Embargo: 5pm Sunday
PRIME MINISTER'S WEEKLY BROADCAST
THE THREAT TO RECOVERY
26 October 1975
During the past week we have had brought home to us
the harsh practical consequences of the Opposition's refusal
to pass the Budget. The violence done to our democratic
institutuions is monstrous enough, but the violence being
threatened to Australia's economy is scarcely less serious.
In its crab for power, in its bid to overturn the elected
Gover.-.. ent, the Opposition is threatening the whole difficult
and fra ile process of economic recovery at the very time
when the first real signs of recovery are beginning to
appear. During the debate on the Budget a month ago I warned
that nothing would be more harmful to Australia's economy
than a * wholly unnecessary constitutional crisis engineered
by the Cpposition. I pointed out that the Budget must be
given a chance to work. By refusing to pass the Budget,
the Opposition is denying that chance. They don't care
about the consequences to the economy. They don't care
about the effects on employment, on business confidence,
on consumer spending or on anything else. They cheerfully
contemplate the wreckage and disruption of the Australian
economyn as long as they get their way.
The Opposition has the gall to claim that the Budget
has failed a Budget which they won't even pass through
the Parliament. They say the Budget isn't working when it
hasn't even been passed. Yet when we look at the latest
figures we can see that the Government's economic policies
are working. On Thursday the consumer price index for the
September quarter was issued by the Statistician. It
showed an increase of 0.8 percent a strikingly low
figure, and the fourth consecutive quarter in which the
rate of price increases has fallen.
Now I don'twant to make too much of that figure.
It would be tempting to claim, by multiplying that figure
by four, that Australia's annual inflation rate is only
3.2 percent, the lowest in the western world. After all,
that's how Mr Lynch, the shadow Treasurer, interpreted previous
quarterly cost-of-living figures: he multiplied them by
four and called that the annual rate of inflation. Well,
I'd be happy for Mr Lynch to tell us now that Australia's
rate of inflation is the lowest in the world, but we have to
be auite realistic about this. We have to remember that
inflation is still a problem in most comparable countries and
that Australia has a long hard battle ahead before inflation
is beaten compoletely. What we can fairly claim is this: / 2
the latest encouraging figures on the prices front are due
largely to the success of our wage indexation policies.
Wage indexation is an immensely fragile and sensitive
experiment. With goodwill on all sides it can work.
It has taken months of negotiations with the unions and months
of argument before the Arbitration Commission to bring
indexation about. Nothing would be more likely to shatter
the unions' cooperation and put wage indexation at risk than
the Opposition's reckless attack on the elected Government
and the resulting economic disruption.
Let's recall what is in the Budget which the
COposition is holding up. And let's remember that at no
time has the Opposition proposed any credible alternative.
About 3 million Australians something like two-thirds of
all taxpayers will benefit from substantial. tax cuts.
About half a million present taxpayers will be freed from
i: come tax entirely. Pensioners and low-income earners will
gain the greatest benefit. The average wage-earner will pay
almost 30 percent less tax on overtime and additional earnings.
The family man with a wife and two children will be able to
earn more than $ 100 a week free of tax. The old system of
deductions, which favoured the wealthy, will be replaced
by a system of rebates which is fair to everyone. The Government
has introduced a new tax deal for all Australians. What is the
Opposition's alternative? They want double taxation a return
to the discredited system of pre-war years, when the States
imposed income taxes on top of the federal tax, and the smaller
States were worse off than the others.
SFor all of us in Canberra it's been interesting
to see the growing panic and desperation of the Opposition
reflected in their conduct in Parliament. Mr Fraser and his
deputy have resorted to wild and unsubstantiated charges against
Government ministers. Mr Fraser himself made a scandalous and
quite unfounded attack on Frank Crean, the Deputy Prime Minister,
accusing him of leaking a confidential document to the Opposition.
The charge was promptly denied. It was baseless. Mr Lynch
then tried to revive his pet Khemlani business by asking a
question based on a newspaper report, and completely ignored
the fact that in the very same newspaper there was a statement
by an Adelaide solicitor denying the report on which the
question was based. The Opposition will stop at nothing to
smear ministers and even implicate their personal staff in
phony charges of misconduct. This week Mr Fraser accused the
Australian Statistician, an officer completely independent of
the Government, of producing fraudulent cost-of-living figures.
The most contemptible aspect of the Opposition's conduct has
been an attempt to put pressure on the Governor-General
himself. We've read and seen their desperate appeals to get
the Governor-General to dismiss the Prime Minister and
presumably install Mr Fraser instead.
The confusion and contradiction of the Opposition in
this affair have been unbelievable. This week, when we
submitted our Budget bills again to the House of Representatives
every Opposition member voted against them in every division.
Yet when the bills went before the Senate the Opposition resorted
to its old stalling tactics and deferred the bills without
actually voting against them. They lack the courage of their own
3.
convi~ ctions. They denounce the Budgct buat ha-ven' t the quts
to vo,-eo aqjain st it. They oppose it in on-e Ho1use butL defer it
in the other. They block the money for running the nation's
affairs, and then claim that_ there's no cons tituti onal
crisis. For months they've criedi doomi and disaster arid
tried to panic the Australian people, buit now, as the full
meaningT of their action dawns upon them, they assure us that
evervthina is normal, that there's no cr. Lsis at all.
They go on parroting the sloga2n that the people must
choose who the Goverinrent should be. Thr-: e fact is that the
-eonle have made that choice. ' Ih* ey made it17 months ago
clccto-d a Government that c.-,=, ands a majority in the
House of Representatives, a democratLic Government, a
ueocle' s Governjent, a Goverrnment that wilnot be removed
rromoffce alf way through its term just because i t
suis heOmu;-os;."_ n. ~ vrtiathat has haeonened this wea'..-
th-e ra~.ñ ies ancd demonstrati 4ons in suupport of -he-elected
G o ve r n2nt, the strengtn and unit': of the Labor move,-e,=
tho pnc oa-: Mr Fraser and his followers, the mounting concern
of -Austr1alians about where the Opposition is leading the
n -tion's economv in thi-is hour of crisi. s everything has
stkrengthened MY resolve tCo stand firm and resist this att-ackI
on A:, ustralian democ racy. Mr Fraser has blundered. He knows itad
to ju rom this weksnewspa-per ed-itoria3 s, his
: rien-ns i: r ie press kno-., it too. in one stupid act of
con s t tt2ona I egn7rcs sion he has dest-royed hi s ow., n honour,
threatened .7" ustralia ' s econom-ic recovery, undermiLned our
aemocratic institutions a--nd rallied the nieLbr oe t
H-{ u -will re-gretL this fEolly for the rest of his lifec.