ALP Centenary Dinner
Melbourne
8 May 2001
Each one of us as we contemplate this first one hundred years of the Caucus of our great Party will conjure up different images of personalities and issues that have featured in this history.
Preoccupied as we so often are by the drama of conflict, rivalries, schisms and defections, many minds will turn to the arguments on conscription, the ratting of Billy Hughes, the protracted and debilitating fight between the Langites and the forces led by Curtin, Evatt and the devastating Split of the fifties some even to the more recent tussles for the leadership.
Significant as all those things are in the vivid tapestry of our past, I would rather tonight reflect upon the strong underlying threads of that tapestry threads which have given us inspiration and purpose for the time ahead
To understand that enduring strength, one must appreciate a seeming paradox the simultaneous commitment to constancy and to change. From the very beginning, to this day, Labor has never wavered from its fundamental commitment to protecting and advancing the interests of the working men and women of this country. At the same time it has shown a continuing capacity to adapt and change its policies to pursue that goal in the most effective and purposeful manner.
Perhaps this truth is best illustrated by Labors approach to the White Australia policy. In the first year of Federation the Labor Caucus supported the legislation embodying this policy and this support was continued on the assumption that it served the interests of Australian workers. That assumption became increasingly threadbare over the years and in the post Second World War period economic and moral considerations coalesced to lead Labor, properly, to the abandonment of the policy.
That abandonment was the culmination of the single most constructive transformation ever effected in Australia and it is right that we, who are both the inheritors and the guardians of the great Labor tradition, should cherish this fact and put it in its appropriate historical context.
Remember that after the Second World War broke out the conservatives were found wanting in the task of providing government for this country and in its time of peril Menzies resigned because he did not have the support of his own people and in the same year, 1941, Fadden was defeated when a no-confidence motion was carried with the support of the two Victorian Independents, Coles and Wilson.
Labors John Curtin galvanised the Australian people, harnessed the forces of industry, stood up to Churchill by putting Australias interests at the top of the national agenda, and, after being overwhelmingly endorsed at the 1943 election, guided Australia to victory, dying just a few weeks before the defeat of Japan.
As magnificent as these achievements were, equally significant was the vision that Curtin and his Caucus had for the post-War Australia. During the darkest days of the War some of the best minds in the country under the leadership of Nugget Coombs were assembled to plan the structure of that future. And central to that planning was the commitment to a massive immigration program that was to change the face and the capacity of Australia for ever and for the better.
Consider the dimensions of this change. Under this policy some 6 million people have come as immigrants and another three-quarters of million under refugee and other humanitarian programs i.e. a number virtually equal to Australias population of 7 million at the end of the war. We have retained the best of our inherited traditions parliamentary democracy and the rule of law but have been able to strengthen our economy and enrich our culture by the contributions of these new citizens who have come from more than 140 different countries to make Australia their home. No country in history in such a relatively short period and so peaceably has been so able to transform itself for the better.
This is the great Labor achievement and the support of Caucus was central to that achievement. No other political group in our history has put such an indelible stamp upon the character and strength of todays Australia.
And I would, in this respect, make two other points. First, the role of the trade union movement should never be forgotten. Australia had never known anything like full employment before the war and there was a natural disinclination among many trade unionists to welcome the influx of hundreds of thousands of new entrants to the work force. But my predecessor as President of the ACTU, Albert Monk, and other far-sighted colleagues collaborated with the Labor Government and its successors to plan and implement the program. Those successors Menzies and Holt publicly acknowledged the debt Australia owed to the trade unions for this co-operation. It is one of the tragic ironies of politics that their successors, Howard and Costello that happy pair of Liberal lovebirds and their fast disintegrating government should seek to depict as un-Australian the trade union movement, so instrumental in helping to create this modern Australia.
Second, I said that our renunciation of White Australia was the culmination of our radical changes in immigration policy. Since that time we are the one major party with the Caucus at the forefront which has been absolutely consistent and unequivocal in refusing to embrace or tolerate any kind of racial discrimination. When Graeme Campbell who has now found his right spiritual home with Hansons One Nation went down this track Caucus and then the Party repudiated him.
Against that constancy we have the history of Liberal lapses and Howard hedging. So unacceptable were Howards comments about Asian immigration in 1988 that when I introduced into the House of Representatives on the 25th August a motion rejecting his position, three of his Liberal Party colleagues, including the present Minister for Immigration, Philip Ruddock, crossed the floor and voted with the government. Eight years later Howard failed Australia again on this fundamental issue in giving oxygen to Hanson by his refusal to condemn absolutely the dangerous racist nonsense she was peddling.
Since Labor abandoned White Australia as part of its policy, it, and the Federal Parliamentary Caucus have never wavered from the principle that no individual shall be discriminated against on the ground of race, colour, creed or gender. Caucus will maintain that position and it will be a fundamental element of the incoming Beazley Labor government.
That government will inherit massive challenges arising from the incompetence and distorted priorities of Howard and his colleagues. But Kim let me say this: just as you inherit the challenges and the problems, so will you be the inheritor of a philosophy, a spirit, and a sense of commitment to the nations best interests embodied in the Caucus that will enable you to meet those challenges successfully.
Time is short so let me just briefly go to some of the more important of those challenges. We will never as a country fulfil our potential if we are not a nation at peace with itself. The process of reconciliation with indigenous Australians which I commenced a decade ago has been distorted by the Prime Ministers small mindedness. He has a convenient, bifurcated perspective of history. He, rightly, identifies with the glories of the Anzac tradition and says that it has helped to shape the character of Australia today. But the gross injustice inflicted upon Aborignes were the responsibilities of earlier generations. We werent there it has nothing to do with us he says. We werent at Gallipoli either but we do identify with it and we are shaped by it. This five-bob each way approach demeans us, denigrates Aboriginal Australians and divides the nation. We should recognise both the glories and the infamies of our past and our Prime Minister on behalf of the nation should say sorry. Kim Beazley as Prime Minister will do that.
The conservative parties have, consistently, been criminally derelict in the areas of education, research and innovation. When we came to office two appalling facts confronted us. First, with only one in three children completing secondary education we were near the bottom of the educational league of developed countries and it wasnt the kids of the well-to-do who missed out on the opportunity to develop their talents. Second, in the preceding decade there had been a 40% reduction, in real terms, in funds directed to research and development. In the tradition of the Party that had turned Australia around after the war, Labor in the next thirteen years reversed those inexcusable legacies of the conservatives and moved this country steadily up the international tables.
But as soon as they got back in 1996 the conservatives were at it again. Education is in crisis and, particularly, public schools are being disadvantaged as against the private sector. And in a world where it is increasingly essential to channel resources into Research and Development the dramatic upward trend under Labor was savagely reversed by the Howard government.
Kim Beazley will bring to an end this betrayal of Australias future. And, as the leader of the Party which removed the spectre of physical and financial trauma from millions of Australians by the introduction of universal health insurance, Kim Beazley, in co-operation with the States, will bring back efficiency and equity into the Australian health system which has been allowed to run down under this government.
In equipping Australia to take its place in an increasingly competitive globalised economy the Beazley Labor government will not delude Australians that tough decisions can always be avoided. But it will follow one pre-eminent principle. If such decisions are necessary in the national interest and some people at the immediate face of change are impacted adversely then the nation as a whole will provide for them. And in doing this it will work constructively with the trade union movement as, indeed , it will with business.
Finally, Kim Beazley will recognise the fundamental importance for Australia of good relations with the countries of our region. In pursuit of that objective, Australia under Labor will not be the surrogate certainly not the Deputy-Sheriff of the United States. Our relationship with that country is, of course, significant but that does not require an automatic endorsement of its policies. My government had a good relationship with America but we were independent in our judgement. Ronald Reagan pleaded with me for Australia to support Star Wars. I refused and the relationship survived. Similarly a Beazley Labor Government would, I believe, refuse Australian involvement in Bushs unnecessary and potentially dangerous National Missile Defence system.
And so, my friends, there it is. A great Party, a great history, great challenges and a great leader. We will best honour that unique political tradition by committing ourselves resolutely, completely, to doing all in our power to ensure that Kim Beazley by the end of this first year of the second century of federation will be in a position to meet those challenges as head of a federal Labor government.