On the occasion of the unveiling of a plaque commemorating the swearing in of the Government of J.C. Watson
Leader of the first National Labor Government in the World
Melbourne
27 April 2004
The unique strength of the Australian Labor Party lies not simply in the fact that we are the only political party whose continuous operation coincides with the creation and existence of the Australian nation. More importantly we are the one party that in government and in opposition has embodied and reflected what Australians have liked to think of as the essential spirit of our people the fair go.
It is significant that the Watson Government assumed power one hundred years ago today having fought in the Parliament for a comprehensive and fair Commonwealth conciliation and arbitration system; and that it was defeated less than four months later when Watson refused to accept the conservative push to exclude the public sector from the new federal jurisdiction. Labor first came to, and first lost, power by this fundamental commitment to the fair go for all Australians.
Watson and his colleagues had a vision for a stronger, fairer Australia in which enterprise could prosper and the rights to human dignity and well-being of those least able to protect themselves would be safeguarded. I want, in the short time available, to emphasise Labors continuing practical commitment to that principle in its domestic and international policies over the next one hundred years and in particular to expose the hypocritical and dangerous perversion of that record by our political opponents.
On the basis of this analysis I will assert why the upcoming federal election must rank amongst the most important in our history. So much of what all my great predecessors and Paul and myself, with the support of our Parliamentary colleagues and the Party rank and file, have done to fashion a fair-go Australian society will be at jeopardy if this most conservative government in Australian history is returned to power. I know that all of them would want me, on this special day, to say these things with a strong and proud voice on their behalf. It is an obligation I happily accept.
Time does not permit a detailed listing of Labors enormous achievements in creating a better and fairer Australian society. Let me simply make the point that the very composition and character of that society reflects the Curtin and Chifley decision to initiate the vast post-war immigration program; the initiative of, and commitment to, universal health insurance is Labor, as is the implementation of, and continuing commitment to, equal opportunity in education.
I turn now to two major areas of conservative myth-making in the political dialogue of this country; myths that must be smashed in the lead-up to this election economic management and Australian defence and security. The fables Howard has concocted about alleged conservative superiority over Labor in these matters makes Aesop look like an amateur.
First, economic management. By the mid to late 1970s it was becoming clear that Australia was operating in a global economic environment increasingly less benign for us than the first post-war generation. The conservatives were in power under Fraser with control of both Houses and the legislative capacity to make the economic management decisions necessary to adapt to this challenging new environment. They rejected the trade union movements offer of co-operation and treated it as a hostile entity and for seven years left outdated and counter-productive structures unchanged.
In the event when Labor came to office in 1983 we inherited a sclerotic, uncompetitive economy marked by double-digit inflation and double-digit unemployment. Manufactured goods and services made a miniscule contribution to exports. The legacy of conservative economic management was an Australia devastated at home and unable to compete abroad.
If you were to listen to Howards fables you would be led to believe that all that happened then was that Labor muddled along with no idea of how to meet the challenge of economic management and allowed interest rates to rise to 20% and more. Thats the fable and thats all you hear. Well, my friends, lets have all the facts and lets have them loud and clear and lets have them right up to the time of the election.
It is true that at the end of the eighties interest rates went to over 20%. Like most economists around the world we got it wrong by underestimating the resilience of the market economies after the stock market crash of 1987 and left monetary policy too easy, too long. We had tight fiscal and wages policies in place but when the boom produced unsustainable pressures on the external account we were forced to push interest rates up to those extraordinary levels. I subsequently apologised unequivocally to the Australian public for what I described as my worst mistake in office.
But what the Howard fable does not tell you is that by that time we had undertaken the most radical, positive transformation of the Australian economy in the countrys history. We had created one and a half million new jobs at twice the rate of the rest of the OECD. Productivity had increased and manufactured goods and services had become competitive in international markets.
Every independent economic commentator has publicly recognised that the unprecedented changes we made during that period in macro and micro economic policy laid the foundation for the basic strength of the current Australian economy. It is beside the point for Howard to say that he supported those changes. For 30 of the previous 33 years the conservatives had been in power and had the opportunity which they neglected to do what we did to make the Australian economy competitive. And the fact is that Howard, treating the trade union movement as an enemy, as he does, and not as a potential partner, could not have secured the wage restraint that was a necessary condition of the transformation for the better which we achieved. I repeat the economic commentators are right when they attest that the strength of the Australian economy today is, in large measure, attributable to the vision and courageous policy-making of Labor after 1983.
Second, defence and the security of Australia. John Howards assertion that the conservatives are the best equipped and experienced to be trusted in handling the defence, and security and international relations of this nation is the most dangerous and historically distorted of all his fables.
It would take much more time than is available now to produce all the detailed evidence that explodes this myth. Let me just give you the bare essentials of sixty five years of conservative culpability and Labor, consistently, getting it right.
Rawdon Dalrymple, one of Australias most distinguished diplomats, and now adjunct Professor at Sydney University, wrote last year: In 1939 and 1940 the Australian Prime Minister, R G Menzies, argued strongly against the Churchill policy of refusal to contemplate further attempts to appease Hitler. Menzies strongly opposed Churchills policy and rhetoric of resolute defiance of Hitler.[1] Such was their judgement about the state of unpreparedness in which they had left Australia and their demonstrated incapacity to handle the dangers confronting Australia that, in 1941, the two Independents in the Federal Parliament, Coles and Wilson, crossed the floor and brought to power the Curtin Labor government which so successfully met the greatest war-time challenge in our history.
The conservatives, unlike Labor, simply did not understand the new realities of the post-war world. Menzies, trenchantly criticising the Chifley governments support of the moves towards Indonesian independence, delivered himself of the memorable observation that such support contributed to a doctrine which would justify the expulsion of all colonial powers in South and South-East Asia a dreadful prospect for Australia.
This monumental inability of Menzies and the conservatives to understand the winds of change in the region and to disentangle issues of nationalism from the broader Soviet threat was then more tragically reflected in their gratuitous insertion of Australia into the Vietnam War, in which 508 Australians lost their lives. Referring to Menzies crude attacks on Labors opposition to our Vietnam involvement, Dalrymple wrote: .the threat as depicted at the time was often exaggerated and over simplified.
Dont those words have a frightening and eerie resonance today? I ask you to remember, precisely, what John Howard said at the National Press Club on 13 March 2003 in putting his case for war:
I couldnt justify on its own a military invasion of Iraq to change the regime. Ive never advocated that. Much in all as I despise the regime (regime change) has not been one of our policy objectives. That could be a consequence but our goal is the removal of weapons of mass destruction.
By the Prime Ministers own specific words on the 13th March 2003 there is now seen to have been no justification for sending our troops to Iraq. To talk now in disparaging terms about not cutting and running before the job is done i.e. completing the process of regime change, is a direct contradiction of his clear statement that day to the Australian people of what that job was. In attacking Mark Latham, who is doing no more than advocating the logical conclusion to Howards statement that we should not be in Iraq for the purpose of regime change, the Prime Minister is repeating the political gamesmanship of the Vietnam years; Labor, then, was attacked and its integrity was called into question by Menzies for advocating the withdrawal of our troops. Labor was right then and it is right now.
If there should be a United Nations Resolution assuming responsibility and leadership for the reconstruction of Iraq then, and only then, with our troops withdrawn and a clean break from Bushs pre-emptive adventurism, would be the time to decide what positive contribution Australia could make.
The truth is my friends; no Australian Prime Minister has ever put this country at greater risk, and for the wrong reason, than John Howard with this lock-step performance with George Bush on Iraq.
In Australias case, it is true that we would have been on the al-Qaeda radar screen before the invasion of Iraq; nevertheless the simple, indisputable truth, attested to by the intelligence agencies of the three countries is that terrorist threats to Australians at home and abroad have been intensified by putting our name up in neon lights alongside the United States and the United Kingdom in this unjustified act of war.
If I may borrow a phrase ITS TIME time that this myth of superior conservative competence on defence and national security be understood for the humbug that it is. On the occasion of greatest peril from invasion the Australian Parliament threw out the conservatives and turned, successfully, to Labor. In Vietnam they took us to war, at a great cost, on the basis of lies and a total misunderstanding of the facts on the ground Labor was proved right. Out of the mouth of the Prime Minister they have, at grievous risk to this nation, got it wrong again on Iraq and Labor has, again, got it right.
My friends, one hundred years ago today, John Christian Watson began the tradition of the commitment of Federal Labor to a fair society and a secure nation. We will today, and in the months ahead, best honour the memory of Watson and his colleagues if we, in turn, commit ourselves to bending all our endeavours to the election of a Latham Labor government.
A return of a Howard government would represent not just a loss for Labor. It would mean the erosion of what we have come to regard as the Australian tradition by the entrenchment of concepts alien to that tradition the use of government power to further assist the already privileged at the expense of the relatively disadvantaged, the politicisation of the public service including the intelligence and defence forces, and the surrender of our sovereign independence in foreign, defence and national security policy.
Mark Latham, friends, in honouring the first national Labor government we must not, and we will not, allow that to happen.
[1] Continental Drift: Australias Search for a Regional Identity by Rawdon Dalrymple