CHECK AGAINST DELITVERY EMBARGOED UNTIL DELITVERY
SPEECH BY THE PRIME MINISTER
ACCEPTANCE OF BROTHERHOOD OF ST LAURENCE
CHILD POVERTY POSTCARDS
PARLIAMENT HOUSE 22 JUNE 1990
Archbishop Hollingworth
Dr Hewson and other Parliamentary colleagues
Ladies and gentlemen
and, in particular, children of Canberra
representing the children of Australia
Thank you for these postcards and thank you more importantly
for the concern and the commitment that they represent:
your cn~ en about the plight of Australian families and
Australian children who are living in hardship, and your
commitment to do something positive to remedy that plight.
Your action demonstrates that Australians do care about
those in our community who have less, and are prepared to
speak out for those whose own voice is muffled by
disadvantage. For that, you deserve the respect and
gratitude of us all.
As Archbishop Hollingworth has noted, my Government has
placed great emphasis on improving the financial situation
of families with children
we have raised all children's payments to a benchmark
of adequacy and we have indexed them
we have substantially increased rent assistance and
from March 1991 it will be indexed
we have introduced the Child Support Scheme
we have introduced a $ 100 million package of help for
disadvantaged young people, particularly the homeless.
And we have recognised too, that the causes of poverty are
complex and that breaking the poverty cycle involves more
than income support.
2.
The most effective means of overcoming poverty is of course
through employment. Our record of job creation is second to
none. Some 1.6 million Australians have found jobs since
1983. Some of these are disadvantaged people who have found
work through programs like JET and NEWSTART.
We have dramatically expanded the quality and quantity of
opportunities for education and training.
For families to take advantage of employment and training
opportunities, access to affordable quality child care is
crucial. We are working to create more than a quarter of a
million places by 1996 and to ensure, through better fee
relief levels, improved access to these places.
Having achieved greatly improved income support, job
opportunities, training and education chances for
disadvantaged groups in our society, we are now
investigating how to carry the fight for social justice into
new arenas.
For example, we have announced the National Housing Strategy
so that, together with the States, we can look further into
the housing needs of Australians and determining how these
can best be met.
We have also announced a major review of health policy
within the Medicare framework designed to put in place a
national health strategy for the twenty-first century.
Also in pursuit of these new approaches to social justice I
invited the Premiers and Chief Ministers last December to
participate in a Commonwealth/ State Ministerial Committee on
Services for Disadvantaged Children and Families. The
intended objective of that Committee is for the States and
the Commonwealth to improve the co-ordination of services
that we provide to disadvantaged children and families so
that these people get a better deal.
As the Brotherhood and the Councils of Social Service have
also realised, many families suffer disadvantage simply
because they live in places where fewer services are
available such as on the outer fringes of our major cities
and provincial towns, or in remote parts of Australia.
Part of the solution to this problem lies in the better
coordination and allocation of services.
As I said at the opening of the Committee's first meeting:
from the point of view of the family in need, working out
which tier of Government has the responsibility of providing
the services is less important than ensuring that the
appropriate services are delivered, to those who need them.
The Committee's work so far has borne out that fundamental
truth.
The first step the Commonwealth has taken is to try to
establish with the States a genuine exchange of information
and views on what services are currently provided and how
best they can be integrated and improved.
I can assure you my Government is committed to action. We
very much want to see results.
But I think it's appropriate in this gathering, where the
focus is on the Federal sphere, to remember that the States
also have a vital role to play. They too need to
demonstrate their full commitment to the work of the
Committee. In particular, their strong commitment is needed to
collecting and exchanging better information than available
to date on the location of their services and the scope for
better integration before real progress can be made.
On the special needs of Aboriginal children, funds and
co-ordination are of course necessary. However, as the
Brotherhood has pointed out, Aboriginal people themselves
must have an opportunity to develop and implement solutions
to their own problems. The context of their poverty the
dispossession and oppression suffered by generations of
Aboriginal people must be addressed. Through the
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission and the
promotion of a process of reconciliation, the Government is
attempting to give Aboriginal people the self-management and
self-respect necessary to overcome the fundamental causes of
Aboriginal child poverty.
Let me conclude with a more general point about the
motivation of politicians and the rationale of social
justice programs such as we are discussing today.
It's very easy to adopt a fashionable cynicism about
politicians and assume that they will only do something if
they're pushed into it. That's an attitude that I see
underlies these postcards, where you make the claim that
" tall. politicians will only do something about [ child
poverty] if they feel they have to. At election time, for
instance Let me say, quite deliberately, I think that is a cheap
shot. It may make you feel good -quite simply it is a
false statement.
I can tell you: That's not my attitude to social justice;
it's not my attitude to what politics is about.
I think any closer analysis of the new services we have
delivered to disadvantaged Australians would show they
haven't been based on a judgment that there may be votes in
them. Instead, they have been part of an overall strategy
of change based on a fundamental analysis of who really is
in need in this community.
4.
The reason we can afford to spend more money on the less
well off is, by and large, because we decided to spend less
money on those who are better off. That has meant taking
benefits away from people and levying new taxes on those who
hadn't been paying their fair share. In other words, we've
made some tough decisions some unpopular decisions
decisions that cost us votes at election time. I ask you to
recall the virulent campaigns waged against us on the assets
test, the fringe benefits tax and the capital gains tax.
But we made those decisions because they were the right
decisions to make. I think at the end of the day you would
agree that is a far better rationale for decision making
than any knee-jerk responsiveness to a lobbying campaign,
whether expressed through postcards or by any other means.
So my Government has worked, and will continue to work, to
improve the circumstances of the disadvantaged in our
community. We cannot do it single-handed. The contribution
made by the many community organisations, notable among them
the Brotherhood of St Laurence, and the Councils of Social
Service is crucial. I commend your work and wish you
continued success.