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CHECK AGAINST DELIVERY EMBARGOED UNTIL DELIVERY
SPEECH BY THE PRIME MINISTER
AUSTRALIAN LABOR PARTY WA BRANCH
RURAL AND REGIONAL SEMINAR
BUNBURY 6 AUGUST 1988
At the outset I want to congratulate the West Australian
branch of the Australian Labor Party on its initiative in
organising this biennial seminar over the last six years,
and to thank them for inviting me to deliver the keynote
address. This seminar priovides a valuable forum for Labor to outline
to Party members and to the wider community the breadth of
its vision for the five million Australians who live outside
the major metropolitan cities.
Those five million Australians make up less than one-third
of the Australian population but they are engaged in
producing almost 80 per cent of all the goods we export.
They are, and they will remain, the backbone of the
Australia's trade effort for the foreseeable future.
This seminar is timely, because it allows us to focus, as we
enter the third century of Australian nationhood, on what
Labor has been able to do, and on what we must continue to
do, to ensure the continued efficiency and strength of our
great primary industries.
When I was first elected Prime Minister in 1983 1 promised
to govern in the interests of all Australians.
our record of achievements on behalf of Australia farmer s,
and country dwellers generally, demonstrates that that
pledge has been fully met.
Since we came to office in March 1983 Australia has had to
deal with a series of major economic difficulties, most
particularly the collapse in our terms of trade in 1985 and
1986. In each case our responses have made us a stronger
country, a fairer country and a country far better equipped
to face the future.
Ahead of us lies the task of articulating and pursuing our
vision of how we want Australia to grow in the 1990' s. 869
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our vision is an Australia which is fair, prosperous,
competitive and independent.
It is an Australia in which all our children will have a
full and equal opportunity for the development of their
talents within an education and training system which is
both adequate and relevant;
am Australia where those who are actively engaged in the
productive processes will be equitably rewarded, and
where those who are not so engaged the young, the
elderly, the disabled will be decently sustained by
the community;
an Australia whose economy will be able to cope with the
challenges of a rapidly changing world, enmeshed in our
dynamic region;
an Australia able to contribute to a better and to a
more peaceful world;
and it is an Australia in which our national goals of
justice and fairness are achieved, not by the savage
conflict of competing interests and groups but through
national co-operation.
These are goals for all Australians goals which are
equally relevant to people living in the cities and to
people living in the country.
when we say we have created over one million jobs,
when we say we have made a fairer taxation system, which
will produce significant personal tax cuts next year,
when we say we are bringing inflation down,
when we say we are well down the track * to stabilising
international debt,
when we say we have lifted the number of kids staying on
at secondary school from 36 per cent in 1982 to
53 per cent in 1987 and we will achieve 65 per cent
early in the 1990' s,
when we say we have introduced a new Family Allowance
Supplement which delivers unprecedented amounts of cash
assistance to the poorest families among us,
we are talking about major achievements for all Australians,
wherever they live.
One of the principal characteristics of this Government has
been its capacity to achieve these reforms, not through the
confrontation which was the hallmark of our predecessors,
but through consultation.
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And to a rural and regional audience such as this, I can
make the proud claim that in few areas has this process of
constructive consultation been more productive than in the
Government's relations with the Country Women's Association.
Let me take this opportunity to recognise in particular the
leadership and drive that has been displayed by the outgoing
President of the CWA, Dorothy Ross.
It was at the suggestion of Dorothy Ross that the Government
decided to conduct the recent invaluable survey on the needs
of Australia's rural women.
But I do not want in this keynote address merely to outline
wl~ at we have already done. Because the road back to
prosperity is a long one which will continue to involve hard
decisions for some years to come.
Nowhere is this more true than in the fundamental area of
economic reconstruction an issue close to the heart of all
Australians and especially to those involved in the rural
economy. You know only to0 o well the vulnerability of our economy to
sharp fluctuations in commodity prices.
Reducing this vulnerability means tackling the task of
reconstruction the hard and long term task of transforming
our highly protected, and consequently relatively weak,
manufacturing sector into one which can compete on world
markets and win; and at the same time ensuring that
agricultural and mining industries, already among the most
efficient in the world, can withstand the sharp changes in
exchange rates and market corruption which presently
characterises the world's trading and financial systems.
The response of conservative governments to this problem
over the nearly three decades they ruled Australia since
1949 was one of neglect and pretence: neglect of the
fundamental realities of Australia's exposed world economic
position and pretence that we could continue to support
ourselves by simply hiding behind higher and higher tariff
walls. Labor's response has been a determined and deliberate effort
to provide the real answers.
Iboth our international diplomatic initiatives and our
reforms of domestic industry structures, we are ensuring
that rural industries can continue to generate the national 871
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do t r
First, we are attacking world trading problems, and
especially the problem of agricultural trade protection, as In
the central element of our international diplomacy. This p
has been a constant and frequent element of my own pr
presentation of Australia's views in a number of
international forums forums such as the EMF Symposium in In
Davos, January 1987, the GATT in Geneva in October 198.7 and pa
most recently during my trip to the United States in June. ef
We are taking an active role in the Uruguay Round of the g
multilateral Trade Negotiations expecially through ourI
leadership of a major new force in trade negotiations which pr
we initiated, the Cairns Group of fair trading nations.
In each of these forums we have made it clear that there is
a continuing threat to free and fair world trade.
This threat comes from three main sources:
the restrictive agricultural policies of the European
Community and the USA's reaction to those policies,
Japan's reluctance to open its markets,
the large trade imbalances between the major economies,
and their counterparts in inappropriate domestic fiscal
policies.
Efficient agricultural exporters, including Australia, are
fed up with being caught in. the crossfire of competitive
subsidisation by the US and the European Community. s
We are also fed up with being illegitimately denied accessV
to markets. a rE
It is true that in recent times we have had some significant
successes. For example, new arrangements have been
negotiated with Japan which, over time, will dramatically it
increase the Japanese market open to our beef producers. ti
As a result, Japanese beef imports will grow at Bi
60,000 tonnes a year for the next three years. k
The Labor Government can point to a number of ways in which
our trade diplomacy has produced tangible and lasting I
results for Australian primary producers. a
But the reality is that more needs to be achieved, quickly.
So we will continue to press our case to free up markets and
to ensure efficient producers like Australia get a fair go.
The next opportunity for progress will be the mid term
review of the current round of multilateral trade
negotiations which will be held later this year in Montreal.
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Australia will be seeking a commitment from other nations to
the early winding back of agricultural subsidies as a
downpayment on an overall strategy over time to eliminate
trade-distorting subsidies.
in all of my international presentations, I have made a
point of saying that Australia is practising what we are
preaching on tariff matters.
In the May Economic Statement the Government announced a
package of structural reforms designed to improve the
efficiency of primary industries in the context of a more
general package to speed our industrial reconstruction.
I do not wish to be exhaustive, but our main objectives in
primary industry have been threefold:
to enhance the productive capacity and life
opportunities of non-metropolitan Australians through,
for example, improving the access and relevance of
education and training programs;
to develop a more responsive and productive industry
structure by providing clearer market signals to
producers and lower costs through substantial reductions
in protection given to manufacturing; and
to provide a more efficient infrastructure for primary
industries, for example through more efficient grain
handling arrangements, and increased funding for soil
conservation and disease eradication.
Economic reconstruction is too frequently seen as something
which affects only the big cities and only the manufacturing
sector. The truth is that rural industries and rural residents have
a key role to play in the creation of new and better
rewarded industries in Australia.
if agriculture in Australia is to reach its true potential
in our third century it will do so by positioning itself at
the forefront of new technology.
Biotechnological change is extremely rapid. industries that
keep up with it will be the prosperous industries of the
future..
In order to keep our place as one of the world's foremost
agricultural nations we must also become one of the foremost
in research and development.
To achieve this we must allow indeed encourage that
industry to operate in the international market place. 873
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I have every confidence that Australia has the potential to
foster an agricultural research and development industry,
selling its services into growing markets such as China, the
Soviet Union, the Pacific Basin, and perhaps even Europe and
the United States.
The Government will continue to support research across a
broad range of agricultural industries, We will continue to
provide matching funds for research. Indeed we stand ready
to contribute to each industry research fund up to 0.5% of
the gross value of production in the particular industry.
Ladies and gentlemen, vif to
At the outset of my address I said that this was a timely
seminar-because, in our Bicentennial year, it focused our Thc
attention on what we must do as a nation to ensure the go%
continued efficiency and strength of our primary industries. ree
This seminar is also timely in a more specific sense because
it coincides with the renewed speculation from the
conservative side of politics about the amalgamation of
Liberal and National Parties.
That leading National Party figures such as Doug Anthony and
Peter Nixon should see merit in combining forces with the
Liberal Party is a significant development in Australian
politics. They have identified a number of trends in rural Australia
that they argue put a question mark over the continued
separate existence of the National Party.
Let me quote one sentence from a recent newspaper article by
Doug Anthony on the amalgamation issue which highlighted one
of these trends:
" The rural zeal against city dominance that-gave birth
to the ( National) Party in earlier days has become more
temperate with improvements in health, education,
communications and rural industries."
What Doug Anthony does not state explicitly but what
obviously is at the root of his concern is that thoseimprovements
in health, education, communications and rural
industries have largely taken place since the conservatives
have been out of office.
They are improvements which have been delivered to rural and
provincial Australians by State and Federal level Labor
Governments. My colleague the minister for Primary Industries and Energy
John Kerin has spoken about the way in which Australian
politics has been characterised by " myths" about rural
Australia 874
the myth that the erstwhile Country Party is the
" natural" party of the bush
and the equally potent and dangerous myth that Labor has
nothing of relevance to say to much of the rural
constituency.
I believe the achievements of Labor in Government, and our
vision for the future, have comprehensively put those myths
to rest.
The truth of Australian politics today is that it is Labor
governments, at the State and Federal levels, that have the
real interests of rural and regional Australia at heart. 875