Thank you very much Jason, Bob Charles, Steven Hartney the candidate for Chisholm, and Paul Teiwes the candidate for Holt, Helen Kroger the State President of the Victorian Division, and Julian Sheezel the State Director, other colleagues, ladies and gentlemen.
I have been a regular visitor to the electorate of La Trobe, not only as Prime Minister, but also in the years before that. Bob Charles is a very good friend of mine. Bob Charles has been a wonderful representative of this electorate ever since he won it back in 1990. But Bob Charles has now passed the baton of Liberal representation to a new face, somebody who brings to his candidature a special experience in the Victoria Police Force. And let me endorse immediately what Jason had to say about the importance of having a broader gene pool of politicians than people whose sole working experience has been a politician';s office or a union office.
We run the risk in this country of so narrowing the base from which candidates are chosen, that our parliament of 20 years time will be full of people whose only experience has been in professional politics, and I think that will be a very, very bad thing indeed because you all know that running a trade union is just another branch of the Australian Labor Party. It';s professional politics. We want people who represent every section of the community. We want businessmen and women, we want farmers, we want doctors, we want lawyers, we want teachers, we want police officers, we want people who have done I guess the most important job of all, and that has been full time raising children. We want, in other words, a cross section of the Australian community.
Jason knows the social challenges of this area. Police officers know the drug problem, they know the difficulty of dysfunctional families causing, as their children grow to teenage, ill disciplined behaviour leading to crime, and all the social implications of that. And he has been no passive cop on the beat, not that there is anything wrong with cops on the beat – in fact a lot of us think there should be more cops on the beat more often – but what he has demonstrated in his time in the Victorian Police Force is that for his age he has been quite a stellar performer. And he has won recognition. He has been, I understand, the youngest Senior Sergeant in the Victoria Police Force. Now all of that points to a person who is dedicated, somebody who believes in his community and somebody who is used to the ideal of serving a community. We want Members of Parliament who want to serve the community and not serve their own self-interest and their own career prospects. And Jason falls square in the middle of that.
Now I say these things because when you know a long-serving, respected Member, and my friend Bob certainly falls into that category, people say – gee, Bob';s going, okay that';s a pity, we love Bob and he';s done a fantastic job. But Bob would be the first to say we now get behind the new man, the new person we have chosen and make sure that he takes over and inherits Bob Charles'; mantle and becomes the representative for La Trobe. La Trobe is a tough seat. It';s always been close. Just about everything is close in this part of Victoria politically. They';re all tiny margins and we';ve all got to work very, very hard to make sure we hold onto them.
But we have a good story to tell. We have a very good story to tell nationally. Our economy at the moment is performing better than at any time since World War II. And that';s not a piece of hyperbole. Our growth rate… we';ve had growth now for 10 years or more continuously. We have unemployment below six per cent and inflation below three per cent – the first time those two have been together since 1968. Our unemployment rate now is the lowest in more than 22 years. Our interest rates are the lowest in a generation.
We have more than doubled the number of apprenticeships and traineeships than what we inherited back in 1996, and real wages under this Government have grown by 13 per cent in eight years versus just under three per cent in 13 years of the former Government. In other words, the party of the workers has given the workers lower wage rises than the party of the so-called bosses. Of course we are a party for the entire Australian community and there is no economic statistic of which I am more proud than the fact that under this Government we';ve not only cut unemployment, but we';ve boosted people';s wages. Now Mr Hawke and Mr Keating used to say that was impossible. Their justification for cutting wages or suppressing wage rises was that it was needed in order to reduce unemployment. Well somehow or other we have been able to run a more productive economy so that if you lift wages off the back of higher productivity, you don';t cause inflation, and that means you can simultaneously reduce unemployment and also boost people';s wages.
We';ve cut our debt. Our exports are very strong. We';ve built a diverse set of trade relations. I remember when we were campaigning in 1996, the then Prime Minister Mr Keating was running around and saying oh the leaders of Asia won';t deal with this fellow, he won';t get his foot in the door, they';ll turn him away. That';s not what I found when I went to China on behalf of the North West Gas Consortium to be involved in the final discussions to the largest export contract that this country has ever won. What I found was a leadership of the most populous country in the world that was very ready to do business with us.
And we have been able to build an ever closer relationship with America without in any way compromising our close trading relationships with Asia. And the symbolic evidence of that were those two days in October last year when historically an amazing double – President George Bush one day addressing a joint sitting of parliament, and President Hu Jintao of China the next day also addressing a joint sitting of parliament. Now who would have imagined that was possible five years ago, let alone 10 years ago. So it';s an illustration that we have been able to rebalance our relationships. We have never been closer to our traditional allies and I';m very proud of that, but that closeness has not been achieved at the expense of preserving and further developing the very important relationships we have with the countries of our region.
In very important areas such as education and health, we have been faithful to the commitments that we made in 1996. One of the very important commitments I made as Opposition Leader in 1996 was that we would preserve Medicare. People said we couldn';t be trusted with Medicare. Well Dr Carmen Lawrence as Health Minister back in 1994 rejected the 10,000 signature petition that Bob Charles gathered together to get a Medicare office in this area, and I';m delighted to say that today the opening of that office has been announced, and that Narre Warren will have a Medicare office – the first of two to be opened in Victoria.
We';ve restored private health insurance. When we became Government, only 33 per cent of the population was in private health insurance, that had been deliberately run down by Labor because they don';t believe in private health insurance, they don';t. I mean, whatever they say, they don';t believe in private health insurance because whenever they get their hands on it, they reduce the subsidies, they make it less attractive, they run it down. It got down to 31 per cent. I mean, we introduced two things – we introduced a 30 per cent rebate and we introduced lifetime community ratings. And that has resulted in the number of people in private health insurance rising to almost 45 per cent – the highest it';s been for many many years. And that';s important, not only for the value private health insurance represents, but also because the more people there are in private health insurance, the less pressure there is on public hospitals. And private hospitals have taken some of the load off public hospitals.
Now what we need in this country is a combination of the two. The best way to deliver human services is a partnership between the public and the private. It';s no good leaving it all to the private sector because there';ll be a market failure because there';s not enough economic sustenance for certain activities, they';ll disappear. But equally, don';t give it all to the Government. Never give everything to the Government, no matter what the Government is, they are very very bad at managing things that require sort of fine tuned private sector judges because that is not the business of government. I mean, just as governments shouldn';t run milkbars and coffee shops and hotels and liquor stores, they shouldn';t be left to having a monopoly on running other things. So, you need a partnership and that';s what we have in health. And that importantly is what we have in education.
I';ve always been a tremendous believer in the right of parents to choose where their children are educated. I don';t want to be telling people where their children should be educated. I want to be providing people with a range of opportunities. I want them to be able to choose between the Government schools and the private schools. I want the private school options to be affordable. You don';t offer people the choice of an independent school if the only school that';s available charges fees of $14,000 a year. And what I';ve presided over is the expansion of a private school sector which offers low fee options to parents. They';re the ones that have grown, not the ones they keep talking about.
Every time the Labor Party talks about a private school they talk about Scotch or Wesley or King, well they';re nice schools, I';m not having a go at them but they are a typical of independent schools. They represent only a tiny proportion of the independent schools. Sixty-one per cent of the independent schools are catholic parish schools in the catholic systemic system. And there';s a great swag on new low fee independent schools, the growing numbers of Australians are choosing for their children. But the public sector also needs to be very strongly supported and I had the great privilege this morning of going to the 50th anniversary of Ringwood Secondary College, which is a fantastic school and it';s got a great reputation in Melbourne, particularly in the area of performing arts and to address that school assembly and to share some of my thoughts about what Australia might be in 50 years time and what it might have been 50 years ago, and we won';t go into that, it was a tremendous experience and a reminder of the diversity of our government education system and that it contains many very dedicated teachers and many outstanding schools.
So we have got a great story to tell, but if we want to retain government, we want Jason to become the next member for La Trobe, we';ve got to work very very hard. If I can speak passionately as the Liberal Leader as well as Prime Minister, winning seats like this for the fourth time in government is hard. There';s always a tendency for people to go – oh well, they';ve been there for a while, they might be doing a good job, but you know see if there';s anything else around and we';ll have a look. And there';s always a danger of that and we';ve got to guard against that. We';ve got to remind people that you can';t take Australia';s prosperity for granted.
I looked at my opponent the other day when he was addressing the Press Club and there was an air of assumed prosperity in everything he said. He made remarks such as – in a country as wealthy as Australia we should be able to afford this; we are prosperous enough to afford that. And I thought to myself – this bloke thinks it will go on regardless of what you do. The reality is it won';t. If you get a government that decides to put the unions back in charge of industrial relations, if you get a government that decides to go back into debt, you';ll push up interest rates. If you get a government that decides to adopt anti-business policies, you';re going to slow economic growth. I mean, relatively speaking, business activity in Victoria is under greater strain than many other states because of the trade union industrial relations policies of the Bracks Government. It was confirmed in a survey this morning of the Sensis organisation which indicated that although business conditions remain strong because the national economy is strong, Victoria is losing out. Now as an Australian Prime Minister, I don';t play favourites with different parts of Australia. But if I were a Victorian, I';d be cranky that my state was doing less well than other parts of Australia. I';d want to know why my state wasn';t doing as well and I think it';s a question that will increasingly be asked.
And then, of course, on the local level there';s another issue I occasionally here about and that';s called – what';s the name of that Freeway? Scoresby, that';s right. I every so often hear about Scoresby Freeway and I should hear about it because we signed a deal. I mean, the issue here is trust. The issue here is trust. We signed a deal and that deal was that we would build it without tolls, that it would be a freeway not a tollway. John Anderson signed the agreement with Batchelor whoever he is or was, the Victorian Transport Minister and Bracks went to the last election, wrote letters to everybody saying you have my word, it will be built. Now we know what that word was worth – nothing. Now, that';s what we';re angry about and that';s what you have a right to be angry about. I mean, if he just said before the last state election – look, we might want to make it a tollway, okay, people might have criticised that but we';d have known where we stood. So that';s why we';re going to continue to persevere and we';re going to remain committed to putting money on the table to build it on the conditions of that memorandum of understanding. And that is the local issue that is tremendously important and my Victorian colleagues right through this part of Melbourne have never stopped talking about it and I don';t blame them because it';s a very important issue.
Well ladies and gentlemen, thank you very very much for coming along this afternoon. I think he';s a great bloke and I want you to get behind him. I know Bob is working for him flat out. It';s going to be a tough fight, but if we all get behind Jason, well allow him the time and the opportunity to go out into the community and to expand the contacts that he already has. I have no doubt on election night; he will be the next Liberal member for La Trobe. Thank you very much.
[ends]