Thank you very much Rosemary, Rob Kerin, Alexander Downer, Bruce McDonald, my other federal and state parliamentary colleagues, ladies and gentlemen.
Can I start by congratulating Bob Randall on his election as your new President. I look forward to working with him and other members of the south Australian Division in the lead up to the next election.
Can I also again as I did last night and at lunchtime yesterday, thank Rosemary Craddock for the tremendous contribution that she';s made as President of your Division over the past three years. I';ve worked with her with ease. Relations between the Executive and my office have been very close and smooth and I look forward to a continuation of that partnership with your new President.
Can I also say how very important it is to me that the federal and state parliamentary parties all over Australia work as closely as possible. We';re rather lonely being the only Liberal government in Australia at the present time. I don';t like those dinners at the Lodge with no Liberal friends the night before Premiers'; conferences meetings and I look forward to working with Rob and others around Australia to bring about that change.
My friends annual Party conferences are a great opportunity to talk in the broad about our goals for Australia. And at Party conferences in Western Australia and Tasmania and now here in South Australia, I want to remind all of our supporters that the things we do and that the things that we stand for and the policies that we seek to implement are designed to achieve three great goals for our country. And they are goals that I believe the main stream of the Australian community very strongly shares. And those three great goals are national security, economic strength and social stability.
National security is understandably very much in our minds. We live in a different world from the world that the Coalition government inherited in 1996. We live in an age of terrorism. We live in a region which is threatened with the possible challenge of failed states where Australia must play a key leadership role. And we also live in a world where it';s important to understand that the interests of Australia do not lie in having all of our associations and all our relationships in one part of the world. Rather the interests of Australia lie very much in seeing this country as a citizen of the world. A nation which in the words of the foreign minister is a significant, powerful, respected nation. A nation which especially over the last few years has been able to punch above its weight. A nation that is seen because of its strong economic performance and because it is willing to take a stand alongside friends. A nation to be respected and worked with.
And one of the things that I take particular pride in observing is that in the time that we have been in government we have seen a further deepening of our already close relationship with the United States. But that has been done without in any way prejudicing the maintenance and the further development of our very close relations with the nations of Asia. Only last week I visited Beijing and met for the first time the new President and the new Premier of China. The leaders of the largest country in the world. And the President of China will visit Australia before the end of the year undertaking a visit to this country on one of his first significant overseas tours. It underscores the fact that our relationship with Beijing based on a pragmatic identification of things that we have in common whilst recognising that historically and politically and culturally we are very different societies. But you can simultaneously build very close relations with our traditional allies such as the United States and also build ever closer relationships with the countries of Asia. It is a period in which we are co-operating more closely than ever with the government of Indonesia in the common fight against terrorism. And that fight will go on for a long time. And that fight has already carried our armed forces to Afghanistan. Its seen us lose 88 of our fellow Australians in Bali. It sees us challenged to the ongoing response to barbarism and terrorist behaviour in Iraq.
And on the subject of Iraq just let me briefly place on record again my rejection of the allegations made in Canberra yesterday by a former officer of the ONA that in some way the government deliberately distorted and misrepresented the intelligence assessments that came to it. All of the statements that we made about intelligence were consistent with the assessments that we had received from the agencies. Mr Wilke would have had access to raw intelligence data and ONA assessments but I have been informed by the Office of National Assessments the body from which he resigned, that he did not have access to some very important and very sensitive intelligence material concerning Iraq. But that is not really the point. He';s not produced any evidence to support his allegations that the government fabricated and distorted its Iraqi intelligence material. The truth is that the government didn';t that. I didn';t do it. The Foreign Minister didn';t do it and the Defence Minister didn';t do it. And can I while mentioning both of those gentlemen, both of my very senior colleagues Alexander Downer and Robert Hill, the two Ministers who more than anybody else in the Cabinet who shared with me the particular challenges of the past year. Alexander Downer is now short of being by a relatively short period of time Australia';s longest serving Foreign Minister. And I want to record before his home audience of South Australia what a great job that he';s done as Foreign Minister during the whole time that the government has been in office. He';s brought a sure hand, a deft touch and a great deal of sagatious advice to me in the discharge of what as the years have gone by has become an even more important area of responsibility within the government.
You can be assured that the government will continue to provide the resources that are needed by our Defence Forces. I will visit the Australian Defence Forces in the Solomon Islands on Monday to personally thank them for the fine job that they are doing.
Alexander,s already been there with his New Zealand colleague Phil Goff. You can be certain that we will invest the resources that are needed by our intelligence services and you can be absolutely certain that we';ll continue to work very closely with our allies and friends both in the region and elsewhere in the ongoing fight against terrorism.
Of course the capacity of this nation to have an authoritative voice around the world is heavily influenced by our economic performance. No industrialised country has outperformed Australia over the last seven years and the latest forecast suggests both for this year and next year the Australian economy will grow at a faster rate than any of the other major industrialised societies.
That is something that we can be very proud of but of course a stellar national economic performance is not an end in itself. The great value of that strong economic performance is that it';s altered and improved the lives of our fellow Australians.
Now let me just touch very briefly on a few areas that indicate that. In March of 1996 interest rates on housing loans were much higher than they are now and the average Australian paying off a loan now is paying $450 a month less than what he or she was paying in March of 1996. Our memories are not so short that we forget the 17% and 18% interest rates that homebuyers used to pay under Mr Hawke and Mr Keating. The farmer';s of Australias memories are not so short that they will forget the bill rates of 21% and 22% and 23% that many of them had to pay when Mr Hawke and Mr Keating ran this country.
The policies that we have followed by reducing the budget deficit, by building surpluses, by repaying debt have contributed to the lower interest rate regime enjoyed by homebuyers and small business alike.
Wages in Australia now are higher than what they were when we came to office in 1996. And they are not higher because we have had an upsurge of inflation, higher wages have been built on higher productivity because we have rebalanced the incentives of our workplace relations system.
In the 13 years that Mr Hawke and Mr Keating were in power the alleged friends of the workers, Mr Hawke a former President of the ACTU, the real wages of Australian workers in 13 years, that';s the increases after inflation rose by only 2.3% in 13 years, and yet in seven and a half years the real wages of Australian workers under my government have risen by 10.2%. In other words with lower interest rates and higher wages Australian workers are better off under the Liberals than they ever were under a Labor government. Now that';s an important ……
By that measure it';s the Liberal Party that has become he real friend of the working men and women of this country. It';s the Liberal Party that champions their interest. It';s the Liberal Party that gives them lower interest rates and higher wages, but we haven';t stopped at that we';ve also generated more jobs.
In the seven and a half years unemployment has fallen by 2% from 8.2% to 6.2%. We have generated about 1.1 million new jobs and we have driven youth unemployment down to a level that it wasn';t at since the middle of 1990. And on top of that I am particularly proud of the fact that we';ve addressed the needs of the 70% of young Australians who leave school and don';t go to university. We obviously should address the needs of those who do go to university but we should remember that 70% don';t and in December of 1995 there were 141,000 apprentices in Australia. The figure now for apprenticeships and traineeships is more that 390,000. In other words in that seven and a half year period we have more than doubled the number of Australians entering apprenticeships and traineeships.
Now this is delivering real benefits for the working people of this country, lower interest rates, higher wages, more jobs and better apprenticeship opportunities. That is a quartet of delivery that no Labor government, the Labor Party in 13 years double the time virtually that we have been in office, the Labor Party could not deliver those benefits.
So my friends when I talk about the economic performance of this country it';s not just about people at banking conferences saying that the Australian economy is doing well, it';s not just about the performance of the implicit price deflator and the GDP and all of those other complicated descriptions of our economic performance, but it';s the flesh and blood delivery of opportunities and benefits for the mainstream of the Australian people.
Lower interest rates, more jobs, higher wages, more apprenticeships – now that is what we are on about. We are on about delivering the benefits of an enhanced and an improved economic performance. But we are also on about providing this country with a maintenance of its social stability. One of the great boasts of the Australian nation is that we are a fair and just and egalitarian society. We are not a society riven by class division and class pretension, we are a society that rewards effort and responsibility and merit, we are a society that wants to give every Australian who is prepared to have ago the opportunity of living out and achieving his or her dreams. But we are also a society that believes that alongside national security and economic strength part of the social contract, part of social stability is to have an eye towards things that are important about the sustainability of our future.
That is why in the lead up to the 1996 election campaign we placed a great deal of emphasis on caring for the environment. The environment is no longer some kind of elite niche issue in Australian public life or Australian politics. It';s a mainstream political issue. Everybody is now an environmentalist, everybody worries about the sustainability of this ancient land of ours, everybody wants to preserve our natural resources and to sensibly husband and use them. Everybody worries about the challenge of water supply and salinity and the people of Adelaide in particular have reason to be concerned about this issue.
I am very proud of the Liberal Party';s record on the environment. I am very proud of the fact that out of the sale of the first one-third of Telstra we established the Natural Heritage Trust, the biggest single investment in the environmental future of this country undertaken by any national government.
I am very proud of the way in which we have continued to support and nourish the landcare movement. I am very proud of the work that Robert Hill did and David Kemp has carried on as the Federal Environmental Minister. Last week in the Senate against the efforts of the Labor Party and the Greens and the Democrats, I repeat against the efforts of the Labor Party, the Greens and the Democrats, we were able to secure the passage of the new Heritage Act which is going to, amongst other things, establish a new measure called Essentially Australian, a new measure of natural heritage or national heritage sites on which such hallowed areas as Anzac Cove will be listed and it will provide a new benchmark if you like of those sites and those things around Australia that we are particularly proud of because they are essentially Australian. And it staggers me that the Labor Party and the Democrats and the Greens combined to try and defeat this measure and congratulations to David Kemp for securing the support of the four Independent Senators to pass this into law.
But ladies and gentlemen I want to say something about the Murray Darling. Water is a very precious resource that we almost use sustainably and we do have to balance the needs of the environment and development and governments at all levels have been grappling with the need to improve the way that we use our water. This issue is going to be very high on the agenda at the meeting of the Council of Australian Governments in Canberra next week.
My government has made a priority out of improving the health of our rivers and improving the economic efficiency of water usage. Since 1996 the government has committed more than $500 million in different ways to the restoration of the Murray Darling Basin and at the last election we committed to sweeping reforms of how we deal with issues such as property rights, allocation security, environmental sustainability and the operations of water markets, and this work is now very well advanced.
At the forthcoming COAG meeting I am cautiously hopeful of securing a national agreement between all the governments of Australia on how we deal with water. It will improve water entitlement systems, markets and environmental allocations and lay the basis for dealing with these issues around Australia. And in developing the Federal Government';s response in this area can I pay a special tribute to the work of John Anderson, the Deputy Prime Minister and the Leader of the National Party. John';s personal dedication and commitment to this issue is a further illustration of the very close partnership between the Liberal Party and the National Party which has been the essence of our Coalition success over the last seven and a half years. A more decent individual and political contributor to Australian public life you couldn';t find, when you think of John Anderson he is one of the very fine contributors to our public life and a person for whom I have immense personal regard.
Ladies and gentlemen nowhere are these issues more important than in the Murray Darling Basin, one of the great food production systems in Australia. We may have done a lot in the past but we need as governments acting in the collective interests of all of the Australian people, we need to start taking some additional decisive steps now.
That is why I will this weekend write to the relevant Premiers proposing that they agree to an initiative to allocate $500 million over and above what has been allocated in the past to start the task of restoring the Murray Darling Basin';s water system to sustainable extraction levels. This will be a $500 million initiative over a period of five years. The funding would be expected to flow in 2004 after the intergovernmental agreement is finalised. The Commonwealth will contribute as its share of that $500 million, $125 million and if agreement can be reached from the contributing States and Territories this $500 million will underpin many of the activities and the reforms that we will agree at COAG.
This will be a very important start. It obviously won';t be the last word but unless further work is undertaken then great environmental and other damage will be done and I know that initiatives and actions in this area will be very important to the people of Adelaide and very important to the State of South Australia.
The exact amount of water to be saved will depend on the activities undertaken and where they are undertaken. Much work has already been done in this area and we must let the science and local community who know guide us in our work.
I sense that there is the opportunity, particularly at the meeting next, for a coming together hopefully across the political divide of all of the governments of Australia to understand and to grapple with and to propound solutions to one of the great challenges of our future and that is the sensible use and allocation of water.
We must recognise that when water rights that people have enjoyed for years are taken away or reduced those people are entitled to proper compensation. Water rights long enjoyed are property rights in the sense that we understand that term and the notion that we would allow those rights to be arbitrarily cancelled and taken away is something that I don';t accept. But I know how important the Murray Darling is to the people of Australia and that is why I will be proposing the commitment by all of the governments under the Murray Darling partnership of this $500 million with the money beginning to flow next year and it will lay the important ground work of the further reforms that are needed in this very important area.
Ladies and gentlemen I have said something of our goals and our aspirations, let me say something of the importance now of the role of the Liberal Party organisation.
We are in the unusual situation of holding Federal office but being out of office in every State and every Territory. There is a widespread belief in the Australian community that at a national level we are in some senses unbeatable. Can I tell you with all the sincerity I can muster that couldn';t be more wrong. Every government is beatable, every Opposition is electable. There is no such thing as an unlosable or an unwinnable election. History is littered with examples at both a State and a Federal level of Prime Ministers and Premiers imagining that they couldn';t be beaten and pollsters and pundits and commentators saying that Opposition leaders are unelectable.
Most of the Federal elections that I have been involved in over the last 29 years have been close. A few of them have been landslides but not many. Most of them boil down to a few seats. If we lose seven or eight seats at the next Federal election we are out of office and at the present time we';ve overperformed, if I can put it that way, in South Australia pleasingly, in NSW, in Queensland, and we have underperformed badly in Tasmania where we don';t hold any lower House seats and to a lesser extent in Western Australia and Victoria.
So what we have to do is to understand how close the fight will be, ignore all these acres of newspaper columns saying that the Labor Party is unelectable. They are very electable. They';ll have more money than us to spend on the election campaign because the unions donate to them and increasingly companies are giving 50/50 to the major parties. So they';re ahead. The unions don';t give 50 per cent to us, I can assure you. They don';t give any to us. So the reality is that they will have a big war chest and we will have to counter that as best we can. Nowt I will need your help, my colleagues will need your help.
We need to retain the unity that has been a hallmark of our government for the last seven and a half years. We need to identify the goals that we have. We need to remind people that on those measures of national security and economic strength and social stability, the Liberal Party';s performance and what the Liberal Party offers for the future is so much more superior. We have to remind people of the quality of our team. I don';t run a one man band. To the extent that I have achieved success over the last seven and a half years, I owe it to my colleagues both in the ministry, in the parliamentary party and in the party organisation. We are a government that will remain in touch with the Australian people. We won';t develop hubris. We won';t assume that we are complacently entitled to relection. We recognise that we have to work extremely hard to retain the trust and the support of the Australian people.
But we will have two very precious assets in that campaign. The first of those is that we will be able to point to the benefits that we have delivered to the Australian people over the last seven and a half years. We';ll be able to remind the Australian people that we haven';t shirked the hard decisions. We were prepared to take unpopular decisions to get rid of the $10.5 billion deficit Mr Beazley as Finance Minister left us. We were prepared to tackle reform of Australia';s industrial relations system. For years I had been lectured by the businessmen of Australia in boardrooms and at party gatherings about the need to do something about the disgrace of the Australian waterfront. And in 1998, led by the courage of Peter Reith who was then the Workplace Relations Minister, we took on the maritime unions of Australia, and we have changed forever the face and the productivity of the Australian waterfront. In 1998 the idea of moving, having a crane rate of 26 an hour on the Australian waterfront was regarded as unthinkable. It was languishing at about 17 or 18 per cent. We now have 26 to 27 movements an hour. That is a measure of how we have transformed that aspect of Australia';s industrial relations.
We were told you could never do anything about a taxation system and some people told me it was suicide to go to an election offering a new taxation system. And at various stages in the lead up to that election I thought they were probably right. And when Lynton Crosby rang me with that exit poll on the night of the election, I sort of thought well I knew they were right. But of course it turned out that we lived to fight another day and the Australian people, admittedly by a smaller margin than we might have hoped, were prepared to give us a go and they were prepared to allow us to implement it.
We were told that you could never risk the sort of intervention that we undertook in East Timor, but we did it with the support and the respect of the world. We were told that you couldn';t reduce government debt as rapidly as we were able to do, and we were told that there so many other things that we couldn';t undertake. And we were told of course that we were going to destroy Medicare and I can remember when I was Leader of the Opposition in the lead-up to the election in 1996, giving an undertaking that we were going to preserve Medicare, and so we have. And right at the moment you have the extraordinary situation that the public hospital system of Australia, which is owned, operated, run and controlled by the state governments of Australia, the situation where over the last five years this government, the Federal Government, which does not control or operate or own or direct the public hospitals of Australia, we have contributed more and the states have contributed a declining amount to the maintenance of that hospital system. And right at the moment there is on the table on offer a funding increase of 17 per cent in real terms, a $10 billion funding increase from the Federal Government, and all that is needed is for the state governments to agree to match our funding increase, and then the new hospital agreement can be signed. And on top of that, we have been willing to introduce a 30 per cent health insurance rebate because we believe in private health insurance. We believe that health in Australia should be a partnership between the public sector and the private sector, and the stronger the private hospital system there is, the more load is taken off the public hospital system. Labor by contrast will axe the private health insurance rebate or at the very least, severely means test it, and that is why Mr Crean and their various spokesmen have systematically declined to give undertakings that if Labor is elected, the private health insurance rebate will remain untouched.
So we';re able to point to performance and when we ask people to re-elect us next year, we';re not indulging rhetoric, we';re actually pointing to achievement and a solid record of courageous reform. And the second great asset that I believe that we will take to the election is that we have a quality team. We have Ministers like Alexander and Robert and Amanda and Nick and many others around Australia who work together as a team. We have a strong parliamentary party. We have an enormous depth of talent in our ranks and we have a group of people who represent the broad stream of the Australian community. Unlike the Labor Party our parliamentary ranks are not filled with former trade union leaders and political staffers. Our ranks are filled with the representatives of the mainstream of the Australian community, and that is how I hope it will always remain.
Finally ladies and gentlemen, can I thank all of you for the great help that you have given me, the great loyalty you have displayed and the tremendous sense of sustained support and commitment which has made my job easier, made my job achievable. Together over the next year let';s keep it that way so that I might return after the next election, and to thank you for the tremendous support that you have given me.
Thank you.
[ends]