Subjects: Queensland Liberal Party; tax reform; national gun laws; East Timor and Indonesia; education
E&OE.................................
PRIME MINISTER:
Well thank you very much David, Con, to all my parliamentary colleagues, ladies and gentlemen. It's always good to be back in Queensland. It's always particularly good to be in Brisbane. The best thing about being Prime Minister of Australia of course always is the opportunity to travel around the country and meet the enormous variety of people who make up our remarkable society. And over the next few days I'll have an opportunity of savouring again a bit more of Queensland. I've got tonight here in Brisbane and tomorrow I go to Townsville to open that great zinc establishment which represents the largest investment by the Republic of Korea, for a company of the Republic of Korea, in Australia at Townsville. I then will attend the East Timor parade in Townsville which promises to be one of the greatest events that Townsville has had for many years. Then I'll go on to Cairns and do a few things there and then at about midday on Thursday just for a bit of a diversion I'll fly off to Korea for the weekend because Korea is a very important customer to Australia and there's a certain symbolism in the fact that I will be opening tomorrow the largest investment by a country in this country and that particular country Korea is normally Australia's second best customer.
But tonight I want to address a few remarks a little bit around the theme that David developed and that is doing things with the responsibility that you have of high political office. I've now been in politics, in parliamentary politics since May of 1974 and that is. it'll be twenty six years on the 18th of May since I was first elected. When I was first elected Gough Whitlam was halfway through his three years of being Prime Minister. A lot of people in this room hadn't been born when I was first elected and in fact my three children hadn't been born when I was first elected although one was very close to being born when I was first elected. And over that period of time I've had an opportunity of observing some enormous changes in our community and enormous changes in the way in which politics is operated. But one of the things that hasn't changed is the fact that the purpose of public life is to actually make a difference and to bring about change for the better for your community and for your country.
And particularly addressing some remarks to some of the students who are here tonight and I welcome that fact. Some of you will in your future lives support my side of politics, some of you will support the other side, some of you will be indifferent. Those of you who take an interest in politics, the only piece of advice I would give you, and I won't try and engage in propaganda, it never works. If you appeal to people's sense of reason and fairness and intelligence you have a far better idea of winning their hearts and minds than if you inflict them with a whole lot of propaganda. The one thing I would say is that if you do have a view about changing things for the better as you see it you should try and do something about it.
And what I have tried to do in the time that I've been in parliament and particularly the time that I have been Prime Minister is to actually identify some of the problems that Australia has, some of the road blocks that Australia has to being more successful and more competitive and to remove those roadblocks, whatever the political cost and the political danger may be. And a good illustration of that is of course on the 1st of July we see the introduction of the biggest ever change to Australia's taxation system. Now that's very risky, it would have been an easier life for me to have decided to put taxation reform aside, to have left it to another Prime Minister, to have left it to another government, to have said it's all very difficult; the Labor Party doesn't like it; the Democrats only like some of it and a lot of people out there are scared of change and we could have put it aside. Now that would have been easy and comfortable, it may have reduced the stress level of my political advisers, it may have made some of my marginal seat holders feel more comfortable but at the end of the day I don't know that it would have been doing a great service by Australia's future because in the end you are judged for what you are willing to risk in order to achieve something better.
If what you want to do is risk free and has universal support then of course it's easy to do. If what you want to achieve is not risk free and encounters a great deal of opposition well it means that it probably is going to in the long run be for the benefit of the country and is going to win in the long run the respect and the admiration of those who look back on the events of your time.
The introduction of this new tax system on the 1st of July will mean that the doing of business, the way in which we conduct our affairs will never be the same again but the change will be of enormous long term benefit for Australia. To 80% of Australians, those people who aren't in business all it will mean is that some of the things you buy are a little dearer, some are a little cheaper and some will remain about the same. And in addition to that everybody will enjoy a personal income tax cut, the level of that will vary according to the number of children you have, your level of income and the other responsibilities and expenses you might incur as you earn that income. It will make our exports cheaper and more competitive, importantly for a state the size of Queensland it's going to mean that fuel in rural and regional areas will be cheaper than it would otherwise have been. We're going to reduce the company tax rate to thirty cents in the dollar giving us one of the most competitive company tax rates in the Asian-Pacific region. We're going to virtually halve capital gains tax which will particularly make it more attractive for small investors. We're going to abolish provisional tax and we're going to make a whole host of other changes including getting rid of a very old-fashioned ramshackle wholesale taxation system.
Put together it represents the biggest, single economic shakeup that the this country has seen. It's copped a lot of criticism and it will go on copping criticism until it comes in and I believe though after it comes in and people realise that it is not as complicated, it is not as fearful, it is not as awesome, it is not as difficult as it's been represented by our opponents, I believe as time goes by people will see the wisdom of the change that has been made.
But as David said, politics is not just about economic change and economic reform. I've often been asked in the time that I've been Prime Minister if I had to record the things of which I'm most proud that the Government was able to do in the time that I've been Prime Minister. Of the three things that I believe are the Government's finest achievements only one of them is economic, the other two are the fact that we were able to achieve in 1996 uniform, national gun control laws. And I don't know whether any of you saw the television footage last night and this morning of those great rallies in the United States and I've got to say I don't always agree with Hillary Clinton on political issues but what she was saying about gun control law, and very interestingly one of the people who addressed those tens of thousands, particularly of women who gathered in Washington and all around the United States was she said that if Australia was able to do something in this area why can't the United States. And this is an example [applause] and this is an example, I mean we often hear in Australia, we often make the mistake of thinking we always have to imitate and follow those in other countries. There are occasions where others in other nations should imitate and follow us. And I know there are probably a few people in this room who thought the changes we made at the time went too far, I don't. I think those changes were what the Australian public needed, they were in the national interest and I believe as the years go by they will make a very significant contribution to a reduction in the murder rate in this country and will make Australia a safer society particularly for women and children.
And another issue of course which I've alluded to of which I was particularly proud was the role that we were able to play in defending the people of East Timor. For the first time in twenty five years of our relationship with an Indonesia incorporating East Timor an Australian government had to face the inevitable difficulty of doing something that would be unpopular with the Indonesian Government but would nonetheless be the right thing. And we stood up for the people of East Timor, we did the right thing. And can I say one of the things that really struck me in the weeks leading up to the decision we achieved in the United Nations to authorize an international force to go into East Timor was the steady stream of messages and faxes I got from school students, from school communities all around Australia. They weren't concentrated in one area, some of them were government schools, some of them were Catholic schools, some of them were non-Catholic independent schools, some of them were small schools and some of them were big schools but they were all saying one thing and they wanted the Government to take some action to stick up for what they believed was right. And I think they were right in sending that advice to their Prime Minister and I have absolutely no doubt that the Government was right in the action that it took.
But I don't look back on those events now with any lingering anger towards the people of Indonesia. It's very important that when you've had a dispute of that kind that you seek to put the negative part of it behind you. You don't ever retreat from what you did, you don't ever apologise for what you did because it was right but you recognise that Australia and Indonesia share a common future and a common destiny and it's very important that every effort, consistent with Australia's self respect and Australia's sense of national dignity, that every effort is made to rebuild the relationship between Australia and Indonesia.
So of the many things that we have done ladies and gentlemen in the time that we have been in government of which we're justifiably proud, not all of them are economic and political life and national leadership and political achievement involves more than economic achievement although that is tremendously important. And as David said you can't find the resources to build a compassionate society to look after the less fortunate if you don't have a strong economy. A strong economy provides the flesh and blood of social provision and the goal of a strong economy is to have a more contented society. I don't wake up in the morning and say, you beaut we have a GDP of X%. I don't wake up in the morning and think, isn't it marvelous that we have an annual growth rate of 4%. I wake up in the morning thinking in human terms of the fact that we've generated 653,000, almost 700,000 now after last week's figures, almost 700,000 new jobs since we came into government. That we have lower levels of interest rates, we have higher real incomes, we have more people in private health insurance, that we have achieved those things. And they are the real fruits and the real product of our economic achievement.
Now I don't pretend to any of you that we have done everything that we would have liked to have done and I don't pretend that everything that we have done has been popular and I don't pretend that there's not a lot of unfinished business but we have tried as David said to govern for the totality of the Australian community. And I said on election night in 1996 that I wanted to govern for the people who voted against us as well as for the people who voted for us and we have tried to do that.
And this of course, is a Liberal Party gathering and it's a Liberal Party gathering here in Queensland which is a very important State for us. We hold a lot of seats in Queensland. We have a lot of very good members and senators in Queensland and many of them are here tonight and we would like to hold a few more seats after the next election. And I want to particularly say to you Con, that you are doing an absolutely magnificent job leading the Liberal Party organisation here in Queensland. It's never easy. It's a thankless job being the volunteer unpaid president of a political party in any State. And I want to thank also Graham Jaeschke your State Director and all the other people responsible for organising the Liberal Party's affairs here in Queensland. We are now my friends, half way through the term that we won in October of 1998. The political debate and the course of political affairs will be very heavily dictated of course by the public reaction to the introduction of a new tax system on the 1st of July. But there are many things beyond that. And there are many other things that the government has sought to do. I am reminded by the presence of people from so many, such a diverse number of schools that one of the things that the government has done that I am particularly proud of is that we have underwritten the provision of greater choice in Australia's education system. I meet the students from the various schools I speak to you myself as a product of the State government high school system in New South Wales which gave me an extremely good education for which I am very grateful indeed. But I also speak as somebody who sent his children to government schools at a primary level and exercised the choice as a father, along with my wife of course, she had a very heavy influence to, very heavy, to send my children to independent schools at a secondary level. And that is the kind of choice that I want as far as it is humanly possible for every parent in this country.
We don't play favourites with education, amongst schools, what we seek to do is to give parents a choice of where they send their children for their education. And in many ways, Australia has the most admirable array of education choices for parents of any country in the western world. As I go around the world and I explain the structure of the education system in Australia, you may, many of you be surprised to learn that it is the envy of countries around the world. We are regarded as having a far more broadly based element of choice for education in this country than any country in the western world.
So there is much ladies and gentleman, of which the Liberal Party can be genuinely proud of what it has achieved over the last eighteen months and the two and a half years before that. But we face as you always do in politics, you face a constant struggle to maintain the supremacy of the communication of your own achievements. Politics these days is a lot more volatile than it used to be. There is a lot less tribalism in politics, people are far more prone to change their political allegiance according to a whim than used to be the case a few years ago. I often used to say that when I was growing up politics was roughly operated according to a forty-forty-twenty rule. Forty percent voted Labor, forty percent voted Liberal or National and twenty percent swung around in the middle. I often think now as I move around Australia instead of it being forty-forty-twenty, it has become thirty-thirty-forty. In other words there are fewer people who are rusted on, you get bigger swings, you get outcomes that you don't sometimes expect. And all of that of course presents a greater challenge to the energy and the intelligence and the integrity of those people who are in public life. But it is an enormous privilege to be Prime Minister of Australia. It is an enormous privilege to work as the leader of a very very dedicated parliamentary team and a number of my ministers are here tonight and I want to thank them and through them all of my parliamentary colleagues for the support and loyalty they so consistently give to me.
I have had a lot of marvelous privileges in the time I have been in this job and on many occasions it has touched me very closely. A few weeks ago I went to Gallipoli on ANZAC Day and I was overwhelmed by the enormous number of young Australians who were there. Young men and women between the ages of 17 and 25, the great bulk of the 10 or fifteen thousand people who were on Gallipoli that ANZAC morning. And it was an extraordinary demonstration of the growing wonderment and interest and affection of young people in Australia for our past. I don't ask that they look on our past uncritically, Australia like every other nation has achieved an enormous amount and like every other nation it has blemishes in its past of which we ought not to be particularly proud. But of course the commitment of the young men of Australia eighty-five years ago in that terrible campaign was of course one of the things of which we could be undeniably and unalterably very proud. And it certainly warned me a great deal to find this great interest and hunger for our history and our past which is so very important in helping us to understand our present and guiding us very much to our future.
Ladies and Gentlemen I think we have come a long way. I think Australia is a better and stronger and more respected and more firmly based country economically than what it was in March of 1996. We may do things differently from our predecessors and thank heavens we do. We may have incurred the wrath of some in the community, we may be attacked furiously because some in the community believe that our priorities are wrong. I say to our critics that we set out to do a number of things. We set out to strengthen the Australian economy and we have clearly done that. We set out to govern for the mainstream of the Australian community and not for minority vested interests and we have done that. We set out to propound and defend the values of Australia abroad and we have done that. We set out to rebalance Australia's foreign and defence relations away from an exclusive preoccupation with our region to a situation where we represented ourselves as a country that had important associations not only with our region which came first, but also with other parts of the world.
And we also set out to build in the Australian community a new social coalition that recognised that not all social problems can be solved by the Government, nor can they be solved by individuals being left alone, nor can they be solved by the welfare sector. But rather if we can galvanise the efforts and the commitment and the talents of all sections of Australian society then we can do that. We have had some magnificent examples of that. Last Friday morning in the most cosmopolitan part of Sydney, perhaps Australia, in King's Cross in Victoria Street King's Cross, I opened a drop in centre for disadvantaged women largely women who were fleeing domestic violence, often with their young children, called Lou's Place and this provided something of a Mecca, something of a haven for women fleeing very unhappy circumstances. And this was made possible through a combination of the efforts of Mission Australia which is one of the great welfare organisations of Australia and a group of men and women in business who decided to put back to society which had been so generous to them through their profitable businesses, put back some resources to help those in the community who are less fortunate. And it was a splendid example to me of the social coalition in action. And for our part as a government we have kept the social security safety net but we have also made it clear that we believe very much in the principle of mutual obligation. That society should support those who through no fault of their own cannot care for themselves but in return for that support if a person is able to do so that person should give back something to society. And that is the mutual obligation principle, that is the principle on which things like Work for the Dole are based.
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much for coming tonight, thank you very much for the support that you have given to the Liberal Party and thank you very much Con and Graham and David and all the other members of the Queensland Division of the party for the tremendous loyalty and support and help that you have given over the years to me both as Opposition Leader and as Prime Minister. We face an important election at the end of next year. I never take anything for granted in politics. I always assume that the next election is going to be a tough fight, the next one will be, but I am very confident that with your continued support and loyalty we will not only hold on to the seats we now have in Queensland but we have excellent opportunities in one or two areas of building on the number that we already have.
Thank you very much.
[ends]