Subjects: Achievements and goals of the Government; East Timor, social
coalition, foreign relations; politicians' standing in the community; refugees,
industrial relations; privatisation, Telstra; East Timor tax.
E&OE...................
Thank you very much Mr Chairman and Ladies and Gentlemen.
It is now almost four years since the Coalition Government was elected in
March of 1996 and I thought it would therefore be useful if I tried in the
few moments available to me to give a brief account of the stewardship of
the Government over that period of time and most particularly over the last
12 months.
It is important when giving an overview of that kind to recall the broad
goals that the Government set itself in March of 1996. Because it is all
too easy in politics to focus far too heavily on the micro detail of day
to day policy decisions and administrative actions and to lose sight of
the fact that collectively they are but means to achieving certain overall
goals. Every Government elected to office in this country has certain national
broad aspirations, has a desire in the period of its office, whether it
be long or short, to bring about beneficial change for the aggregate benefit
of as many Australians as possible.
And so it was with the Coalition Government taking office for the first
time in 13 years in March of 1996. We set ourselves a number of goals, we
set ourselves the goal, a very general but very desirable one, of strengthening
our country. Of strengthening it economically, strengthening it socially
and strengthening it internationally.
I think I can report to the nation that over the four years, and particularly
over the last 12 months, we have achieved to goal of strengthening Australia
economically. The economic performance of this country at the moment is
as strong as it has been at any time since the end of World War II - in
some respects, even stronger - because we operate in a more open, competitive
international environment, we are less protected, we have, and may I acknowledge
our predecessors did in a number of areas, embrace essential changes and
reforms, and that has collectively given us a fundamental generic economic
strength that we have not had for some time.
We sought to strengthen the country socially by recognising that it was
important to draw upon the fundamental values and instincts of the Australian
community. One of the things that I have endeavoured to do as Prime Minister
is to develop what I chose to call in my Federation Address at the beginning
of this year, an 'Australian way' or an Australian approach to handling
particular problems, and out of that we have developed the notion of a social
coalition.
I don't suggest that that notion isn't found in some manifestation in other
parts of the world but I haven't consciously sought to apply some kind of
foreign paradigm to the notion of how we marshal the resources of all of
the people and all of the institutions of this country.
The social coalition seeks to recognise a reality and that is that the government
alone cannot solve all of the social problems of a nation. The great welfare
institutions of our society acting alone cannot hope to do so, individuals
acting alone cannot hope to do so, although they have a role to play and
responsibilities to assume and obligations in appropriate cases to return
to the general community, and finally of course the business community's
primary role is producing economic wealth, but it does have a contributory
role to play in relation to social policy.
And what the social coalition seeks to do is to draw upon those four elements
and working together to tackle problems in a somewhat different and in many
cases innovative way, and for the first time we have more heavily involved
many of the welfare organisations at the policy making end as well as at
the compassion end of delivering social policy.
We have sought through a series of initiatives to encourage greater participation
by the business community. My cry has been not that business should give
more, but rather that more businesses should give because there are many
outstanding examples in the Australian community of the generosity of individual
businesses.
We have not sought through the social coalition in any way to withdraw from
the traditional role of government in Australian society. The traditional
role of Government in Australian society has been that the Government should
have a limited role, that that role should be strategic. Part of the strategic
role of Government is to support and provide and nurture a social security
underpinning or social security safety net.
And it has never been the aim of the Government I lead to drive the Government
proportion of gross domestic product down ever lower as an end in itself,
but rather to recognise that there are roles for Government in our community,
they are limited, but they are important and they are strategic.
And as we come to the end of this century, I hope to believe that we may
have found a reasonable balance in relation to the roles of Government and
the roles of business within our community.
And the third of the goals we set ourselves was of course the strength of
Australia internationally. There were many elements of the foreign policy
of the former government that we found agreement with, and its always desirable
to have a certain continuity of foreign policy as administrations change.
It is never in the national interest to change policy merely for the sake
of reminding the world that a new government has taken over.
But we have sought in the time that we've been in office to bring about
some re-balancing. To move away from what I thought on occasions looked
a little like an 'Asia- only' focus by the former Government to what I have
called an 'Asia first' focus whereby we recognise that although our political,
economic and strategic linkages with the Asian Pacific are far and away
our most important and would continue to be so, we also have very important
strategic and foreign policy and economic linkages with other parts of the
world.
And many of you have heard me before speak of what I regard as that special
intersection of history, culture, geography and economic circumstance that
I believe Australia occupies, with our strong links of all sorts of kinds
with Europe and North America that our strategic and geographic placement
here in the Asian Pacific world. And indeed that intersection and the unique
insight that it gives to this country was very much at work in recent months
in the role that we discharged in relation to East Timor.
So they were, ladies and gentlemen, some of the broad goals that we set
ourselves almost four years ago.
Becoming more up to date, when I delivered my second Federation Address
in Brisbane of this year, I said that the Government had five broad goals
for 1999. I said that we were resolved first and foremost to continue to
pursue policies that will maintain our remarkable rate of economic growth
and economic strengths. I think I can report to you and to the Australian
people that we have in fact achieved that goal and in some respects achieved
it beyond the expectation that we had at the beginning of 1999.
There is the hope that not only will we be able to report in a years time
that we were able to stare down the Asian economic downturn, but in fact
we might have begun to get some of the benefits of the upswing that is now
beginning to occur in some parts of Asia.
I said secondly that we remain absolutely committed to the implementation
in full of our visionary tax plan endorsed by the Australian people at the
last election. And absent the 10 to 15 per cent as I have described it that
was taken out in negotiations with the Australian Democrats I can report
that the Parliament has endorsed and we are in the process of implementing
that taxation plan which is the biggest change to our taxation system, probably
ever and certainly the biggest since the end of World War II, and will return
to this country very major net economic benefits. It is important when the
focus is inevitably on some of the detail and the argument and the political
debate is about some of the detail, it is important to remember that the
big game, the big story out of tax reform, are the major benefits to the
Australian economy. The lower business costs, the lower export costs, the
lower fuel costs to the bush, the major cuts in personal income tax, the
quite dramatic and very beneficial changes to the business taxation system
that will give us a world competitive rate of company tax that will dramatically
cut almost in half in many cases the rate of capital gains tax, which will
stimulate a higher level still of foreign investment in this country.
And the story of tax reform is the story of giving to this country an even
better economic chance, as we go into the next century, of making an already
very competitive Australian economy, even more competitive. And giving to
of course 80 per cent of Australian tax payers a personal rate of income
tax at the margin that can never go higher than 30 per cent.
Thirdly, I said that we would not tire in our efforts to further reduce
unemployment, which although at an eight year low is still too high, and
once again I can report to you that we have made progress. Not as much as
I would have liked, but more than I though at one stage during the year
it would be possible. Even some of the more conservative of the Government's
economic advisers are now suggesting to us that with current policy settings,
and they include of course a continuation of a strong rate of economic growth,
we might see unemployment go even lower.
Fourthly we are going to extend out commitment to the principle of mutual
obligation in Australian society and certainly I can report again that we
have been very active on that front, the extension of the work for the dole,
the introduction in relation to the drug offensive, of the diversion programs
in cooperation with the states. The details of that I launched in Sydney
only a few weeks ago and yesterday the Health Minister went to Tasmania
to announce in cooperation with the Premier of Tasmania the diversion programme
which is built upon, once again, the principle of mutual obligation - that
society has an obligation to do everything it can to assist people who want
to break the drug habit. And we have a very special social responsibility
to do that and I don't pretend that this is an easy challenge and I don't
pretend that the solutions are simple but part of the process must be to
confront people who do wish to break the habit with the reality that if
they are to get assistance, if they are to avoid being caught up in the
criminal justice system then they should avail themselves of treatment and
rehabilitation facilities.
And finally I said in my address earlier this year that we would work to
create an even stronger social coalition to more effectively remedy areas
of disadvantage and under-privilege and I have already spoken earlier of
the importance that I place on the building of a strong social coalition
in this country. So as we come to the end of this year and as we reflect
upon what has occurred and it has by any definition been a remarkably active
and a remarkably productive year but from my point of view and the Government's
point of view it has not so much been the individual policy decisions but
the contribution that those policy decisions have made towards achieving
those broad goals that I recalled at the beginning of my address.
Of course the year has also been characterised, as political years always
are and years in the life of the nation always are, by events that could
not reasonably have been foreseen certainly in the way they worked out at
the beginning of the year. And clearly Australia's involvement in providing
hope and a future for the people of East Timor very much comes into that
category. It was without doubt the most important international event to
effect Australia during the year. It saw for the first time Australia leading
an international peace enforcement operation. It saw Australia assert herself
in an appropriate and sensible way - not a provocative or over-reactive
way in our part of the region - in a way that has brought lasting credit
to our nation and lasting credit in particular to the men and women of the
Australian Defence Force. It represented the act of a country that sought
not argument or disputation with the Republic of Indonesia but rather a
country and an Government that sought to discharge its obligations to a
group of people who in earlier years had more than discharged their obligations
to Australians of an earlier generation. And I believe that history will
see the Australian action in East Timor in a positive light. History will
see Australia as having acted in an appropriate, a restrained, but nonetheless
very determined, very definitive way.
Throwing forward to the year ahead it's a clich to say that it will be
a very active year. I see the role of the Government in the year ahead being
very much one of continuing to pursue, in the name of achieving the goals
I outlined, the economic reform programme that has been a characteristic
of our time in Government. There is a lot of talk in our community about
whether the reform process has gone too far, whether we have reform fatigue.
Once again it is a question of achieving an appropriate balance. The reform
process never stops. In a sense, once governments give up on reform then
the community is entitled to question the continued value of that government
to the community. Reforms of course must take account of the impact of change
on our community. There is an ever present obligation on governments to
explain and interpret economic reform and the benefits of change and reform
to their communities and their societies and if we don't do that resistance
- much of it ill-informed - will build to the process of reform.
It is fair to say that Australia at the present time in a national generic
sense is enjoying great prosperity and great economic strengths. That situation
imposes a special obligation on all of us to make sure that all sections
of the community as best we can enjoy and share in the benefits of that
national economic well-being and economic strength. And I think particularly
of those of my fellow Australians who live in the rural and regional areas
of our nation. Historically and now in present terms contributing so much
to our export income, so much to our wealth and also importantly, so much
to our understanding of what it is to be an Australian. And I have often
said in the past that I cannot conceive the Australia that I grew up to
love as being an Australia that doesn't have the bush and the rural and
regional parts of our country as very much part and parcel of how we see
ourselves and how we relate to ourselves as an Australian community. And
it is a special obligation to make sure therefore as best we can, in the
months ahead and indeed in the years ahead, that the benefits of national
economic strengths are enjoyed by many of our Australian citizens as is
humanly possible. Because when the country is doing well those who aren't
doing well feel the disadvantage ever more keenly and ever more acutely
and that puts a very special obligation on us.
I will seek, and the Government will seek in the months ahead, to make certain
that we continue all we can to reduce our current level of unemployment.
Unemployment in Australia has now assumed a markedly varied character in
the sense that there are large parts of Australia particularly in some of
the large cities, where for practical purpose, unemployment has been reduced
to an almost irreducible minimum. There are many of the central districts
of Sydney where the unemployment rate is in the order of slightly below
or slightly above 2%. And yet if we move into some of the regional areas,
the change is quite dramatic and quite marked. And that once again underlines
the point I make about the need for reaching out and ensuring the best available
assistance consistent with national economic goals is made available to
people in rural and regional Australia. And we will seek over the year ahead
of course to complete the successful and smooth implementation of our taxation
reforms. They are important reforms, their implementation in a smooth effective
manner is an important priority of the government.
We will also seek in the year ahead to build a sensible but restrained an
non provocative way on the new sense of respect, and I believe strength,
in which Australia is viewed internationally. We have been a very good regional
neighbour - not only of Indonesia but also of nations such as Thailand and
Korea. We have a capacity to play a crucial role in the economic and political
development of the region and our capacity to do so is enhanced by our economic
strength and our capacity to do so has also been enhanced by our diplomatic
standing in relation to East Timor.
And finally, ladies and gentlemen, we will seek in the year ahead, to do
something that I said was very important to me and to the Government that
I lead when I accepted the verdict, very pleasingly I might say, of the
Australian people on the 2nd March 1996. And that was to try
and focus on those things that united the Australian community rather than
those things that divided them. Because I have long held the belief in public
life that the things that unite us as Australians are infinitely more enduring
and more lasting and more effective and more important than the things that
divide us. And if there is one goal that any government worth its salt should
set itself and that is to do everything it can to bind together and to unite
the Australian people. And if there is one thing - and I say it finally
- that I can say with every conviction that we have been true to over the
last almost four years, and that is that we have not been a government that
has been beholden to any one section of the Australian community. We have
not been a government that has been owned by one section, we have not been
a government that has pursued an obsessive agenda out of deference to one
section of the Australian community. We have rather been a government that
has sought as best we could to govern for all Australians.
Thank you.
JOURNALIST:
Tony Wright from The Age, Prime Minister. Your review today has been
pretty much about the last years of this century, and we are just about
move into another century and millennium. And yesterday of course you knocked
over a couple of records of the great Liberal Prime Minister Menzies with
cricket scores and by your own lights a better economy. I wonder whether
you attempted at any stage to go for that last record - 16 years as a Liberal
Prime Minister? And perhaps more realistically, as you'll be going to another
election in a couple of years, would you be prepared to commit to serving
another full term as Prime Minister should you win that election, and God
and passing trucks willing?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well thank you Tony. My position on this has really been quite consistent.
I take one election at a time. And I said that after the last election.
I'm in good health. But I'm a realist. I take one election at a time. If
my party wants me to lead them to the next election then I will be happy
to do so. I remind all of you that I don't hold the office I now have other
than by the courtesy and the gift of the Liberal Party of Australia. It's
not mine to pass on, it's not mine to do a deal with anybody about. It is
an office that I hold out of the courtesy of the Liberal Party and my position
is that if the party wants me to lead them to another election I'd be very
happy to do so. What happens after that I will deal with on a term to term
basis. I'm not getting into the exaggerated business of projecting beyond
that. I really think that would be both presumptuous and unrealistic.
JOURNALIST:
Gay Davidson.[inaudible]. Anyway I wanted to ask you Prime Minister what
your reaction was when Indonesia scrapped the East Timor [inaudible] on
protest agreement? And have you had any..that was two days ago. Have you
had any intelligence more about it? What diplomatic moves have you made?
Have you given any advice to the American Government who will of course
be clearly intrigued about this whole thing considering their interest not
only in oil but also this sort of strength?
PRIME MINISTER:
You'll appreciate that I can't go into any detail about intelligence advice.
The view of the Government is that nothing that has happened so far threatens
the arrangements that we've made. We think that applying some of the notions
of successor states in international law that there won't be any difficulty
in working out an understanding in relation to that.
JOURNALIST:
Prime Minister, Vivienne Stanton from Reuters. After your famous school
report card speech to Parliament earlier this year, we know that you see
quite a bit of talent in your frontbench. I was just wondering how soon
you're planning to rearrange the desks, and who will get to be a prefect
and who will get sent to the back of the class?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well I don't have anything in mind on that front. When, if I were to well
I'd announce it. Were we to make any changes I'd announce them. But I think
the team is doing very well. But I also think that I've got a lot of talent
on the backbench.
JOURNALIST:
Malcolm Farr, the Daily Telegraph. In your 25 years in Parliament,
have you known politicians to be held in the low standing that they are
today? And going back to the referendum but without please going to the
issues of the referendum, do you think a consequence of the 'no' case tactic
or strategy of saying politicians cannot be trusted would exasperate the
current low standing of politicians. What would you do to raise the level
of respect of politicians and consequently of the Parliament?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well I don't know that the attitude has perhaps changed as much as people
including journalists and some Parliamentarians often say. I think there's
always been a bit of that sort of healthy scepticism in this country towards
people in authority. I was asked by President Clinton when he came to Australian
in 1996, we had a talk about some of the comparisons between Americans and
Australians. And I said that I thought one of the differences between Americans
and Australians was that Australians were somewhat more sceptical as a people
than Americans. And that's no bad thing. It may be aggravating for us on
occasions but it is no bad thing. It's I think part of our Celtic inheritance
that we have a certain scepticism. So I'm not sure that it's got so dramatically
worse. I mean we all say that. I don't know that it's changed quite as much.
What would I do to change it? I don't think there's any one thing you can
do. You can only do your best. Try and talk to people as candidly as possible.
Try and understand what motivates the mainstream of the Australian community.
Don't get captured by interest groups. Don't get too remote in not only
a geographic sense but in a sense of understanding what the broad community
feels. You asked me about the 'no' campaign. Well the 'no' campaign had
a lot of elements and had a lot of contributors. Different people put it
in a different way. You wouldn't have found anything I said that involved
any denigration of politicians. I had a view. My view was that we shouldn't
change. Now I haven't come here today to sort of rehearse the referendum,
you shake your head and I'm glad to hear that you haven't either. But I
don't know that out of that there was any great further damage done. But
I'm prepared to be accountable, and bear in mind it was a free vote, and
when you have a free vote the Prime Minister has the same privilege that's
accorded to every other member. And I'm very happy to have anything I said
during the campaign subject to very close scrutiny.
JOURNALIST:
Amanda Buckley, Bloomberg News, Prime Minister. I just wanted to ask you
about privatisation today. We know it was very much on the Government's
agenda when you came into office, and you've had some very big sales and
I think 40% of Australians are now shareholders as a result. But I'm wondering
whether you've run out of a bit of steam on this issue. We know that your
Treasurer is very keen to get more sales and we know that he'd like to sell
the remaining 50.1% of Telstra to eliminate Commonwealth debt. We know there's
less enthusiasm in the National Party, perhaps reflecting what you said
about that reform fatigue out there in the community. And I'm just wondering
if you do have a timetable in your own mind for the rest of Telstra, if
you can tell is where Sydney Airport is in the queue at the moment - I know
there's a bit of a back up of big decisions coming along on that score -
and give us some idea of what the Government's privatisation program will
be in future?
PRIME MINISTER:
Amanda, the policy on Telstra hasn't changed. The policy on Telstra is that
we still have it as a goal to sell the lot but we made a commitment to..once
we got to where we are now we have an examination process in relation to
the adequacy of services particularly in regional Australia. And only if
we were satisfied from that would we then go on. But the goal hasn't changed
and it's not as far as I'm concerned likely to change. I would like to remind
people, particularly those in regional Australia who might be listening
to this program, that a lot of the benefits that are now going to the bush,
for example the rural transaction centres. And I opened the first of them
at Eugowra about six or eight weeks ago. And they'