ALP-THE PARTY OF IDEALISM AND REFORM
JOHN CURTIN MEMORIAL LECTURE-1978
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ALP-THE PARTY OF IDEALISM AND REFORMJOHN CURTIN MEMORIAL LECTURE-1978 |
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It is a great honour to be invited to deliver the annual
memorial lecture for John Curtin, one of the most distinguished prime ministers
in the history of our nation.
It is appropriate that the venue should be Western Australia,
the State which he represented in the House of Representatives for a total
of 14 years.
John Curtin is remembered most as the prime minister who
united Australia in time of war when the petty squabbling of conservative
politicians had left the nation bereft of effective leadership.
Curtin's role as a wartime leader was an accident of history.
He was trapped by his time in a situation which denied
him scope for the full exercise of his great reformist spirit.
Yet, despite the war, Curtin did preside over changes which
have affected Australia and its people profoundly.
Probably the most significant was the Banking Act of 1945,
which brought the banking system under the control of a central banking
authority, allowing the development of a more effective system of monetary
management after the dispiriting experiences of the Scullin Government in
the Great Depression.
That legislation stands intact in its essentials even today.
It is difficult to imagine how the national Government could discharge its
responsibilities in economic management without it.
Curtin persuaded the States to surrender their income taxing
powers-at that time the most far-reaching change in federal relationships
since the Finance Agreement of 1928.
He initiated schemes for health, hospitals, unemployment
and sickness benefits.
He introduced pensions for widows and pay-as-you-earn taxation.
The Curtin Government established a national airline, the
Australian National University and the Joint Coal Board to modernise that
industry.
It brought the national Government directly into education
for the first time and paved the way for joint Commonwealth-State funding
for housing.
If these proposals had survived beyond 1949, Australia
would have had a full-scale urban and regional development program 25 years
ago.
For good or ill, depending on one's outlook, Curtin introduced
the broadcasting of Parliament--something the mother of Parliaments has
grappled with only in recent months.
We can only guess at the further dimensions of greatness
that might have been added to the record of John Curtin if fate had decreed
that he led Australia in a time of peace.
But we should be fully conscious of the extent of his achievements
in a period when, for the first time, the flames of war reached our own
shores.
Curtin knew and understood the Australian people. He trusted
them and that trust was reciprocated. He responded to the times and the
people responded to him. That example is particularly relevant today.
The credibility of national leadership is critically, though
understandably, low.
For more than a decade, conservative politics in Australia
has been a battleground for personal ambition and ideological factionalism.
Labor's period in Government was cut short by a manifestation of that conservative
warfare; last year's election result can be seen in the same context.
The cynicism and ruthlessness with which the present Government
and Prime Minister gulled the Australian people last year has been revealed
by the subsequent actions, most notably the Budget.
If the leading figures in the public life of a nation like
ours are inconstant in the application of standards of probity and integrity
in the discharge of their responsibilities they place at risk the essential
under-pinning of the system of Government. If they are to flaunt a blatant
double standard, it must be expected that the coinage of proper conduct
will become generally debased.
Stemming this tide must be a particular responsibility
of the Australian Labor Party--the party of idealism and reform. If we lose
our commitment to ideals and reformation, we have lost everything. But there
is no such danger.
Notwithstanding the hammer blows of the past two and a
half years, the spirit of the Labor Party is unimpaired.
The electorate is prepared to trust Labor; to listen
to us; to support us.
We must live up to that trust.
The Labor Party is the only political force in Australia
which stands genuinely for social and economic reform. And I have no hesitation
in saying that we are as firmly committed as ever to our objectives of progressive
reform. There will, however, have to be some new defining of priorities
within those objectives. And it is that process I shall deal with tonight.
Labor believes there are certain fundamental injustices
embedded within our social system which must be eliminated before we can
truly claim to have a free and fair society. We must place a heavy stress
on the social infrastructure servicing our society.
We ought not to forget, in that regard, what was achieved
in the three years of Labor Government. We must realise how much of that
progress is being eroded by neglect, where it has not been reversed for
ideological reasons.
Let me remind you of some of the achievements that are
endangered, if not destroyed, either by neglect or more direct Government
action.
The Labor Government transformed the outlook for education.
We established the Schools Commission, ended the long and
bitter argument over so-called 'State aid' by almost doubling education
funding and distributing it on the basis of need.
Need is no longer the basic criterion in education funding
and the spectre of a revived and divisive 'State aid' debate is real.
Priority planning has been taken out of the hands of the
Schools Commission, funding of schools has been slashed to a real growth
rate of only 1 per cent, and in the pruning of Schools Commission recommendations,
only the wealthier private schools emerged unscathed.
Labor established the Technical and Further Education Commission
so that technical skills might find their proper place in a changing society.
We introduced legislation requiring impact statements for
all proposals likely to affect the environment.
To a substantial degree, the present Government has sought
to evade its responsibilities under this law by passing them over to the
States.
We raised the standard rate of pension from 21 per cent
of average weekly earnings to 25 per cent and introduced twice-yearly indexation.
As average weekly earnings tend to increase faster than
the CPI, the announced change to once-a-year indexation means that pensioners
will progressively become worse off.
Cutting back indexation to once a year will rob pensioners
of another $100 million a year.
The means test was abolished for all those over seventy.
We now see it creeping back.
We legislated for Aboriginal land rights and established
the Aboriginal Land Fund Commission to acquire land. The Commission has
never been allowed to function effectively and its latest allocation of
funds is actually down 27 per cent from last financial year.
Labor legislated to override State laws which discriminated
unfairly against Aborigines.
Yet look at the Queensland situation today.
We made great efforts to improve the level of Aboriginal
housing throughout Australia, but in real terms the current Budget for that
purpose is 28 per cent below that provided in 1975-76.
There is a similar story with the Aboriginal health programs.
Labor introduced universal health insurance through Medibank--a
scheme which has been under constant threat from the time Labor left office.
We established the Industries Assistance Commission, the
Trade Practices Commission and the Prices Justification Tribunal--all of
them key instruments in equitable economic management, and all of them cut
back in scope by subsequent Government action.
I don't intend this as an exercise in point-scoring. My
purpose in mentioning these items, among many, is to illustrate an erosion
of concern for social responsibilities, a downgrading of compassion.
Our opponents have sought to nurture memories of all that
went wrong for the Labor Government and the impression that there was nothing
else.
I am confident that, reminded of the specifics, the overwhelming
majority of Australians would readily concede the achievements of the Labor
years, whatever riders some of them might add. Moreover, the spirit of those
measures is not a spirit of big government and big spending as if those
things were virtues in themselves.
In its three years, Labor introduced schemes like the Australian
Assistance Plan and the Area Improvement Program, which provided an unprecedented
degree of decentralisation in decision-making, right down to a district
and neighbourhood level.
But those schemes have gone.
Labor does not believe that good and effective Government
is achieved merely by the spending of money. But neither does it believe
that all spending of money by Government is bad, or at the least, suspect.
As we see neglect continuing to seep into so many areas
of public policy, our commitment to progressive reform with maximum equity
is reinforced. To fail in this regard would be not only to deny the deprived
and the needy in our community.
It would be a failure to respond to the qualitative needs
of our society as a whole--needs which are as much middle class as they
are working class.
One of Labor's roles must be to inspire concern, to nurture
issues of social conscience and morality against the pressures of self-interest
and mere pragmatism.
These are some of the reasons why the Labor movement has
expressed such extreme hostility to the 1978-79 Budget. It is a Budget lacking
social concern, unjust in its redistributive priorities and, in any event,
inappropriate in its strategy.
The Labor Party cannot accept a situation where the health
needs of the community are provided so unevenly, with the greatest advantage
to the affluent and the greatest disadvantage to the needy.
It is appalling that the socially disadvantaged, by Government
decision, must now convince a doctor in private practice of their condition
before they can qualify for Government assistance.
For demographic reasons, some pressures on the education
system will ease in the years ahead. But within the system, neglect and
deprivation remain rampant in many areas. The victims are innocent children
from less affluent families.
Yet the conservative priority in education is again to
underwrite the privileged end of the system.
We cannot accept the perpetuation of deprivation and grossly
unequal opportunity through official neglect.
I believe it is important to make these points in the present
climate.
The expediencies of conservative politics have been fostering
an alarming mood in sections of our society.
It is reflected in attitudes which vary from a refusal
even to accept the existence of problems such as I have been describing
to a flint-hearted assumption that the victims of social dislocation bring
their condition upon themselves.
By these standards, social concern is passé.
Strong men claim to stand alone--they ask no favours, least
of all from Government, they say, so why should they be expected to provide
favours for others. Paradoxically, the people who take this 18th century
view of the ideal in economic affairs are often the beneficiaries of substantial
Government handouts--which are of course, 'different'.
A 'gentleman' farmer from the rich Western Districts of
Victoria sees nothing strange about delivering homilies on how tough life
must be while receiving substantial Government assistance for his farm by
way of superphosphate subsidies.
Or he may be given to declaiming against a class of persons
he calls 'dole bludgers', who are said to 'rip off' the taxpayers, even
when given to patronising $600 a night hotels at public expense while travelling
overseas.
Double standards and selective indignation are no basis
for credible policy. They need to be recognised for what they are.
Assistance to the unemployed, for example, is on nothing
like the scale of assistance to industry.
According to the latest Budget figures, direct assistance
to industry in the current financial year will be $536 million. Indirect
assistance through the tax system--principally by way of the investment
allowance and the trading stock valuation adjustment--will be worth $867
million. Assistance provided by way of protection is worth at least $6,000
million--a grant total of about $7,500 million a year, or about 7.5 per
cent of this year's estimated gross domestic product.
The cost of paying a subsistence benefit, or less, to the
unemployed will be $780 million.
In other words, the cost of assisting industry is nearly
ten times greater than the cost of assisting the unemployed.
I am not trying to reverse the conservative argument.
It does not necessarily follow from what I have just said
that all assistance to industry is unjustified or abused. Indeed, the next
Labor Government will be committed to providing certain forms of assistance
to industry to improve performance and help to revitalise the economy.
By the same yardstick, it is wrong to condemn all expenditure
to improve social infrastructure or transfer payments for which there is
a genuine need.
Government can assist in both directions.
In all cases, the rate at which it does so should be regulated
by what the economy can bear and what the community wants.
I mentioned earlier the erosion of concern for Aboriginal
Australians in various areas of policy.
Consider the situation there.
The Commission of Enquiry into poverty had this to say:
... [Aboriginals] probably have the highest growth rate, the highest birth rate, the highest death rate, the worst health and housing, and the lowest educational, occupational, economic, social and legal status of any identifiable section of the Australian population.
Accurate measurement of Aboriginal unemployment is difficult
because so many do not register, but well-based estimates put the figure
at over 50 per cent.
The infant mortality rate for Aboriginals is 20 per cent;
for white Australians it is 2 per cent.
Two per cent of Aboriginal children progress beyond third
form at school; for white children the future is 23 per cent.
The black, the unemployed, the poor and the sick cannot
be punished for their condition as if they chose it just to rip off the
system.
The concept is barbarous.
It is unfortunate, but inevitable, that with every system
of Government support there will be a minority who abuse it.
The Government has had to change its Special Youth Employment
Training Program because of employer abuse.
Abuse is not confined to a few who don't wish to work but
do wish to collect unemployment benefits. Far bigger money is made from
tax avoidance and the milching of the health insurance scheme at the country's
expense.
Yet the double standard tends to appear again in this type
of comparison.
The outrage at social security abuses is of a totally different
order of magnitude to the concern expressed at the other forms of cheating
I have just cited. To the conservative eye, it would seem, crime committed
in a white collar or a grey flannel suit, or with the sanctity of a stethoscope,
is far less heinous, far more tolerable.
My point is this--the indignation and reaction to so-called
'dole bludging' exemplifies a pernicious trend in public debate and political
decision-making.
It is based on spurious grounds, so far as comparisons
are concerned it is directed at a powerless and unorganised section of the
community, inflated out of proportion--and then used as the excuse for dismantling
social infrastructure services in the community.
If we allow these attitudes to take root and grow we are
inviting the failure of our system.
We cannot turn our backs on the real needs of Australians.
We cannot allow our sense of priorities to be directed
obsessively to purely economic issues to the detriment of massive social
and human questions.
These things have been happening, are happening now in
Australia.
In three successive budgets, there has been a redistribution
of wealth and resources away from areas of need, away from the majority
of the Australian people, to certain large corporate interests in our economy.
Can we claim to be better off, in any respect, as a result?
I find no evidence for such a claim; quite the reverse.
Inflation has been reduced by dint of deeper recession.
The economy shows no sign of upturn, even though it has sunk into a deeper
trough than other comparable countries.
Let me remind you, as a matter of fairness, of the situation
during Labor's period of Government. Australia's growth rate then was higher
than in these other countries; our level of unemployment was lower. Their
problems became ours to a very large extent--though you will recall the
scorn heaped on that thesis at the time.
Now, in a depressed situation, Australia continues to pursue
contractionary policies despite the enormous social distress they are generating.
Alternatives are available. Sooner or later they must be
adopted, as we have suggested in the weeks since the Budget.
A concern for the disadvantaged is not necessarily bad
economics. The mix of measures available to Government can be properly balanced
to generate activity as well as relieve suffering.
On our present course, by next year the loss of production
caused by present policies could be estimated conservatively at some $8,000
million. When the social costs are added, it is surely obvious that the
issue cannot continue to be ignored.
Yet to suggest alternatives is to invite again the spurious
claims that Labor stands for big-spending, irresponsible government, while
the conservative parties are small-spending and, therefore, responsible.
Our opponents have propagated the view that there is some
intrinsic benefit in reducing the size of the public sector, that the private
sector must expand as a result.
Again, I would suggest, there is no sound evidence for
such a view.
The total Commonwealth sector in Labor's last Budget accounted
for 29.5 per cent of GDP. The comparable figure last year was 31.1 per cent,
and a reasonable estimate for this financial year is about 30.4 per cent.
In the virtual absence of economic growth, the public sector
naturally accounts for a large share of contracted resources. The more the
public sector is deliberately cut back in areas such as capital works--where
the spending actually takes place in the private sector--the more the private
sector will be undermined and overall economic activity diminished. A policy
of cutting back and back on this part of the public sector thus intensifies
the squeeze on the depressed private sector. In fact, public sector expenditure
is essential to get the private sector out of recession.
It is also worth noting that last year's expenditure with
the Budget deficit should discredit forever the ill-informed conservative
sloganeering about the overwhelming evil of deficits.
The Government has been engaged on some substantial fiddling
of the books, moving out large items which traditionally have been included
in the Budget.
The point of that exercise is to reduce the size of the
Budget and, so it is hoped, the level of the deficit, for the sake of appearances.
If the bookkeeping had been carried out in the normal, proper way the deficit
for last financial year would have been around $4,000 million.
It would have been the highest deficit in history.
Yet in spite of that huge deficit, inflation came down--contrary
to all the principles the Government had argued previously. The simplistic
notions of economic management which have been force-fed to the Australian
people over these past few years are the products of a piggy-bank mentality.
They are inappropriate and positively dangerous.
The core of the argument between Labor and the conservatives
on economic management is not about big spending as against small spending;
on the evidence, they are spenders on as big a scale as anyone before
them.
The real question between us, however, is who gets the
benefits.
There is nothing exceptional about the size of the public
sector in the Australian economy. It is in the middle range, well below
the highest and smaller than, for example, the United States and several
other countries whose economic performances are rather more impressive than
ours.
Does that prove anything?
One could argue, in fact, that some of the measures employed
to encourage expansion of the private sector--measures like the investment
allowance--have been counterproductive for their side-effects, particularly
in employment.
Moreover, certain policies, such as the movement to world
parity for crude oil pricing and the progressive withdrawal of the export
levy on coal, have given substantial extra profits to some foreign-owned
companies at the expense of the rest of the community.
Those companies have moved their windfall profits out of
Australia, aggravating the balance of payments problem at a time when our
current account trend is already a cause for uncertainty.
Labor believes strongly in the need for a redistribution
of both wealth and power to the majority of the people.
I have recently outlined in some detail some of the redistributive
measures we propose.
Changes in the tax scales to reduce the advantage created
in recent times for those with the highest incomes, a capital gains tax,
a resources rental tax to return more of the benefits from the exploitation
of public resources to the public purse, and to clamp down on tax avoidance
through such devices as family trusts.
We see the redistribution of power as a matter of establishing
firm rights for the individual. The most basic individual rights should
be spelled out in a Bill of Rights. I would hope that those who have opposed
such a proposal on technical grounds in the past have been persuaded by
the alarming growth of authoritarianism in recent years.
The statutory basis of Australian democracy is too slender
for comfort in the light of examples we have seen in recent times.
Even the right to vote for a national Government can rest
ultimately on the whim of a State Government.
Indeed, nowhere in Australia is there an inalienable right
to vote. Essentially, the vote is a privilege, an indulgence that could
be withdrawn or limited quite legally. That's a shaky basis for democracy
to rest upon.
I acknowledge the constitutional difficulties of introducing
a Bill of Rights on the American model. In Government, Labor was forced
to acknowledge them but, nevertheless, strove always to be consistent with
the relevant United Nations Conventions. The next Labor Government will
seek to codify that spirit.
We will be prepared to make greater use of the external
affairs power of the Constitution--one of the few openings through which
the national Government can move in this area.
We will work for strong and effective freedom of information
legislation rather than the pale shadow of that name which has finally emerged
from the bureaucratic surgery after more than four years.
The scope of the current legislation has been restricted
far beyond real need.
A guaranteed right for the citizen to know what is going
on in Government is not one that appeals to entrenched authority such as
the bureaucracy. It is essential, nonetheless. Politicians, the transient
element of the system of government, should acknowledge the need for their
own good.
Governments can be too easily 'snowed' by their public
service advisers; they can too easily fall into comfortable tandem with
those who run the power machine with the security of permanency and, largely,
anonymity.
It will be interesting, incidentally, to see the fate of
the present, attenuated freedom of information proposals in the light of
Government-imposed staff ceilings throughout the public service. The legislation
will impose new legal obligations on every section of Government but there
has been no indication that the staffing resources will be provided to carry
them out.
In this same general vein, Labor believes it essential
to legislate for full disclosure of substantial donations to political parties.
It is an essential part of the process of restoring credibility to politics.
Where Government decisions can mean additional corporate
or individual profits of many millions a year, and where the tendency has
been established to favour those sections of society above others, who could
blame disillusioned voters for thinking that influence may be bought?
Open Government can be a reality, and a creative one.
Disclosure of political funding and genuine freedom of
information would take us a lot closer to that ideal.
Just as we created an employee-elected commissioner on
the ABC, we would look at worker representation on the Board of TAA, the
Australian National Line and the Australian National Railways. The task
ahead of us is not only to redistribute wealth but also power for a more
just and humane society.
This year's Budget should have been the one to launch the
Australian economy into the 1980s, but the impetus just wasn't there. We
will have cause to regret that fact in the future. We needed the impetus
now; its absence is a setback to national economic performance and will
weaken our preparedness for the 1980s.
It is noteworthy even now that economic discussion is centred
almost exclusively on the immediate problems besetting Australia. There
appears to be almost total neglect of the difficulties ahead of us which
have medium to long-term implications.
Already we know that about 4 per cent of the workforce,
at least, is unemployed because of deep-seated structural changes taking
place in the economy.
We are aware that they will remain unemployed and their
numbers will grow in the absence of medium to long-term programs on the
part of Government.
Our economic structure is in urgent need of revitalisation
now and will need it more and more as the pace of change accelerates. We
must give ourselves the time and the means to make the rate of change manageable.
We cannot resist change.
We cannot hope to deal with it by confrontation politics.
And as the Jackson Committee on manufacturing industry
pointed out three years ago, major change cannot be left solely to market
forces and the price mechanism; that approach is not acceptable in the Australian
environment.
The Jackson Committee's Green Paper on manufacturing policy
said this:
Governments should act to provide, so far as possible, a stable and predictable environment for industry to operate in.
But the Committee also warned:
Government concern for industry confidence and for the reduction of uncertainty should not be permitted to stifle necessary change or innovation. Government pronouncements should not mislead the public and industry about the likely future, nor understate the need for change.
That same Green Paper said bluntly that the traditional
ad hoc approach to the management of the Australian economy was no longer
good enough.
We have built up an enormous, ramshackle structure of subsidies
for primary industry, assistance to secondary industry, tariffs which protect
some manufacturers from imports while they simultaneously penalise, through
added costs, farmers who rely on exporting--the list goes on.
Our future demands a more rational use of our limited resources
than in the past. We need processes for genuine consultation aimed at genuine
consensus.
We need very much the spirit, the understanding and the
empathy that a leader like John Curtin brought to national political leadership.
Curtin's White Paper on full employment with rising living
standards was a brilliant articulation of widely-shared but previously unstated
aspirations of an Australian society which had been through depression and
war. The longevity of that policy statement as the bipartisan expression
of Australia's basic economic policy objectives was testimony enough to
its power. The Labor party still believes in those basic objectives, the
only major political party to do so. Their pursuit in these final two decades
of the 20th century, however, will be more difficult and will have to be
by different means from those defined in 1945.
They will require of us a constant, careful judgement between
the demands of social infrastructure and productive infrastructure--though
we should be careful not to regard the two as mutually antipathetic.
Spending in areas such as education, health services and
the arts are not easily quantified in terms of strengthening the economy.
Intangible though they may be, however, I hope nobody today would argue
against the proposition that a better educated, healthier and more creative
society must also be the more effective economically.
Judgements of this sort will be impossible unless we rid
ourselves of the conservative shibboleths of recent years.
We will need a larger public sector; the Government's
own advisers say as much.
The Department of Employment and Industrial Relations has
warned that manufacturing industry can only provide modest growth in employment
opportunities.
The rural and mining industries will contribute little.
Within the services sector, the prospects are uneven because
of the development of labour-replacing technology as, for example, in the
banks.
The community services sector will offer job expansion
opportunities until the early 1980s, when its rate of job generation will
decline from the influence of demographic change (as in education) and greater
capital intensity (notably health care).
The Department of Employment and Industrial Relations estimate
that something like 10 per cent of additional jobs will have to be provided
from public administration. Let me quote the Department clearly because
there has been a lot of ill-informed nonsense spoken and written recently
which, if listened to, will lead the country deep into serious social problems.
It says:
It seems likely that one of the main challenges in managing the economy to produce reasonably full employment in future years will involve some redistribution of income from the sectors strongly contributing to the nation's wealth to those which more readily employ people.
With major service areas like retail trade likely to contribute less to employment growth, the public sector may be increasingly required to generate jobs within the public sector or through the private sector via public expenditure.
Another sobering point needs to be borne in mind.
Because of improved productivity directly attributable
to increased capital intensity in production and distribution and intensive
labour saving innovations, a higher rate of economic growth than achieved
through the two decades to the 1970s will be necessary to sustain a comparable
performance in the provision of jobs. A daunting prospect!
Two years ago, a French Government report forecast that
by the mid-1980s, 40 per cent of jobs in insurance companies and banks would
be taken over by computers. The German firm Siemens says that by the 1990s,
30 per cent of all office jobs will be taken over by computers.
There is no evidence of any Government awareness in this
country of the enormous social dislocation this sort of change will bring
about. Quite clearly, there needs to be an informed understanding within
the community of the nature of this change, its likely effects and Government
responses, if further disruption of the recent Telecom type is to be averted.
We cannot blame people for reacting the way the Telecom
workers did if they are frightened of the unknown and can detect neither
sympathy nor awareness on the part of the Government.
Without delay, there needs to be started a major national
inquiry into likely ramifications of technological change and the more efficient
use of labour in the workforce. Insecurity and alienation in the workforce
and society generally are not the building blocks this nation will need
for the tasks of the 1980s and beyond. Propagation of the 'dole bludger'
syndrome and others in that category can do nothing to relieve insecurity
and end alienation.
To all these ends, we must devise and develop suitable
machinery so that the social and economic development of the nation is mapped
out in a way that the community can understand.
It is one of the more absurd conservative myths that respectable,
free enterprise Governments cannot accept the concept of planned social
and economic development, just as every well run business plans its affairs
for three to five year periods. The need is for more openness at every stage
of the process, including the conclusions, which in our present system,
remain locked within the Treasury and, to a lesser extent, the Cabinet room.
In a discussion on the general subject of national economic
planning not so long ago, the distinguished Professor of Economics at the
University of Maryland, Professor Melville Ulmer, commented that ... "There's
nothing more authoritarian about economic regulations, in a democracy, than
there is about traffic laws; they're to be judged exclusively by their results."
The point was rather whether planning could make a substantial
and valuable difference.
And on that score Professor Ulmer had some pointed remarks about institutional outlooks in America which could apply with equal force to a good many conservative views in Australia. Let me quote him:
At present, government in America operates on the fundamental premise that the market, the free market, can do no wrong-in general, that is. Hence Government is thrust into an unchanging posture of constant surprise.
We are surprised that inflation occurs and accelerates every time business activity is expanding, even though it has been doing so repeatedly for 30 years.
We are even more surprised when inflation doesn't disappear as corrective recessions are invoked, even though prices have risen in every year but one since World War Two; and we're surprised about pollution and poverty, food and drug contamination, urban squalor, crime in inner cities and so on, even though all are equally predictable, and without the aid of econometric models. Surprise makes for hectic ineffectuality in government, a waste and proliferation of agencies, often operating at cross purposes.
And may I just offer you a final comment from Professor
Ulmer:
In contrast, economic planning requires a pragmatic governmental attitude of readiness, the same alertness and forethought that any sensible person exercises in his own affairs. At a minimum, it would result in the coordination of what Government is trying to do now, in its displanned, disorganised way ...
I think Professor Ulmer's rather wry statement of the present
situation and the alternative is unarguable on any objective view of our
circumstances.
The Australian Labor Party platform is quite specific about
our commitment to the planned social and economic development of the nation
on a number of essential principles.
The platform states that our economic objectives include
full employment, greater economic independence, maintenance of a diversified
industrial base, reduction in national and international inequalities in
wealth and income, price stability and an improvement in living standards.
We believe in the same basic principles that were stated
in 1945 by the Curtin Government's White Paper.
Market forces alone will not create the environment necessary
to achieve these objectives. To create the environment necessary to achieve
these objectives we need the clarity, the cooperation and the coordination
that can only come from the collective definition of our goals and methods--from
participation.
Perhaps we need to consider measures such as social and
economic impact statements as well as environmental impact statements.
Certainly we need to ensure that future change does not
bear any heavier on those already disadvantaged within society. And in that
regard may I remind you that the disadvantaged are not all minority groups.
The largest of all disadvantaged groups in the Australian community comprises
fully half our people--and I refer, of course, to the women of Australia.
It is a sad reflection on the changed priorities of national
Government that, after the efforts in the Labor years to redress the inequalities
affecting Australian women, the only serious current action in that field
is at the level of State Governments. All power to those States which have
acted to outlaw discrimination on the basis of sex. The Labor Party supports
such progressive action wherever it is possible. We look forward particularly,
however, to the time when it is possible nationally.
On an occasion dedicated to John Curtin there is one further
area of policy that must be mentioned, that of international relations.
Curtin was responsible for the most decisive assertion
of Australian independence that had been made at that time since Federation.
His decision that Australian interests--it may well have
been Australian survival--could no longer be submerged by those of an Empire-oriented
Government in London has had profound effects on our development as a nation.
It is true that a minority of ultra-conservative thought
in Australia still misrepresents or misunderstands the significance of that
decision.
By turning to the United States at a time of direct threat
to this nation, Curtin was not seeking to replace one great power hegemony
with another. It was a practical alliance based on mutual interests.
The United States did not seek client status from us--then
or later. That was the idea of conservative Australian politicians.
The drama of Curtin's break with tradition may not have
been fully appreciated at the time, though it certainly has been since.
Great decisions in international affairs seem to have a special drama. They
are still possible and, in some respects, necessary and overdue.
The future Australia must be less deferential in the presence
of the great powers, more active in regional cooperation, where she must
not only listen but be prepared, on occasions, to lead. Before long, the
increasing emphasis on economic issues in international affairs will also
force us to back words with actions, sometimes with the need for politically
sensitive domestic adjustments as a consequence.
Tonight, I take pride in re-stating so many Labor commitments
which have carried down from Curtin's period--and, indeed, from earlier
times in some instances.
We do not believe our society can be socially and economically
just without the continued pursuit of the objectives derived from these
commitments.
We are not a party of 'big' government--too much Government
intervention is stifling. But we cannot accept default and neglect. Too
little government is an abdication of responsibility, a charter for the
type of exploitation that belongs to the century past. Today, as much as
ever before, the Labor Party is inspired by the ideals which guided John
Curtin.
Curtin recognised and discharged a responsibility to attend
to social reform, even at a time of great international and national disturbance
and distraction.
I believe we face comparable conditions today.
Our great international and national disturbances and distractions
are mostly economic rather than military, but they place the same demands
on national leadership.
We assert unashamedly that at times like the present, where
there is to be some sacrifice, it should be distributed according to a sense
of equity and justice. The distribution should not be a matter of providing
comfort and accommodation for the preferences of the privileged at the expense
of the majority of people. Moreover, we assert an over-riding responsibility
that must be acknowledged and discharged in responding to these great economic
problems--it is that we do not lose sight of our equally important objective
to look after the social needs of the community.
At times like the present we cannot respond as generously
or as rapidly as we would in more suitable and more prosperous periods.
But it is incontestable that there is room to attend to the more glaring
areas of neglect and injustice. To ignore them because of some narrow-minded
inadequate focus on economic affairs, is to sow seeds of social division
and antagonisms in our society, which are both unnecessary and undesirable.
The most recent Budget exemplified all of these most undesirable
traits. Equally alarming, it ignored totally the medium to long term social
and economic problems they are creating in our nation.
We cannot expect a growing army of the young to accept
the types of policies that treat them in some extravagant fashion as expendable
pawns in an economic chess game poorly played by conservatives. There is
very real evidence of growing alienation in the community--and no wonder!
It is the main disturbing quality the conservatives have injected into our
social system. We need a return to the great ideals that guided John Curtin
and, indeed, Ben Chifley after him.
They were ideals based on a true sense of compassion, tempered
by the sound commonsense of the average man, and influenced by the values
of social and economic equality and justice.
Those ideals were attained within a clear vision of what
Australia in the future should be. That is what we need again today.
Labor makes no apology for our scale of priorities.
They are headed by the demand for policies to assist the
economy out of depression, policies to generate activity and jobs. Beyond
that immediate need is the task of reshaping and revitalising the economy
so that it is better equipped to cope with the many changes that are now
approaching headlong.
On another level we would rather provide assistance for
Aboriginal welfare than wealthy mining companies.
We see it as a priority to redistribute the untaxed capital
gains of the wealthy so that the glaring social disadvantages of our education
system can be overcome.
We do not hesitate to state our commitment to improving
the urban environment in which we live.
We are clear in our determination to enhance the quality
and distribution of health services by clamping down on tax avoidance from
devices such as family trusts and by redistributing from the top 2 per cent
of incomes. A vocal minority will stridently resist these changes. The Labor
Party is confident in the justice of what it proposes, confident that the
case for such redistribution can be argued persuasively and successfully.
We are clear in our message to those few who control so
much of the wealth of the community--the needs of the great majority of
the people cannot continue to be neglected so that the privilege of the
wealthy minority may be preserved and enlarged. To argue otherwise is to
invite something worse than social division. In difficult economic circumstances
like the present it could be the genesis of a nasty rift in our society.
The Labor party today is the party of the future--a party determined that that future will be better and more just for all Australians.