E&OE.....................................................................................................................
I met somebody on Saturday night, both of whose parents are living National Treasures. Anyway, ladies and gentlemen, first of all can I thank Tony Abbott for his elegant, humorous and skilful introduction, and accurate introductions. He does the job superbly well. I'd like to thank the owners of Machiavelli and I would also like to welcome my Ministerial colleagues.
This is the second instalment of what I hope will become a regular pre-Christmas tradition under the Coalition Government. And it is an opportunity to cram a few friends into a small space, eat some delightful food, introduce those friends to people who are prominent members of the Australian Government and for me just to say a few words about what has happened over the last year.
But I do want to thank all of my colleagues who are here and also my colleagues who aren't here, elsewhere in Australia, for the tremendous support that I have had and the Government has had over the last year.
As Tony said, this last 12 months has been a little different from the first 12 months, but what has been very encouraging about the last 12 months is that we have made a very, very strong finish and as we go towards Christmas, it is possible to look back on some remarkable highlights of the last year. To comment on a few things that have occurred in the last few weeks and then to throw ahead to a few things that are going to be tremendously important to Australia and to the Government in 1998.
The single-most important thing that has happened over the last 12 months to Australia is that we have been able to withstand and come through relatively unscathed, the enormous financial turbulence in our part of the world. And of all the things that might be said about the last 12 months, that is the single-most important thing. And it is a great achievement of my Government and of all us, together, that because principally - of the steps that we took when we first came into office to tackle the economic situation that we inherited, the very large budget deficit, the very poor levels of national savings, the inadequate industrial relations system and other areas where micro-economic reform was needed - because we tackled those things it has meant that we were able to stare down what could have been a potentially disastrous impact from the financial turbulence in our part of the world.
And it is no mean achievement for us to be able to look back and to see over the past two months that Australia has increasingly been seen, not as an anxious outsider in the Asia-Pacific region seeking admission to a successful club, but rather an extremely reliable, strong, dependable, middle power, contributing and performing well above its weight. And that has been possible because of the measures that we took. It has been possible because the Australian economy is now seen as a safe haven. It is possible because of the fact that we eschewed, in the early months of our terms in office, we eschewed easy options and cheap alternatives.
And we took some decisions that cost us a bit of political pain this year, but as the year closes, I think increasingly, the Australian community is seeing the wisdom of those decisions. And I just ask you to contemplate what might have happened to our currency, what might have happened to the international esteem of this country, what might have happened to our reputation in our part of the world, if those measures had not been taken.
And it made me immensely proud, as Prime Minister of our country, to be able to say to the leaders of our partners in the region, that we were strong enough and reliable enough, and dependable enough, to be able to contribute to their financial rescue. And I think that is something that ought to be of immense satisfaction and immense national pride.
Now that is the most important thing that I can say about Australia's performance and Australia's economic strength over the last year, but we have had a few highlights, and one of them of course was the outstanding, beyond belief success of the privatisation of Telstra. It was the best privatisation Australia has seen, the biggest we have seen. It was much more successful than even the dreamers amongst the leaders of the Coalition thought it would be when we devised the plan before the last election.
When I reflect back on some of those thoughts I had, as I wandered along the beach at Hawkes Nest, before the 1996 election - when we thought we would marry up the sale of one third of Telstra with the development of the Natural Heritage Trust of Australia that provides the largest capital injection into the Australian environment by any government of any persuasion in Australia's history - it has been a remarkably successful policy, and for the life of me I can not understand why there is anyone left standing in Australia who is opposed to the privatisation of bodies like Telstra.
Even Bob Carr is in favour of privatising his electricity authorities in New South Wales and I renew the offer - I am always happy to address the comrades to try and persuade them to change their mind. But, Telstra was an outstanding success. I think we have also been very successful in putting together a coherent, sensible, well targeted industry policy. And I want to thank John Moore, who is present here today, as the Minister most responsible for the contribution that he has made to that.
Because having a balanced approach to industry, recognising that one of the messages that has come out of the turbulence in our region, is that highly interventionist economic policies simply don't work - that is one of the constants you have to bear in mind - but also recognising there is always a role for strategic intervention by governments, particularly where there is clear evidence of market failure. And that is what we sought to do with our industry policy statement.
And in sending a very strong message to the Australian business community that we are a high growth Government and setting out our sights towards a growth of four per cent or more in the decade to the year 2010, which is so essential to reducing unemployment, the Government, undoubtedly, has struck the right balance and the response to that Statement from the business community has been extremely encouraging.
And there are two or three other things where I believe that the national interest was served in a way that many of us didn't think might be possible. And of the blokes who are on the wall there, photographed in a suitably casual fashion without his glasses, is Robert Hill. Robert's not here today, he's probably still asleep, because he spent about 72 hours without sleep negotiating on Australia's behalf at the Climate Summit in Kyoto, and I don't think anybody can overestimate the magnificence of the job that he performed for Australia and the really important policy triumph that that outcome at Kyoto represented.
When we started on that road about a year ago, we were facing a demand from the European Union that as a developed country we should cut our greenhouse gas emissions between 1990 and year 2010 by 15 per cent. Now because like the European Union we couldn't fortuitously include, as the Europeans could do, all of those British coalmines that had been closed down by the Thatcher government in the 1980s, and we couldn't include the extractions from greenhouse gas emissions of the collapse of East German industry following the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe, two quite fortuitous events which meant that their starting point was fairly easy to achieve, because we couldn't do that, if we had got anywhere near succumbing to their demands we'd have faced the loss of tens of thousands of jobs in regional areas of Australia, and we would have faced a very, very severe penalty on some of the most efficient and world competitive industries in Australia.
All along we said that we would make a major contribution to reducing the rate of growth of greenhouse gas emissions in Australia, and I'm very happy to say that if we had left things as they were, they would have grown by about 40 per cent between 1990 and year 2010, and as a result of the measures that we have announced, and others that were already in the pipeline, we are going to be able to reduce that to something in the order of eight per cent. But what we were able to achieve was an acceptance first of all of the principle that you can't have a binding world agreement in this area unless you recognise that different countries have different needs and have different situations.
And we also won widespread recognition at the conference of the treatment of some of the land clearance practices and the re-afforestation practices in Australia which is so important to the overall level of greenhouse gas emissions. So it was a remarkable negotiating achievement, we had no help at all from our political opponents, we had a cynical reaction from the Australian press and we had widespread grandstanding by other countries who were perfectly content to apply to themselves standards that they weren't prepared to apply to us. But in the face of that we were able to negotiate an outcome that served the environment well and also covered the interests of Australian industry.
And finally in the area of achieving things on the international stage, yesterday it was announced in Geneva that something that Australia has pushed for very hard, and that is a more liberal and open regime in financial services, and something that will further enhance the aspirations of Australia to become a major financial centre particularly in this part of the world, the World Trade Organisation agreement on the liberalisation of financial services is another, I think, feather in the international negotiating cap of Australia. And it is something that will open up enormous new opportunities in our region for the banks and other financial institutions of this country.
So as we come to the end of the year, I guess the most important bit of news that I've had as we come to the end of this year, were those magnificent job figures that came out last week. Because at the end of the day, generating jobs for Australians is the most important economic responsibility that any government has. And we have tried very hard to lay the proper foundations for that and we're starting to see some signs that those foundations are beginning to work. And to have job creation of 150,000 in three months doesn't mean that the problem is solved, and it doesn't mean that every month ahead of us is going to get better and better. But what it does mean is that for the first time in eighteen months we have begun to see the fruits of higher growth, we have begun to see growing confidence. And when you marry that up with all of the anecdotal evidence that this is going to be an extremely good Christmas for the retailers of Australia, it does mean that we end the year on a very, very optimistic and a very, very enthusiastic note.
Now that's reflecting back on the last year. I want to say something about the year ahead and it's going to be a year of very, very important policy changes. And the most important of those will be of course the reformation of the Australian taxation system. I don't think I'm giving away any political secrets to say that in 1998 the Government will unveil its plans to reshape the Australian taxation system. I'm not exaggerating things to say that of all of the unfinished pieces of economic business in Australia, none is more important than changing our taxation system. And we don't want to change it for some blind, ideological reason. We want to change it because the present system is no longer serving the needs of a modern community, particularly a community that hopes to do well in the 21st century.
Our rates of personal income tax are too high. When I left school in 1956 you paid the top marginal rate of tax when you earned 17 times the average weekly earnings - not something that sort of troubled me in a practical sense - but that was the rate. From seventeen times average weekly earnings, you're now down to 1.4 times average weekly earnings. Now that is ridiculous. It cripples incentive, it discourages people to work harder and it destroys all the sorts of aspirations for higher achievement that are meant to be the hallmark of our kind of society. So we do need a new system. We need a system that addresses the chronic deficiencies and the chronic anomalies of our indirect tax system. We need a system that makes Australia more internationally competitive and we need to address some of the weaknesses and some of the conflicts that are inherent in Commonwealth/State financial relations.
Now you can't put tax reform off forever. There's no way you can do that. It's been put off several times a lot more than it should have been put off and sooner or later a government is going to have to face the responsibility of tackling it. And of all the many things that challenge my Government in 1998 none is more important, and none will be more valuable to the long-term future of this country and the sort of society we build economically for our children than reforming the Australian taxation system.
Now I know it's risky, I know it's difficult and I know some people will say well somehow or other you get elected and then you do it. The fact of the matter is our system quite properly works on the basis that the public want to know what you stand for before an election, and I have the rather old-fashioned view that if you state categorically that you're not going to do something before an election it rather does destroy the credibility of yourself as a government if you totally repudiate that after an election. And that is why we'll unveil to the Australian public a tax plan before the election and it will be one of the things that we'll campaign on.
Now the Labor Party will oppose it, the Labor Party can go back to the 1950s, the Labor Party can stick its head in the sand, it will say the present taxation system is OK, they'll fiddle at the edges, they'll pretend that they can give you all that you want without any fundamental restructuring. And I hope at the end of the day the Australian public will disbelieve them. Because there isn't a man or woman in Australia who seriously looks at our taxation system that doesn't believe that it is long overdue for fundamental overhaul and fundamental change. And that is going to be something of enormous importance economically as we go into the next year.
One or two other very non-economic things, but things that are very important to the future of Australia will also be dealt with in the new year. We're going to have a Constitutional Convention about whether or not Australia should become a republic, and I think this Constitutional Convention is going to be a lot more successful and is going to provide a lot more interest and a lot more excitement for the Australian people than some of the cynics have suggested.
We've just completed the process of electing delegates and I think what that Convention most usefully can do is to devote its energies to working out what is the most suitable republican alternative to the present system of government. Now there remains in the Australian community a division of views on this issue and it has never been my role or my desire as Prime Minister to force one or other view down people's throats. Rather to provide a mechanism for the issue to be discussed and hopefully out of that mechanism, which is the Constitutional Convention, will come an agreed upon alternative to the existing system and then that alternative and the present system can be put to the Australian people for a vote well before the turn of the century, which is what I promised when I went to the Australian public at the last election.
It is right that we examine these issues as we come towards the end of this century. It is right that they be examined, they be talked about, they be debated and they be resolved before we celebrate 100 years of the existence of the Australian nation. And so far from my seeing the Constitutional Convention as being a wasted exercise, as being something that will become a mere debating forum, I think it may well surprise us in the diversity of Australians that have been elected to it, representing indigenous people, representing the young, representing local government, representing all points on the spectrum of political opinion, representing a variety of views as to what kind of republic Australia ought to be, representing a lot of people who don't want any change, I think it will turn out to be a far more productive and make a far greater contribution to an understanding of our identity and an understanding of the kind of constitutional future that we need to have.
We will also need in the course of the next few months of course, once again at a parliament level to try to resolve the very difficult issue of Native Title. It has proved to be one of the most difficult political and legal issues that any government has had to face. The easy thing is to throw up one's hands and say, well it's all too difficult, we'll leave it as it is. But no responsible government can leave the existing law relating to Native Title untouched because the whole basis of the original Native Title Act was that you'd only ever have Native Title on vacant Crown land. And the idea that Native Title could exist on other than vacant Crown land was something that was undreamt of by most Australians at the time of the Mabo decision, and at the time of the original Native Title Act. And it is important from the point of view of mining security and mining predictability, it is important to the point of view of the security of farmers and pastoralists, and most importantly it is important to the sense of justice and fair play of our indigenous community that a balanced and fair outcome be achieved.
And that is precisely what I believe the Government's legislation is. It was arrived at after a difficult period of four or five months of debate and negotiation within the community and within the coalition of Parties. It produced an outcome which was not completely satisfactory to any one of the individual stakeholders and that probably means that it represented a fair balance between the competing interests. It is a piece of legislation that respects the legitimate interests of all of the stakeholders and it's a piece of legislation to which the Coalition remains very strongly committed. And I might say it is a piece of legislation to which all of the Premiers and Chief Ministers of the States certainly in private, if not in the case of one of them at least in public, to which they all genuinely gave their support and their assent.
It has been a difficult issue and I know that the Government has been subjected to some very heavy criticism. But we've held our ground in the face of that criticism and we'll continue to do so, not out of any sense of arrogance, not out of any insensitivity, but because it never makes any sense to further compromise on something which has already been compromised.
We didn't adopt the trade union approach of putting an ambit claim in our legislation and then agreeing bit by bit to be ground back from that. What we decided to do from the very beginning is to talk to everybody and produce an outcome that we thought was fair and just. And having done that, we intend to defend that outcome, to argue it to the Australian people and to put it forward in the appropriate legislative way.
So ladies and gentlemen, there is an enormous amount that is on our plate and on the agenda for the coming year. I end the year both politically, but more importantly as an Australian with a tremendous sense of hope and optimism. We end the year in a week in which Australia tomorrow here in Sydney will honour a person whose death last week severed the remaining link between living Australians and those who took part in the most defining event in Australia's history, and that is the landing on Gallipoli on the 25th of April 1915.
And it is a reminder to all of us as we approach the centenary of the birth of Australia as a nation, as we approach that momentous celebration of 100 years of the Australian nation, it is a reminder of just how close we are to having no people left who were associated with some of the great historical events that define the Australian existence through the 20th century. And it's a reminder to all of us of the tremendous good fortune that we have to live in this country, of just what we have achieved as a nation, of how widely we are respected around the world, and I have a tremendous sense of excitement and enthusiasm about the fact that as a people we really exist in a unique intersection of history and geography and culture and economic circumstance.
There is no other country in the world that is quite like Australia. We are in many ways a projection of western civilisation, we have our European roots, we are increasingly linked both by people and citizens with nations of the Asia-Pacific region, that we have uniquely as a nation with this part of the world a very close strategic and historical and philosophical affinity with the nations of North America. And there is no country in the world that like, and it gives us an opportunity in a productive, positive way to work to the benefit of not only our own people, but to the benefit particularly of the countries of our region.
Ladies and gentlemen that's the year as I've seen it, there's some of the things that lie ahead of us. I am very grateful for the fact that so many of you have supported the Government, supported the Liberal Party through thick and thin. I look around this room and I see people who have been prepared to turn up when we weren't the flavour of the month through those long years - it seemed a hell of a long time and it was - those 13 years of Opposition, and many of you were around as friends then and I appreciate that very much and it's never forgotten by myself and my colleagues. But I do thank all of you, particularly my own local people in Bennelong, there are many of them here today. It's great to see you all again, and I look forward to this becoming well and truly an annual event of the Sydney political scene.
Merry Christmas to all of you, I hope it's everything that you want for yourselves and your families and friends, and I hope you all have a great New Year for the benefit of all Australians. Thank you.
[Ends]