Terry, thank you for those very warm and generous remarks, Alistair Walton, Shane Stone, Chris McDiven, the President-elect of the Party, my colleagues, ladies and gentlemen. Might I join Shane in thanking Goldman Sachs, JB Were for its generous sponsorship, it's not the first time, I hope it won't be the last. But these sponsorships are very necessary and at a time when corporate friends in that way that matters most for a political party in a state of perpetual campaigning are sometimes hard to find, even in good political times let alone bad political times, the support that both of you gentlemen and your organisation has given to the Party in different ways is very welcome.
We gather at this Federal Council meeting with I guess a mixture of nostalgia and expectations. The nostalgia is that we take the opportunity, because we do mark the 60th anniversary of the foundation of the Liberal Party of Australia by Sir Robert Menzies, we look back on these years, we enjoy legitimately the fact that Menzies brought to the Government of this country a sense of security and stability and wellbeing which really was a metaphor for Australia of the 1950s and the early 1960s. He made people feel that this country was secure, that it was a good country, it was a decent country, it was a country that looked after people who needed help, it was a country that welcomed those new citizens from the four corners of the earth. And I still find one of the most pleasurable things of being Prime Minister is to go to an event and to be embraced literally by a still very emotional Croatian, Estonian, Italian, Greek lady or gentlemen who says "Mr Menzies - he gave me a new life in this country". And it's a wonderful legacy because it is a characteristic of that period of time.
So we have a lot to reflect on and think about as we gather, and we should be very proud of that legacy and also because we are a party that also honours the achievements of our state political leaders, we also pause for a moment to reflect for example on that extraordinary political career that was Henry Bolte's in Victoria - unexpectedly becoming the Premier of Victoria in 1955 and beginning some 27 years of unbroken Liberal Government in that State. And Charles Court also was a very powerful Liberal Party figure of the history of our party.
But today also, and this conference is also an opportunity of projecting forward. And inevitably this weekend, because it marks the weekend following the rising of the old Senate and when we meet again as a national Parliament the Senate will be transformed to a Senate where for the first time since June of 1981 the Coalition will have a majority, a majority of only one, which in anybody's language is a very slim majority. We remember from 1961 we had a majority of one in the House of Representatives that had enabled us to govern for two years and then to increase it quite sharply at the 1963 election. But this Senate majority, and it is a Senate majority, it's not Senate control, it's a Senate majority, it does afford us an opportunity to do things that I know you want us to do. To do things that the Australian people elected us to do, and to do things that will be of long term benefit to our country. But it is not something to indulge in some kind of self-satisfied fashion. The last thing that any political leader or party in this country should ever do is to assume that they have a licence from the Australian people to indulge in any kind of overzealous way their ideology or their enjoyment of power. We govern in trust for the Australian people and we govern for all of them and they expect us to use our new found authority wisely and soberly and sensibly. But they nonetheless expect us to use it decisively. I will never want it said of a government I lead that it missed the opportunity of a majority in the Senate to do some things that we could never otherwise do without that majority.
Our biggest challenge is to maintain the momentum of economic strength. Economic strength is a continuum, it's not something that comes in fits and starts. You can't borrow it, use it and then put it away, it's something that you have to keep nourishing and providing stimulus for if it is to be maintained. We've had 14 years of uninterrupted economic growth, and that is a product of 20 years or more of economic reform and change. And I say 20 years because I have never disputed and I won't dispute it ever at a Federal Council meeting of the Liberal Party that there were a number of things the former government did which constituted economic reforms and were valuable to the economic strength we now have. And I think in particular of financial deregulation and tariff reform. Both of which incidentally enjoyed enthusiastic bipartisan support from the then Opposition. But in recent years economic reform has of course come from our side of politics. And if you look back over that period of almost a decade and you think back to five years to the struggle we had to implement taxation reform, who now talks about the GST other than in the context of the debate between the States and the Commonwealth about the division of the GST and the adequacy with which, or the inadequacy rather which with the States have used the GST to remove unwanted state taxes. We talk of the extraordinary achievement that is due in such great measure to the work of Peter Costello as Treasurer of fiscal consolidation, of converting a debt at a national level of $96 billion into a situation where our debt to GDP level is 1.9 per cent - the OECD average is 47 and it's 45 in the United States and in the Euro-area it's over 50, and in Japan it is much higher. Now that is an extraordinary achievement. We think of the other reforms that the Government has carried out which has made a contribution which enabled us to go through the Asian economic downturn and also suffer barely a glitch in the wake of the events of September 2001.
But all of that is now in the past and you find with economic reform that things pretty rapidly get consigned to the past. You labour for months, you have these huge reforms and you end in a state of intellectual exhaustion, it's all over and then basically the next morning the journalist or the businessman or the supporter says "well righto John, what's next?". And it's true, it is "what is next?" And it is a never ending, you never reach the finish line, it keeps getting moved further ahead, it's very frustrating. It's like one of those experiences you have and you dream and you're trying to reach something and you never get there. Terribly frustrating. Politics is a bit like that, but because that's the sort of thing that keeps you interested in it too because you think at the end of the day you will eventually grab hold of that finish line and declare victory but it never quite happens.
So we are now very focused on what is ahead and maintaining economic momentum does require further reform and there's no area where that reform is more important than in the area of workplace relations. And doing a little bit of research for the current debate on the workplace relations system I came across a very interesting quote in a speech that Tony Blair made to the trade union congress in 1997 - just after he had become Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. And he was talking very directly about the decision he'd taken not to try and wind back any of Margaret Thatcher's industrial relations reforms and he had this to say, he said this, "Remember in everything we do that fairness in the workplace starts with the chance of a job". Let me say that again, "fairness in the workplace starts with the chance of a job." What that means is that you can have all of the elaborate protections for a worker, so-called protections, you can have all of the regulations, you can have all of the if, buts and maybes, but if you don't have a strong economy those regulations can't deliver that worker a job, or can't deliver that worker a promotion because you can't afford the promotion. And the reason for our industrial relations reforms are to make sure that the economy is running even stronger so that not only do more workers have the chance of a job, but they have the chance of a better job.
That in essence is what it is all about - it's not some complicated ideology, it's not some kind of settling of accounts with the trade union movement. I do have no quarrel of any kind with the right of the trade union movement in this country to organise, to recruit members, to bargain collectively or individually on behalf of people in the workplace and I recognise that there are still some industries in this country where the best industrial relations outcome is an outcome where the union is intimately and constructively and directly involved and I have no desire, and there is nothing in the law changes we propose that will prevent that happening. We are not abolishing awards, we are not abolishing the right of people to join trade unions - we are protecting that right. We are not abolishing minimum wages. We are not doing any of the things for which we are attacked by our political opponents. But what we are doing is to borrow and slightly vary the words of Tony Blair, what we are trying to do is to give people not only the chance of a job but the chance of a better job.
And there is no doubt in my mind that if you look around the world, the evidence is overwhelming that the countries that have freed their labour markets are the countries with lower levels of unemployment. There is a historic debate now beginning in Europe as a result of the rejection of the referendum in France and Holland. And that debate is very much about the corporatist model of running and economy or the more open market model of running an economy, exemplified by the Franco-German approach or the British approach. And nowhere is that difference sharper than in the area of the labour market. France and Germany and Spain have an unemployment level of 10 to 11 percent, but Britain, New Zealand, the United States and Australia have unemployment levels that are around half of that.
And even after all of the reforms that we contemplate are passed into law, even after they've been passed into law, we will still have a more regulated labour market than either the United Kingdom or New Zealand. And it's a reminder therefore that this is not an exercise in extremism, it's a commonsense further step along the path to labour market reform and the sustaining of the strong economy that this country has had over the last twenty years. And if we don't take this opportunity now, it will be lost potentially forever. Because this is, we have a conjunction, a remarkable conjunction of circumstances. We have the numbers in the Upper House to pass the laws. We have a strong economy; we have a Labor Party which is mired in a view that really pre-dates some of the attitudes of the Hawke and Keating Government. I mean, Mr Beazley's position on industrial relations is even more old fashioned than that of Mr Hawke or Mr Keating. Now that's a remarkable thing for me to have to say, but it's true. It is. And because at the last election, the Labor Party's policy on industrial relations was to throw out all of the reforms that we had been able to negotiate in 1996 and to negotiate through the Senate with the help of the then Democrats.
So if you think that this is the most important area of economic reform for the next session, you are 100 per cent right because it is. And there is no issue more important to me, more important to my senior colleagues. I mean I've been engaged in this debate about industrial relations reform for more than 20 years. Peter Costello, you remember, made a fine reputation for himself along with Michael Kroger in that famous Dollar Sweets case. So he has been a very, very strong supporter. And I see Fred Stauder here. I mean it's worth recalling that we have a long legacy, this party, in relation to this issue. We are not new players on the field of workplace relations reform and that just underscores the fact that there is a very deep and unremitting commitment on the part of the Government to achieve these reforms. Because we believe very passionately that they will help maintain the momentum of economic change.
They are, of course, not the only areas of reform. We announced in the Budget some major changes concerning Welfare to Work. Once again, designed to ensure that at a time when our population is ageing, we maximise to the greatest possible extent, the participation of people in the workforce. But they are also designed to have another benefit of which I spoke at the meeting of the Federal Women's Committee yesterday when the Federal Council began. And I made the observation that particularly for many women who have suffered the trauma of a marriage or relationship background, self esteem is often dented or weakened and the opportunity of returning to the workforce with the socialising benefits that that can have for many women who in particular, not only women, but overwhelmingly women; because it is still the statistical reality that the great bulk of sole parents in our community are to use the old language and perhaps more accurate language - they are deserted mothers. We sort of think you can't use those sort of expressions now because they are too judgemental. Perhaps they are, but they are often a little more descriptive of precisely what group of people we are talking about. And the people in that situation work, the opportunity of working, the opportunity of reacquiring skills or of keeping skills up is important to them financially, but it's also important to them from the point of the human personality and fulfilment and the socialising benefits of work. That is a very important reform.
And while I'm talking social issues, can I also say that over the next year we will be rolling out and establishing the 65 Family Relationship Centres which represents the public face of our new approach to the administration of the Family Law Act. And these Relationship Centres will provide for the first time a shock absorber for people who are coming out of often acrimonious marriage breakdowns and haven't been able to agree on the custodial and financial arrangements for their children. And they will be required to have regard, have resort to this shock absorber before embarking upon often acrimonious and costly and very counterproductive and poisonous litigation.
So we are very much a Party which after nine and a quarter years in Government has not run out of puff. A Government which is still full of ideas and full of views and commitments about future Government. And we're also full of a lot of talented people. Australian politics is suffering on both sides the phenomenon of it being sometimes difficult to get people of high quality, especially when you're struggling in opposition, high quality to come into Parliament. And the Labor Party is falling into the trap of having too shallow a gene pool from which they recruit their new members. And I made the comment the other day that even allowing for the trade union membership of Parliament from the Labor side which has been a common thread ever since Parliament was established at a Federal level, at least when I came into Parliament in 1974 there'd been a few people on the other side who'd shorn a few sheep. I mean Clyde Cameron and Mick Young had shorn a few sheep, and might I say a few people on our side. Ralph Hunt I remember famously showing me his shearing exploits at Gunnedah. I don't, I'm no judge anyway. But let me say, far be it for a boy from Earlwood to start talking about shearing sheep. But can I simply say this? That we do face a situation were more and more our opponents are comprised of former trade union officials and political apparatchiks with very little experience of life.
There is a place for a proportion of trade union officials and apparatchiks. We've had some very good apparatchiks come into politics on both sides including our own of course. But the problem is a sense of balance and proportion and when I look at the occupational backgrounds of the intakes of 2001 and 2004 into the Federal Parliament we have a very rich diversity of talent and they're not all bulked up in one occupational area or one life experience area and that bodes extremely well for our future.
Can I finish by saying to all of our business observers who are here today that we appreciate very much indeed the support that the Party has received from the community at this Council meeting? We are very proud of the fact that we are a political party that is owned by nobody. We do represent all sections of the Australian community. The Liberal Party of Australia is the most broadly-based political party in Australia. I use the ecclesiastical metaphor of saying it's a broad church. It's a very broad church. It's got high, low and middle. And I won't try and put you in any particular pews but let me simply say that we enjoy very much and we value the contacts we have with the business community.
We have tried to create a good business climate, not because it is an end in itself, but if you have a good business climate, you get people investing and you get Australians employed and you're providing opportunities for their children to go to university, get an apprenticeship, go into business or indeed do whatever they might want to do. But we do value your support. We will maintain that contact. We will not take that support for granted, but we hope to continue as a Government to provide the sort of climate that you've had over the last ten years and we can only do that if we can maintain the momentum of our economic reforms and our economic changes.
Thank you.
[ends]