E&OE................................................................................................
Well thank you very much Michelle. To both you and Kevin can I
first of all say congratulations for having embarked upon and completed
what remains one of life's most challenging exercises and that
is to write a book. We may think, we politicians, that there are
lots of books around, there are. But there are lots of people who
think they would like to write a book. There are lots of people
who start to write books, but many of them never finish writing
those books. And of course there are some people who we wish would
never have even thought of writing a book let alone completing the
task. So congratulations to both of you for having made a very firm
personal commitment to such a journey.
In case you don't know, Michelle graduated in arts with honours
from the Australian National University, and now works as a research
officer with Senator Alan Eggleston. Kevin, I think you all know,
as having been the Member for Menzies for a number of years. He
was a barrister of law before entering federal Parliament, married
with five children. And he's made a very distinctive contribution
to political and Parliamentary life in the time that he's represented
the division of Menzies.
One of the valuable things that I believe this book will do is
to provide a quite special source of information and point of reference
to people involved in public affairs because what it does, on the
examination that I've been able to undertake, is that it brings
together under one cover so many of these statistics and the changes
in trends that we in public life need to know about virtually on
a daily basis. You can often find a book that, say, deals with demographic
trends. You can a find a book that deals completely with economic
trends. You can find a book that deals completely with social trends.
And you can find plenty of books that deal with political trends.
But what ‘Changing Australia' does is to get all of those
under the one cover and in the process provide a very valuable source
of reference to those involved in politics.
It is of course a veritable treasure trove of politically
relevant and socially alarming statistics. For example it tells
us that the rate of youth suicide in 1960 was 3.5 per 1000, but
in 1990 it had risen to 11.2. Australia has many things to boast
about. One of the things of which it should be particularly ashamed
is the very high level of youth suicide. It has statistics that
are relevant to contemporary political issue such as the debate
about taxation reform. It tells us that families with children comprise
62% of households in the poorest 30% of society, but only 32% of
those in the top 10% of Australian households measured according
to wealth. It tells us that over the past decade personal income
tax, as a share of Commonwealth government revenue, rose from 35%
to 54%, that's in the last decade, and this compares with an
average of only 31% for all OECD nations. I can't think of
a more compelling and relevant statistic in favour of fundamental
reform of our taxation system, and the need for a new tax system
for a century in case you'd missed the point that I thought
should relevantly be made in relation to that.
It's also been recorded in the book that between 1960, and
this really is an extraordinary statistic, between 1960 and 1990
the effective tax rate on individuals rose by 83% where as the effective
tax rate on families rose by 360%. Now when some of us argue that
there should be some re-weighting of the balance of the taxation
system in favour of family groupings perhaps a statistic like that
will demonstrate that we are not engaged in some kind of anti-single
person crusade. We are merely in the business of trying to re-weight
the imbalance that has crept into our tax system over the years
and one of the things of which I am exceptionally proud as Prime
Minister was the family tax initiative that we took to the 1996
election, and the way in which it has been dramatically reinforced
in the taxation reform package which the Treasurer introduced into
the federal Parliament.
Speaking generally, one of the other things that the book does
is to remind us of how we are no longer the society of joiners of
organisations which we once were. And this applies right across
the spectrum. It applies to political parties, it applies to movements
within religious denominations, it applies to some of the best known
service organisations and national institutions. And if I were asked
to, in a phrase, define the younger generation of the 1990s and
illustrate one of their differences with younger generations of
earlier periods, I would say that they are above all an options
generation. They don't like to commit themselves too far in
advance to anything and they like to keep a decision on what they
do with their lives to the very last moment. And I think it is one
of the characteristics of the way in which society has changed.
I don't say that in a sense of lamenting it. I think what you
have to do with change is to always know that it's going to
occur. You must always do your best to accommodate it. Where it
is for the good you should accelerate it. Where it is for the bad
you should argue against the wisdom of ever changing just for the
sake of change. But you should never be pessimistic about society's
capacity to change for the good because so much of what has occurred
over the period of years covered by this book, although it has been
unsettling to many in our society, it has also produced many beneficial
outcomes. And there are characteristics of modern society which
are infinitely more tolerant, infinitely more understanding, and
infinitely more compassionate than used to be the case. I believe
very strongly that one of the ennobling things about modern society
is that we have a far more compassionate, enlightened, decent understanding
approach to people within our community with any kind of handicap
or disability compared to what was the situation 30 or 40 years
ago where I think they were treated in many ways quite shamefully,
and quite indecently.
So it is a very interesting volume and it reminds us that despite
the decline in the membership of what you might call finite organisations
which are involved in different kinds of good works, the number
of people generically involved in volunteer work in Australian society
is still as robust as ever and it records that the recent survey
of unpaid work found that one in five Australians carry out voluntary
work in the community. And that the nations 2.6 million volunteers
donate the equivalent of 22 work days a year to community service
which is the equivalent of almost a quarter of a million people
working full-time. And it's also interesting to note that retired
people carry out twice as much voluntary work as people in the paid
work force.
Ladies and gentleman, I do want to congratulate both Michelle and
Kevin on the compilation of this volume. I want to thank them for
the contribution that this work will make to an informed understanding
of the issues that we as members of Parliament are required to debate.
Understanding our own nation is a prerequisite to governing our
nation well and ‘Changing Australia' will make a contribution
to a better understanding of Australia and we should all be indebted
to Michelle and Kevin for that contribution and I have much pleasure
in launching the book. Thank you.
[Ends]