CHECK AGATNST DELIVERY EMBARCOED UNTIL DELIVERY
SPEECH BY THE PRIME MINISTER
ADDRESS TO THE NEW SOUTH WALES STATE CONFERENCE
OF THE AUSTRALIAN LABOR PARTY
SYDNEY 10 JUNE 1990
Delegates, Twelve months ago, when I last addressed this conference, I
concluded my comments with a simple statement of fact.
I had been saying how important it was for all Australians
that Labor continue working, in Government, towards our
overwhelming goal: our goal, in Ben Chifley's words, of
seeing that all members of the community can enjoy a decent
standard of living.
I said that was a goal Labor must attain because in
Australian politics, only Labor can attain it.
And I concluded with this statement: " With your help, we
will attain it".
Delegates, With your help, we are attaining that goal.
Because with your help your discipline, your restraint,
your commitment, and your energy we won the election last
March that so many said we were bound to lose.
Australia stood at the crossroads.
The Australian people faced the starkest of choices:
a choice between two profoundly different
political programs two utterly different visions
for the future of Australia;
a choice between the social safety net and the
social trap door: Labor's determination to open
further the opportunities of all Australians, and
the conservatives' commitment to the reinstatement
and entrenchment of privilege;
a choice between a coherent strategy Labor's
clear way forward through the national and
international challenges of our time and the
conservative recipe for industrial confrontation,
health chaos and fiscal irresponsibility;
and it was a choice between Labor's experienced
and united leadership team and the temporary
alliance of convenience presented by a ramshackle
Coalition.
Delegates, the stakes were high for Australia and for all
Australians. So at this, the first State Conference our Party has held
since the Federal election let me say to all of you, and
especially to the rank and file members, a heartfelt thanks
for all your work in the lead-up to the campaign and on 24
March. Quite simply, New South Wales was the solid rock on which
the Federal victory was built.
You successfully retained every Labor seat in the State.
You beat off the challenge from the New Right in the seat of
Phillip and I pay tribute to Jeanette McHugh for a great
victory.
You regained the sixth Senate seat, allowing Sue West to
return once more to the Senate.
And you didn't just hold your own. You pushed on, into
conservative territory where Labor had literally never
ventured with success before.
I have to admit, when I made that call for " your help" this
time last year, I didn't realise just how energetically and
how successfully you would respond.
For that matter, neither did Charles Blunt.
For the record, Neville Newell is the first person since
1929 to take a seat off an incumbent leader of a Federal
party.
And his victory in Richmond is Labor's first in this seat
since Federation.
But it won't be our last.
With Harry Woods having also won a tremendous fighting
victory in the seat of Page, Labor is now established on the
North Coast as the party of Government.
And these victories in New South Wales, along with our extra
seats in Queensland, meant that even with our
disappointments in Victoria, the result of the election was
beyond doubt.
The lesson is clear.
Australians will not cop the conservatives' determination to
entrench privilege at the expense of ordinary men and women;
they will not stand for empty posturing when what
is required is detailed strategy and decisive
action they will not hand the reins of power to a
conservative coalition that is deaf and blind to
the need to protect the Australian environment.
That was the lesson the Liberal and National Parties should
have learned on 24 March.
And when the time comes in this State, Bob Carr will teach
the Greiner Government the same lesson.
Because the truth is this: conservative politics is so
bankrupt in New South Wales, at both the State and Federal
levels, that seats hitherto not contemplated as potential
Labor gains are now legitimate targets for us
and certainly, no seat held by the National Party
should be off our campaign map.
When I make my first electorate visits in New South Wales
which I will be doing in mid-August I will be taking this
message to our two new seats on the North Coast.
I'll be telling the people of Richmond and Page that the
issues at stake in the Federal election will equally be at
stake in the State contest.
In particular, I'll be telling them that the chasm between
Labor and the Nationals on the issues of environmental
protection and of quality of leadership will ensure that, in
the future, victories like Richmond and Page won't be
unrepeatable and won't even be seen as very remarkable.
It is nothing short of amazing to follow in the press the
squabbling between the Liberals and the Nationals about
which of them will pick up the fragments of the shattered
conservative presence in the bush.
The Nationals started out by launching a ' provincial
Australia' drive and the Liberals are responding with a
' regional Australia' push.
The fact is, when it comes to representing the real
interests of the more than 5 million Australians who live
outside the major cities, it's not the Liberals or the
Nationals who can do the job.
It's Labor.
For too many years, Australian politics was split down the
middle, with the non-metropolitan areas treated as the
gerrymandered fiefdoms of the conservative parties.
But now, Labor has a strong and growing credibility in rural
and provincial Australia, which is being increasingly
reflected in our numbers in the Federal Parliament.
Whether it's protecting overseas trading interests and
fighting for fair access to foreign markets or whether
it's extending modern telecommunications to the people
outside the capitals or whether it's ensuring that people
in provincial cities and country towns have services
equivalent to their metropolitan cousins or whether it's
protecting, through Landcare, the soil on which our
agricultural prosperity depends you'll find it's Labor
doing the hard work to build a secure future for rural and
regional Australia.
Delegates, We all know that this is Stephen Loosley's last State
Conference as General Secretary of this branch.
As one of the architects of our 1990 victory, he deserves
our praise and thanks on that score alone.
But a more complete record of the last 13 years he has
served the Party the last seven of them as Secretary
includes many more achievements.
At a time when the Federal Party has been operating with an
unparalleled degree of co-operation among the factions, it
has been appropriate, too, that Stephen Loosley has brought
a certain degree of glasnost to the running of the New South
Wales branch.
He has brought increased professionalism to the operation of
the Party machine.
Perhaps his greatest material contribution has been
conceiving and executing the idea of the New South Wales
branch acquiring its own offices. I'm told that one of the
key elements in the brief Steve gave to the real estate
agents was that it had to be a property in Sussex Street
which reflects his keen interest in Labor's history and
traditions.
He will be missed by you in Sydney but that loss is
Canberra's gain. His skills make him a very welcome member
of the Federal team. Labor already has a huge lead over the
conservatives in terms of the quality of our Senate
representation and Senator Loosley will be no mean addition
to that equation.
Delegates The 1990 election was a tough contest and it was a hard won
victory. But the verdict, at the end of the counting, was clear-cut.
And our mandate for the fourth term is unambiguous.
Don't fall into the trap of believing that we won this
election by default that we fell over the line because the
other mob was so pathetic.
They were pretty pathetic. But we won this on our own
merits by demonstrating to the people of Australia that
our strategy for the future of this country represents the
only effective and credible way forward.
Now that the Australian people have given us the privilege
of a fourth term in Government, it's up to us to live up to
their expectations.
We sought a clear mandate for continued economic reform
and that's what we have been given.
I can assure you, and through you the people of Australia,
that this renewed mandate will not be wasted or frittered
away. The first major decision of the fourth term was the election
of a new Ministry one I believe is superbly equipped for
the task ahead.
The Ministry is already working towards meeting our election
pledges including our massive expansion of access and
availability of child care, and our new ' clever country'
program of Cooperative Research Centres.
The two new ministers from NSW Peter Baldwin and
Robert Tickner along with my Parliamentary Secretary Ross
Free, are already making impressive contributions in their
areas.
We are now about to begin the cycle of preparations for our
first fourth-term Budget. In this context let me give you a
very explicit assurance that the Government's willingness
and capacity to take the hard decisions in the national
interest are as keen and far-sighted as ever.
You have probably heard me use those words " hard decisions"
more often than you would like.
They certainly crop up fairly frequently in the vocabulary
of Government these days.
All I can say by way of apology or explanation is that
Governments that only take " easy decisions" end up running
themselves, and the country, into the wall.
If Australia learned any lesson from the nearly-three
decades of disastrous conservative rule that preceded 1983,
it was that squibbing the tough decisions, neglecting the
structural requirements of the economy, papering over the
weaknesses, just spells hardship down the track, and
requires a decent government to come along and put things
right. We inherited not so much an economy as an industrial museum
with nineteenth century exhibits like steep tariff
barriers, uncompetitive work practices, antiquated capital
investment.
Our historic role is to build an Australia that for once
lives up to the potential of its people
with an economy that is competitive in our region
and the rest of the world,
and a society that is sufficiently prosperous and
fair to ensure I've already quoted Chifley's
words a decent standard of living for all.
We've done the job well, precisely because we have taken
hard decisions.
There are more hard decisions coming up, and they will
require, as in the past, careful negotiation and
accommodation. And by talking about this current round of decisions, I
don't want to be misunderstood as saying that once we've got
them out of the way, then the future will be plain sailing.
What we must all understand is that economic reform is a
constant process. What's needed is a continued willingness
to adapt because the nature of a dynamic economy is its
very capacity for repeated phases of change, its inbuilt
flexibility that responds to the challenges of today and,
then, the challenges that are now unforeseen or only
emerging. The Labor movement is uniquely strong because we are
involved with, and because we understand, the workplaces
where the success or failure of the Australian economy is
determined every shift of every day of every working
week.
And this Labor Government is uniquely committed to the task:
so that when we embark on change, it is comprehensive change
for the lasting benefit of the whole nation not tinkering
to skew the system in favour of this or that vested
interest. So for the fourth term, there are more hard decisions and
tough negotiations ahead; but there will, as a result, be
further progress in the creation of a competitive,
prosperous and fair Australia.
And let me draw the contrast between us and our opponents on
this critical, absolutely central, issue.
In all the agonised post-mortems that our opponents have
conducted to discover why they have lost four elections in a
row, one thing only has become manifestly clear.
It is that this new-look Opposition has come no closer to
relevant and effective policies for Australia's future than
the old-guard it has replaced.
They're certainly no closer on health.
They're no closer on economic policy Dr Hewson spent most
of last year and all of this year predicting a recession and
when the latest figures proved him wrong once more, he
declared instead that we were going through " a patchy period
of flatness, where some sectors are doing quite well"!
They're even further away from getting a fair and effective
taxation policy. Not content with being belted by the
electorate for wanting to abolish our capital gains tax,
Dr Hewson and his tattered Shadow Treasurer still seem to be
toying around with the remnants of their unthought-through
notions of a consumption tax.
There were recently some well publicised airing of
differences on our side of politics.
But at least the public knows that the only debates on our
side are about the real issues: the nature of the problems
facing our country and the most effective way of tackling
them. These debates within Caucus and Cabinet constitute the only
real focus of debate about policy in Parliament House we
are still the intellectual engine room for the reform of the
Australian economy, as we have been since 1983.
The conservatives remain what they always have been: an
irrelevance. All we hear from them, as we have since 1983,
is a noise made by those who don't yet understand what the
national challenges are let alone how to formulate a
relevant and effective solution.
Delegates,
We have been given a priceless opportunity by the Australian
people the opportunity to impress on the Australia of the
next century the imprint of progressive, compassionate and
effective Labor reforms.
That is why the mandate we have been given for a fourth term
in office is such a precious one.
My Government will meet the challenge. We will continue to
formulate and implement the comprehensive reforms that have
been our hallmark since 1983.
And that way we will ensure that we are laying the right
foundations for the Australia of the twenty-first century
the Australia that is now starting to take shape the
Australia that the schoolkids of today will inherit.
It is to open those kids' horizons today and to expand
their opportunities as adults in the Australia of the future
that our reforms in this fourth term must ultimately be
directed. If we spend the next three years well and we will then
it will be those kids who become the long-term beneficiaries
of our fourth term in office.
And that is why this is such a precious mandate and such a
heavy responsibility.
Let me close as I did twelve months ago: " With your help,"
we will fulfil that mandate and shoulder that
responsibility.