19 October 1999
E&OE………………………………………………………………………………………
Well thank you very much Ron. And to your wife, to the Deputy Prime Minister John Anderson and Julia Anderson, to Kate Carnell the Chief Minister of the Australian Capital Territory, to my other Ministerial and Parliamentary colleagues, and they number in their ranks at least one shy retiring truckie. That’s Wilson Tuckey - who’s very shy and retiring - who informs me that he is an authentic truckie and he has what he described to me as a ‘road training’ licence. I hope that’s the right description, but Wilson is very proud of that association with your industry.
Can I say that I’m delighted again to have the opportunity of addressing the representatives of an industry that tonight celebrates a very important decade of achievement and change and reform, and also inaugurates a new era in national cooperation and national representation. Ron rather stole one of my lines when he mentioned one of the subjects that we talked about over dinner, and that is the intensely competitive character of your industry where only 20% or less of the total volume of activity is in the hands of the six largest competitors within the industry. And it speaks volumes for your industry being essentially an industry made up of small and medium sized operators. Many of them family based businesses that are daily coping with the challenges that I know businesses of that type must respond to.
And can I say in direct response to your Chairman that we are very conscious of the costs and other pressures that bear upon your industry. I want to say a few things in a moment about the general state of the Australian economy. But in talking about the general state of an economy it’s important that a Prime Minister or indeed any other minister in a government, recognise that although generically the country may be performing very strongly, there are always firstly some areas at the time which are not sharing in that general strength, and there are always particular challenges that face individual industries.
Your industry employs 135,000 people around Australia. The employment in the industry increased by almost 9% last year. 81% of all non-bulk freight is carried by road, and of course it’s almost a cliché to acknowledge how important long distance road transport and haulage is in a nation as large as Australia. Our attitude to many things has been long shaped by distance, and the long travel that people must undertake in order not only to maintain personal contact but also to do business. And your industry is particularly aware of that and particularly responsive to it. And the forces that have driven you and encouraged you to form effective national organisation, the latest manifestation of which I will officially unveil at the end of my remarks. Those forces and that understanding of the importance of providing as cheap and as affordable modes of transport and carriage in Australia by road has of course been very very difficult and very much part and parcel of your operation as people in the transport sector.
Australia’s freight task is going to double over the next 20 years. It is therefore imperative that we not only have efficient and effective modes, and accessible modes of rail and air transport, but we also have a strong competitive nationally based trucking industry. And that is what your organisation and the ladies and gentlemen representing the members of your organisation here tonight are all about. Ron and I have had many discussions, and indeed I’ve had discussions with many other members of your industry over the past couple of years, about many of the cost pressures that you are faced with.
And whilst I don’t pretend for a moment that every single element of the Government’s taxation reform package is completely unalloyed good news for your industry. I do believe that if you look at the aggregate impact of taxation reform you can argue without fear of contradiction that it will bring both medium and longer-term benefits including significance reductions in costs for your industry. One of the great characteristics of the Government’s tax reform package is that it carries with it quite fundamentally and unarguably a significant cost reduction so far as transport and the operation of your industry is concerned, because not only will the price of petrol for small businesses fall as a result of the GST component being rebated, but all trucks 20 tonnes and over trucks between 4.5 and 20 tonnes used in regional areas will see diesel excise costs effectively reduced to 20 cents a litre. And there will also be cost reductions on inputs like truck parts and tyres.
Now I know there are some concerns about some aspects of implementation. And in discussions we’ll do our best consistent with our obligations in relation to the overall package to respond to those. But I don’t think it can be disputed one of the goals which we set ourselves when be embarked upon the path of taxation reform more than two years ago, and that is to reduce the cost of fuel used for business purposes in this country. That goal has been achieved. Because we have always recognised that if we are to make a serious indentation on the cost of doing business which is conducted over long distances in this country, we have to do something about reducing the cost of fuel. And I believe we have been able to achieve that goal.
In his introductory remarks Ron talked about the challenge of change and the need for reforms in your industry. And it’s appropriate that I say something briefly about the challenge of change and the need for reform so far as the country and the government of the country is concerned. It has become a cliché to say that we live in a globalised economy, that change is unavoidable, and that those countries that propose change or refuse to embrace it will ultimately be left behind. But cliché or not it is largely true. We don’t have an option any more of putting a nice little cocoon around Australia and saying to the rest of the world we don’t like the global disciplines that you seek to impose on us. We’re going to shut them out and we’re going to be quite content within our little cocoon. Those days of course both economically and otherwise are long and distantly behind us. And we face the need and the reality as we approach the next millennium to ensure that the Australian economy is run efficiently, that it’s run competitively, and it embraces as far as possible world’s best practice.
That is the economic imperative, and no Australian government any more than can any Australian industry ignore economic imperatives. The Government is not just about economics, it is not just about the bottom line, it is not just about maintaining a budget surplus, it’s not just about lower interest rates or taxation or industrial relations reform. It is also about understanding the social impact of economic change. It is about recognising that even in the best ordered economy that even at a time when generally speaking the economy is performing well and the national economic health is very evident that there are people who are not sharing in that sense of wellbeing.
The Australian economy at the present time is now stronger than it’s been for more than 30 years. In many respects, the Australian economy now is stronger than it has been at any time since the end of World War II. Our inflation is low, our interest rates are very low, our levels of business investment are high, our budget is in surplus, our capacity to pay our debt is vastly stronger than it used to be. Yesterday we became the largest share-owning democracy in the world. Larger even on a per capita basis than the United States of America. And we are seen by the rest of the world as having achieved a near economic miracle by staring down the worst effects of the Asian economic downturn.
Now if all of those things are true, and I think most objective commentators recognise their literal accuracy. Yet I recognise as Prime Minister that there are still far too many Australians without a job, I recognise that there are many people in rural and regional Australia who are not sharing the national economic plenty. I recognise that at a time when the rest of the country is doing well that the sense of being deprived, the sense of alienation, the sense of not sharing in the national economic plenty is all the more acute.
I think we all understand from our own life’s experiences that if you are the odd person out, the one who’s not sharing in the general bounty, you feel things a lot more acutely than if all of the people in one particular group are suffering a similar situation. Now there’s no simple easy solution to that but an important start is made when governments and prime ministers recognise that within a state of general economic wellbeing there are pockets and groups of people and areas of the country that are missing out.
Since I have been Prime Minister I have argued for, and as leader of the Government, presided over probably as big a clutch of fundamental economic reforms than any government has been able to carry out in a similar period of time. We have reformed the taxation system in a way that was unimaginable a few years ago. Our changes to industrial relations have contributed to a very significant shift desirably, in my view, towards an industrial relations approach based on workplace bargaining and away from the practices of the past. And these changes have not been attended by significant increases in industrial disputation. They have not been marred by the industrial warfare that was promised by our critics when we put them forwards before the 1996 election.
In addition to that, we have presided over significant privatisation of Australian industry and we have enabled thereby literally hundreds of thousands of Australians to buy shares for the first time in their lives and to feel a more direct role in the development and the strengthening of the forces of competition and the forces of capitalism within Australia. And I use the word capitalism very deliberately and not in any way ashamedly because I think the goal of providing access to the ownership of capital to as wide a base of the Australian community as possible is an extremely desirable goal and not one in any way to be apologised for.
But the process of change and reform is not an end in itself. You change and reform in order to provide a stronger economy and through a stronger economy to provide more jobs and a higher standard of living and therefore a greater contentment in life for a greater number of Australians.
And we have seen over the last three and a half years more than half a million new jobs created. We have a lower unemployment rate now than we have had for almost 10 years. And pleasingly, although it’s still far too high, we have been able to bring about a significant reduction in the level of youth unemployment.
But there is still a very significant reform challenge ahead of us. We have just unveiled some major proposals to reform the business taxation system in this country. If we can through discussion with the Australian Democrats and the Australian Labor Party secure passage of those reforms through the Parliament they will in time deliver us a 30 per cent company tax rate and an effective halving of the rate of capital gains tax in Australia. And that will give us a taxation system for business which is as competitive and as attractive as can be found anywhere in the world.
Importantly, those changes will provide more incentive for people to invest in those activities and ventures that require the taking of greater risks than might be the case with other forms of investment. And they will provide an investment bank for many of the activities that are needed over a period of time to ensure that the inventions of the brightest and the best in Australia can be usefully converted to a commercially profitable operation.
The task of taxation reform therefore is not only bound up with the GST and reductions in personal income tax but it is also very much bound up with fundamental and important reforms to Australia’s business taxation system.
But it’s also important to understand that reform is not just in the area of economics. A few weeks ago my colleague, the Minister for Family and Community Services, Senator Newman, commissioned a reference group to examine against certain criteria the state of Australia’s social security system and to ask some fundamental questions about reform that is needed in that area. Not reform that would in any way challenge the Government’s commitment to an adequate social security safety net. Not reform that would put at risk needed protection for the vulnerable in our community because we have no intention of doing that but reform that takes account of a number of things including the Government’s commitment to the principle of mutual obligation which, simply stated, says that the Government and the rest of the community have an obligation to look after those who through no fault of their own are not able to look after themselves. But equally it is not unreasonable of the community to say of those people that if they are able to do so they should give something back to the community in return for the support they receive.
Now, that is a sound principle. It is a principle that is evident in our approach to work for the dole and it’s a principle that will underlie the need to examine our welfare system. And in case anybody imagines that it is some kind of far right agenda to have a look at our social welfare system I note with interest that in recent months Noel Pearson, a well respected leader of the indigenous community of Australia, and Wayne Swan, the social security spokesman for the Australian Labor Party, have both called in their own way and in different ways for fundamental examinations of the welfare system in Australia. And I hope out of that process we can gain a better understanding of the sort of system we need against the background of the criteria the Government has laid down as we move into the next century.
I think I would as the leader of a Coalition Government and as the leader of the Federal Parliamentary Liberal Party be remiss tonight because of the day that it is if I didn’t say something about the contribution of Jeff Kennett as Premier of Victoria. Mr Kennett’s defeat in the election (applause) – well, you are obviously listening to me – Mr Kennett’s defeat in the election is a reminder, of course, to all of us who hold office that nothing can ever be taken for granted, that we live in a volatile political climate. We live in a far less tribal political state than used to be the case and that it’s a message and a lesson that Liberal, Labor, National Party and Democrat politicians alike should absorb and understand. And anybody who imagines in politics that they are immune from those forces that are abroad within our community, democratic forces, are deluding themselves.
But if politics is about being given responsibility and using that responsibility to bring about desirable change for your community and if it is about making a difference then I believe that Mr Kennett made an enormous difference for the good for the State of Victoria. He did inherit a bankrupt State. He was courageous. He was gusty. Not everybody liked what he did, not every liked the way he did it. But he did improve Victoria and I think the judgement of history will be a very positive and a beneficial one towards him.
Can I say to you, ladies and gentlemen, that I have enjoyed the association that I have had with your industry. Ron Finemore has been a very strong and articulate advocate of the interests of your industry. He’s never been reluctant to put a point of view to the Government that has been controversial, where that point of view has been in the interest of your industry. He’s never been unwilling to criticise where that criticism has been justified. And I am sure on occasions in the past it has and I am sure that in the future there will be occasions when it will likewise be justified.
But he is a good representative, a forthright representative of your industry. Tonight is a very important occasion. I know it’s an occasion where you look back on the last 10 years in particular with a very great sense of pride and a sense of achievement. I know you have a lot of challenges ahead of you but I am sure that you will tackle them with the gusto and the commitment and the sense of vision that you have displayed over the last 10 years. Thank you for inviting me here tonight. I assure you that the Government will continue to lend a ready ear to your concerns and your legitimate advocacy. And I know in John Anderson you have a person who is particularly attuned to the concerns and needs of your industry. He is a constant advocate of the role of your sector in the Australian economy. He does represent you at the most senior level imaginable and in a most effective way around the Cabinet table.
Thank you for inviting me tonight and I have very much pleasure in declaring launched the Australian Trucking Association. Thank you.
[ends]