Fax frrm 12 November 1996
TRANSCRIPT OF THE PRIME MINISTER
THE HON. JOHN HOWARD MP
SPEECH TO THE AUSTRALIAN QUALITY AWARDS
DARLING HARBOUR, SYDNEY'
EE Thank you very much David. To Bob Carr, the Premier of New South Wales, Barry
Murphy, ladies-and gentlemen.
The last time that I made a speech in this convention centre was at the dinner to
welcome home Australia's victorious Atlanta Olympic Games team and that was a very
euphoric night and -it was a -night that was full of proper adulation for a group of men
and women who had done remarkable things in the name of Australia. And it's very
appropriate that the next address should also be in honour of a group of men and
women who are also doing equally remarkable things for Australia. We are never
reluctant, and properly so, and it's always part of our national character to do honour
and pay homage to our sports men and women who achieve so much on the sporting
and playing fields of the world. We're very proud of them and they give us a great
deal of inspiration and a great deal of encouragement.
We ought to be equally proud and we should pay equal homage to those men and
women who achieve excellence in business and the way in which the Australian Quality
Awards have grown in status over the years, the way in which a gathering of over
4000 people, I understand, involved right across the nation tonight in this exercise is an
indication of how much store all Australians are now placing on the need for our
nation to succeed in the international competitive race.
Quality is all about lifing performance. It's all about lifting competitiveness, and
lifting performance and lifting competitiveness is all about Australia's international
future. You've all been told before but it has to be said again and again. We live in a
fiercely competitive global economy. Nobody owes Australia a living. The fact that
we live cheek by jowl to the fastest growing and most exciting economic region, the
Asian Pacific region, means that we have a remarkable opportunity, that we can't take
our future for granted, that we have to claw our future for ourselves, we have to
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compete, we have to be efficient, we have to be smart and wve have to produce high
quality products. What I think the Australian Quality Awards do is to focus the minds
of everybody, not just men and women in business but also men and women in
governments, focus the minds of all of us on lifting our gamne and lifting our
performance. As I flick through the citations of the various recipients tonight, one of the common
threads that came through very strongly to me was the importance of relations between
the owner and the proprietor of the business and the employees of that business, and
the great focus in so many of the awards, not only on customer satisfaction and good
customer relations but also on good human relations inside the firm. And I still believe
it may in the eyes of some be regarded as an old fashioned value but I think it's an
enduring and important value, that the most important resource that any firm has is its
employees, its people, and if the relations between those who run the business, and if
you can get the relationship right, if you can involve every last person in your firml or
your enterprise or your government agency or your business, in the future if you can
forge a common vision, if you can have a common purpose at the workplace level,
then I think you've got more than half of the battle won. And we've come a long way
in that department over the last few years and everybody has played a part, and I
acknowledge, quite frankly despite the differences I may occasionally have on policy
issues, I acknowledge the contribution that has been made in that area by many leaders
of the trade union movement in Australia because I think increasingly, we're all seeing
that we have to work and fight together for a common purpose and if you can have
that common purpose inculcated at the firm level, then I believe that more than half the
battle has been won.
And that of course is the philosophy that lies very much behind the Government's
recent changes to workplace relations. They are not about fighting long distant and
best forgotten battles. They are about imbuing a sense of common endeavour and
common enterprise at the workplace level because that really is the wave of the future.
The next millennium is going to see dramatic changes in the Australian workplace. We
are going to see proportionately more Australians employed by smaller firms. We arc
going to see the communications explosion absolutely change the face of the way in
wvhich work is conducted, We are going to see more people working from home. We
are going to see more people working in decentralised locations. We are going to see
people more and more sensitive to the shifls of economies in different parts of the
world. We are going to have people more conscious that job availability will be a
global thing rather than a national or a regional thing. And there's going to be an even
greater pressure in the future on high quality and high performance and I want on
behalf of the Government, I want to thank everybody that has been associated with tile
Australian Quality Awards. I want to thank the assessors, I want to thank the
participants but collectively, I want to thank everybody who is committed to building a
more competitive and a more enlightened business future for Australia.
I think more than at any other time in our history, we are conscious that we have to
make our way on our own. We will win and we will succeed if we are the world's
best, and if we're not the world's best in many areas then we are not going to have the
future that all of us want for ourselves. But I am filled with optimism and confidence
about the future. Just as I take a very positive view about the balance sheet of 2
Fax from Australia's history to date, I also take a very positive view about Australia's future
prospects and sitting and listening tonight to the performance of big and small firms,
public sector as well as private sector bodies and agencies all over Australia, you can't
be other than filled with a great sense of optimism and hope.
So on behalf of the Government, I congratulate Barry Murphy and his committee. I
congratulate those who devised the Australian Quality Awards. 1 thank them for the
great contribution that they are making to Australia winning the international
competitive race.
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