Thank you very much Michael. To Senator Connie Fierravanti-Wells, Joanna Gash, the wonderful Member for Gilmore, wonderful Member for Gilmore, heavens above her majority at the last election was so big, I'm going to get her to come and do a fundraiser in Bennelong before the next election. The Lord Mayor of Wollongong, other distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen.
I am truly delighted to be back in Wollongong and I am especially delighted to be associated with the return of a Liberal Senate office to Wollongong. Australian politics is full of stereotypes and they get things wrong. I mean there's a story frequently told about Canberra. It looks like Killara and votes like Cessnock. And they have these stereotypes, we really have to move away from them because the political world in Australia now is very different from what it was 10 years ago and it's certainly very different from what it was 25 years ago.
And what that means is that there is no part of Australia that any side of politics can take for granted. There's no part of Australia that is impossible for either side of politics to draw support from. And what that means is that political parties, and this applies as much to my Party, the Liberal Party, as it does to the Labor Party, that we have to see ourselves always as representatives of the entire community. And I see having a Liberal Senate office in Wollongong, as Michael Baume did, as a perfectly natural thing. And one of Connie's predecessors in the Senate John Tierney had a Senate office in Newcastle. And people said "oh, isn't that strange", it's not strange because the world is changing. And whilst the heritage of this city will always be tied up proudly with the steel industry and manufacturing, the modern Wollongong is now a very diversified, varied, exciting and innovative path of a very diversified, exciting and innovative Illawara region.
I opened this morning a light aeronautics hub, for want of a better expression, which will be supported by a regional partnerships grant from the Federal Government of some $300,000. And what that will do is bring new industry and combined with the enormous strength of the university activity in this city and the magnificent diversification into other commercial areas, we are now dealing with a part of Australia, a part of New South Wales, which is very different from what it was 10 or 20 years ago. And nowhere is it of course more different than in the story we can tell of employment.
You'll forgive me reaching into my pocket for a piece of paper because I wrote down the employment figures for this area, and they're very instructive because there has been a lot of discussion about things to do with workplaces and employment in recent weeks. I just ought to tell you that the unemployment rate in the electorate of Throsby in March 1996 was 12 per cent - it's now 6.5 per cent. In Cunningham it was 11 per cent - and it is now 6.7 per cent. Now both of those figures, whilst they are huge improvements on what they were almost 10 years ago, both of those figures are still too high and both of this figures are a little above the national average.
Now I won't come to Wollongong, I won't come to a gathering like this, without saying something about the Government's plans in the area of workplace relations reform. Some people have said to me "John, the economy is running well, unemployment is five per cent around the country, the budget's in a strong position, our exports are good, business is good, interest rates are low, you've had a tax cut in the last budget, why on earth do you want do any more? Why don't you just sort of leave us alone? Why don't you just leave the economy to look after itself? Why do you keep talking about all of this reform business? Why do you want to change the workplace relations system?"
Now that's a fair question and some people would pose that question. I answer it by saying very simply that the prosperity we now enjoy in Australia is a product of the reforms and the productivity improvements of earlier years. And if we make the mistake of resting on our laurels, of going to sleep on the reform task, we're going to find in five or 10 years that we're starting to run out of steam, that we're starting to find that we have an economy which is no longer being sustained by productivity improvements because the reforms that brought about those earlier improvements have now run their course.
And it might be difficult, it might even be in the eyes of some unpopular. But there is no point in being in government unless you are prepared to embrace and maintain a continuous process of economic reform. Because the economy of Australia in some respects is like a successful company, not in all respects, and there are things that governments have a moral obligation to do, and I'll come to that in a moment because there's been a bit of discussion about morality and ethics in the context of workplace relations reform, but it is a bit like running a company, you all know from your own experience that you really only have two choices - you go forward or you go back.
The idea that you can run on the spot and maintain a nice, simple equilibrium, that there'll always be customers knocking on the door, that none of your competitors will be trying to take them away from you, that you'll always have a guaranteed market share. That of course is never the case and you have to keep striving to maintain the market position you have. And some of you may have heard me use it before, and I apologise for saying it again, but it makes the point that I talk about the economic challenge of Australia being like participating in a race towards an ever receding finishing line. You never get there but you know that if you stop running the other blokes in the race are going to surge past you. And they are our international competitors. And we live in a very competitive world, we're doing very well at the moment, we're selling a lot of resources to countries like Japan and China and Korea, our sales to China have absolutely burgeoned in recent years and there are opportunities in a large number of areas.
But let me say to you that we can't take that for granted, we have great reserves of natural gas in Australia but so do a lot of other countries and it is in many respects still a buyers market in a lot of the resource areas. And we have to fight all the time to maintain our market share. And if we take things for granted we're going to fall behind. And that really is why we believe a further round of industrial relations reform is necessary. They're not small reforms, they're big reforms, but they're fair reforms and they're reforms that are going to lay the basis of higher productivity and therefore more jobs and higher wages in the future.
People follow me around Australia from time to time and they hold up placards and they say "don't cut my wages, John, leave my wages alone". Well I haven't left their wages alone, I've in fact presided over the biggest real wage increase on a sustainable basis that this country has had since World War II. I mean I happen to believe in high wages. And no employer with any common sense does other than believe in high wages. The best employee is a well paid employee, the best employees are the great asset... the good employees are the greatest asset that any employer has.
We live in a worker's market like never before. We have a shortage of workers; we don't have an oversupply of workers. We have a chronic shortage of workers in many of the areas of skills. And you all know, and many of you would have experienced it as employers, that we have great problems in trying to find some skilled tradesmen and women in many of the particular disciplines.
But over the last nine and a half years, real wages in this country have gone up by just under 15 per cent. Under the government of my predecessors - over 13 years they went up by two per cent. So who has been the wage suppressor? Who has been the side of politics that has been interested in real wage growth? Why would anybody in my position want to see the wages of Australian workers suppressed? I want to see them go on increasing. But they can only go on increasing if those increases are based on productivity, because if companies pay wage rises they can't afford, what happens is they end up sacking staff to afford the wages of the staff they keep. It's as simple as that. And the only way that you can sustainably increase wages is to have a more productive workplace. And part of having a more productive workplace is not only of course to have a full order book and to be an efficiently run company, but also to have a workplace relations system where people are working together for the common cause and you can best get that if you have a workplace relations system that allows as far as possible employers and employees to negotiate their arrangements at a workplace level.
By all means negotiate them according to some defined safeguards and protections. I don't believe, as many in the United States believe in, in getting rid of minimum wages; that's wrong, that will create an underclass in this country and I will never support that. But I do believe that we have to make it easier for workplace agreements to be struck and I think we also have to recognise the reality that some small firms find the existing unfair dismissal laws actively discouraging them from taking on new staff. And until those laws are changed that represents a very significant break on the hiring aspirations of many of the small and medium sized firms in this country.
Now my friends, I want to say in relation, finally, to this reform that it is part of a number of things that this Government has sought to do in the nine and a half years that's been in office. And all of those things are meant to build a culture in this country, a culture of enterprise, a culture of where people aspire to improve themselves and a culture of choice and a culture of opportunity.
I think Michael mentioned earlier the issue of education. He's right - I am the product of the New South Wales state education system and I'm very pleased and grateful for the high quality education that the public system gave to me in Sydney. And what we've tried to do is to build up both systems. I don't want an Australia where the public education system progressively loses ground and we have tried, with our own funding decisions, although public education is overwhelmingly the responsibility of the States, we have tried to support that goal.
But we do believe in giving parents a choice in relation to the education of their children. And this country has an unrivalled combination of public and private contribution towards education. I find when I have discussions with leaders in other countries they are amazed at the choice that is available to Australian parents. They are amazed that people have an opportunity, at relatively modest cost, to send their children to independent schools if that is their choice. And it's all part of the desire of this government to expand the horizons of choice and the horizons of hope of the Australian community.
Over the last nine and a half years this country has changed. I believe it's changed for the better. I don't pretend that everything the Government has done has been right. I don't pretend and I don't delude myself that everything the Government has done has been popular. But I do know this - that the regard in which Australia is held around the world is greater now than it has been at any time in the last 30 or 40 years. We are seen as having a strong economy, but more importantly we're also seen as a country that stands up for what it believes in. A country that is prepared to say to the rest of the world: "This is what Australia believes in and this is the basis on which we are going to deal with one another".
I've not forgotten a very interesting answer that Alexander Downer gave at a news conference in, I think it was Manila, or maybe it was in Thailand, a couple of months ago when it was decided that there'd be a meeting of countries to form the East Asian Summit in Kuala Lumpur in December and that Australia would be invited to participate in that meeting. And one of the journalists got up and said: "Mr. Downer, now that Australia is invited to attend that meeting, do you now feel that Australia is truly Asian"? And Alexander Downer, very sensibly and very effectively said: "No, I just think it feels Australian."
And what I think he was saying then and saying very powerfully was that this country is no longer engaged in some kind of navel gazing exercise about our identity as to whether we're European or we're too pro-American or too associated with the British or too this or that or whether we're part of Asia or whatever. We went through a silly period 10 or 15 years ago with all that introspective naval gazing; we're not doing that any more. What we're doing is we're recognising that this country is what it's always been - distinctive and different. You don't mistake an Australian when you meet him or her around the world. And the Australian brand in so many areas is now stronger and more defined and more distinctive and more respected and more regarded than it has certainly been at any stage in my lifetime. And this city, this region of Australia, is a microcosm of the modern Australia. It's made up of people from the rich tributary of post-World War II European migration that has done so much to strengthen and shape the modern Australia. But it also contains some of the oldest traditions of Australia and it is also is an area which is embracing through its university side, through the wonderful medical facilities at the local hospitals; it is embracing all the best that the modern world can give.
So to all of you thank you very much. If I may end on a slightly partisan note - thank you very, very much for the support that you have given to Connie and she of course is a native of Wollongong. And to see her parents at the opening of the office today - both of her parents of course immigrated to Australia from Italy after World War II and that is so representative of so many people in this area. And Connie of course represents, and this is where I get slightly partisan let me warn you, Connie does represent a wonderful facet of the people that have come into my team after the last election.
They're such a diverse lot. We have Connie with her background in the law and her background in the Illawara. We have a couple of police officers, we have an air force test pilot, we have a research defence scientist, we have a funeral director - it's true, we're trying to sort of focus him on other things - we have a medical practitioner, we have a farmer, and a couple of accountants, and a farmer's wife, we have a university professor, we have a couple of school teachers and we have number of people who very successfully run small businesses, and we have one who has been very successful in financial circles, having run a merchant bank rather successfully - well several merchant banks I think and probably taken a few over in the process. But the point of all of that is... and one of the policemen is also a very successful coach of Australian Rules football in South Australia - so we have a great variety of people.
Now the reason I say that is, and when I look across and this is where I get really partisan. I'm sorry, I look across at my opponents and I see that they do seem to have a narrow background. And you don't have to take my word for it. The current National President of the Labor Party, the irrepressible Barry Jones, and he was at his irrepressible best this morning when he said that "compare Beazley's shadow ministry - 16 apparatchiks, 10 union officials, four others." Now this is the punch line - "...with Hawke's 1983 Ministry of four solicitors, four academic teachers, four retailers, three union officials and two farmers, with one each; barrister, medical practitioner, clergymen, policeman, economist, chartered accountant, industrial advocate, research officer, engine driver and shearer". Now I think there's a bit of exaggeration there about Hawkey's frontbench, but I won't get churlish after all of these years.
I do want to make the point - and this goes back to what I said at the very beginning - and that is political parties, to be successful these days, have to represent the entire community. I have never accepted the idea that the Liberal Party represents the big end of town. The Liberal Party cares about business, the Liberal Party believes that people have got a right to make decent profits and to be very successful providing they pay their taxes - that's very important - very, very important, because their taxes help pay for the hospitals and the schools and the army and the police which we all need and we all rely on at various stages.
But we are a party that has never been owned by the business community and we'll always be a party that tries to represent everybody. And that's why I'm proud to be in Wollongong and I'm proud to have a Wollongong based Liberal Senator and I'm proud of the diversity of all of the members of my parliamentary party and Connie is a magnificent demonstration of that diversity.
Thank you.
[ends]