9 October 2001
E&OE……………………………………………………………………………………
Thank you very much Chris, Dennis Napthine the Leader of the State Opposition, my other Federal colleagues, Bob Charles and Phillip Baressi and I know how much Bruce Bilson had wanted to be here today as well, but another engagement made that impossible. To my State Parliamentary colleagues, many of them gathered here today, to our candidates for the coming Federal Election of Ros Clowes in Chisolm, and Reg Steel in Bruce, my fellow Australians.
This is an opportunity for me to address a group of people representing a part of Melbourne and a part of Australia which has benefited enormously from the policies of my Government over the last five and a half years. And I was wanting a few moments to turn to some of those issues which are so important to the living standards of Australians in this part of Melbourne. But before I do so, can I touch just briefly on the world circumstances which are unfolding as we meet and as I speak.
It is a time of very unwelcome uncertainty. It is a time of enormous economic and strategic challenge. But it is important that we as Australians in response to that challenge, understand the great strengths of our society and understand the great capacity of free peoples around the world to work together to stare down and to effectively confront the face of evil which revealed itself with such deadly precision in the United States on the 11th of September.
It is important at a time such as this that we draw inspiration and strength from the fundamentals of our society. This is not a struggle between religions, it is not a case of Christianity and Judaism versus Islam, nothing could be more wrong or more unacceptable.
It is a case of those who believe in the right of free men and women around the world irrespective of their religious beliefs and indeed whether they have religious beliefs or not to live out lives free of disturbance and free of terrorism. But it’s important to effectively stare down the threat of terrorism that we get on with our daily lives. It is important to remember the great strength of Australian society, the great strength of the Australian economy, the great strength of democracy, to reach out again to people of all religions and of all races and of all creeds and of all backgrounds within our own society. We’ll be signalling that the terrorists have had a victory if we discriminate against all the unfairly treated, a person within our own society according to that persons religion or according to that persons racial background.
This is above all is a time for unity and inclusiveness and harmony and of the Australian people drawing on their great inherent strengths. It’s also a time for hope and optimism because we are a strong country. We’re not only economically strong, but we’re also strong in our belief, our democratic beliefs and in our Australian values and this is a time for us to balance the legitimate concern we have about events but also a sense of optimism.
I am confident that the action now underway under the leadership of the United States is action that is carefully targeted. It is action which is designed to respond in a powerful but effective way against those who visited the terror so indiscriminately and so brutally with such precise evil on the people of New York and the people of Washington on the 11th of September. And it is important in the context of all of those events that we here in Australia continue to debate the great issues that will face the Australian people and which need to be resolved through their choice of Government on the 10th of November.
We do so against a background of and influenced by the events unfolding around the world but we also do so in the context of what the two sides of politics are offering. And when you compare the two sides of politics in this election campaign we not only compare what they are offering during the five weeks of the election campaign, but perhaps more importantly what they have offered and what they have done over the last five and a half years. And can I say to you that I am very happy indeed to have the judgement of the Australian people on the 10th of November, made and delivered on the basis of what I and my colleagues have done over the last five and a half years compared with what Mr Beazley and his colleagues have done over that same period of time.
It’s important to remember that Mr Beazley’s been Leader of the Opposition for the same time that I have been Prime Minister and if he now says he has a difficulty in defining himself in five weeks before the Australian people, well that his fault it is not mine. It is his fault it is not the fault of the Australian people.
I am very proud of what this Government has done to change Australia for the better over the last five and a half years. Over the last five and a half years we have never shirked the difficult decisions. We’ve never been reluctant to court short term political unpopularity in the name of doing what was right for Australia. We have never been reluctant to take on the great reform challenges and the very strength and resilience that the Australian economy now has which will enable it to withstand better than most the inevitable downturn as a result of an already weakening United States economy compounded by the impact of the terrorist attack. We are in a better position to withstand that and that is due overwhelmingly to the reforms that my Government has put in place over the last five and a half years.
Reforms, I might remind you, that were opposed at almost every turn by the Australian Labor Party. Never let it be forgotten that not only did Mr Beazley leave us with $96 billion of Federal Government debt, but he also opposed each and every measure we took to repay that debt on behalf of the Australian people. And it will always be to their double discredit that they not only created the problem, but endeavoured to stop those elected in March of 1996 to address that problem and to put in place solutions.
But of all the things that we have done which have been of benefit to the Australian people over the last five years, no resonates more with the people of this part of Melbourne, none resonates more with the voters of seats such as Latrobe and Deakin and Dunkley and Aston and beyond - nothing resonates more with those people for what we have achieved in the area of lower home loan interest rates.
A very simple comparison tells you that in March of 1996 a person on $100,000 loan, which is certainly not an above average loan either here or in many parts of Australia, that person was paying $350 a month more to service his or her mortgage than they are paying at the present time. And indeed as this bar chart over here demonstrates, the levels in October of 1989 were dramatically high than what they even were in March of 1996. And I often speak of Labor’s triple legacy to the Australian people when they were voted out of office in March of 1996. They left us $96 billion of Federal Government debt. They left us interest rates which had reached levels for homebuyers of 17 and 18 per cent and even higher for farmers and small business men and woman and they also of course left us with a very high level of unemployment in peaking at just on 11 per cent during the time that Mr Beazley had been Minister for Employment. So let me say that of all the achievements of which my government is proud of the things we have done and the interests of Australian families and the interests of people wanting a start in life both with their first home and with their small business. There is no prouder achievement I have in what we have done to deliver to the Australian people decent and affordable levels on both to their homes and to their business.
Now as you know ladies and gentlemen, at the beginning of this year the National Account figures showed that the December quarter, because of some of the transitional impacts of the New Tax System on the home construction industry, that quarter went into negative due overwhelmingly to the impact of the downturn in housing constructions. And immediately, indeed within 48 hours of those figures being made public, the Government decided to act with a special additional measure and that is we doubled the First Home Owners Scheme. It was $7,00 for both new and existing homes and we doubled it for new homes from $7,000 to $14,000. And that measure combined with the sharp fall of interest rates that’s accorded under this Government has breathed new and great life into the housing construction industry in Australia. Now that extension is currently due to expire on the 31st December this year. When I announced it I said it would be $14,000 on a new dwelling until the end of this year.
I’m very pleased to announce today that if the Government is re-elected on the 10 November and to ensure that the recovery and consolidation of the housing industry is not affected as a consequence of the $14,000 reverting to $7,000 on the first of January in the year 2000, there will be additional assistance extending beyond the end of this calender year. And I announce therefore that from the first January next year until the first of July next year the first home owners grant for newly constructed homes will be $10,000, reverting to the original $7,000 beyond the first of July in the year 2000.
In addition the building commencement and completion requirements currently applying to the $14,000 grant will be liberalised. Under the new rules construction of the home must commence within 26 weeks of entering into the contract, instead of 16 weeks at present. And the contract must specify a completion date of 18 months, instead of the existing 12 months.
What we are therefore doing with this announcement ladies and gentlemen is that we are ensuring that there will be no adverse affect on the construction industry as a result of the sudden end, even thought it was announced when I made the decision some months ago, that there’ll be no sudden withdrawal or sudden impact on the industry as a result of the grant dropping back from $14,000 to $7,000 for new homes at the end of this year. We are going to phase in the return to the original level of $7,000 and we’re going to liberalise the conditions attaching to the utilisation of the grant. And as result of these measures the recovery and the consolidation of the home building industry will be assured. The coupling of these measures, the benefit the doubling to $14,000 over the past months, the coupling of that with the sharp fall in interest rates means that conditions could not be better both for new home buyers and for the housing construction industry, not only here in Victoria but all around Australia. And I know that this particular announcement will be widely welcomed by not only the housing industry association but also by new home buyers and indeed first home buyers all around Australia.
Ladies and gentlemen occasionally over the past several years whenever I talk to my federal colleagues who are here today and one or two of them who aren’t here, I occasionally get reminded of the important of a particular freeway. I think they call it the Scoresby Freeway. In fact I’m certain they call it the Scoresby Freeway. And I mean there’s a certain kind of sort of ministerial side step, if I can use a rugby expression, ministerial side step, well known around Parliament House and it’s called the Scoresby side step because whenever certain Ministers see certain colleagues from this part of Melbourne striding determinedly towards them in any of the corridors of Parliament House they know for certain they’re going to say something about the Scoresby Freeway. Well I want to say something about the Scoresby Freeway today. I want to say to you in the plainest possible terms that the Commonwealth Government is absolutely an unconditionally committed to finishing this $890 million road by June of 2008. There won’t be any tolls on the road.
When I first declared that this would be a road of national importance I announced an initial allocation of $220 million with the balance to be funded by both Governments following agreement with the private sector. The issue then to be resolved was how and over what time frame this would be done. I now announce that the Commonwealth Government will fund our entire 50 per cent share right out to the end of financial year 2007/2008 which is the total period of construction and that as a result the total Commonwealth funding will therefore be in the order of $445 million over this period of time.
This is an iron clad, unconditional, straight forward, black and white commitment. A memorandum of understanding as I gather been signed which commits the Victorian Government to matching the Commonwealth Government contribution. So after a lot of prevarication they claim that they have finally came to the party. But let me make it very clear we are committed to the construction in full of the Scoresby Freeway, we’ll contribute 50 per cent of the money and we’ll do it over the time frame that I’ve outlined. And I wait with interest the reaction of the federal opposition to this because it was only a few months ago that the Deputy Leader of the Opposition Simon Crean said in response to a statement by the Greens that they wanted the road stopped, he said that was a reasonable request, it was worth looking at.
Ladies and gentlemen, this election on the 10 November is being fought in different circumstances. And obviously the issue of experience, of stability, of leadership strength and all of those things will be issues that the Australian people will take into account. But not only take them into account in assessing the capacity of myself as leader of the government and Mr Beazley as Leader of the Opposition to deal with in terms of the immediate challenges but they’ll also look back over what we have done over the last five and a half years. And if there’s been a feature or hallmark, an exemplar of what we have tried to do over that period of time, it’s been our determination to put Australia’s interests first. We have embraced some very difficult issues. We have tackled things like Australia’s involvement in the defence of the freedom of the people of East Timor. We have embraced comprehensive taxation reform, that wasn’t easy and some aspects of it drew criticism. And it was necessary to fine tune the administrative details of it. But nobody can deny that Australia needed taxation reform. We’ve needed it for a quarter of a century but it took this Coalition Government, it took this Liberal Government that I’m proud to lead, and very ably supported by a Treasurer in Peter Costello who poured his heart and soul into the development of the new taxation system. It took the team that we represent to the Australian people, it took us working together in order to bring about something that had been needed for more than a quarter of a century.
We have lower personal income tax to the tune of $12 billion a year, we’ve effectively halved capital gains tax for individuals. One of the reasons why our export performance has been so outstanding over the last year is that we have taken the impact of embedded indirect taxes out of our exports. And so the list goes on. We’ve been courageous enough to tackle industrial relations reform. Once again a reformed, indeed a transformed competitive Australian waterfront made possible through the commitment of Peter Reith in particular as Minister for Workplace Relations. That is another reasons why our export performance is so outstanding. In other words over the last five and a half years we have not sought to sit idly by and allow events to influence and overwhelm us. We have at every turn endeavoured to influence events and to move them towards a direction which is putting Australia’s interests first.
So when we vote on the 10 November the Australian people will have a clear choice. They’ll choose between a government that has made Australia strong, a government that has prepared the Australian economy for the inevitable pressure that it’s going to suffer over the months ahead. A government that has never shirked responsibility of taking difficult decisions. A government that has generated almost 900,000 more jobs and a government that has cared for the needs of people living in electorates such as Aston and Dunkley and Deakin and La Trobe.
I mean one statistic that really is a metaphor for what this government has done for communities such as this was given to this morning. Can I tell you that there are currently 1,444 women doing apprenticeships in the electorate of Aston and the comparable figure six years ago was a mere 176. Back to the 30th of June this year there were 320,800 new apprenticeships in Australia. It’s 140 per cent higher than what it was in 1995. There’s an increase of 15.5 per cent since June of last year and the growth in apprenticeships is the biggest ever over the last five years that the Australian apprenticeship system has ever experienced. And the message in this that it’s taken a Liberal Government to give to the sons and daughters of the working men and women of Australia a greater opportunity to get an employment and training place in the sun than any Labor Government in their 13 years of office were able to do.
The final reason ladies and gentlemen why I ask you and I ask all of the people of the electorates represented here today to return their sitting Liberal members and in the case of the other electorates, in the case of Bruce and Chisholm to elect Reg Steel and Ros Clowes, the reason why I ask that to be done is that in the case of our sitting members they are outstanding representatives. In the short time that he’s been the member Chris has won the respect of all of us and we see him as a very fitting and worthy successor to the late Peter Nugent who did so much for the electorate of Aston. And can I say to you Chris that your victory was a tonic like none other for the Coalition when it occurred. If there’s been any moment in the fortunes of the Coalition this year, when one felt the times were a changing it was the night we stated to get the results flowing in from the by-election in Aston. It was a magnificent campaign, a great tribute to the Liberals of Victoria and a tremendous reminder to all of us that if we have good candidates, good representatives, we communicate our message with passion, we work hard, then you can resist tides and you can turn things around.
To all of my colleagues, to Chris and to Phil Barresi and to Bob Charles and to Bruce Bilson who’ve represented this part of Melbourne so magnificently I express my very warm thanks. It's not going to be easy winning this election, don’t believe the talk that you read about certain results being ordained, they are not. Election campaigns are always hard, winning third terms are extremely difficult. So I exhort all of you to work as hard as you possible can to give all the help you can to these magnificent candidates and if we do that we can hope that in the 10 November we’ll be given the privilege once again by the Australian people of governing this wonderful country. Can I finally say to you as I’ve said to many audiences already as I’ve moved around Australia, I have never been more committed to anything in my political life than winning the election on the 10 November.
I am absolutely determined with my colleagues to see Australia through these new and difficult economic and other challenges which we face. With your help and with the good will of the Australian people we can once again be given that privilege and that opportunity. Don’t take it for granted, you never can. You have to work hard to the very end to earn and retain the support and the respect of the Australian people. We’ve done that in the past and we can do it again and I look forward to a great result of the 10 November.
Thank you.
[ends]