Subjects: Pharmaceutical industry; New Tax System; 'can do'; community;
E&OE..................
Well thank you very much Mr Lilley. To Dr McKillop, the Mayor of Ryde, Councillor Edna Wilde, ladies and gentlemen.
To those who don';t live in the electorate of Bennelong, welcome not only to my electorate, but also welcome to the pharmaceutical manufacturing and information technology capital of Australia. Because without any doubt this area and most particularly North Ryde is increasingly the home for many major pharmaceutical manufacturing companies and many companies that are at the leading edge of technological, particularly information technology development in Australia.
Almost exactly to the hour and the minute a week ago, on the other side of Australia in Perth, I opened a new factory for a company called Kaelis and France originally associated with seafood, but now very much into the business of exporting what are colloquially called in the trade, frozen TV dinners for the Japanese market. Now you might think that is a tenuous link between what I am opening today and what I am honouring by way of investment today, but it';s not all that tenuous. Because having gone around that factory in Perth a week ago, and having gone around this marvellous facility and met so many of the employees, and had the opportunity of being told of the product, the modern technology involved, the value to the manufacturing process of information technology it was another reminder to me of how false is the dichotomy between the so-called old and new economies. There is really only one economy and that is the economy of successful companies that combine a basic human need and manufacturing for it with the latest and the most sophisticated information technology aids.
And just as I saw in that factory I opened in Perth a week ago, I saw again this morning as I went around your marvellous facility, I saw the application of very sophisticated technology. The manufacturing of product that meets a human need - pain relief, life preservation, things that have been with us and challenges that have been with us and have been part of the human needs of societies and nations from a very, very long period of time. So I want to congratulate AstraZeneca';s great achievements. I';ve got to thank Dr McKillop for the confirmation of another $30 million investment in manufacturing in our country.
Your company employs nine hundred people throughout Australia. That';s a very large workforce and many of you are here today and it';s very important to remark on the quality of the workplace relations of this company. Good workplace relations, good working conditions, proper remuneration, good communications between management and employees are absolutely indispensable elements of any successful company in Australia at the present time. There';s no successful company in Australia that has really bad workplace relations. Those who have bad workplace relations simply don';t achieve success.
Exports from your company have grown from less than $10 million in 1992, to more than $90 million last year. And in the past three years, as your chairman mentioned, $42 million has been invested by your company in research and development in the terms of collaborative, exploratory, clinical and pharmaceutical research.
We';ve heard a lot in the last week about 'knowledge nation';. Knowledge of itself is a very important commodity. It is indispensable. It is part of the very essence of our being as humans. But knowledge itself is not enough. Unless a nation has a capacity to convert knowledge into income and jobs, it cannot fully fulfil the human needs of our modern society. And the goals of government must there be to create to the maximum extent possible what I';ve often described in the past as a 'can-do'; community.
If you examine the history of Australia, you find that we have often been given the size of our population, at the forefront in invention. We';ve been in the forefront at turning ideas into a practical application in terms of an invention. But we have often lost the quality and the value that could have been captured to our society of those ideas because we have lacked the capacity to innovate and convert the invention, the knowledge into a product of commercial value in satisfying human needs. And of the many challenges that face our community in the years ahead, will be the challenge to be as innovative and as capable of converting out undoubted knowledge, the undoubted skills of our workforce, the inventive capacity of our workforce into products which generate incomes and provide jobs and satisfy human needs.
And your company here in Australia has been a very good example of that kind of thing. It';s prospered because it';s had a knowledgeable, contented workforce and it';s had the capacity to convert those, the ideas of that in a practical way into products that are of commercial value and are sold around the world. It recognises the value in the modern Australia of an export capacity. It recognises that the size of the domestic population is insufficient in so many areas to sustain the demand that is needed for a manufacturing capacity and therefore it seeks exports.
It is true as Dr McKillop said that the marketing environment in which AstraZeneca operates is very competitive. We';re very aware of that in the Government and that is why we have sought in our time in office to make this country as competitive as possible. There are obvious natural attractions in establishing your headquarters in Australia if you are an overseas company. The lifestyle of this country, its social cohesion, its openness, its lack of class pretension, all of those things make it a remarkably attractive country in which to live. But that is not enough, it';s necessary for it to be competitive. It';s necessary for it to have a competitive economy, a low inflation, low taxation economy. And that is part of the thinking that lay behind the Government';s recent taxation reforms that will give us one of the lowest corporate taxation rates in the world. It will virtually halve our capital gains tax, it will remove some of the disincentives for investment from abroad in the more entrepreneurial and venture capital risk taking exercises that any country needs in order to succeed and to prosper.
But are very conscious of the need for a benign, encouraging, welcoming, economic environment. And we are very pleased at the impressive number of companies in so many areas that are seeing the virtue of making Australia a place for investment, a place to establish regional headquarters for the Asia Pacific region and of course in a very special local sense, we are delighted that so many of them are choosing to establish their headquarters here in North Ryde.
So, for all of those reasons I am particularly pleased to be with you today. I want to emphasise how very important and high is the Government';s priority on pharmaceutical manufacturing. I am aware of the particular relationship that exists because of the nature of the Pharmaceutical Benefit Scheme in this country between companies such as yours and the Federal Government. And I understand very well, the legitimate claims and entreaties of the industry in terms of that particular relationship. I am aware and I salute the investment that your company has made in research and development, it is indispensable to the success of companies living in the modern environment. Yours is a great success story. You';ve not only been successful here, but of course you';ve been very successful in the United Kingdom and elsewhere in the world. And I thank you very warmly in opening this new phase of your company';s operations. I thank you very warmly for the face that you';ve shown to Australia. I thank you very warmly for the contribution that you are making in a highly competitive market. And I also salute the success commercially that you have achieved and the example that you represent to the modern Australia of how the future lies in combining in the most modern, sophisticated and technologically underpinned way possible, all of those manufacturing activities that continue to service an ongoing human need. And providing drugs, relieving human suffering, prolonging life, improving the quality of life has been an ageless human need, it will always be there and there will also be a very special place in society for companies such as yours. And in that spirit I congratulate the management and the workforce and I have very great pleasure in declaring the new stage of your company';s operations well and truly up and running. Good luck to all of you. I hope you go from strength to strength. Thank you.
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