E&OE..................
Thankyou very much Michael, to all of my parliamentary colleagues, ladies and gentlemen. I thank you very warmly for turning up in such very large numbers under the Yabsley summons, just ten days out from a very important election. I think you have made a sound decision to be here. And I think the enterprise is therefore very soundly based.
As you can imagine I am totally and utterly and compulsively focused on the next ten days. In ten days time the Australian people will, in the great democratic tradition of which we are proudly part, the Australian people will decide whether I remain as Prime Minister with my team or Kim Beazley becomes the Prime Minister. That is the choice and that is the stark reality that faces all of us in political combat. We are ultimately accountable to our masters and our makers and that is the Australian people.
Overlaying everything in this election campaign are two predominant issues. Everything flows from the assessement you make in relation to these two issues. And those issues are the national security of Australia in its broadest sense and the other issue is the economic management of Australia in its broadest sense. We all know, because of the terrible events in the United States of the 11th of September, seared in the minds and the hearts of the people in this country in a way like no other event in my life time and impacting on me in a special way because Janette and I were in Washington the day it occurred and we had seen the President for 3 hours only the day earlier. But it';s an event that has altered the world. It';s altered the way we must behave as nations, it';s altered the way we have to respond to challenges. And it has multiplied the national security challenge of this country. Not in the sense that the threat to Australia is as great as the threat to other countries, but we are all now more vulnerable and it means above everything else we need a group of men and women governing this country that have got a proven record of having taken difficult decisions in difficult times. It';s one thing to expound the theory of national leadership in a time of security crisis, it';s another thing to have demonstrated a capacity to take difficult decisions in difficult circumstances. And if I can be very specific on this issue because the Australian people in 10 days time have got to make a very specific choice. If you want somebody to lead the country at a time of great security challenge, surely you would choose somebody who has a track record of having in his earlier experiences taken difficult decisions and swum against the tide of public opinion. And I think there';s one thing that I can, I hope with no immodesty claim, over the last five and a half years is that we have demonstrated a capacity to tackle difficult decisions.
Industrial relations reform was not easy. Reforming the Australian waterfront, the mantra of the business community of Australia – there';d probably be 100 or 200 business men and women in this room who at various stages have come to me in my various political guises and said, one day, sometime a Prime Minister of this country has got to summon the courage to take on the Maritime Union of Australia and clean up Australia';s waterfront. We did that, we did that in 1998. And this country and its economy will forever be in the debt of Peter Reith for the extraordinary courage and tenacity he displayed on that occasion.
It wasn';t easy introducing tax reform, I can tell you. You know it. It had its complications, it inflicted some transitional difficulties on a number of people in business. I know that, I regret that and we tried to respond to their concerns. But we all knew in the end it had to happen. The easy thing would have been to have coasted to the 1998 election without a program for taxation reform. But we decided that in the long term interests of Australia it had to be undertaken. And I ask the rhetorical question, bearing in mind the sort of economic challenges that John Simons referred to that we undoubtably face because of the downturn accelerated by the terrorist attack in September, where would we be economically if we had not reformed our industrial relations system. If we had not reformed our taxation system. If we had not by the end of this financial year repaid $58 billion of the $96 billion of Federal Government debt that was our inheritance in March on 1996. The fact that we have run a growing economy, a strong economy, a more open economy over the last five and a half years means that we can face calender year 2002 more confidently and more robustly than would otherwise have been the case.
So if you are somebody who is undecided and I address this question beyond the people present in this room, but I never make assumption about anybody, I';m a cautious person by nature. And I address this question to the generality of the Australian community that if at a time of great security challenge, when you do need a steady hand at the helm, you do need somebody who is willing to take difficult decisions in difficult times. Surely a track record of having done so over the years is a very compelling argument for that person to be given preference and to be given support. The management of the Australian economy over the next few years will be more difficult than it has been over the past three years. I don';t want to overstate that but equally I don';t want to hold back in candidly acknowledging that it is going to be more challenging.
America was stagnating economically before the 11th of September. Although the more optimistic view was that by the first half of next year it would have begun to come out of that. The 11th of September has knocked the stuffing out of large sections of the American economy, although certainly by no means all. And never underestimate the extraordinary recuperative powers of the Americans. Because of the great flexibility of their economy, their largely unregulated economic life means that they can bounce back in a way that no other economy in the world has the capacity to bounce back. But that can';t alter the fact though that it is going to be more difficult.
But the good news is that we are in better shape. The good news is that we have very low levels of debt. The good news is that we have very low interest rates and John Simons is particularly buoyant on that subject and that is very important. I know it sounds a simplistic way of putting it but gee it';s relevant. The average home buyer in Australia now is paying $350 a month less than he or she was paying in March of 1996. And that same average person, courtesy of the higher productivity that our industrial relations reforms has delivered, that same person is taking home a higher wage and is paying less tax as a result of the introduction of the new taxation system.
There are many ironies in political life. But two really hit me in the face in this election campaign. The Labor Party';s passionate historical cry is that it';s for the working man and the working woman. That the Labor Party cares about individual workers, yet interestingly enough in the time that we have been in Government, real wages have risen by 9.2% and in the 13 years that Mr Hawke and Mr Keating were Prime Ministers real wages in Australia grew by only 2.3%. Now I would have thought that at its most basic, looking after working men and women in this country was all about ensuring that their interest rates were low and that their real wages continued to grow. The reality is that we have been far more successful in delivering greater take home pay and more disposable income after looking at the necessities of life such as the mortgage and the food bills and the rent and the like than the 13 years of the two Labor Prime Ministers.
And the other very interesting thing is the almost total neglect in the Labor years of apprenticeships and traineeships. We';ve heard a lot today from Mr Beazley about university education, and that is very important, it';s enormously important to all of us but we ought to remind ourselves that 70% of the young men and women of Australia who leave school do not go onto university and those people were ignored during the Labor years. And one of the things I boast of most readily and with great pride about our five and a half years in office is that we have presided over a 140% increase in the number of apprenticeships and traineeships in Australia, 140%. It';s gone from something like 135,000 where it had languished for 10 or 15 years to more than 305,000. And that has involved a dramatic lift in the number of women in apprenticeships and traineeships and also a very significant increase in the number of indigenous Australians in apprenticeships and traineeships.
The reality is, my friends that, and I was reminded of this reality when I saw the three words, jobs, health and education on the Labor Party logo at the launch in Hurstville this morning of Mr Beazley';s campaign, and I thought to myself well we all believe in jobs and good health and good education and then the thought crossed my mind and it has at many times during this campaign that the foundation of job growth, the foundation of having the resources to spend more money on health and more money on education is a growing economy. Unless you have a growing economy you can';t spend more money on health and education, in fact you will end up spending less. Unless you have a growing economy you can';t generate jobs. You can';t create a better health system, a better education system and more jobs in isolation from a growing economy.
And one of the great myths of course that has been put around about this government of mine over the last five and a half years is that we have left public education in this country impoverished and that we';ve been biased or displayed a prejudice in favour of independent schools. Let me just give you three very simple facts. Fact number one is that in the time that we have been in government the Commonwealth has increased its expenditure on government schools over five and a half years by 43 per cent, although the enrollment in government schools over that period of time has grown by 1.8 per cent. At the present time 69 per cent of Australian children are educated in government schools and the financial provisions for government schools from all governments is 78 per cent of the total amount of money spent on education by all governments. And the other statistic I would simply give you is that in the time that we have been in government total Commonwealth spending on all forms of education has risen by 17 per cent in real terms.
The last five and a half years have been for me and for all of my colleagues a period of immense privilege. I have never at any time in my political career, and certainly not in the time that I have been Prime Minister, I have never taken the Australian people for granted. And can I tell you I';m not taking them for granted now. This election is not an easy fight. Don';t believe in their simplest terms, the polls published yesterday in the Australian or in the Sydney Morning Herald. Because of the decision of the Australian Democrats for the first time in their history to go in for discriminatory preference allocations, the challenges we have in many of the marginal seats is much greater. And what the Democrats have done is to display their pro-Labor bias, to put their pro-Labor colours on display. And as a consequence the task in front of us is that more difficult.
The other challenge that we have of course is that when you';ve been in office for two terms and you';re coming up for a third term there';s always a tendency for people to think well they';ve had two terms, they might not have done a bad job but we might as well give the other crowd a go. And that is a tendency that the government has had to fight through the whole of this election campaign. There are many reasons of course why I would grieve if we were defeated, why many of you would join me in that reaction. But I guess the greatest single challenge and the greatest single threat this country has and most particularly can I say very directly the business community of Australia has if there is a change of government on the 10th of November is that you will have Labor Governments in Canberra and Labor Governments in every state of Australia with the exception of South Australia. You will have wall to wall, coast to coast Labor Governments and the implications of that for industrial relations are enormous.
Two terms is not enough to entrench fundamental change, you need at least another term to entrench fundamental change in the economic and industrial culture of a nation so that even if a government of a different persuasion is subsequently elected they feel under no pressure to rollback those changes. Look at what';s happened in Britain, Tony Blair hasn';t rolled back any of the fundamental industrial relations changes that have been made by Margaret Thatcher, because the conservatives had been in power for sufficiently long a period for that not to be realistic. But mark my words, if Labor wins on the 10th of November they will have no compunction at all about rolling back our industrial relations changes. The Australian workplace agreements will go, the secondary boycott protections in the Trade Practices Act will go, the right of automatic union entry into a workplace, even if there are no employees associated with that union will be restored, compulsory unionism will be brought back, this pernicious practice that I think started here in New South Wales where the union can bill a non-unionist for the alleged improvements the unions have gained in their terms of work and condition, that will become part and parcel of life throughout Australia.
Now I don';t exaggerate this because I';ve read in detail Mr Beazley';s industrial relations policy and his rollback of industrial relations will actually take us back to the period that operated in the early years of the Hawke Government, he would actually go back further than the Keating Government was prepared to go in the area of industrial relations. He has a more orthodox, traditional, Labor Party view about industrial relations than even his predecessor. Now I don';t normally talk in comparably favourable terms of his predecessor so it must be a pretty important distinction for me to acknowledge it. But it is a distinction, believe you me there was just a tiny smidgen of recognition in the fist year of the re-elected Keating Government in 1993 about the need to change, but it disappeared pretty quickly. But that is a pretty serious issue, the no ticket no start signs are up in Perth, and they';ll be up all over the country if you have a Labor Government on the 10th of November. And I don';t exaggerate because the frontbench of the Labor Party, if it wins government, will have every former living ACTU President there with the exception of Bob Hawke, and he';ll no doubt be giving a little bit of advice from the sidelines.
So my friends that is not just a rhetorical attack you might expect from a Liberal Prime Minister 10 days out from an election, addressing a business gathering in the CBD of Sydney, it';s not. It';s a statement of the reality. Because of the many issues that I';ve devoted myself to - policy issues - in public life there';s none I';ve been more passionate about than the need to reform our industrial relations system. It was the biggest single cultural change we needed for our economy, even bigger in a sense than taxation reform, although not as far reaching and not as comprehensive. But once we started to change the culture of Australia';s industrial relations system we had within it the capacity to lift our productivity. And one of the reasons why our productivity has gone up so much over the last few years is we';ve got a much better industrial relations system. And if we throw that away as surely as we will if we elect a federal Labor government on the 10th of November this country is going to pay a very heavy price indeed.
And my friends this is therefore a very critical election. All elections are important but this has about it a tinge of immediacy and gravity that perhaps even the election of 1998 and some other elections in the last few years haven';t had. Because we have entered a more difficult and potentially dangerous period of our history. I don';t sound undue alarm, I simply state the obvious. We are engaged in a world coalition against terrorism, we have no alternative in our own interest other than to be part of it. Because that foul attack was an attack on us as much as it was an attack on our American friends.
We have found ourselves in an area of the world where so much of our future economically and politically lies. Our relations with the nations of our part of the world are important, indeed they';re crucial. But those relations have got to be based on mutual respect, they cannot be based on unilateral accommodation, which appears on occasions to be the mantra of my political opponents. We have to over the next year or two chart a course for this country that maintains the strength and the durability of our alliance with the United States, which reaches out to our neighbours in the region, that reinforces our credentials for tolerance and cultural accommodation within our own country. The struggle we're engaged in at the moment is not a struggle against Islam or against the people of Afghanistan, and I';ve said on many occasions and I would say it again that each of us, whatever or own background might be has a responsibility to reach out to the 300,000 Australians of Islamic and Arab background and make sure they feel every hour of their lives that they are as much a valued part of the Australian community as any other person. Because what the terrorists assaulted was a way of life more than anything else and what is worth defending and what is worth fighting for is a way of life more than anything else. And that way of life is tolerance and openness and cohesion. A nation that respects people according to their contribution and their ultimate commitment to their country and that is really what being a fair minded Australian and it';s what the Australian fair go is all about.
This my friends is not a time to risk it with somebody and with people who have a great capacity for flexibility. Particularly on policy and even within the space of 24 hours. It';s not a time to elect a party which for three and a half years has told us that the Goods and Services Tax is poison and is responsible for every single calamity in the Australian nation, without exception and then when they finally unveil their rollback they tell us they';re going to keep 97 per cent of it.
It';s not a time to elect a group of people who having left us with a $96 billion debt, spend all their waking hours in opposition trying to stop us implementing the policies to roll back that debt. And it is not a time to elect to the treasury benches of Australia a group of people who are perfectly prepared to behave like political guerillas in relation to attacking all of the reforms that this government has bought about. And then to have the nerve to complain that we haven';t left them enough money to spend on their particular pet projects. Because of all of the more outrageous complaints I';ve heard from Mr Beazley over the last year he keeps complaining that I spend money on things that he';s asked me to spend money on. I mean he says look the surplus is not big enough. What have I spent the surplus on? I spent the surplus on extra defence, he says he agrees with that. I spent the surplus on extra road funding, he said he agrees with that. I've spent some of the surplus on welfare reform, he said he agrees with that and he wants more. I spent some of the surplus on getting rid of half indexation of petrol excise, he said he';s in favour of that too. I spent it on science and innovation, he said we should spend more on that and so the list goes on. In fact I put out a list of expenditure programmes that totals $17 billion over a four year period and every single item was an area of expenditure where he had called for government action. Apparently he wants the programmes to be supported but he doesn';t want any of the money spent on them. Well that of course is not real life, every last dollar of that expenditure was important for supporting the economy and important to achieve the social goals of this government. Because government is not just about the bottom line, it';s not just about good economic management, although that';s the foundation of the capacity to do other things. It is also about those important social provisions that maintain a cohesive and united Australian community.
Finally ladies and gentlemen as I look around this room I see many many familiar faces. I';ve addressed many luncheons of this type over the years here in Sydney and many of you here have been my very good friends through thick and thin. I said the other day when I opened NIDA that there was a bit of similarity between a politician and an actor. That you often played to full houses and sometimes by interval it had emptied, or half emptied and then some of them started to come back. Well I';ve gone through that experience. People have started off listening and they';ve gone away and then some of them have come back, the trick of course is to get them to come back at the right moment and I';ve been working hard on that over the last 3 or 4 weeks. But can I say to those of you here who have been great friends of mine over the year, thank you very much. Whatever the outcome is on the 10th of November, I will remain forever grateful to you for the support and the loyalty that you';ve displayed towards me over the years.
I';m cautiously hopeful about what the result is going to be. But I';ve been in this game so long as to be incredibly suspicious even of cautious hope. That you really do have to play it right down to the wire and the last thing I want to say to you is that although I';ve been in public life for a very long time, I have an incredibly energetic commitment to the next term. If I can be given the opportunity of serving the Australian people again as Prime Minister I won';t let them down. I will see them through what is probably the most difficult and dangerous time this country has faced in the last quarter of a century. I';ll set about from day one implementing the program we have outlined. I will renew with great energy my commitment to the job. I have to say that when people talk to me about stress, they say do you suffer any stress? And I say to them I have a theory, and that theory is you don';t suffer from stress unless you are doing something you don';t like. I can tell you I';m not suffering any stress at all. I';ve never been more stimulated by this job, I';ve never felt more equal to it';s challenge and I will be so very honoured if the Australian people ask me to continue to serve them.
Thank you.
[ends]