PRIME MINISTER
TRANSCRIPT OF THE PRIME MINISTER, THE HON P J KEATING MP
SPEECH AT FUNDRAISING LUNCH, THE VALLEY RESTAURANT,
FAULCONBRIDGE, 30 AUGUST 1995
E& OE PROOF COPY
Thank you so much, and thank you for so many of you coming. It has been a
very, very pleasant day indeed to be here, and to be in the Mountains, and to
have the opportunity of planting a tree at Faulconbridge with the line of oaks
the Corridor of Oaks which are a symbol, I think, of our continuity of the
Prime Ministership over the period since the Federation in 1901. And I am
particularly pleased to be there today with the Mayor, with my parliamentary
colleague Maggie Deahm, with Minister Bob Debus. I am particularly
delighted that Margaret Free could join us today, and other distinguished
guests, including the Chancellor and members of Local Government. It has
been a very nice occasion, and I am pleased to have been able to make that
link, again, between the Federation and Henry Parkes, and the things for
which my Party has been interested in, and the things for which we have
stood for a very long period of time. And particularly this link with Macquarie
with Chifley, of course, being Member for Macquarie and Prime Minister, I
have even got a link myself because I have been the Member for Blaxland
since 1969, a bit tenuous, but there we are better than being the Member for
something else.
And in this, I think I was saying earlier, for those of you who weren't there
that here we are now, a century on, thinking about our nationalism again.
And I just reminded people of the great decade of nationalism and social
experimentation in Australia it was more than a decade: from the early
1890s until 1914 was the period when the sense of Australia came together.
A period of great difficulty, of economic difficulties, of a very great drought in
the 1 890s, the birth of the Labor Party, and then of course, the Federation.
And then, basically, the First World War snuffed it out, and it only returned
fleetingly again during the period of Curtin's Prime Ministership, and of
course, with Gough Whitlam. And we hope that now, in the 1990s again, we
can where we have had, in some of these economic difficulties, a drought
these things must bring on a renewed sense of Australian nationalism.
Because here we are now, this decade, thinking about that we have to round
the circle off with an Australian Head of State. And it will be when it
happens Australians will feel very good about the fact that an Australian
person is the head of the Australian nation that represents and personifies
the Australian people. So, it was an opportunity to make these points again
to say that, for my part, I was not about simply planting a tree as one of a
series of Prime Ministers, but to plant it for the reason that we round the circle
on Federation, and we cap it off by making clear that we are a unique nation,
the Australian nation, and everything about us is Australian and our Head of
State is Australian.
I was talking earlier, too, about the categories of Australians who believe in
Australia who have faith in Australia, and faith in the Australian people.
And, many of you I know who are students of Australian history, remember
Manning Clarke's division between the enlargers, and the straiteners and
punishers he said that Australians tend to fall into two categories, the
people who believe in something bigger, and greater and grander, and larger
essentially have faith in their fellow Australians to make it, and those who
say this is your place in life, get your nose to the grindstone, conform, and he
said they are the straiteners. And I think, as time goes on, you can see in this
debate again about an Australian republic, people coming out saying yes it
very clear, we are a unique nation, that our Head of State shouldn't be the
Monarchy of another country but there are still those people who say oh no,
you can't let Australians manage themselves. Not quite yet not quite yet.
They are not sure when it is, but not quite yet.
At any rate, we have come a long way together, and I think we have got an
opportunity now we have never had. And that is, one hundred years ago, all
the markets we dealt with, all the people we traded with, were essentially in
Europe, and sometimes in North America. This is the first time in Australian
history the European history of Australia, the non-Aboriginal history of
Australia where we are closest to the fastest growing markets in the world.
So, now on our doorstep are markets growing faster than the traditional
markets we used to have. And the thing I am most pleased about, is that
Australia has set itself up in the last 10 years to be part of that
psychologically, culturally, economically. Because you can't go and say to
old societies like Indonesia 200 million people here we are, we are the
Australians, not the Australians of a White Australia Policy, but a proud
nation, Australians, we relate to you and we have respect for your culture,
and they say show us how you treat your indigenes, and we will show you
how you will treat us. You can't go there without integrity you can't
approach these nations, and be part of this community here without integrity.
That means that we have to come to terms with our own history and bring
our culture, be clear about what our culture is, and who we are as a people
before we can go out and do that. Now, I believe we are doing these things,
and our relationship is such now with Asia I can't believe that at any stage in
our history that we have had a better relatio nship than we have now, whether
it be with Indonesia, or with Vietnam, and two weeks ago I had here the most
distinguished Vietnamese, the General-Secretary of the Vietnamese
Communist Party, who is now turning Vietnam into essentially a market
economy after those years of deprivation. Or last week, where we had the
annual Ministerial Meeting with our Japanese colleagues in this case, the
Minister for International Trade and Industry, Mr Hashimoto, and Mr Kono,
the Foreign Minister. The two most important people in the LODP which is
the Party which has essentially managed Japan all through the post-War
years. I mean, we have got these relationships now, and we are building
them up.
And we can see an interesting life for ourselves an interesting engagement
with this region, a better standard of living, more jobs in Australia, and a
higher level of income for Australians. You compare that to the cloistered
little country we were back in 1983 ring-fenced by tariffs, ring-fenced by a
managed exchange rate. Sitting there, wondering which way to go: our
national income falling, because the things we had relied upon traditionally
wheat, wool, minerals being of much less value, and bringing much lower
prices and sitting there watching the income go down, the debt go up, our
competitiveness shot to pieces, no inner faith and confidence about
ourselves, coming out of a deep recession with very high unemployment and
inflation. I mean, that was the sort of yoke we were in, in 1983.
But, when you look at the progress now here we are, we are clear about our
identity, we pulled the tariff wall down, we have now got import competition
and exports. Yesterday, we had the highest level of exports per month in our
history we are seeing, in today's National Accounts, the inflation rate at
2.1 on the broadest measure of inflation for the year. We have just had
680,000 jobs since the last election can you believe that? 680,000 jobs
since the last election. It took us 200 years to get 6 million people in the
labour market, and we have added 10% of that in 2 1/ 2 years. I mean, it's a
profound change. And today, with today's National Accounts, where we have
another quarter of growth, we have 16 consecutive quarters of growth. The
last time we had 16 consecutive quarters of growth was 25 years ago a
quarter of a century ago. Four straight years of growth, four straight years of
employment, four straight years of getting on top of inflation and giving us
back our economic future. And yet my opponents talk about 5 minutes of
economic sunshine in their cynicism, they talk about 5 minutes of economic
sunshine. It is the longest growth phase in a quarter of a century. And it is
now our opportunity to build on these things, but we have done all of this
together the Government has done it with the Australian people. It has
done it with the Trade Unions we have put it into a consensual model,
where consensus matters. We have said at that Economic Summit way
back there in 1983 that the policies of conflict can't give us the economic
future we wish. That we can't have wage explosions that give workers a short
term wage increase to see it dashed by high inflation a year later. That we
need high investment to get high employment and that we need high
investment to rebuild our capital stock to give us the exports and import
replacement that will generate our wealth.
But, we need to do all of this in the context of inclusion. That is, we are one
nation and we are a nation together and it is not a nation for the high fliers
and the top end of town. It is a nation for everybody and so we said you are
entitled to access and equity in health. You are entitled to access and equity
in education and you can have these things in a country this wealthy and at
the same time the goers who build the businesses can still have their go
becausq the profit share is very high, the tax system, the corporate tax rate is
by western world standards right on the line at about 35 or 36 per cent.
You can do all these things, but we don't have to go for the punishing and
straitening model of tearing people down and building an underclass.
At the last election you might remember me saying we won't leave the
unemployed behind, we won't have an underclass. Not that we might try not
to have an underclass, we won't have an underclass. When I introduced
Working Nation that great social change from the Government last year, that
was directed to the long term unemployed and now we've had since that time,
in these last two and a half years since the election, a quarter of all the jobs
have gone to long term unemployed people. In other words, it is typically the
case in most countries like Australia that the new entrants to the workforce
are the school leavers or the migrants. Those who are long term unemployed
stay out forever and they get marginalised, never to come back. We brought
them back. So, the place is not only more fully employed, but it is happier
and it is more fair.
So, doing it together in a consensual way without a conflict model. It means
that in this country, if you are single or if you are married or you have children
and you wake up and you are sick you have got Medicare there to support
you. Ten years ago three kids in ten completed secondary school. This year
it is eight in ten and we have added about 60 per cent of places to higher
education since the middle 1980s and you can see this by the growth in
higher education and we have the Chancellor here today just to make the
point for us. The reach of higher education and the access for higher
education which we now have.
But, how could we be the smart society that wanted to make the engagement
with Asia, that wanted to sell the clever products and the services and not just
another paddock full of wheat or wool as important as they are but to do
the other things too, the high value added products, the intellectual property,
the services, how could you do it when only three kids in ten completed
secondary school? I mean, what hope did we have?
This is the faith our opponents had in Australia. An elitist higher education
system, an elitist secondary school system. Seven out of ten didn't make it
bad luck. That was their philosophy bad luck, no faith in you. Of course,
never distinguishing the point that so many bright people are the children of
low income parents who make their way and make their change in this
society, but they were marginalised because they were not allowed to take
their place because the great liberator in a society like this is education. And,
it was through this change that we have been able to see the proliferation of
higher education, the regionalisation of higher education, the access to
higher education and now, of course, for that six in ten kids who leave
secondary school who were formerly untrained, we are bringing up the TAFE
system into a national structure to have vocational education sitting out there
beside the universities as a place to educate our children. The children in
the main of working class parents.
Now, that is what inclusion is all about. That is what the consensual model is
all about. So, when you go to the trade unions and say ' give us sensible
wage outcomes and low inflation', we'll give you back high employment,
access to education for your kids, a decent health system and a decent
system of income support and a decent system of income support in old age
with a pension and superannuation. We have got that agreement. That is
what the Accords are all about. If it has worked so well for Australia, why
would you tip it out? Why would you not have it? To go back to industrial
fights so that one strong group can go and pick up a 15 per cent wage
increase at the expense of other lower income groups to find it blows the
inflation rate out of the water twelve months later and they end up with
another three or four percentage points on interest rates. That is what will
happen under our opponents. Were they to win an election, they eschew and
reject any Accord, you would immediately see the unions protect themselves
and go for wage increases. Immediately the Reserve Bank would start
sticking interest rates back up and it wouldn't be by half a percentage point or
one, it would be by three or four or five percentage points. In other words, we
would hold wages down by flattening growth, by flattening the whole
economy. In other words, rather than try to deal with the problem through an Accord or
some consensual arrangement directly, the Coalition would deal with it by
flattening the whole place and you end up like a west European economy. A
low growth economy running at one to two per cent. But, one to two per cent
doesn't provide the jobs. What we have in today's National Accounts is 3.7
per cent growth for the year. You may remember about a year ago it was
running at about six per cent and it was too. strong because we just couldn't
keep the goods and services up to it and the demand for imports was too high
and it went over into the current account and we said we have to slow this
down and we have. And, it has come back from six per cent to a strong,
sustainable 3.7 per cent. In other words, if you look at today's Accounts
figures 3.7 per cent for growth for the year, 2 per cent for inflation and
strong employment growth which we have seen over the course of the year
we have got the economy, at the moment, where we want it. We have got the
economy growing sustainably as I say for four straight years or 16
consecutive quarters.
This didn't happen by accident. It has been put there, not by spin doctors or
smart advertising agents, or smart party secretaries or people passing notes
to ministerial offices or words into the ears of journalists, it happened there by
policy. This all happened by policy. It happened by substance and that is
why we can sit here with our lunch and know that the Australian economy is
growing at a strong sustainable rate. That our core competitiveness has
been protected by low inflation. That those huge export growth figures that
we saw yesterday are going to continue because the model is in place.
Look at the Government's last two major policy statements the Budget and
Accord Mark VIII. The budget took the budget back into surplus. We will be
in surplws now for the rest of the 1 990s. Which means as we need money for
investment and in these National Accounts today, these are strong
investment figures, as we need funds for the investment we will see it come
from the budget surpluses. We will also see it come from that other element
of the budget, national superannuation, where every Australian person by the
year 2002 we are talking about seven years from now will have 15 per cent
being put away for their income supplementation for the rest of their lives.
Which will mean for somebody who is now about to join or just joined the
workforce, they will have an income in retirement equal in today's dollars to
average weekly earnings. In other words, it will be about twice the pension.
But, it will do more than that. It will save trillions of dollars, thousands of
billions of dollars for our long run investment and our long run savings. So,
we don't need to put weight on overseas savings or on overseas debt. That
was the Budget.
A couple of weeks later we introduced Accord Mark VIII. Eight variations of
this since 1983. What did it say? Essentially, that we will have a wages
policy which is enterprise bargaining underpinned by a safety net. If you
don't get anything in the bargain, you get the safety net adjustment to make
sure that you can maintain your standard of living. They are modest safety
net adjustments of around $ 10 per week. Completely affordable in national
economic terms. But, the underpinning commitment which was in there. The
core commitment was that the ACTU and the unions will run the wages
system to produce two to three per cent inflation which is the target of the
Reserve Bank. So, you have got the trade union movement of the country
coming out, endorsing as a policy, the Reserve Bank's inflation target. It is
unheard of in the OECD area, in the western world area. I mean, you don't
find that kind of co-operation in countries they just generally don't have that
willingness, groups in society don't have that willingness to make those sorts
of commitments. Under the consensual model, we have got those sorts of
commitments and those two things, the Budget in surplus, the huge stock of
savings as superannuation and the commitment to low inflation, are the sorts
of things that really matter.
Now I noticed today in the Sydney Morning Herald, one of the barnacles of
the Press Gallery, Alan Ramsey is saying the Government has wasted the
year. The Government has wasted the year. Well have we wasted the year
with 16 quarters of growth, four straight years of growth? Have we wasted
the year with over 400,000 jobs in the last year, or 680,000 since the
election? Have we wasted the year bolting inflation down so that we maintain
our core competitiveness? You know, have we wasted the year giving
Australians, particularly the younger Australians, the notion that in retirement
they will have a standard of living akin to what they will have at work?
You know, have we wasted the year building a stock of savings our
opponents could have only dreamt of? Thousands of billions of dollars.
Can you imagine the whole of the workforce having 15 per cent of their
income put away. That huge cash flow of that coming into national savings.
Instead -of that, what they want us to do is chase down Parliamentary
scandals and so-called, or worry about the sort of froth and bubble of public
life and not the policy. All that matters are the policy changes and I face an
opponent I mean I became Treasurer in 1983 after John Howard had left it
after five years as Treasurer. It was like a dentist going over bad work. You
know where he has done all the cheap jobs. You know, didn't touch the
exchange rate, believed in deregulation but didn't have the bottle, didn't
actually have the horsepower to actually float the dollar, believed in low tariffs
but couldn't knock over the tariff wall, believed in changing the waterfront but
couldn't do it. You know, believed in having a competitor to Telecom and
decent telecommunications services and lower phone prices, but never got
around to it. Left us with 11 per cent unemployment and 11 per cent inflation
and just by the sheer effluxion of time, and as their third choice in this
Parliament, he now says " well after you've spent 12 years of life putting it
back onto an even keel with your colleagues, I think I'll now take over. I will
come back and have a second go at wrecking
Well you see, you have got to say well look have you really got faith in this
country? Do you believe an Australian person should be our head of state?
No, he says " no, I still believe that the monarchy is best for us. Mind you, if I
were the Government, I might give you a referendum on the republic." But at
the referendum, the Government itself, would be in favour of the monarchy.
Oh say, oh that's terrific, thank you very much.
In other words, do you believe " No, I believe that the monarch of
Great Britain should be our head of state." Right. Do you believe that there
are good instincts in the Australian community, that they will come together,
that you can have things like Accords and that you can have, therefore,
higher growth, higher employment growth and a good social wage?
" No, don't believe in Accords, don't believe -there are these good notions
there at all. Believe it is going to be survival of the fittest. If you are
industrially strong, you take your pound of flesh. If you're not, bad luck."
Well, therefore, do you believe in a safety net? " Don't believe in a safety net.
You know, believe in the US system?
And here is the US Labor Secretary, Robert Reich, saying " In America, we
have had some of the highest employment growth in the world. But the army
of working poor in America, the lowest half of the American workforce haven't
had a real wage increase in 16 years." They haven't got beyond inflation in
16 years. In fact, they have wage declines. And I read a statistic last week,
that 70 per cent in the growth of American household income has gone to the
top 10 per cent of households and the bottom 20 per cent of American
households have lost 10 per cent of their income: an unconscionable division
of wealth. That is the sort of thing my opponents believe in. And then they
want to walk around and say " we believe in Australia, we believe in the good
things." I mean they want to take us back to an obscurantist, conflict model
that we left in the late 1970s, early 1980s. And to pass up 16 quarters of
growth and low inflation and linkages into Asia
I said yesterday in the Parliament, I mentioned the General-Secretary of the
Vietnamese Communist Party. He came to Australia the week after Vietnam
was admitted as a full member of ASEAN the Association of South East
Asian Nations, with Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand etc full
member. That was two weeks ago. A week before that, the United States
had diplomatically recognised Vietnam again and they had exchanged
Ambassadors. The day he went home from here, the next day, he saw
Warren Christopher, the US Secretary of State in Hanoi. But John Howard
wouldn't see him in Australia because he is still fighting the Vietnam War and
he thinks a few Vietnamese in Western Sydney may not vote for him if he
were seen to be meeting Mr Do Muoi because of their memories of the
settlement of the Vietnamese conflict.
Now how can Australia hand stewardship of its Asia relationship to somebody
who plays these games and who doesn't understand that when you say to
these people a full member of ASEAN, to the leader of the country I will not
meet you or see you, I will snub you. Does he expect to be treated well by
the Thais, or the Malaysians, or the Indonesians, or even the Japanese who
run a western style economy? When Kono and Hashimoto were here last
week, they knew about it, they knew Howard had snubbed him. So these
things go around the region and then expect to say, after winning an election,
for Mr Howard to wander out there, into the Asia Pacific, and say " Here I am.
I believe in the monarchy. I still believe in all the trappings. I would have
knighthoods back, if I had the chance. And just, by the way, I will only talk to
the ones of you who I like."
Now, the thing is we are either in this, or we are not. We are either part of
this community of nations here, or we are not. We either go as a strong
vibrant society and culture, or we don't. We either go there proud of what we
are and what we have become, or we go there as some sort of derivative
society on the back foot. Now these are the issues. But you can't be like that
away from home, if at home you are divisive, you have a conflict model, you
don't bring everybody in and we are all not part of the one nation. You can't
cheat at home and kid people outside. It has got to be genuine right through.
You can't say the Native Title Act is a day of shame. That Mabo is an act of
shame and, at the same time, say to the Asian nations around us, we want to
be part of the community of nations in this part of the world.
So in coming here today to support Maggie, who is a new Member of
Parliament, but a good Member of Parliament. Who is a person of the
community who has faith in Australians and likes them, wants to be with them
and know them and represent them. This is the sort of governing Party
Australia needs, of people like this. Who have a genuine understanding of
community sentiment and see the good things in Australians. Who feel the
good sentiments and the good vibrations and not wanting to put their heads
down and make them keep their place and straighten and punish them and
say " Well, if you are strong you get a big wage increase and if you are weak
bad luck and there is no safety net for you and there is no Medicare for you.
You go out there and put your hand in your pocket and if your kids get sick
you go and pay for it and by the way we only like certain Asians and not
others." I mean this is not the sort of Government Australia needs. But the
Government Australia has got has been the great Government of post-War
change in this country and the runs on the board are sitting in those national
accounts data today. And it should be a matter of great pride to Australians
that together we have all produced this result 16 quarters of growth.
I guarantee there is not another OECD economy, since the world recession,
which has had 16 consecutive quarters of growth.
So these are the things to have pride in. That we care about our children,
that we won't leave them uneducated, that we give them that access and we
lift them up and we believe in them and we let them do their best to put their
mark on Australia and that we have equality of opportunity and fairness.
But, at the same time, we have a good profit share, strong investment growth,
a sustainable growth rate in the economy and good employment growth. In
other words, everyone gets a cut of the action. It is not for one section or
another. Now, I think, that is the model we believe in. We believe in the model that
brings the best out in Australia and Australians, that doesn't play favourites,
that doesn't try and chop the thing up factionally, or in a partisan way. And
what these last 12 years have proved is that that model works and I think the
point we would like to make to you today is that it is the model for Australia to
have one where we are together and we believe in one another and that we
are kind to one another. A society which is a kindly society and not a hard
bitten, devil take the hindmost, society, . a Ia the American Republicans,
a la some of the other right-wing governments around the world. It is not for
Australia, it is certainly not for Paul Keating and it is not for Maggie Deahm.
ends