PRIME MINISTER
SPEECH BY THE PRIME MINISTER, THE HON P. J. KEATING MP
LAUNCH OF LIFE BE IN IT PROGRAM " ACTIVATE"
MELBOURNE, 23 JUNE 1992
Ladies and gentlemen,
I am very glad to be here today to launch this Life Be In
It program called " Activate".
Life Be In It is an Australian phenomenon. I doubt if
many who were there when the organisation was founded in
1975 imagined it would still be going strong today.
Alex Stitt who drew the original Norm and continues to
draw him and who is here today, might know the answer
to that.
It has lasted because it is a great idea, and a selfsustaining
one. It includes people, it works on the idea
of partnership with the community and for this reason
it has been able to consistently come up with more ideas
along the way.
This idea " Activate" is surely one of the best, and
the Government is delighted to be a part of it.
Dr Ian Bennett has explained the details of the program,
but I do want to say this:
This program draws its strength from the strength of
Australia itself.
It draws on the energy, ideas and skills the force if
you like of strategic partnerships between government,
industry and the community itself.
That is the beauty of the idea. That's what will see
this program succeed. And that's why I hope and believe
that the same principle will be brought to other programs
for the unemployed in coming months.
It will most certainly be brought to next month's
national meeting on youth employment and training in
Canberra. Recovery from the recession, the problem of long term
unemployment, the need to re-structure our industry and
seize the opportunities which await us in the world all
these things critically depend on forming these national
partnerships, in substance and in spirit.
In the 1980s we unleashed an enormous amount of economic
energy, not all of it well focussed.
This must be the decade when we re-direct that energy
toward productive investment in competitive industries.
We will do that the incentives are there.
Ultimately this is what will solve the problem of
unemployment this and our determination to train
Australians for the jobs of the future.
Because there is nothing more important to most
Australians than the right to a job.
It is the principal means by which our self-esteem is
built. It is the way we advance ourselves. It is the
way we advance Australia.
For those who have nothing to sell but their labour, it
is the only means of security.
The right to work has always been central to our idea of
what constitutes a fair go.
That is why the Government is making such an effort to
secure jobs for the long term by transforming TAFE into
an education system of status and quality.
It is why " Activate", which is funded under our Jobskills
program, has our unqualified support it provides both
work and training, which means that the people who emerge
from it will have valuable, transferable skills and
that means they will have a future in the modern world.
These are the essentials of any useful response to the
problem of unemployment industries with a future,
training the future.
As I said, we can do those things. We can do what is
necessary to encourage productive investment. We can
renovate our vocational training system.
It will take time and it will not be without difficulty,
but we can do it.
But, even as we do these things, I believe we must do one
thing more.
3
We have to restore faith in Australia.
I think we have to invest the nation with the same degree
of hope and meaning it had for my generation and the ones
before it.
The generation before mine lived in much harder times
than these, and they had, on the face of it much less
reason for hope.
But they did believe in this country. They believed it
had a destiny to fulfil.
That faith played no small part in seeing them through.
And in seeing Australia through.
I'm not sure that this country has quite that meaning for
Australians today.
I don't think for a moment that we will re-kindle faith
and hope by looking backwards, or by standing still.
We won't do it either by paying old obeisances or talking
about the good old days of dead end jobs.
Nor will we do it, incidentally, by cutting into the
advanced and comprehensive social programs we have built
and maintained over a century, and which are today the
hallmark of Australian civilisation.
I think we will best restore that faith and confidence
in fact we will only restore it by confronting the
future.
Confronting the future means finding solutions now.
Solutions like this one which do what we in the
Government have been trying to do since we began the
national program called One Nation.
Get the directions right. Address the imperatives.
Consolidate our strengths. And as we develop ideas and
get them working, keep building that regimen of care for
each other and the nation, which is always the best
measure of a successful society.
I believe we have to make a truly national effort, and
that is truly what we have been doing these past six
months. The national meeting we will hold on 22 July will be a
major step along that path.
That meeting, I believe, will deliver new hope and
opportunities to Australians, particularly young
Australians.
We can do much to solve our problems if we have the will
to do it.
In Australia we have much in our favour. Among all our
human and material resources there is one as valuable as
any other that is our belief in fairness, in the " fair
go", of individual opportunity tempered only by social
justice this is an ethic as old as the nation itself.
We should call on that belief now and in the future.
It will serve us well.
It has served Life Be In It well in this program.
I want to congratulate everyone associated with
" Activate" and thank them, and wish them success.
Thank you.