LaborNET

  Ask Neale

  Tool of the Week

Politics

Raising the Rafters

Opposition leader Kim Beazley delivered a stirring address to last weekend's NSW ALP State Conference. Here's every word of it.

It is a pleasure to be here in the birthplace of this country.

These are great and challenging times for the Australian Labor Party where we now hold office in four out of the six States - the whole of the eastern seaboard is Labor.

And soon this wonderful city will be fulfilling a dream when it hosts the Olympics Games.

It was so good to see the images this week of the torch arriving at Uluru in the heart of this nation, and to see it received with such warmth by the Aboriginal people, on behalf of all of us.

It was a bit of a foretaste of September when the brilliance of our young people, our athletes and swimmers and all the others, will be displayed before the world.

The open hearts of the Aboriginal people of central Australia, as they took part in the torch relay, reminded me of the spirit of the Sydney people who walked the bridge of reconciliation on this day a fortnight ago.

It was so good that there was a Labor Government here in NSW to ensure that gesture was made: that a great Australian symbol, the Sydney Harbour Bridge, was given over to the people on that day.

The country was crying out for good leadership, and for a proper place to express the feelings of the people.

And Bob Carr grasped that moment, and crossed the bridge, along with his political opponent.

And with hundreds of thousands of Australians, of all colours and ages, I was privileged to be there on that great day.

Of course it was always a bridge too far for John Howard.

Just as on so many other issues of importance to this country, we find John Howard playing the spoiler's role.

We are going to have to walk around John Howard if we are ever to get true reconciliation in this country.

Soon we will be celebrating a hundred years of Federation - 100 years since the small collection of colonies took the courageous first step of forging a strong Constitution, and then persuading the British Government to accept it.

That steady spirit we saw on the reconciliation walk was at work there during the Federation years.

That Australian firmness of purpose -- without showiness, in a practical way -- pulling together the different parts into a strong and democratic whole.

Again, when attempting to celebrate 100 years of nationhood in a meaningful way, we have been blocked by John Howard.

I suppose given his character there was little chance our Prime Minister would be able to rise to the occasion history demanded, to put us on the road to the republic.

But we'll walk above and beyond the blocker. It will just take a little longer.

Next year's Federation celebrations will take place the same year as the Federal Labor Caucus celebrates its 100th birthday.

The Party has come a long way since its 22 Labor members, elected to the first Federal Parliament in 1901, agreed to form the federal Labor Party under the leadership of a Sydney printer called Watson.

The changes in our party since that time reflect the changes in the world around us - changes we have taken up with creativity and enthusiasm, separating us so clearly from our opponents.

We are now an outward-looking party, which believes in engaging strongly with our region.

We are the party with the vital links to the countries to our north.

It was under Labor that the economy was opened domestically and internationally. This involved embracing free trade, the deregulation of financial markets, and ultimately the creation of many more jobs.

The truth is there is no option to stand still. In a time of unprecedented change, nobody gets to stay the same.

I understand why, under the Howard Government, some people, and some regions, feel the pace has been too fast.

The Howard Government has made no attempt to help people adjust to globalisation and increased competition. They've been left to fend for themselves.

This Government has ripped away the helping hand Labor used to provide. It has cut back education and training schemes, labour market programs, child care places.

No wonder some people ask why they feel they must shoulder an unfair burden, while all around them they see others reaping the rewards.

But that is not an argument against embracing open markets and the new economy.

There are now 1.7 million jobs dependent on exports in this country - that's one in five people in work. About 750,000 jobs depend on exports to East Asia alone.

In the manufacturing industries, jobs in exporting firms can pay up to 30 percent higher wages than other firms, so it's in Australian workers' interests to be involved in trade.

Australia is a stronger country in part because of our greater integration into the world economy. Thirty years ago, Australia's exports stood at just over 10 per cent of GDP. Today, our annual exports of over $114 billion amount to about 20 per cent of national output. It's a much bigger cake, and exports have a much bigger share of it.

All this shows us there's no sense in closing ourselves off from the world. Rather, we should be working towards the election of a national Government that cares about equity, and a fair go for all.

Under Labor we will re-establish programs that allow everyone to share in the strong economy.

The opportunities are there as never before for a lively, free society like ours to embrace new ideas, to take part in the explosive advances in technology and science, at home and abroad.

We want Australians to be in the vanguard of the worldwide knowledge revolution.

But we will demand that opportunities are shared, and that the most needy are protected.

These are core Labor values. That's what we offer, in stark contrast to our opponents in John Howard's Government.

I think, at long last, people all over this country are waking up to John Howard.

They are waking up to him on his twin political aims - he's always had them - to bring in the GST, and to belt the workers and their unions.

People are starting to see the deceit and delusion at work in this unfair and unnecessary Goods and Services Tax - set to hit the most vulnerable in our society in less than a month - the pensioners, young families, and students, among them.

It's worth remembering some of John Howard's words when he deceived the Australian people about his intentions on this tax.

John Howard issued a press release on 2 May 1995 which said this:

"Suggestions in today's Australian that I have left open the possibility of a GST are completely wrong.

A GST or anything resembling it is no longer Coalition policy.

Nor will it be policy at any time in the future.

It is completely off the political agenda in Australia."

And then on the same day he was interviewed by the media:

Howard: No, there's no way that a GST will ever be part of our policy.

Journalist: Never ever?

Howard: Never ever. It's dead. It was killed by the voters in the last election...It's not part of our policy and it won't be part of our policy at any time in the future.

But still people doubted his word. So, on December 11, 1995 he did a radio interview in which he was asked again if he had a plan to introduce a GST, and he said this:

Howard: One of the worst things about politics in Australia at the moment is that the public doesn't believe what its political leaders say. Now I'm telling you ... it is not on the agenda, full stop.

Presenter: Would you like it to be?

Howard: No, it's not on the agenda, full stop. Just not there. Vamoose. Kaput.

Well, how could we all have so misinterpreted those words? I mean, he said it in English. He said it in Spanish - vamoose. He said in German - kaput. Perhaps we should have asked for the French translation, or the Danish or Swahili.

Whatever language he used it would have been a supreme and deliberate untruth.

Labor has recently been focussing attention on the savage abuse of taxpayers' money as the Government has thrown more than $430 million into the scandalous Unchain My Wallet campaign to try to persuade people this tax is a good thing.

Now, of course, it was largely through the good work of Labor senators, constantly grilling government officials, that we found out how much the GST campaign cost.

It was Labor stalwarts John Faulkner and Robert Ray who winkled out of the government that this unprecedented propaganda campaign was costing so much. Is it any wonder that Faulkner and Ray are known to some Liberals in Canberra as Bad Cop and Worse Cop.

The great triumph of these Labor bloodhounds this week was when they forced the Government to back down on John Howard's illegal letter.

This was a $10 million mail-out the Prime Minister was planning. He wanted to send signed letters to all voters, by name, improperly using electoral roll information.

And in the most breathtaking part of this entire scheme he was going to send the taxpayers the bill! We would be paying for these letters.

Faulkner and Ray first told the Government in May that this use of the rolls was illegal and unprecedented.

But until this week, the Government just wouldn't listen. The Prime Minister kept telling the public all was above board, and that all the correct procedures had been followed.

On Thursday the Government was forced to admit that the Prime Minister's plan was a breach of the law.

The Labor Party's complaints were upheld by the Attorney-General's Department. And those letters will all have to be pulped.

And of course in the Labor Party we're calling it Pulp Fiction.

Our Party has been fighting these issues as any effective Opposition would. We put our resources on the line - not the taxpayers'. We used the institutions of democracy to expose this planned improper use of public resources.

You are all political enthusiasts. Can I recommend to you that you trawl through the records of Senate Estimates these last few weeks. You will be proud of your elected representatives.

We demand that every cent that improper John Howard letter cost - the printing, the addressing, and even the pulping - be paid for by the Liberal Party.

And I also want to announce today that I intend to follow up this episode by introducing a Private Member's Bill into the Parliament banning the use of taxpayers' funds for blatant political propaganda exercises.

The Bill I will introduce will outlaw the spending of taxpayers' money on ad campaigns of a partisan political nature, such as the Government's current GST campaign.

The Government's current campaign is grossly excessive. It does not present factual material in an explanatory, fair and objective way.

The guidelines in our Bill will ensure that material will be presented in unbiased and objective language. It must be presented free from partisan promotion of government policy, and political argument.

If passed, this Bill will stop taxpayers' money being spent on any more cynical campaigns to promote the Coalition's prospects for re-election.

The Labor Party has done much to publicise the fact that if you took back the money from the Government's fraudulent $430 million GST campaign you could do so much more for ordinary, hard-working Australians.

You could fund at least 1,400 extra public hospital beds; or re-open closed wards; or keep some smaller country hospitals open.

With $431 million, the Government could have funded treatment of around 170,000 extra hospital patients over the next 4 years, slashing waiting lists across the country.

But one thing this Government will never understand is that it doesn't matter how much you spend on advertising - you won't sell a dud product.

Because this GST is going to become another in the long line of Liberal Party lemons - first Incentivation, then Fightback and now the 10 percent GST.

It will sit there alongside the great classic lemons - the Leyland P76, and the NSW Branch of the Liberal Party.

We in the Labor Party have been pointing out since before the last election that the Howard Government has been hoodwinking people about the GST in three important ways:

� They have consistently understated how much prices will go up;

� They have totally overestimated the adequacy of their compensation;

� They have attempted to disguise the complexity of the scheme.

In the last fortnight in Parliament we have found that their famous promise that nothing would go up the full ten percent under the GST - a promise made by Peter Costello - was totally wrong.

They tried to tell us in January that the law would not allow anything to go over ten percent. Well, the Government's watchdog, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, has finally been forced to admit that there is no law that keeps price rises under 10 percent.

We have already found a swag of goods and services that we know will go up by 10 percent or more on July 1, including Workers' Compensation premiums, rental appliance agreements, and items of clothing.

Do you remember the Government's promise that prices would rise by only 1.9 per cent ?

The ACCC has now told us that children's clothes from July 1 will go up 9.8 percent, electricity and gas bills by 9.5 percent. If you want to get the plumber and electrician out that will be an extra 9.5 percent. And whether you go out or stay in on a weekend night - it's 8 percent extra on either the movies or the video hire.

And prices are going up already in anticipation of the new tax.

Of course, you can't entirely blame the small business people who are putting prices up because their suppliers have told them they'll be passing on the full ten percent.

Small businesses have spent thousands of dollars each trying to get ready to become tax collectors come July 1.

At every point they've come up against bureaucratic bungling - websites that don't work, phone numbers that are never answered, wrong answers from officials, or no answers at all.

Everyone knows the GST equals higher prices, which equals higher inflation and higher interest rates.

On compensation, the Government keeps telling us that it will make sure no one is worse off.

But this week, after a lot of digging in the Parliament, we discovered just how little truth John Howard tells about the GST.

The Government promised many pensioners $1000 to compensate for the effect the GST would have on their savings. But now it turns out, for many of them, this cash will be worthless. If they save it, it will reduce their pension.

So much for compensating the elderly!

We also found out that after two months, two panic attacks, and two backflips, the Government is still making any parent who stops work to care for a child after June 30, worse off than under the current system.

And we all know the value of the much-touted tax cuts has already been eroded by the interest rate rises triggered by this risky tax scheme.

Now, of course these men of yesterday in the Howard Government have another big idea apart from introducing a GST.

That other big idea is to totally change the industrial landscape of this country, to take away the proper power of the Industrial Relations Commission - the fair umpire - and to hit ordinary workers and their trade unions for six.

On industrial relations, under John Howard and Peter Reith, it's a return to the bad old days of confrontation. That's their idea of industrial relations. Belt the workers and toss out the independent umpire.

Because you never hear any talk about unity or cooperation from our opponents. They are the wreckers. They're the ones that bring in the men in balaclavas, and the attack dogs, against workers on the waterfront.

So aggressive and divisive is the Howard/Reith regime that a Victorian Supreme Court judge described it a few months ago as "ritualised mayhem in which only the innocent are slaughtered".

Labor's policy could not be more different from the Coalition's.

We believe it is good economic policy as well as good social policy to have -- and to maintain -- a cooperative, cohesive, skilled, safe and fair workplace.

Labor's policies to ensure this start with three basic points.

First, Labor's industrial law will require all parties to negotiate in good faith. Our law will support the primacy of collective forms of bargaining and we will give precedence to it. But it will insist on good faith bargaining, whatever bargaining options are preferred.

Second, our law will recognise that the right of employees to act, organise and protect themselves collectively is a prime element of justice in the workplace.

Third, we will restore the powers of the independent umpire, the Industrial Relations Commission, so that it can bring back fairness in the workplace, act in the public interest, and keep the industrial peace.

We'll ensure that, among the principal objects of our industrial legislation, the Commission will have the power to conciliate when bargaining gets bogged down and, where necessary, to arbitrate.

I guess you can't expect too much from John Howard and Peter Reith - men of the past on so many issues.

As I like to say about them - they're in love with the past and at war with the future.

But the tragedy is that what we need in this country more than ever before is a cooperative industrial relations system, a workplace where work and family can be balanced, and a highly-productive, highly-skilled workforce.

We need to position ourselves to take advantage of the huge scientific and technological changes we are facing.

You know I have been talking a lot lately about how we can make Australia one of the world's leading "Knowledge Nations".

When we talk about making Australia a Knowledge Nation we're not just talking about the need to produce more scientists and more biotechnology research, although this will be absolutely critical, and one of our priorities.

It involves all Australian workers, and their families.

It's about helping Australians upgrade their skills so they can move to better employment. It's about assisting people who leave school early to re-train, to keep ahead of the changes in each and every workplace.

It's about giving our children the best start in life, and access to the best our education system has to offer, whatever the income level or location.

And it's about helping small businesses that are being held back by a lack of trained job applicants, when they see all around them unskilled people who can't find a job

The research that we released in February -- Workforce 2010 -- told us that the economies that will grow the fastest over the coming decades will be those with the most highly trained and educated workforce.

And what does the Howard Government intend to do about this? Have a look at The Weekend Australian newspaper yesterday and you'll see what they have in mind.

Before this GST is even introduced, they are leaking a story that they want to spend another $20 billion of taxpayers' money before the next election, trying to buy back votes.

There they are saying they will spend all that money on tax cuts, or other bribes. This Federal Government will say anything, do anything, and spend any amount of taxpayers' dollars to hold on to office. It's all about short term political gain - and nothing to do with nation building.

They would do anything to try to make Australians forget how much they have ripped out of the Budget since 1996 - ripped away decent services Australians have sorely missed - only to then spend that money and more trying to make the GST palatable.

We know they have taken away education, and training, and labour market programs, and child care, and perhaps worst of all, they have allowed our once great public hospital system to run down.

Well, these are programs you can rely on the Labor Party to restore in a fiscally responsible way- programs to make families safe and secure and whole once again.

And I just want to pay tribute to Bob Carr on this matter. Bob has managed to increase State recurrent spending on education and training by 26 percent since 1995.

Bob Carr knows the importance to the future of our country in getting a sound education and training system in place.

If only the Federal Government had the same priorities, Australia would not be the only major country whose Commonwealth spending on these vital programs, as a proportion of GDP, is actually declining.

I look forward to unveiling more of these ideas at the National Conference later in the year.

In the meantime I want to pay tribute today to the great ideas and the hard work that we see from NSW representatives at both the State and Federal level.

I want to assure you that Labor is working hard to be well positioned with its policies whenever John Howard calls the next election.

I will tell the Australian people our policies in detail before the next election - an election that should be at the end of next year, after another Howard Budget.

The Australian people will know fully what we intend - and what will be on offer will be a Beazley Labor Government that will roll the GST back, and restore fairness in industrial relations. A Labor Government that cares about families, and cares about ensuring Australia has a strong future.

It will be a stark contrast to the Howard Government which has no plans other than a cynical vote-buying spree.

I know I can rely on all of you for the effort and commitment to overturn the Howard Government's backward-looking agenda, and to help persuade people all over this country that there is a better way.

Finally, let me say how proud I am to address the great NSW Conference of the Australian Labor Party. Your Conference has always been an important fixture of the Australian political calendar, and of Australian political history.

This is the conference that gave the nation Prime Ministers of the calibre of Ben Chifley, Gough Whitlam and Paul Keating.

I'm told your next conference will be in October 2001. That is when I hope and intend to return to address you as the latest in the line of Labor Prime Ministers building this nation the Labor way - the Australian way.

   Visit Kim Beazley's web page

  View entire issue - print all of the articles!

  Issue 58 contents

Crackdown on Fiji Workers Intensifies

Building Industry Braces for Post-Games Slump

Call Centre Battle Hots Up

More Sackings Spark Entitlements Showdown

Carr Establishes Labor Hire Inquiry

High Court Puts Workers At Reith's Mercy

Miners Hit the Streets Over Death Threats

Unions Urged to Reignite Republic Debate

Tips Rip-Off Sparks Hotel Picket

Community Workers to Lay Siege to Parliament

Water Workers Accept 14% Pay Rise

Counselling for Workplace Accidents

Korean Food Festival is Union Business

Che Helps Doctors Save Lives

Maude Barlow Public Lecture - Sydney June 27

»	The Soapbox
»	Sport
»	Trades Hall
»	Tool Shed

»	In Defence of Rallies
»	The Cost of Activism

Notice Board
- Check out the latest events

Latest Issue

View entire latest issue
- print all of the articles!

Previous Issues

Subject index

Search all issues

© 1999-2000 Labor Council of NSW

LaborNET is a resource for the labour movement provided by the Labor Council of NSW

[ Privacy Statement | Disclaimer | Credits ]

LaborNET is proudly created, designed and programmed by Social Change Online for the Labor Council of NSW