Subjects: Subjects: tax reform; private health insurance; economy; employment; launch of Intelligent Island; inquiry into the case of Alwyn Johnson; welfa
E&OE..................
Well thank you very much Richard. To Sue Napier, the Leader of the Parliamentary Liberal Party, Lynton Crosby the Federal Director of the party, my Federal and State Parliamentary colleagues, and fellow Tasmanian Liberals. First can I take this opportunity at your annual gathering to express my gratitude for the support, the loyalty, the encouragement and the consistency that Liberals throughout Tasmania have displayed over the last 12 months. I know it has been a difficult period at a State level. At a Federal level it's been a period of enormous achievement and enormous change. But in the 18 months that lies between now and the next Federal election we have both challenges and opportunities here in Tasmania.
We don't hold any Federal seats in the House of Representatives in Tasmania and that presents us with a great opportunity. It's important that we work very hard to win back some of the seats that we have lost in Tasmania. I think our prospects of doing so in several of them are quite outstanding and I would encourage the organisation to find and get behind the right candidate in each of the seats that we need to contest and we need to win back. The next election will be a tough battle. The third time around is always difficult. But it can be won and if we campaign strongly and realistically, if we remain very much in touch with the mainstream of the Australian community, if we put aside arrogant notions of any right to be re-elected, but focus on a very simple proposition and that is that you must earn your re-election - you have no right to it - then I believe that we can be successful.
As I look back on the last year I think all of us can feel a sense of quiet pride at what has been achieved. Contrary to the most passionate desires of the Leader of the Opposition the world did not come to an end on the 1st of July. In fact Australia embraced on the 1st of July in a way that does great credit to the commonsense of the Australian people, Australia embraced the biggest ever change to our taxation system. And it was not only a big change to our taxation system but it was in many ways the biggest structural change the Australian economy has embraced since the end of World War II. And the benefits of taxation reform will be felt in the years ahead. We not only have dramatically lower personal income tax with 80% of Australian wage and salary earners and taxpayers on a top marginal rate of no more than 30 cents in the dollar, but we have given to our exporters a greater competitive edge. We have guaranteed to the States of Australia over the years ahead a sound revenue base to fund the provision of public hospitals, government schools, police and road services which are the bread and butter responsibilities of State governments in this country.
And whenever I hear the Leader of the Opposition talking about health and education and saying how much he's interested in health and education, I ask him the question - Mr Beazley if you're so interested in health and education why did you vote against a reform that will guarantee funds for those things in the future the like of which we haven't seen in the past. And that illustrates the fundamental weakness of the Labor Party's position on tax reform. Tax reform was not only about changing for the better our indirect tax system, it was not only about providing reductions in personal income tax. It was also about underwriting the future provision of revenue for the essential services in health and education that is so important to our community because unless you give to the States a secure revenue base as time goes by they will not have the wherewithal to provide particularly for government schools and for public hospitals. So I would simply say of those in the Labor Party who profess their concern for government schools, for public hospitals, why did you vote against the best thing that government schools and public hospitals have been offered by any Federal government in Australia since the end of World War II. And until, until they can explain that they have no credibility as the defenders of government schools and the defenders of public hospitals.
Our commitment in those areas of course is to the great Liberal commitment of choice. We believe in a strong government education system, but we also believe in the right of parents to choose to send their children to the school that they think is most suitable for them. We also believe in the great Liberal principle of choice in health care and health services and one of the many achievements as I look back over the last 12 months of the Coalition Government is the remarkable renaissance of private health insurance in Australia. I can now report to you that we are heading back to levels of 38%, 39%, even 40% of coverage of private health insurance. And this is a remarkable turnaround my friends from what we inherited. We inherited a private health insurance system that was literally bleeding to death and it wasn't bleeding to death by accident, it was bleeding to death because of a deliberate wound inflicted on it by the former Labor Government. Labor does not believe in private health insurance. At best the Labor Party grudgingly accepts the possibility that people might like it. In their hearts they would like private health insurance to disappear. That is why Kim Beazley says it's a bad system but I suppose I'll have to keep it if I happen to be elected. That is why Jenny Macklin refuses to rule out means testing of the private health insurance rebate. And to borrow a hallowed phrase in Liberal Party terminology, as surely as night follows day if the Labor Party does win the next election there will at the very least be a severe means test on private health insurance. And we're not talking about a means test, I'm not talking about a means test for people earning $100,000 a year or more. I'm talking about a means test on an individual income of perhaps $40,000 or $50,000 a year because the economics of means tests are that unless you impose it at that kind of level you don't really save any money.
Now ladies and gentlemen one of the great reforms of the last year, one that can join taxation reform on the list of the Government's achievements over the last year has been the way in which we have been able to bring people back into private health insurance through a combination of the tax rebate, lifetime health cover, the gradual elimination of the irritation of the gap - one of the constant complaints of people who took out private health insurance.
So therefore as we look back over the last year it is a year of very significant achievement. It's a year in which we have seen the human dividend of good economic policies. I've frequently spoken of the reality that good economic policies are not ends in themselves. We don't get inflation down or interest rates down or get the budget back into surplus to pass some kind of economics examination, to get a tick from the International Monetary Fund, to get the approval of the financial markets or the financial writers. That's not why we do that, that's not why we pursue good economic policies. We pursue good economic policies because good economic policies produce contented, better educated, better employed, better paid people. The human goal of good economic policies is human satisfaction and human happiness. And if you want an illustration, an emblem if I can call it that of what we have achieved through our economic policies let me take you back only a couple of days ago to the unemployment figures that were released on Thursday. And those figures showed that in the four-and-a-half years the Government has been in office we've created almost 810,000 new jobs, that we now have the lowest unemployment rate in this country for more than ten years. We have the lowest youth unemployment rate for probably 20 years, we have a dramatically lower female unemployment rate and we are seeing in all parts of Australia, not just in Sydney where there's a lot of economic activity coming off the back of the Olympic Games, we are seeing broadly based job growth throughout the whole country. And this my friends is a dramatic illustration of the human dividend - the personal bonus that thousands of Australians are enjoying out of good economic policies.
And coming more locally here to Tasmania yesterday I was able to participate in something else that could be called a bonus, indeed we have called it a bonus. We've called it a social bonus and it's the extra funds that we've been able to make available for very necessary projects around Australia arising out of the sale of part of Telstra. Yesterday, accompanied I might say by the Premier, I'll come to that in a moment, I was able to formally launch Intelligent Island. Intelligent Island is a $40 million investment in making sure that Tasmania is up there at the very front of the information technology revolution that is sweeping the world. And this money was made available out of the proceeds of the sale of the second tranche of Telstra. And I ought to remind you and I should remind the Tasmanian people that that money, the availability of that money was trenchantly opposed by every Labor Member from Tasmania. Not one Labor Member or one Labor Senator voted to give Tasmania that $40 million. They fought it tooth and nail, and yet of course their Premier as he's required to do was there beside me because the Tasmanian government is happy to cooperate in the expenditure of that money, and so they should. I mean we do the hard work, we get it through, and they're there to help cut the ribbon. Now that's the nature of government and I suppose it's the nature of politics.
But don't let anybody ever forget that every Federal Labor Member and Senator from this State voted against $168 million of social bonus coming to the people of Tasmania and that's something that should always be remembered. And every time....if it hadn't been for the Coalition, if it hadn't been for the Liberal Senators and Senator Harradine, the people of Tasmania would have been denied the opportunity to participate in information technology advances which offer the hope of modernisation, of more jobs, and the participation of the people of this part of Australia in the information technology future of the world. And it will ever be to the discredit of the Australian Labor Party no matter how much catch up politics they now may indulge in, and it's proper that the government of the day should cooperate with us to make sure the money is properly dispersed and I don't criticise them for that, but I do criticise them and I will always criticise them for trying to deny this money to Tasmania and the people of Tasmania, the people of Bass, the people of Franklin, and the people of all the other electorates should remember that hard against every Labor Member and every Labor Senator at the next Federal election. It's an issue that should reverberate through this island State between now and the next Federal election.
Ladies and gentlemen when at the beginning of this council meeting the President of the Young Liberals of Tasmania read out the fundamental beliefs of the Liberal Party and of Liberals all around Australia, one of those fundamental, or many of those fundamental beliefs were built upon that great principle of respect and regard for the individual. And I've got to say and I'm particularly conscious as I address a gathering of Tasmanian Liberals, that back in 1991 when I was the Opposition Spokesman on industrial relations, that responsibility brought me into contact with a Tasmanian individual called Mr Alwyn Johnson, commonly known in this State as the man, the whistleblower in relation to one of the banks. I studied his case back in 1991 and I formed a view that he'd been the victim of a great injustice and it's a view that is shared by a number of my Tasmanian colleagues. Jocelyn Newman and many others have discussed this matter with me, and I believe that what's been done over the years, particularly by the current government, has been inadequate to deal with the injustice that that man suffered. We recently put to the Tasmanian government the proposition that there should be a joint Commonwealth-Tasmanian government inquiry into the circumstances of Mr Johnson's case. The Tasmanian government rejected that proposal and I'm announcing this morning that the Commonwealth will go it alone with it's own inquiry. I will announce in the next few weeks the name of the person who will conduct the inquiry, the terms of reference of the inquiry. We will of course seek the cooperation of the Tasmanian government and the Trust Bank in the conduct of the inquiry. But if the Tasmanian government won't assume its share of responsibility to see that justice is done for this man we will do it alone.
Now some may say this is a great deal of interest by a Federal government, a national government with its many responsibilities in the circumstances of one individual. But that is what good government is all about - it is ensuring that justice is done to an individual where the system has denied that person justice and the opportunity of properly being heard. And I am today as I was nine years ago when I first studied his case concerned that he has not been given proper justice, he's not been given fair treatment.
Ladies and gentlemen there are just two other things that I want to say to you this morning. The first of those is that we've now been in office for four-and-a-half years. We've achieved a lot, we've changed a lot, but where necessary we've kept a lot because government is about a combination of change and reform where that is beneficial but preservation and defence of traditional values and traditional approaches where that is essential. And the art of good government is to find the right balance and that is something that we have endeavoured to do over the last four-and-a-half years. And I believe that there is an understanding within the Australian community of the need to preserve that balance. I've always thought that Australians would respond to reform if you could persuade them of two things. You have to persuade them that the reform is good for Australia and you also have to persuade them that the reform is fair to all of the people of Australia. And in the end we won the argument about tax reform, in the end we triumphed over the cynicism and the sabotage of the Labor Party. We triumphed over the understandable concern of people about radical change because we were at every point able to persuade the people that what we were doing was good for Australia. And we were also able to persuade them that what we were doing was fair to the people of Australia. And that is why tax reform has been so widely accepted within the Australian community. That is why much to his disappointed the world did not fall in on the government or on the people of Australia on the 1st of July as Mr Beazley had hoped. And that is the principle that we are going to apply to other areas of reform and challenge.
Jocelyn Newman and I and others in the government have been working on the challenge of welfare reform. Welfare reform will not involve cutting people's benefits to which they are entitled. We are not a government that slashes pensions and takes away benefits from people who need them. We are a government that will always preserve the social security safety net just as we will maintain and defend the Medicare system because it's part and parcel of the social infrastructure of this country. But consistent with those commitments there is opportunity and scope for us in the years ahead to reform and strengthen Australia's welfare system. Based on a strong social security safety net, based on the fundamental Australian way of looking after people who really need help and looking after them decently and compassionately, but also recognising that if the State provides assistance for people it's not unreasonable to ask that something be given by those people in return if they are able to do so. And that is the principle of mutual obligation, it's the principle that's underpinned work for the dole and many associated projects.
So the final thing I say to you is that the reform process when you are in government is never ending. You don't mark time - you either go forwards or you go backwards. If you endeavour politically or in government to stand still and to be in idle you inevitably go backwards, you lose support, and you lose respect. We live in a world of incredible economic change and incredible economic opportunity. I have found in Tasmania not only in the last couple of days but also on the other visits I've paid in recent times, I have found a sense of hope and optimism. It's a sense of hope and optimism I find all around Australia. It's not confined to Tasmania. It is a product of the improved sense of national wellbeing and national confidence that this country has developed over the past few years. And that is in turn a product of our sense of pride in having achieved so much economically, in having stared down the Asian economic downturn, of having effectively made our mark in the leadership we displayed in relation to East Timor, and all of the other things that this Government has been able to achieve over the last four-and-a-half years.
We have achieved my friends a great deal together and I'm delighted to be back at this State Council. I was delighted to share some time yesterday with Sue and the members of the State Parliamentary Liberal Party to exchange experiences in relation to Opposition. I know what Opposition's like. I spent a lot of time there, won't go back again. Promise you that, won't go back again. Even better, been there done that. And all you've got to do in Opposition is work as hard as possible to get out of it and I know the experience and I know how difficult it can be and I've also experienced the exhilaration of being in government. And at a Federal level we can share some of those experiences with our State colleagues. And together all of us over the next 18 months can of course lay the foundation for a return to government here in Tasmania, but also from my vantage point to lay the basis of winning back seats from the Labor Party in the House of Representatives, winning back from those Members who voted against giving Tasmania an information technology future. Every last Labor Member in Tasmania voted to deny the children of Tasmania the information technology future that children all around this beautiful country of ours are entitled to. If we go into the next 18 months with that sense of determination and that sense of corporate Liberal spirit I think we can achieve both of our goals. Thank you. [Ends]