Well thank you very much Tony, my other parliamentary colleagues, Helen Kroger the President of the Victorian division of the Liberal Party, ladies and gentlemen.
I'm especially pleased to be here today to address this business gathering, put together in the name of and in support of Tony Smith, the Member for Casey. Tony is one of three very talented younger new Federal Members that came into the Parliament from the state of Victoria at the last election. I have known Tony for a long time. He has political skills and political maturity and political judgement beyond his still very youthful years and appearance, and you are very fortunate, those of you who live in Casey and those of you who support the Member for Casey, you're very fortunate. And I'm an unhesitating admirer of him as one of the new generation of younger Federal Members of the Liberal Party that has come into the Parliament, and I'm very proud of the fact that at the last election we were able to bring in a group of men and women who had an enormous variety of skills.
We had people like Tony who had had significant experience as a political adviser, we had somebody such as Greg Hunt who had experience in that capacity and also in international organisations, and by contrast to that we had somebody on the central coast of New South Wales who had run a business that gave you warnings of lightning and storms coming - not a bad qualification for politics, I might say. It's an indication of the breadth of the talent that the Liberal Party continues to attract federally, and it's very important that we go on encouraging people who have a range of talent. We want to get people who represent every different aspect and every different facet, and I'm therefore particularly delighted to be here to support Tony and to very warmly commend him to you.
It is, as he said, an extraordinary time in the history of our country and an extraordinary time in the history of the world. And not surprisingly I want to say something about what has occurred in Iraq. I want to remind all of you that it's only a few weeks ago when the decision taken by the Government and the decision taken by the Government of the United States and the Government of the United Kingdom, was subject to fierce vitriolic criticism by many, not only in this country but around the world. And as inevitably happens with these things, we went through the various phases. When the military campaign started, people expected unrealistically that it would be over in three or four days. And then when it wasn't, they started to say, what's gone wrong, forgetting that the Gulf War in 1991 lasted for 42 days; forgetting that the bombing of Serbia on behalf of the Muslims - let us remind ourselves the Muslims of Kosovo who had been subjected to terrible genocide by Serbia - that campaign lasted 79 days; and that the core military operation in Afghanistan to topple the Taliban had lasted 37 days.
So we went through the next phase then of what has gone wrong. And then you went through the, what you might call the armchair general phase, where you had all the retired former military leaders coming out and saying well look, if only they had done it this way and if only Rumsfeld had listened to his advice, then everything would have been alright. And then all of a sudden, it started to turn and all of a sudden it started to come to a fairly speedy conclusion. And people have now realised that the military operation did proceed essentially according to plan. It has demonstrated a lot of things, and I'm no military tactician, but I think what has occurred in this campaign will be the stuff of military academy and military studies for many years into the future. This is probably the first military operation in history where the really lethal effect of real-time intelligence has been demonstrated in a quite dramatic way and a quite dramatic fashion.
The contribution that Australia has made militarily is one of which all of us can be incredibly proud. It's a contribution that is not just tokenistic. The quality and fighting capacity of our men and women is widely admired by our coalition partners, and the contribution that they have all made in different ways - the Royal Australian Navy firing in anger and in action for the first time since the Korean War when it provided naval cover for the Royal Marines in the south of Iraq; the commitment of the squadron of Hornets, once again the first operation of that kind for 30 or 40 years; and the combination of different elements in combat - all of which add up to a very significant military contribution.
And I don't want the military campaign to come to finality without the Australian public well and truly understanding the superb professionalism of what our men and women have done. And they have fought, not only bravely and professionally, but they have also fought very ethically. This is another point I want to make, and that is that unprecedented steps have been taken in this campaign to minimise, to the maximum extent it is ever possible, non-combatant casualties. You can never have a military operation without casualties, without combatant as well as non-combatant casualties. But the allies have gone out of their way to minimise them, and our own forces have operated according to our own rules of engagement and strictly in accordance with Australia's international obligations as a signatory to the various conventions that govern the laws of war.
And it's worth reflecting that all of the doomsdaying scenarios that were predicted, not one of them has been realised. And I have begun to see some welcome stories, and one of them in the Sun Herald this morning by Andrew Bolt in which he listed all these fearful predictions that have been made. The first disaster prediction was of course that there would be a street by street, house by house battle in Baghdad a la Stalingrad. That didn't eventuate. The next one was that you would have hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of refugees, that did not eventuate. The next one was that the Iraqis would set fire to every one of the 1100 oil wells in that country, that didn't eventuate either. And, of course, they were going to fire scud missiles into Israel and thereby provoke the entry of Israel into the military conflict, that didn't eventuate either. And it really has been a very remarkable operation and proper credit has got to go to the planners of it and particularly, of course, to the leadership role played by the United States with enormous help from the British and from us.
I'm very proud of what this country has done. What we did was right, what we did was very direct and very courageous. And can I say to this, as a Liberal Party gathering, the thing that made me as proud as anything else about this whole exercise has been the way in which every single member of the Federal Parliamentary Liberal Party and National Party supported the Government's decision. Just a couple of months ago there was a lot of controversy in the Australian community and a lot of people around Australia were uneasy about the possibility of us becoming involved without the passage of the 18th Security Council resolution on Iraq. We took the decision we did, and to their enormous credit all of my colleagues loyally supported it. And being men and women with natural reactions, I'm sure some of them would have gone through some self doubt about it, but in the end they all supported it. And the impressive display of unity and commitment, and dare I use such a word at a Liberal Party gathering - solidarity - that was demonstrated was one of the best displays of political purpose that I've seen and experienced in public life. And it's a great demonstration of what a first-class team that we have in Canberra.
Now, there are going to be a lot of difficult days ahead and whenever you have the overthrow of a tyranny, you go through a degree of turmoil and a degree of chaos - but that will settle, and over time the people of Iraq will choose another form of Government. It will be up to them to decide the precise form it takes. I suggested this morning when I opened the Commonwealth Law Conference just at the Convention Centre here in Melbourne, that they might possibly give consideration as the columnist, Greg Sheridan, in The Australian opined at the weekend they might give consideration to having a federal system because Iraq is a country that originally was a bit of an artificial construct back in the 1920s and it does contain strong ethnic and denominational within the Islamic faith religious differences. There may well be a case for a federation with the Kurdish elements of the Sunni and Shi'a elements in different parts of the country, but that will be a matter for the Iraqi people to decide.
And we will play a very important part in the process of helping the country in its reconstruction process. We will do it not only because we have international obligations to do so, but we'll do it because we are a nation that is willing to commit military forces but it is also willing to commit humanitarian relief. And I want to say that relief... want to say how tremendously impressed I was that having decided only on Saturday morning after a discussion with Senator Hill - the Defence Minister - that we would send those medical supplies into the Baghdad hospitals, they had arrived by last night and there are more on the way. And that action of ours has sparked action by the other coalition partners to get additional medical assistance and supplies into the hospitals. So, we are not only in the business of waging effective military campaigns, but we're also in the business of acting as a humanitarian provider of assistance to people who need it.
There are a lot of moments you remember in public life. All of us in this room, I guess, would have remembered the scenes of exhilaration in 1989 and 1990 as we saw country after country in eastern Europe throw off the yolk of Soviet imperialism and the world in eastern Europe changed. I remember those scenes as all of you do, but I'll always remember the scenes last week and the most fervent opponent of what the Government had done could not have been unmoved by the spontaneous exhilaration and expression of relief that was demonstrated by those people on the streets of Baghdad. And that in a way is what public life in the end is more about than anything else - to think that you can make an historic difference in the lives of people and that's what's been involved here and the decision that we took. Of course it had risks, of course it was criticised, but it was a necessary decision and a decision that had to be implemented regrettably without the involvement in a formal way of a further Security Council resolution.
Now, I haven't come here today to criticise the United Nations. The United Nations does have a complementary role to play in Iraq in the weeks and months ahead - an important role to play. But it stands to reason that the coalition forces will have to, in the interim period, represent the administrative authority. And over time, we want to see power transferred to the Iraqis in whatever form they choose. And I hope the process of them putting together an alternative government, an alternative government process, is not undertaken in undue haste because it is a country that if it gets it right on this occasion can have a wonderful future. It has huge resources of oil; it is potentially a very wealthy country; it has a well-educated population; it has a lot to draw on and if it gets the right kind of government and the government that sits well with the kind of people there, then I think it can have an absolutely magnificent future.
There are a lot of wild assertions being made by people that this represents a completely new approach to the conduct of international affairs by the United States. I think some of those assertions are very wide of the mark, indeed. I think people who generalise too speedily from individual decisions taken by great powers, and there's only one great power in the world now and that is the United States, completely misunderstand the motives and make inaccurate predictions about the future.
We entered this military campaign because we believed that Iraq, and believe that Iraq, had weapons of mass destruction. We did not want to see a rogue state like Iraq keep those weapons. Not only would that be dangerous in its own right but we feared that if Iraq were able to keep those weapons other rogue states would think with the world unwilling to do anything, they could do likewise. And the more countries like that that have such weapons, the greater becomes the likelihood that those weapons would get into the hands of international terrorists. And that would represent a very direct and lethal threat to countries such as Australia.
In the process of course we have inevitably, and axiomatically, removed a loathsome regime. And I believe as a consequence the world is a little less likely to be subject to international terrorism in the future than might otherwise have been the case. I can't say that it won't happen, and I'm sure that if there is a terrorist incident at any time in the next two years, anywhere in the world, the perpetrators of it will say we've done this in retaliation for what the Americans did in Iraq. They will say that, I make that prediction now, whether that is a true description of their behaviour or not. And that is the kind of world in which we live. And the world has changed as a result of the 11th of September. We do face the twin challenges of international terrorism and rogue states having chemical and biological weapons. And if ever they come together in a fatal mix the consequences could quite horrific. And that in essence is what the conflict was all about. But now as it is reaching its very terminal phases we must turn our minds to the future, we must turn our minds to the reconstruction of Iraq. We must turn our minds to reassuring our friends in the region that this was not a war on Islam, nothing could be a more monstrous perversion of our motives and our values to suggest that it was a war on Islam. And I'm very happy to say that in the discussions I had with the President of the largest Islamic country in the world, President Megawati, a couple of months ago in Jakarta, although she disagreed with our approach she said I accept totally that it is not a war on Islam and that she undertook to do everything that she could to communicate that judgment to other Islamic countries. Indeed the evidence emerging so far is that the backlash, if I can put it that way, from quite a lot of Islamic countries in relation to this has been a little less, once again than the doomsayers had predicted.
So can I just say that it has been a very difficult and a very challenging period. It's not over yet. But it's a period that has reminded me, and I think reminded the Australian nation of the capacity of this country to do things and to do things well once a decision is taken. I want to pay tribute to Alexander Downer and Robert Hill, the two Ministers principally who advise me and work with me and continue to work with me in this issue.
I do want to record my respect for the leadership displayed by President Bush. It's easy to attack the President of the United States. The United States is the most powerful country in the world, they're an easy mark for all the critics and all the people who have grumbles. And I think he's shown a very strong commitment to a set of attitudes and to an outcome and he's given very impressive leadership. And can I also say as a fellow participant in a parliamentary system of government how much I admire the leadership of Tony Blair on this issue. I have been constrained to say in the past, and I'll say it again here, that he's demonstrated what a strong Labour leader can do in a challenging situation. And I think he faced different challenges from what I faced. He had to look behind him rather than in front of him because the conservative Opposition in Great Britain gave full support to the Blair Government's decision.
But having spent a few minutes inevitably talking about Iraq, I wouldn't want any of you to think that we regard that issue as the only challenge that the Government has. The domestic political challenges remain. And our commitment to the maintenance of strong economic growth, our commitment to bringing down another surplus Budget remains as strong as ever. We are in the process of finalising some announcements relating to policy in important areas such as health. And I'll be having something to say about this within the next few weeks. And I want to emphasis that what we will be announcing will be designed to strengthen the existing system. We made a commitment before we were elected that we were going to maintain Medicare. And we have done that and the announcements I will make in a few weeks will strengthen and not weaken the Medicare system. We also indicated that we would provide greater incentives for people to take out and retain private health insurance. When we came to office private health insurance was about 33 per cent of the population and heading south. And it got down to about 31 per cent before our measures began to bring about a change. And it now sits at about 45 per cent of the population and it has bought about some significant changes. It's led to a 12 per cent increase in private hospital utilisation. And it's resulted for the first time in 2000/2001, the very first time since the introduction of Medicare in 1983, it's resulted in a very small fall in the number of public hospital admissions. And when you take those two things together, who can seriously dispute the proposition that the private health insurance arrangements that we introduced have began to take some of the pressure of the public hospital system.
But we remain committed to a partnership with the states in relation to public hospitals, which traditionally the Federal Government has made a significant financial contribution towards supporting. And they of course are hospitals that are maintained and administered by state governments. But we also intend to maintain to the full the universal principles of Medicare. And they are the right of any person to have free treatment in a public hospital. The right of all Australians to receive the Medicare rebate in relation to consultations with a GP. And of course the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme that provides very important safeguards and safety nets for all Australians.
Now I've taken a moment to talk about this very important domestic issue because the essence of good government is to maintain a policy focus in not only international areas, but also areas of domestic policy.
And can I say in conclusion ladies and gentlemen that we have, in my, I hope, humble view been a quite successful Government. And we've been a successful Government because we have been a very good team. I'm very proud to say that you couldn't have a more effective Deputy Leader and Treasurer than I've had in Peter Costello over the last seven years. I've already paid tribute to the work that Alexander Downer and Robert Hill have done. I don't think an Australian Foreign Minister has paid a visit to Washington ever which has been the subject of more high level attention and engagement than the one recently conducted by Alexander Downer. Australia is a nation that is punching above its weight. It's punching above its weight because it's performing very strongly economically. It's punching above its weight because it's been able to balance its foreign relations so that it is not seen as exclusively preoccupied with the Asian Pacific region as appeared to be the case under the former government. But it is nonetheless displayed a sensitivity towards that relationship. I mean let me remind you that of all the nations in the region where it's fair to say that our relations have witnessed the largest single quantum advance has been our relationship with China. We have doubled our exports to China, we have just signed an enormous natural gas deal which will guarantee supplies of natural gas over a 25 year period to China. Now these things illustrate a flexible foreign policy and a capacity to not only maintain the strength and the closeness of our alliance with the United States and other countries such as the United Kingdom, but also to deepen and to broaden our relationships with the nations of our region. There is no greater furphy in describing Australia's foreign policy than to say that we have neglected our relationships with the region. Indeed in the time I've been Prime Minister I've had more one on one meetings with the just retired President of China Jiang Zemin than I have with any other world leader. And indeed the very first country I visited as a Prime Minister was Indonesia.
So as we look back on that seven year period we can see a very strong team, a willingness as Tony said to tackle difficult issues. And certainly a determination for this country to play a very important role in the affairs of the world.
And lastly can I thank you for being here. The Liberal Party always needs your support. We're very proud of the fact that the Liberal Party, unlike the Labor Party, is not an appendage or a wholly owned subsidiary of any one particular section of the community. But we do listen to the business community and on most major issues the decisions we take are designed to provide a better economic climate for business. And over the last seven years with low interest rates, low inflation, strong economic growth, a highly competitive exchange rate, and all of the other things that you've experienced, I think we have created a very strong business environment. But we don't take that for granted, we want to work at it, we need your help, we need your advice, and we need your involvement in that process. And can I finish where I began in commending Tony to you as an example of the newer, younger very well motivated highly committed and very able members that we have in the Federal Parliament. And when you see people like that you have no cause at all for concern about the future capacity and the future strength of our Federal Parliamentary team.
Thank you.
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