and Do Muoi went home to meet the
American Secretary of State two days later.
I mean it gives you some idea and yet Howard says he wants the stewardship
of the Asia relationship for Australia and yet the week he snubbed Do Muoi,
was the week they became full members of ASEAN. So what do the
Malaysians, the Singaporeans, the Indonesians, the Thais, the Philippines,
what do they think about when one of their partners was snubbed? Because
why? Because he thinks there are a few votes out there with the Vietnamese
community in Western Sydney and in parts of Melbourne. That is it. Just for
the same reason he told those kids at Saint Ignatius High School that he
would put a prohibition on uranium exports to France. He will say whatever
he thinks will get the attention and the approbation at the moment. But in
terms of the serious stewardship of the country's interests, he can't be relied
upon and he can't be trusted.
So I want to thank you for believing in us, for supporting us, for having faith in
the better values which the Labor Party has always had on offer and knowing
that we are at the cusp an exciting part of our history as we come into the
21st century, as we throw off all the linkages to the vestiges of our past in
terms of the things, our Constitutional linkages with Britain. These things
which have been useful to Australia but are useful no longer. And that as we
take that turn on the centenary of our federation and into that 21st century,
that we will be the people marking out the way for Australia.
Now that is what I think this election coming is going to be about and that is
why I thank you for supporting us, supporting my colleagues with me tonight
and coming along to hear what we have got to say. But more than that,
simply to lend a hand. Thank you.
ends