9 October 1999
E&OE……………………………………………………………………………………….
Well, Con, thanks for that understated welcome. I might come again, when’s your next convention?
But to you, Con, to Shane Stone, the Federal President of the Liberal Party, to my federal Parliamentary and Ministerial colleagues, David Watson, the Leader of the State Parliamentary Liberal Party, but most importantly of all members of the Liberal Party here in Queensland.
Can I say how honoured I am to have the opportunity of addressing a division of the Party which has enjoyed an increase in its membership of something like twenty to thirty percent over the last twelve months because political parties in the end are about membership. They are about enlisting with the hearts and minds of the men and women of Australia. They are not about the Members of the Cabinet alone, they are not about the Prime Minister or the Premier alone. They are in the end about the commitment of the cross section of the Australian political community to a particular cause. And I want to start my address today by thanking the Queensland Division for the tremendous support that it has afforded to me and to my federal Parliamentary colleagues over the last twelve months. And to congratulate all of those, your President, your State Director and all of the members of the State Executive and the members of the various branches. And to thank those branch members for their toil and their effort and their loyalty and their commitment. Because you are the people that stuck to us during the lean years. You are the people who were still there to help us and support us when we were out of public favour. And now that we are in government let me assure that I don’t forget and I will never forget the loyalty and support that has been coming from the branches of the Liberal Party here in Queensland and throughout the length and breadth of Australia.
When I look back at the year that has passed since I last addressed this convention, I can say without undue hyperbole that it has been a year of remarkable achievement for the government, but more importantly it has been a year of remarkable success and remarkable achievement for Australia. During that twelve month period, Australia has without any ambiguity stared down in a most emphatic way the worst economic recession our region has experienced since the end of World War II.
When I addressed you a year ago I probably would have expressed some apprehension about the possibility that although we had done well, the Asian economic downturn would catch up with us. Well that has not turned out to be the case. Through a combination of skilful policy changes, a very careful and intelligent management of our exchange rate and a determination of the government to commit itself to long term economic reform, we have become the star economic performer of the Asia Pacific region.
And we have done it not only because of the work and the effort of the government and the leadership that the government has shown, but we have done it particularly because of the commitment of the men and women of the Australian community towards a new and different Australia in which we are now living. An Australia that must be more competitive. Must be more open. Must realise that you only win the race if you stay ahead of the person who is in the race with you at the particular time. You don’t win the race if you simply perform better than you did ten or twenty years ago. You win the race if you outperform your rivals in today’s contest.
And that is what Australia has been able to do over the last year. We’ve done it for the reasons I’ve mentioned and they’ve included the reforms of the government. The determination of the government when it came to office to get that deficit that Mr Beazley left us at $10.5 billion into a surplus. And we were able to do that a year ahead of schedule. And I want to record my gratitude to all members of the government for the work that was done, but particularly to Peter Costello as Treasurer for the work he did and the leadership he showed in his portfolio responsibilities, ably assisted by his Finance Minister and Acting Treasurer, John Fahey, who is on the platform with me today.
And by turning the budget around, we were able to send a very strong signal to the rest of the world that you have in charge of the government of Australia a group of men and women who were determined to take with a sense of social sensitivity but nonetheless with complete resolution the difficult economic decisions that were needed. And I know that some of those decisions in the 1996 Budget angered people in this auditorium. I know that not all the community supported every decision that we took, but in the long run it has delivered the outcome that we all wanted. It has delivered a strong and resilient Australian economy. It’s meant that we now have the lowest interest rates for more than thirty years. If we were still running a budget surplus we wouldn’t have such low interest rates. If we were still running, I’m sorry a budget deficit, we wouldn’t have such low interest rates. If we were still running a budget deficit we would be making great demands on the financial markets and competing over much with those in business for the available funds and that would be pushing interest rates up rather than in the other direction.
But over the last year we have not of course only tackled the budget problem, and that very effectively, but we have also embraced and fought during the election campaign the cause of taxation reform. Taxation reform is the biggest single economic change that has been proposed by any government in this country over the last forty or fifty years. We took that change to an election in October of last year. And we won that election despite an outrageous campaign of vilification and distortion and fear mongering lead by the Leader of the Opposition, supported by the membership of his Party and supported by many others in the Australian community. But despite that fear campaign, and despite the political risk inherent in campaigning on a taxation reform programme before an election, we won. And we were given the moral authority and the political authority of that victory to pursue our reforms through the Parliament.
Now it is a matter of well known Australian political history that we didn’t get everything that we wanted in the Parliament. But we got 85 to 90 percent of what we wanted. And although there are some features of the compromise that we would have preferred not to have had, the reality was that we had no alternative. And in the end the Australian people want their elected governments to get on with the job and to do things. They don’t want a constant seminar on Parliamentary obstruction. They want action. And they want to see a Prime Minister and a government that is prepared to negotiate sensible outcomes as necessary in order to achieve long term benefits for the Australian community.
And that long term benefit will be that come July of next year we’ll have a radically better taxation system. We will have the biggest personal income tax cut ever. We will have 80 per cent of the Australian community on a marginal tax rate of no more than 30 cents in the dollar. We will have taken a seven to eight billion dollar load off the back of Australian business. We will have cut the cost of Australian exporters by three to four billion. And importantly for the state of Queensland, we will have achieved massive reductions in the price of fuel. So important and such a direct cost of moving goods across this vast state and this even vaster country.
It does represent a magnificent reform and it’s a reform of which all members of the government are immensely proud. It’s a reform that I personally sought for probably fifteen or twenty of the last years that I’ve been in Federal Parliament. It’s a reform that could only have been achieved if we had the courage, as we did, to take it to the Australian people at the last election. There was no other way of getting taxation reform in this country and we were prepared to do that. And I’m very pleased to report to you that that commitment and that courage has been rewarded.
But it’s not only been in the area of taxation that we have seen great reforms over the last year. Only two days ago, a decision of the Australian Industrial relations Commission, reminded us of how the industrial relations landscape in this country has been transformed since Peter Reith’s reforms of 1996 negotiated with the Member for Dickson when she was the Leader of the Australian Democrats. Criticised at the time by some as not going far enough. But in reality striking the right balance.
They were sensible, intelligent major reforms. And one of the reasons, ladies and gentlemen, that the Australian economy is performing so well at the present time, is that workplace relations reform has increased the productivity of the Australian workforce. The Australian workforce now has the double benefit of higher real wages because they are more productive because of industrial reform and lower interest rates. And that is why Australian consumers are spending in a record fashion. That is why domestic consumption spending is such a strong driver of Australia’s economic growth at the present time. Because the workers of Australia are better of than they have been for thirty or forty years. Because their real wages are higher and their interest rates are lower.
And we’re also of course in the middle of what they call in the markets T2, the sale of another 16 per cent of Telstra. Now I’m constrained by the operations of the Corporations Law from saying just about anything else about that at the present time or I might get in trouble, but let me say we are strongly committed to privatisation. And I think it was here in Brisbane at the first national convention of the Liberal Party in 1998 that I said one of the great goals I had in political life was that just as the Menzies government had made Australia the greatest home owning democracy of the world I wanted to make Australia the greatest share owning democracy in the western world, and we are a long way along the road to achieving that goal.
But we haven’t stopped with those achievements. Recently we announced major changes to business tax reform, to business tax. We committed ourselves to business taxation reform. And they are also quite dramatic, far reaching reforms. We will have a corporate tax rate of 30 cents in the dollar. We are effectively halving the capital gains tax for individuals which will dramatically reward investors right across the income spectrum. We are providing more incentives for people to invest in ventures. We are making it easier for people to take risks with their money in order to promote real investments that may take longer than normal to provide some return to the people who promoted them. And all of these changes are designed once again to keep us ahead of our competitors in today’s race. They are designed to maintain Australia’s position as a competitive, outward looking modern economy, not only surviving but competing very well in today’s globalised economy.
But it is not, my friends, only in the area of economics and industrial relations that this government has been active. I’ve said to you before that I don’t regard being in a strong economy as being an end in itself. I don’t regard good economic policy as being an end in itself. I regard those things as a means to achieving a more stable, harmonious, coherent, happy Australian community, in which there are employment opportunities for young Australians and in which we live happy and contented lives. And we will have the domestic economic muscle to project ourselves in an appropriate way on the international stage. And so it is that we have also concentrated very heavily on reducing unemployment. And I’m pleased to report to you that since the government was elected in March of 1996 we have generated more than 520,000 new jobs in Australia. We now have the lowest unemployment rate for close on ten years and youth unemployment now is significantly lower than what it was in March of 1996.
Those changes are of course the essence of what, in the end, we are about. We will have a more productive economy. We are able to maintain a higher rate of economic growth without overheating the economy and without having to put the brakes on to bring it back under control and we have a capacity to generate more jobs.
But in the area of health, I am pleased to report to you that major changes have also been effected over the last year. We’ve introduced a 30 per cent tax rebate without means test for all people who take out private health insurance. We’ve also committed ourselves to the introduction of lifetime health cover, which is designed to provide younger people with an incentive to take out private health insurance. And Michael Wooldridge has done a remarkable job as Health Minister in the last three and a half years. He is working assiduously to address one of the most difficult and challenging problems in the interface between the medical profession, the health insurance providers and the patient and that is the problem of the gap. And the work that he is doing and some of the fruits of that work are now becoming apparent is very important to making private health insurance more attractive to the Australian public.
I know that there are faults in Australia’s health system. There are faults that can be pointed to. And we acknowledge that. And we are working on that on those flaws and those faults with the states of Australia. But I think it is important that when you look at our health system that we preserve a sense of perspective. It for all its faults, it is an infinitely better health system than any country anywhere else in the world has. And if you are on a low income, if you are struggling, if you’re a battler, far better that you become ill here in Australia than in the United States or the United Kingdom or any part of Europe because we have an infinitely better safety net and an infinitely more protected system.
But we will pursue further changes and improvements to the health system, underpinned, always, by our commitment to the Medicare system, which is absolute and uncompromising and also our commitment to the role of private health insurance, which we have fought very hard to strengthen and to broaden and to make more attractive and which Labor for a period of thirteen years allowed to run down because of their ideological objection to private health insurance.
In other areas we’ve also implemented far reaching reforms. In the last budget we announced that this government would double the public investment in health and medical research in Australia over the next four years. By the year 2005 we will be spending in both nominal and real terms a record amount on health and medical research in this country. And we are doing that very deliberately because this country has always punched above its weight when it comes to health and medical researchers. This country has proudly produced some of the great achievers in the history of medical science. And when we commissioned the Wills examination of health and medical research provision in Australia we were determined to respond in a positive way to its recommendations. And the announcement that we were going to double the commitment to health and medical research is an indication of this government’s commitment to a can-do mentality for this country. A belief that we have the brightest and the best in Australia and too often in the past we have allowed them to go elsewhere. And we what we aim to do over the years ahead not only in relation to health and medical research is to bring them home if they have gone in earlier generations and to encourage their peers and their equivalents in current generations not to go away in the first place.
Those, ladies and gentlemen, are some of the things that we have focussed on domestically. But of course, the minds and the attention and the emotions of the Australian people in recent weeks have been very significantly focussed on events overseas. Not far overseas, but of course in East Timor. And I want to say a few words about East Timor but I know that the thing you would want me to say first and foremost is to send on your behalf and I know on behalf of all Australians, irrespective of their views of other matters, our emphatic support and message of goodwill and good wishes to the men and women of the Australian Defence Force who are serving so magnificently in East Timor at the present time.
They are a superbly well trained professional group of people who are doing this country proud, not only in a military sense but also in a humanitarian sense. And all of us have been touched by the scenes of hope they have brought to the people of that territory, and the exemplary way which they and their leaders have gone about carrying on their duties. Australia has not only done the right thing in relation to East Timor, but we have also done what is in Australia’s long term national interest.
Our involvement in East Timor was not born out of any desire for bad relations with the Republic of Indonesia. We have sought over the years to be a good friend of Indonesia. We have sought to help, as we did on a number of occasions recently, Indonesia through her difficulties occasioned by the Asian economic downturn. We were one of those countries that argued with the International Monetary Fund that the conditions it was to impose on Indonesia in relation to economic assistance should be reasonable and should pay regard to the social infrastructure of that country, and the difficulty of preserving social and other stability in such a vast archipelago, in a country with a population of 211 million people.
So we didn’t come to this issue out of any deepseated hostility to Indonesia. We came to it patiently and carefully through a belief that having regard to the whole history of what had occurred, an act of self determination by the people of East Timor, an engagement of the people of East Timor in a decision making process about their own future was desirable. And that lay behind the policy change that I urged on the President of Indonesia in December of last year. But in response to that, and to the representations of many others, the Government of Indonesia decided to go further and it would hold a ballot on independence. And of course with the greatest of all benefits, the benefit of hindsight, various people including some of our political opponents are running around saying now you should of done this or you should have done that. The reality is that once Indonesia said that there was going to be a ballot there was no way that Australia or indeed any other nation could have with any moral or political authority have argued against holding a ballot. Because after all through the years what have people been asking for, they’ve been asking that the people of East Timor be given an opportunity to determine their own futures. And so it was that they were given that opportunity, and they responded magnificently, 98.7% of them voted and the voted by almost 80% to become an independent nation. It will be a poor nation. It will need our help and it will need the help of many other nations around the world. It will be a small nation. It will have a low living standard. But the thing that matters most to the people of that nation it will be a free nation. And that in the end is what was dominant in our minds.
And that decision having been taken, conditions of great disturbance, bloodshed, and turmoil erupted, and it became very apparent to us that for a combination of circumstances that situation was not being controlled by the Indonesian military and the Indonesian Government. And I again urged upon Dr Habibie, and I encouraged others to urge upon him the acceptance of an international peacekeeping force under the authority of the United Nations. And it came to be that that is what happened. And it’s worth reminding ourselves that Australia is leading a multinational force in East Timor at the present time as a result of a unanimous resolution of the Security Council of the United Nations, and with the agreement of the Government of Indonesia. And that that is a multinational force. It is lead by Australia and at the present time the great bulk of the personnel are provided by Australia. But its increasing multinational character is becoming more apparent as each day goes by, and within the next few weeks the forces on the ground will include significant contributions from our friends and partners in the ASEAN region. And it is important through all the dust and the hubbub of some of the debate about this to remember those salient facts that we are there under the authority of the United Nations and we are there with the agreement of the Indonesian Government.
But we are also there my friends in a leadership role and proudly so, because we were ready. We took a decisions five months ago to bring an additional brigade of the Australian Army into a state of readiness because we thought this situation might possibly arise. That an Australian contribution of significant proportions might be needed. And to those who say that we didn’t plan properly, I throw back in their face that reality, that we were ready and the ADF was ready because of a decision taken by the National Security Committee of the Cabinet of your Government to make sure that that brigade was brought to a state of readiness. And as a consequence, when the United Nations Secretary-General asked me whether not only would Australia participate but would Australia lead the multinational force, I was able to immediately respond in the affirmative. And I’m proud that Australia was ready. I think all Australians should be proud of the fact that we were ready. I think it’s important to keep that in mind as we examine the context of all of the events that have occurred.
I think another thing that we ought to bear in mind is that the speed with which the peacekeeping, or peace enforcement operation was put together is by the standards of the past probably a record. I can’t recall an example in recent memory where a peace enforcement operation was put together so quickly. And for that I pay tribute to the United Nations. I also pay tribute to our friends and partners, not only here in the region but the ready response of the British and the New Zealanders, the assistance from the Americans, and the assistance of many others has been quite crucial. But we ought to not lose sight of the fact that the response to this situation was very quick, it was very effective, and it is an international issue in which Australia is playing a very major role.
This is the first occasion in this nation’s history where we have had the leadership of an international peace enforcement operation. We don’t undertake that responsibility lightly. We are there in partnership with our friends and allies around the world and in particular in our region. We are there not as an act of aggression against the Indonesian State. We are there as an act of goodwill and peace enforcement to assist the implementation of the clearly expressed will of the people of East Timor. That is what this is all about. And what I sense in the Australian community to be overwhelming support for what the Government has done is based on their belief that that is why we are there, and is based on their belief that we have not only done the right thing by the people of East Timor, and done the right thing by Australia, but we have also acted in Australia’s long term national interest.
I want to thank my colleagues for the support and help they’ve given me in relation to this issue over the last few weeks. I particularly want to thank Alexander Downer and John Moore, the two Ministers principally concerned. Alexander Downer for his very skillful, professional and deftly executed work as Foreign Minister, in bringing to a successful conclusion the detail of the negotiations involved in putting together the support that was needed for the passage of the Security Council resolution. And John Moore as Defence Minister for the recommendation he made to our Cabinet Committee five months ago to bring that brigade up to a state of readiness, and generally in relation to his responsibilities as Defence Minister. As in all of these things it’s a team effort. No successful policy of this magnitude is ever achieved by one man or one woman. You need to work with your colleagues and you need to have their understanding and their support.
Now I’ve said before and I say it again today that this is a dangerous mission. So far we have been spared the awful trauma of heavy casualties. But we can’t as a community lose sight of the possibility that things could turn nasty. We hope and pray they don’t. And we know that our men and women have the great advantage of being superbly trained, of belonging to a free and open society that values principles of human liberty and human life, and a group of men and women they are who believe that what they are doing is not only their duty, but what they are doing is in the long term interests of their country, and the long term interests of the sort of values that we don’t own exclusively as Australians, but we share with so many other nations the values of individual liberty and human dignity. And our thoughts and our prayers will remain with them constantly until their mission is completely.
Finally ladies and gentlemen can I just say a brief word about the future. We have now been in Government for more than three-and-a-half years. We have achieved an enormous amount. We have given to the Australian economy an inner strength and resilience it’s not had at any time in the 25 years that I’ve been in public life. We have I think properly rebalanced the foreign policy of this country so that although our engagement with Asia remains our priority, we no longer pursue an Asia only policy.
But we are a nation that does occupy a special intersection in the world. We are a nation that has carried with it many of the values of western civilisation, the great principles of liberalism. We are a nation that has very close links with the United States and we share many travails and conflicts with the United States. But here we are in the Asian Pacific region, uniquely having those influences but being part of the most dynamic and in the longer term the fastest growing area of the world. And we are a nation now that has within our own community and family, we have hundreds of thousands Australians of Asian descent who are making a magnificent contribution to the modern Australia.
Now these three assets, if I can put it that way, give to Australia a special capacity to understand and to work, not only with the countries of the region, but to work with countries elsewhere to do good, positive, cooperative things in the region. We seek the friendship of all of the nations of our region. We seek the friendship of Indonesia, we seek the friendship of all the other nations of the region. And we have of course the friendships of so many of them and I was reminded of the friendship we have with the people of Papua New Guinea only the day before yesterday when I paid a brief visit to that country.
But importantly in all the relations that we have, not only with the region but with the rest of the world, we relate to other countries as individuals relate to each other on a basis of mutual respect. We understand that we share many values, we understand that on other issues we are different. We don’t ask other countries to change, other countries don’t ask us to change. We are who we are, a special breed of people bringing in our own distinctive Australian way, that blend of assets, that understanding that that blend of assets brings in our relations with the countries of our region. And I believe that the nations of that region understand that. Australia is seen as having economic strength, political will, a clear and sharp national identity, and a proper sense of what we believe in, and a proper capacity to relate in a cooperative way with all the nations in the region and all the nations of the world. Thank you.
[Ends]