Opening Address to the Australia Unlimited Conference
Melbourne
4 May 1999
I congratulate The Australian on its initiative in convening this important conference - Australia Unlimited - and thank it for the invitation to deliver the opening address.
The Australian has shown a welcome perspicacity in putting at the core of these proceedings this question - how can we continue to build an open, competitive, international economy while ensuring we develop a progressive, cohesive society? The question, rightly, assumes a continuum in our affairs. I suggest at the outset therefore that it makes sense to have as a basis of our considerations, an understanding of how we got to where we are at the end of our first century as a nation - so that, by drawing upon the strengths - and weaknesses - of that experience we can best make an intelligent assessment of how Australia can in fact move towards a prosperous and cohesive future.
As I have said before no nation has had more unpropitious origins. Except in South Australia, the colonies were predominantly dumping grounds for poor wretches adjudged as criminals by the British judicial system - a sprinkling of condemned political activists, but mainly the desperate poor and rootless of a rapidly industrialising society.
The appalling conditions of their transportation in overcrowded sailing ships to the other end of the earth was matched by the harsh and often brutal environment of their penal servitude. Fear, despair and hopelessness were prevailing sentiments among the convicts. Their plight engendered a move in more enlightened quarters to end the system; this was supported on pragmatic grounds by the increasing numbers of free settlers who saw cheap convict labour as a threat to their livelihoods. The squatters who benefited directly from such cheap labour, under the assignment system, opposed the moves but the system was doomed when it became clear that its continuation was incompatible with the burgeoning demand for self-government. Transportation to the eastern colonies ended in 1852 and to Western Australia in 1868. By that date some 165,000 men and women had been transported as convicts from Britain and Ireland.
Coinciding almost exactly with the end of transportation to the eastern colonies, the discovery of gold in 1851 brought an exciting new rush of migrants into this feisty mix of convicts and free settlers. These were the times, following the French Revolution and the onset of industrialisation, which were described by the eminent Australian historian W K Hancock as "a period filled with a deafening clamour for rights and a few shrill protests about duties." The diggers arrived in their tens of thousands, the independent men, the assisted immigrants, the disillusioned Chartists, the revolutionaries of Europe. In a decade, the population of the colonies was trebled by this influx impatient for gold and just as impatient of anything which denied the equal rights of men. The circumstances of the colonies were making the protests of the old world the common starting point of the new. The ideas these individuals brought with them confirmed existing democratic elements and became reflected in the general attitudes and assumptions of the Australian people.
These attitudes and assumptions went further than merely asserting and achieving the rights of the individual in matters of the franchise - important as that was. The impetus for change went deeper. There was a conviction that this land was new, not only in terms of settlement but in relation to the power structures of Europe. Australian nationalism was more than empty words for it involved the dynamic assumption that the social hierarchies and political and economic inequalities of the old world were not sacrosanct.
After the alluvial gold had been worked out men had to seek their livelihood in other ways. As distinct from the United States, it was not easy to acquire land because of restrictive legislation, and those who could not turned to the new secondary industries for employment. The capitalist organisation of industry was accepted but it was not an acceptance which precluded the possibility of modification or regulation in the interests of those who were employed.
Workers were not alone in pressing their cause. In fact the very concept of a "fair and reasonable" wage which has ever since dominated industrial relations in this country found an equal place in the propaganda of employers in Victoria. They wanted protection by tariffs from overseas competition and solicited the support of labour by arguing that a fair and reasonable wage could only be paid if local enterprise was protected from foreign competition which had the advantage of an exploited labour force.
This uneasy marriage of convenience survived the period of prosperity and expansion that lasted till the latter part of the 1880s. Organised labour followed a traditional policy of direct negotiation and industrial action. The principle of unionism did not go unchallenged but, in general, employers were in a position to grant concessions and industrial relations, if not entirely harmonious, were at least not marked by widespread conflict.
The marriage dissolved with the onset of the deep economic depression beginning at the end of the 1880s. The colonies were racked by bitter and often violent industrial confrontation in the period 1890-94, particularly in the maritime and shearing industries. In terms that now, a century later, have a familiar resonance the employers' clarion call was "freedom of contract" and denial of the right of unions to bargain collectively on behalf of workers. With the help of sympathetic colonial governments, the use of military, police forces and non-union labour the unions were comprehensively defeated.
But these events had two outcomes of enduring significance for the soon-to-emerge Australian nation. First, the move to establish a system of conciliation and arbitration developed out of a widespread conviction that recourse to force for the settlement of disputes in industry should not be tolerated again - that freedom should not be euphemistically equated with licence for either side to impose its will upon the other without regard to the public interest. Second, labour was equally convinced that the time had come to abandon its traditional reliance on industrial action alone. It had thrown its weight behind the campaign to secure the vote for all men and had seen the authority of Parliament invoked against it. The unions concluded that the vote must be used to return representatives of labour who would have a direct voice in how that authority was exercised. The Australian Labor Party was born.
The 1890's also covered the period of the three Constitution Conventions out of which emerged on 1st January 1901, the new Australia of 3.8 million people. The founding fathers were entitled to be proud as they contemplated this new Australia which had been fashioned from just over a century of settlement in the Great South Land. Distance had been not only a tyranny but a blessing. In this remote continent, recently acquired ownership or control of land had not had time to entrench the privileges and respect that centuries of power had created in the old country. Released convicts and the new arrivals shared a healthy scepticism about any attempt to transport a hierarchy of status or rights. This scepticism had produced a climate of pragmatic egalitarianism but not social revolution. A Frenchman, Albert Mtin writing in 1901 (Le Socialisme Sans Doctrines) observed acutely: "Australasia has not contributed much to social philosophy, but she has gone infinitely further than any other country in the practical field."
A vast continent had been explored, the foundations of a great primary industry had been laid, substantial infrastructure in communications and other public services established and the statute books contained a range of legislation which, as Mtin observed, led the world by the social standards of the time. The Australian character had by now come to be associated with the concepts of mateship and the "fair go."
But there was a certain ambivalence in the confidence of this new Australia. We suffered from a cultural cringe which only started to really dissipate under the Prime Ministerships of John Gorton and Gough Whitlam. For a great proportion of Australians the ties to the United Kingdom remained strong. And its wars were our wars. Six hundred and six Australians died in the Boer War but this was as nothing compared with the carnage of World War I. Of the 324,000 Australians who served overseas in that conflict 61,919, or almost one in five, were killed. This horrendous loss of so many of our finest young men was a tragedy for the country - you may get some idea of the impact by realising that it is equivalent today to Australia losing a quarter of a million men - but it was also a defining moment for our young nation. And more than anything, it was Gallipoli that forged a sense of nationhood. Churchill's grandiose strategy was fatally flawed but our soldiers, in their mateship and courage against impossible odds, created a sense of proud Australian identity that has lasted to this day.
The Second World War, in a different sense, was a turning point in Australia's history. Like the First, it started as the United Kingdom's war, but with the entry of Japan on the side of the Axis powers in December 1941 it became a matter of Australia's national survival. And that survival was ensured when my great Labor predecessor, John Curtin, in January 1942, uttered perhaps the most memorable words to come from any Australian Prime Minister: "Without any inhibition of any kind, I make it clear that Australia looks to America, free of any pangs as to our traditional links and kinship with the United Kingdom." Curtin repudiated Churchill's absurd proposal to retain on the other side of the world the Australian troops who had established a magnificent fighting reputation in the Western theatre and brought them back to fight alongside the Americans against the Japanese. When victory was finally achieved on the 15th August 1945, Australia and its international relationships were never going to be the same again.
In the darkest days of war Curtin assembled some of the finest minds in the country under the guidance of another great servant of the Australian people, Nugget Coombs, to plan for a better and different post-war nation. Within a previously unheard of commitment to full employment, Australia embarked upon one of the most massive official immigration programs in history. Under this program, modified but maintained ever since, some five and a half million people from more than 140 countries have come here to make Australia their home. The overwhelming preponderance of pre-war stock from the United Kingdom and Ireland has been infused by immigrants from Europe, the Middle East, the Americas, Asia and, lately, southern Africa. Despite the casuistry and the misgivings of some who yearn for days beyond recall, we are, if language means anything at all, a truly multi-cultural nation - a nation enriched not only by the cultures but by the values, the habits and the disciplines of peoples from around the globe.
It would be idle to pretend that this fundamental transformation of our society has been achieved without pain. But, wonderfully, the "fair go" has prevailed and a people who have drawn so much strength from the great British traditions of parliamentary representation and the rule of law have absorbed and benefited from the traditions of our new citizens.
And demography had been reinforced by economic realities. The gradual dilution of the UK/Irish preponderance in the origins of our people coincided with the end of the Commonwealth preference in trade as Britain joined the Common Market in the 1960s and with Asia's emergence as a new, dynamic centre of economic growth and a force in international trade. Just as intelligent self-interest led Britain to loosen her economic ties with us, so did Australia come to understand that past emotional attachments could not stand in the way of relations with our more immediate, and increasingly dynamic, region.
Our capacity to do this at that time was facilitated by one of the most enlightened acts of bi-partisan political co-operation in our history - the abolition of the White Australia policy. Australia had both the confidence and the good sense to abandon a racially discriminatory immigration policy which was morally repugnant and economically insane.
For thirty years from the end of the Second World War, Australia in so many ways, therefore, was in a real sense the Lucky Country. Initially the world had paid us well for our primary exports and thereafter for the output of our burgeoning minerals industry. We had built a significant manufacturing sector behind high tariff walls and this together with our housing and service industries, both private and public, had provided full employment for a population growing rapidly and peaceably integrated.
But by the end of the 70s and early 80s the mood of our country had changed. Politically, the atmosphere had been poisoned by the constitutional events of November 1975. Economically, confidence had evaporated with the global dislocation triggered by the oil crises of the 1970s. Australia was paying a high price in rising unemployment and inflation which by the beginning of 1983 were running at ten and eleven percent respectively.
A reasonable modicum of modesty prevents me from dwelling at any length on that dynamic period of our history from 5th March 1983 to 20th December 1991; and, equally, my desire to avoid, as far as possible, undue partisanship in this presentation leads me to avoid any detailed comments on events since the advent of the Coalition government in 1996. Rather, while touching on the period since 1983 I would like now, against this condensed background of the forces and impulses which have made Australia what it is today, to consider how we can learn the lessons that will enable us to optimise our prospects as a prosperous and cohesive society.
Let me first however put this proposition. Sensible debate in this area is currently stultified by the constant parroting of a theme calculated to appeal to passion and prejudice rather than to the mind. I refer to the easy epithet of "economic rationalism" flung around indiscriminately as the solemn diagnosis of the cause of so much of our social malaise. Like so many simplistic nostrums the problem with this particular offering is that it contains an element of truth i.e. if all decisions were made simply on the basis of maximising the economic bottom-line it would be socially deleterious. But whenever I hear the phrase paraded as though it really offers a meaningful prescription I want to shout out the question - do you want us to behave in a way which is economically irrational?
The secret of course is that we should combine economic rationality with considerations of social responsibility. That is the first, and major, principle for prosperity with equity and social cohesion. And our history shows this principle to be a reflection of the fundamental ethos of the Australian people. Stripped down to its essentials the political debate in this country has been about how best to reflect that ethos in appropriate policy and legislation. Within that debate neither side of politics has had a monopoly of wisdom in economics or virtue in social justice; but the public sentiment has, in the past, tended to confine aberrations from good policy within reasonably acceptable limits.
The challenge today arises out of the fact that the rapidity of the technological revolution and the globalisation of economic activity has tended to unsettle that public sentiment. What for so many is a sense of bewilderment was most eloquently expressed by the American sociologist and economist, Kenneth Boulding, who said: "I was born in the middle of human history. The world today is as different from the world into which I was born, as that world was from Julius Caesar's". Those words were written in 1966 and the exponential trend of the revolution since then, particularly in the fields of computers, telecommunications and bio-technology, has added to the sense of uncertainty in our community. Life is more complex and the opportunity for security through employment has diminished.
These developments have had two discernible and disturbing effects. First, there is a greater apprehension of and resistance to change; and, second, with a growing sense of their own insecurity among many Australians there is a weakening of their commitment to the less fortunate in our society - and, perversely, an attempt by some to portray these very people as the scapegoats for our malaise.
I believe that meeting this challenge is at the very heart of what we are talking about at this Conference - how can we continue to build an open, competitive, international economy while ensuring we develop a prosperous, cohesive society? And, equally, I believe that the principles which political and community leaders need to adopt to meet this challenge successfully are relatively straightforward.
First, we should assert the unquestionable benefits to humankind which have flowed from its genius through time in creating the opportunities for a better life. Do we really believe that we would be better off if we went back to the horse and plough, if goods were manufactured the way they were a hundred years ago, if the transportation of these goods across our wharves still involved stevedores lumping them on their backs, if long distance communication still depended on tapping out messages in morse code, if the armory of the medical profession was still asprin and castor oil? The simple truth is that we cannot impose a moratorium on the genius of the human mind and we should thank God - or whomever you wish - that we can't.
Second, we should draw on our own history to make today's Australians realise that their forebears created this most favoured of nations by their willingness to embrace change. That embrace, at times, took longer than it should have but we are unrecognisably better for it having happened. Can you imagine, for instance, what a puny force we would be, for our own good and in our region, if we had not adopted that massive post-war immigration program - and, in time, not had the good sense to make it racially non-discriminatory?
Third, we should recognise the asymmetry between our technological and scientific genius on the one hand, and our relative stodginess as social engineers. It is as though we have suffered a collective lobotomy with one side of the brain functioning well while the other has atrophied. We must redress this imbalance and be as bold in making social adjustments as we have been in technical innovation.
Fourth, it follows therefore that we should be astringent in the invocation of "the national interest". If a particular policy change is justified on the basis that the nation as a whole will be better off, then it is both legitimate and desirable that the nation as a whole should make some provision for those who are adversely affected by the implementation of that policy.
Fifth, it also follows that a society which is becoming richer overall through the processes of change should recognise that there are disadvantaged groups who, in the absence of positive action by society, will not derive any benefit from that growing wealth and will become increasingly alienated. Making relevant educational, training and retraining opportunities equally available, irrespective of income, is a crucially important element of such action. If the moral imperative is not sufficient motivation to do what ought to be done in these areas, intelligent self-interest should be.
Sixth, the distinguishing characteristic of the technological revolution is its international dimension and global impact. The nature of our society is being increasingly affected by what happens beyond our own borders. Our international relations, bilaterally and in relevant international organisations, should be conducted in a way calculated to a) optimise the benefits available to us from international trade and investment b) increase the security of our region and c) enhance respect for Australia.
From these broad principles which I see as fundamental in answering our central question I turn, in the final part of these remarks, to some specific issues that I believe bring these principles into sharp relief.
One of the more emotive areas of economic change under my government was that of tariff reform which I regarded, and continue to regard, as critical in the creation of an open competitive, international economy in Australia. The lesson to be drawn from our experience is threefold. First, the voices of the minority who have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo are always louder than those of the vast majority who pay the price for continuing high tariff barriers. Second, consultation and sharing of knowledge with parties who will be affected by tariff reductions is essential in creating the best possible climate for change. Third, that climate is enhanced by guaranteeing, as we did, financial assistance by way of retraining and relocation allowances as tariff reductions are phased in. It is a pity that both sides of politics have hesitated in the tariff reform process. A continuing commitment to the process and the principles are most likely to meet the continued goals of a competitive economy and a cohesive society.
As with the approach to tariff reductions, the readiness of the community to accept change, and continuing macro and micro economic reform more generally, will be a function of its perception that the rewards of growth are equitably distributed. This was the point of the Accord processes. Under those processes the tendency towards a widening dispersion of market income was offset by a combination of more progressive tax scales and means-tested cash transfer systems. I do not assert that we got everything right nor do I argue for a revival of the Accord. But I do assert that those basic objectives remain indispensable to growth with cohesion.
We should be prepared to consider new approaches. One proposal - tax credits for low wage-earners in low income families - has been put by a group of five economists (Peter Dawkins, John Freebairn, Ross Garnaut, Michael Keating and Chris Richardson). I believe it would be an act of statesmanship for the government to convene a meeting with the ACTU, employers, the Industrial Relations Commission, these economists and other who could make a relevant input, to consider the question of how best the government and the Commission, with the co-operation of the parties, can achieve what should be the common objective of looking after the weakest in the community.
And when we refer to the weakest in the community it should remind us that we will never have a truly cohesive society if we do not effect a genuine reconciliation between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Australians.
One does not have to be emotional with guilt to accept that by any relevant social and economic criterion the Aborigines are the most disadvantaged group in our community, who, far from being responsible for the problems of our society, or a threat to it, are most deserving of its compassion and special effort. In particular, we do not have to believe that all those who were involved in removing Aboriginal children from their families were badly motivated. But surely we do have to believe that the fact of the stolen generations is a stain upon our collective history. Surely we are sorry that it happened and non-Aboriginal Australians should be prepared to say to our fellow Australians - the Aborigines - that we are. And I say this with proper respect to John Howard and his high office - that can only be done in a full and final sense by the Prime Minister through and with the support of the Commonwealth Parliament. "Sorry" is a small word but, genuinely expressed, it could have a huge influence in moving towards a real reconciliation between us.
This leads to my final point. Ultimately the basis for achieving what we are talking about in these two days is mutual respect - respect between those who govern and the governed, between capital and labour and their representative organisations, between citizens in Australia, and with our neighbours. It is a perversion of the way we have developed this country, of our Australianness at the end of the twentieth century, to tolerate any suggestion that we should calibrate our citizens by their race, colour or how many generations they have been here.
We are not an Asian nation but the well-being of this and succeeding generations of Australians will be determined more than anything else by the quality and the extent of our relations with the Asian region. Before the melt-down began in July 1997 more than 60% of our exports went to the region. Current evidence supports my consistent assertion since 1997 that the economies of Asia will revive and resume significant economic growth paths. We will not be able to optimise the economic benefits to Australia from that renewed dynamism if we countenance any semblance of a discriminatory attitude towards the people of that region, nor if we decline to do all within our power to assist them through their present difficulties.
No nation in history has more peaceably strengthened its fabric by becoming as multi-racial as any on earth - in addition to those five and a half million migrants we have absorbed more than half-a-million people under refugee and other humanitarian programs. Such a country should never allow questions of race to be a divisive issue in its national life.
If we have the courage to adhere to the precepts I have outlined this morning, to continue the processes of reform and internationalisation together with compassion and responsibility for the less fortunate, then it is no misuse of language to embrace the title The Australian has bestowed upon our proceedings - Australia Unlimited. By being true to our best traditions, by rising to the challenge as we have in both war and peace, we can be a prosperous, safe, cohesive sanctuary for our own people and a credible, respected force for good in the region and beyond.