Gough Whitlam: 'Conservatism is basically pessimistic', Chifley Memorial lecture - 1975

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14 August 1975, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia


As the fourth Chifley Memorial lecturer in 1957 I said:" The way of the reformer is hard in Australia." I intended neither pessimism nor prophecy, although one may concede that little has occurred in the intervening 18 years or the last two and a half years to lead to the belief that reform in Australia is altogether a primrose path. In my 1957 lecture I attempted to point up the difficulties confronting the Australian Labor Party in carrying out its policies under a federal system and in particular the impediments which the Australian Constitution placed in the way of achieving reform. This was no exercise in negativism, in finding excuses.

You will accept that that has never been my way. I was however concerned then by the way in which the Labor Party's failure to move on, to look ahead, to attempt to find new ways towards reform was shortchanging the Australian people and shortchanging the Party itself.

In 1957, the Platform, policies and structure of the Australian Labor Party had remained basically unchanged since the days of the Chifley Government, already by then 8 years distant. Even in 1957, the Party still tended to interpret the 1949 election result as an aberration, much as the Liberals today still see 1972 as an aberration. The Party became obsessed with the idea that rather than being about renewal for the future, its purpose was to return to a more comfortable past not renovation but mere restoration. As a result, both the achievements of the past and the hopes for the future receded equ~ ally . The Party stagnated and the Platform was stultified.

For his heirs, the setbacks which Chifley had met became not an experience for building but an excuse for baulking. At best we learnt only half the lesson of the Chifley experience. We acknowledged that we could not nationalise the banks or indeed any important part of the economic system, but our rhetoric remained unchanged the rhetoric both in the Platform and from our platform speakers. In at least one policy speech the acknowledgement of the Constitutional impossibility of nationalisation was presented as if it were a positive undertaking impotence was to be a guarantee of future good behaviour. The acknowledgement became an alibi an alibi for the Party's failure to develop new policies, to work out new programs whereby the basic ends envisaged by Chifley could be achieved by other means.

In 1956 I had been elected a member of the Joint Committee on Constitutional Review. By virtue of that experience, I became better acquainted and more preoccupied with the
difficulties and barriers raised by the Constitution against not only reform but good government in Australia. With one exception national responsibility for Aborigines the Constitution remains unchanged, despite the unanimous all-Party recommendations of the Committee in 1958 and 1959. These unanimous recommendations covered a wide range of matters, particularly in the fields of economic management and electoral reform. All-Party acceptance in 1959 has become partisan resistance whenever the opportunity to implement these recommendations has arisen.


For example, it is often forgotten that all Parties, the Country Party as much as the Liberal Party, accepted the recommendation of the Committee that the enrolment in any electorate should not vary by more than 10 per cent from the average enrolment in all electorates within a State. As a result of the Joint Sitting last year, that all-Party recommendation is now the law of the land. But partisan resistance has nullified that law. The redistribution proposals by which alone the recommendation of the Committee of 1959 and the legislation of the whole Australian Parliament in 1974 could be made a reality have been rejected by the Senate.
Yet despite the lack of Constitutional amendment, there has been Constitutional advance not by amendment at referendums, but by interpretation in the High Court. The High Court, in
such matters as monopolies and restrictive trade practices, civil aviation and television, has widened the powers of the national Parliament in ways which, in my 1957 lecture, I looked for through Constitutional amendment.


The chief purpose of my 1957 Chifley lecture wastherefore to examine not just the barriers against Labor reform put up by the Constitution but the means by which these reforms could be achieved within the Constitution. I put the view that, while amendment of the Constitution must remain a fundamental objective, neither the Party nor the nation should be expected
to wait indefinitely for amendment before reform. It was not a question of trying to circumvent the Constitution, but to make the best use of it, not supinely to accept the limitations of powers imposed by the Constitution, but to use the powers offered by it. For example I said: " In our obsession with Section 92 which is held up as the bulwark of private enterprise, we forget Section 96, which is the charter of public enterprise."

I further illustrated how in the fields of social welfare, health, education, housing, transport, urban and regional development, industrial relations, restrictive trade practices and law reform, significant advances could be achieved under existing powers to a very great extent* The themes foreshadowed in that lecture became the basis for the substantial rewriting of the Platform at subsequent Federal Conferences of the Australian Labor Party, particularly the great reform Conferences of 1967, 1969, and 1971. The policies thus developed provided the framework for the 1972 policy speech and to that extent, the framework for the programs of the Australian Labor Government in the past two and a half years.


My purpose in this lecture is to review those programs in terms of the basic objectives they were designed to achieve, to examine how the successes of the program may best be
consolidated in the light of the economic conditions in which Australia now finds herself. It is easy enough to generalise about the need for reform. Reform, however, must be relevant to objectives which are both desirable in themselves and perceived to be desirable by the public. A reform Party needs to convince a majority of the people that the reforms it proposes are desirable and a reform Government has to keep them convinced. Quite apart from overriding questions of economic management there are always going to be four special difficulties in that task.

The first is the sheer problem of public perception of what has been done and why it is being donethe so-called communications problem. There may be even some Members of Parliament who might not pass an examination of the substance of the Government's programs.Secondly, there is a law of diminishing returns in politics whereby a demand once met ceases to be an issue.Thirdly, there is frequently a long delay between implementing
a reform and the delivery of its actual benefits. Fourthly, a great many reforms by their very nature benefit and are expressly intended to benefit a minority in the community who,
in general, are among the least articulate and least influential in the community; they are therefore the people least able to translate their grievances into political action or their
gratitude into effective political support.


In a sense the Party of reform in a democratic system carries a self-created handicap as a reforming Government. In Opposition, its essential task is to raise the public
perception of the need for change, the need for reform. That is, its task is to raise expectations. The nature of politics, founded as it is on human nature itself, is that there will
always tend to be a gap, a shortfall, between expectations aroused and expectations met.
A conservative Government survives essentially by dampening expectations and subduing hopes. Conservatism is basically pessimistic; reformism is basically optimistic. The great tradition which links the American and French revolutionaries of the Age of Reason with the modern Parties of social reform is the tradition of optimism about the possibility of human improvement and human progress through the means of human reason. Yet inevitably there will be failures, and the higher expectations rise, the greater the likelihood of at least
temporary failure to meet them.

Up to December 1972 the task of the Australian Labor Party was three-fold: first to state the reforms we proposed, secondly to state the means by which we intended to achieve those reforms, thirdly to convince a majority of the electorate that those reforms were both achievable and desirable. We achieved office because we raised expectations and convinced a
sufficient majority that those expectations could be met. Yet the specific reforms we proposed were related to general goals and had to be so related if they were to be seen
and accepted as part of our general mandate to govern. The meaning of the " mandate" in a Parliamentary system has been subject to critical analysis by Parliamentarians and academics
for more than a century. In Australia the meaning has been especially scrutinised in the past two and a half years because of the very great emphasis my own Government has always placed on the fulfilment of the program set out in the policy speech of 1972 and confirmed in the policy speech of 1974. Another reason why the meaning of the " mandate" has become significant in the current Australian political debate is because of the existence of a hostile majority in the Senate and the use to which that hostile majority has been put. So the debate about the meaning of the mandate has centred on the question of whether in 1972 and again in 1974 the Australian Labor Party was given only a general mandate to govern or a specific mandate to implement each part of its program.

Is the mandate merely general or is it specific? Is it a grant of permission to preside or a command to perform? our opponents naturally interpret it in the weakest sense as a
general and highly qualified mandate to govern on their terms and indeed by their grace and favour. I interpret the mandate as being both general and specific a general mandate to govern
for the term for which we were elected and a specific mandate to implement the undertakings we made, within that term. But even when I speak of a general mandate I cannot accept the conservative definition of a mere mandate to govern, a permit to preside over
the administration of government and, hopefully, to administer the existing system in a sufficiently acceptable way to give reasonable prospects of re-election for a further renewal of the mere mandate to preside. The mandate as I interpret it is to move by specific programs toward the general goals and the general objectives accepted by the people at the elections. What was that goal? I defined it in these words in the Parliament on 5 March 1970:

" on this side we believe there is one clear goal that this national Parliament should set for itself, which should define and motivate each specific action we take. It is the goal
of equality. The true quality of our national life will be principally determined by the way in which and the rate at which we advance towards true equality. It is this that gives meaning
to our possession of prosperity. If I interpret the history of this country and the character of our countrymen and women correctly, it is this search which alone can give any worthwhile,
enduring meaning to our fortuitous possession of this most fortunate, peaceful and privileged continent in this most turbulent and deprived region of the world."


I regard the thrust towards equality as the natural extension of the great thrust of the Chifley Government which was towards security for all. There is no phrase more quoted than Chifley's " light on the hill'. Very few remember what the metaphor meant. As Chifley used it it was not-just a fine phrase but a quite specific objective it was security. As Chifley
said in the policy speech of 1949:" it is the duty and responsibility of the community
and particularly those more fortunately placed, to see that our less fortunate fellow-citizens are protected from those shafts of fate which leave them helpless and without hope. That is the objective for which we are striving. It is the beacon, the light on the hill to which our eyes
are always turned and to which our efforts are always directed."


In other words Chifley saw that the fundamental duty of the community, acting as a whole through its elected representatives, was to provide security for all its members. To that I add the basic objective of promoting the basic goal of equality. As I see it, the two goals are inseparable. I have always put the search for equality in positive terms, that is, the promotion of equality, not the imposition of equality. As I implied in my 1957 Chifley lecture and specified some years later in my Curtin Memorial lecture of 1961:" Socialists are now more concerned with the creation of opportunities than the imposition of restraints. Within Australia we do not have to ration security but to plan abundance."


I state the underlying philosophy in this way: in modern communities, even the wealthiest family cannot provide its members with the best education, with the best medical
treatment, the best environment, unaided by the community. Increasingly, the basic services and opportunities which determine the real standard of life of a family or an individual can only be provided by the community and only to the extent to which the community is willing to provide them. Either the community provides them or they will not be provided at all. In the Australian context, this means that the community, through the national government, must finance them or they will not be financed at all.


over the span of years the common factor which links the doctrine of security and the doctrine of equality is the insistence upon community responsibility for
the promotion of these twin goals. This concept of equality what I call positive equalitydoes
not have as its goal equality of personal income. Its goal is greater equality of the services which the community provides. This approach not merely accepts the pluralistic nature of our
system, with the private sector continuing to play the greater part in providing employment and growth; it positively requires private affluence to prevent public squalor. The approach is
based on this concept: increasingly a citizen's real standard of living, the health of himself and his family, his children's opportunity for education and self-improvement, his access to
employment opportunities, his ability to enjoy the nation'ss resources for recreation and cultural activity, his ability to participate in the decisions and actions of the community, are
determined not so much by his income but by the availability and accessibility of the services which the community alone can provide and ensure.


The quality of life depends less on the things which individuals obtain for themselves and can purchase for themselves from their personal incomes and depends more on the things which the community -provides for all its members from the combined resources of the community. What we aim at is the achievement of the classic liberal idea of the career open to the talents equality of opportunity in a vastly expanded form. Equality of opportunity is a splendid
ideal; but to confine it to equality of job opportunities is not merely to restrict it, but to negate true equality of opportunity.


The older, narrower ideal of equality of opportunity concentrated almost exclusively on education. The assumption was that the mere provision of free education would guarantee equality of opportunity. Even in a community as homegeneous and socially mobile as Australia this has proved not to be the case.

In modern communities, not least Australia, opportunities, social, economic and cultural opportunities are really determined by where a family lives, even more than by a family's income. So we have no preoccupation with equality of incomes. We are striving for an equality of environment in the total sense of those things which increasingly the community alone can provide welfare, health, education, recreation, transport. The general argument against this concept turns on the question of private incentive and individual initiative. This really gets to the heart of the philosophical differences between the Labor Party and its opponents. The argument that collective welfare destroys private incentive is a very old one indeed.

It is the argument which has been used to resist every advance in social welfare, even the most basic ones, such as the provision of old-age pensions. It was the argument used at every stage of the very massive expansion of the social security system under Curtin and Chifley represented in money terms by an increase from $ 36 million provided before the war to $ 200 million in 1949. Such were the colossal sums which Chifley used in those days to undermine free enterprise and destroy individual incentive.

The argument is in fact based on a particular view about human nature and human motives. In the final analysis it predicates fear and greed as being the principal spurs to human
action. It says in effect that if people know they are guaranteed an income in retirement they will be both lazy and improvident during their earning days; if people are not afraid of the price of sickness they will abuse and overuse the health services the community provides; if public schools are made as good as private schools then parents will not work so hard to earn the
fees for their children's eductional; if the attempt is made to make underprivileged communities more decent places to live, people will lose the competitive urge. we are going to hear a lot more of these arguments, put in perhaps more subtle ways. The counterargument is that the removal or reduction of basic fears and insecurities, far from being a limitation on individual incentive, represents a liberation for human creativity. The contest between the two
opposing views of human nature and human society is still the esseace of the philosophical debate between the Parties to the extent that the political debate is conducted in terms of
philosophy and to the extent to which either Party can be said to have a philosophy.


The programs developed between 1967 and 1971 and presented in the policy speech of 1972 sought to give practical application to these attitudes. A political program, particularly a program for a democratic election is of course not an essay in philosophy.

Policies are not developed in a political or economic vacuum; still less are they implemented in a vacuum once the appeal to the electorate has been successful. The program as presented in 1972 had to be related to economic and political realities as we judged them to be in 1972 and as we assumed, to the best of our judgement, they would exist during the three years for which we sought and won a mandate. Carrying out the program has to be related to the political and economic realities as they exist. In 1972, we made two important assumptions which seemed very reasonable at the time. One was political; the other was economic. Both proved partly wrong. The first, the political assumpetion was that if elected we would have a clear three years to fulfil the program.

The second, the economic assumption was that domestic growth would be sufficiently restored and that the world economy would remain strong enough to permit an avowedly expansive and expensive program of social reform to be implemented without massive tax increases or without massive inflation.

The fundamental and continuing difficulty of the Government has been and remains to reconcile the demands of the program with the falsification of two of the key assumptions on
which it was based. It is hard to estimate and hard to exaggerate the damage done to the Australian political system and the Australian economy by the conduct of the majority in the Senate. From the beginning, that conduct has had one overriding objective to deny the very legitimacy of the Labor Government. But its real effect has been to cast doubt on the legitimacy of an elected Government itself, to cast doubts on the legitimacy of the electoral and constitutional proceses.

One has to bear in mind that the elections of 1972 were for the House of Representatives alone. The program was drawn up as a 3-year program. Whatever the result of the 1972 elections, the state of the Parties in the Senate had to remain unchanged; an anti-Labor majority was guaranteed until at least July 1974. So the question of who would control the Senate was never an issue in 1972. If you cast your minds back, you would agree that nobody approached the 1972 campaign with any thought other than what Australians were doing then was electing a
Government for a normal three-year term. There. might have been some fleeting thought given to the possibility of the circumstances by which Labor, if successful, might be brought to the need for a double dissolution. But certainly no-one seriously considered the possibility of the House of Representatives being forced to an election by the refusal of Supply by the Senate. And no-one considered the possibility of a double dissolution triggered off by the threat of refusal of Supply by the Senate. It has been a remarkable example of the unthinkable becoming apparently quite acceptable.

During the 1974 campaign I frequently quoted an article written in 1968 by Sir Robert Menzies in which he castigated Senate pretensions as " a falsification of democracy". That phrase is
now very well known. What is not so well know is that what Sir Robert Menzies was condemning was not the ultimate falsification the refusal of Supply but the repeated rejection by the Senate of legislation passed by the House of Representatives by the majority forming the Government. I quote from Sir Robert Menzies' article in the Sydney Daily Telegraph of 18 February 1968:

" In Australia we practise the system of ' responsible government'. Indeed it has been judicially declared that it is embodied in our Constitution by necessary implication. In that system Ministers sit in and are responsible to Parliament; but Cabinet may be displaced by a vote of the House of Representatives ( not Sir Robert's emphasis the Senate) and therefore holds office at the will of the House of Representatives... " It would be a falsification of democracy if, on any matter of Government policy approved by the House of Representatives possibly by a large majority, the Senate, representing the States and not the people, could reverse the decision."

The basis of Sir Robert's concern at that time early in 1968 is interesting and instructive. He was writing shortly after the Liberal Party had elected Senator Gorton as its leader. Sir Robert's concern was that once the Senate had made the big breakthrough in providing a Prime Minister, its ambitions and pretensions would thereby increase. He feared the Upper House
might become altogether too uppity.

He pointed out that the situation by which a Government in the House of Representatives lacks a majority in the Senate is frequent enough in itself to be normal. The falsification against which he warned was the rejection of legislation, not the refusal of Supply. He didn't deal with that question for one simple reason: it just never crossed his mind that this was a practical possibility worth arguing about.

Yet the Labor Government, the Australian administration, Australian business and the Australian community have had to live with this possibility since April 1973 according to the evidence of Senator Withers, the Leader of the Opposition in the Senate,
who said in April 1974:
" We embarked on a course some 12 months ago to bring about the House of Representatives election". That is, for all but the first few months of the Labor Government a new and gross element of instability and unpredictability has been introduced into Australian political life. No important aspect of our political or economic system has remained unaffected by it.

It may be true that hanging concentrates the mind wonderfully but it is not generally regarded as good for the morale or the health. We can see in retrospect that the election campaign of
1974 and its long drawn-out aftermath interrupted for more than four months the normal business of the nation and, at a critical time, diverted the attention of the planners, whether they were in Government, in administration, in finance or in business, from crucial matters relating to the economy to purely political pre-occupations. One should not think that administrators in Government can divorce themselves from the preoccupations of their political associates least of all in so political and politicised a capital as Canberra. The fact is that during political crises, decision-making in Australia virtually halts. This regularly and properly happens when there is a normal election in the normal course of events that is each three years. To make this turmoil endemic, to threaten it each six months, is thoroughly destructive of good administration and good government.

The present Australian Government is the only Government since Federation and the only Government in the English-speaking world to have been placed in this situation. I confine my remarks in this context to the political consequences, the direct consequences, of the continuing threat by the Senate to refuse Supply. It's not to my present purpose to deal at length or in detail with the Senate's record of legislative obstruction the score of key bills which have failed to pass. In passing, however, I mention two aspects of that obstruction, both related to the concept of the mandate, as I see it, and the proper working of democracy, as Sir Robert Menzies saw it.

The legislation rejected in the Senate was foreshadowed in 1972 and repeated in the 1974 campaign. Much of it was put as long ago as 1969. These Bills are not ring-ins. They are not
to be dismissed just as Whitlam's whims. I put this proposition: if a matter is thrashed out in three campaigns and throughout the intervening years, and if the proposals which a Party has put on those matters are endorsed by sufficient Australians to result in that Party being elected, surely in the name of anything that can pass for democracy, that Party in Government is entitled to claim a mandate for such proposals. More, is not that Party obliged as a Government to try to implement such proposals? That has been the background, the basis put in 1969, in 1972, in 1974 of so much of the legislation now stalled or rejected by the Senate.

Reflect that Medibank itself would not now exist if the Senate had had its way. Medibank exists only because of the double dissolution of 1974 and our subsequent ability to get the legislation through at the Joint Sitting. Furthermore, for all the present pretensions of the Senate, for all the Hamlet-like approach of the Leader of the Opposition to what he will or will not do about the refusal of Supply, the fact remains that while the Government did not obtain a
majority of the Senate seats in the Double Dissolution, it did obtain a majority of votes for the Senate over all the Parties then represented in the Senate a majority of 43,000 over the
Liberal Party, the Country Party, the Democratic Labor Party, combined. A majority of seats in the House of Representatives; a majority of votes in the Senate is this or is it not a mandate
to govern? Yet on specific legislation forming an integral part of the policy put at these elections and on its basic right to govern, the legitimacy of this Government is challenged month by month, day by day.

So for most of the period of our Government we have had to live with an unprecedented political problem. Equally, there has been the problem of world-wide economic difficulties.
As I said before, our program was predicated on certain assumptions about internal growth and the strength of the world economy. We had devised a program of social reform designed to catch up with a backlog, as we perceived it, created by 23 years of
conservative rule. We were concerned that so wealthy a country as Australia, which had once been a pioneer and leader in social reform, should have fallen so far behind. I had stated our
belief in these terms in the 1969 policy speech:

" We make these assertions: firstly, that Australians should not be deprived of opportunities which citizens of every comparable country enjoy. Secondly, there is every reason why Australia, wealthy and well-endowed, in many respects incomparably so, should be giving a
lead to other nations in the equality of opportunities and the quality of the opportunities we make for our own citizens and in the help we can give to others. Twenty years ago, Australia was indeed a pioneer and a leader: now we lag behind."

It should be remembered however that that period of conservative rule in Australia coincided with an extraordinarily protracted period of world economic growth. The world had enjoyed a virtually uninterrupted boom of twenty years. In general, a relatively high rate of growth was accompanied by a relatively low rate of inflation. Through most of that period Australia shared
both these characteristics of the world economy. Although in 1972 the Australian economy was already showing the signs of the twin problems of inflation and unemployment, with a poor growth rate which was subsequently to become world wide, the great catastrophes about to fall on the international economy were not foreseen. With hindsight we should perhaps have foreseen the inevitable economic consequences of the way in which the United
States chose to finance the war in Vietnam. We could not, however, have foreseen the energy crisis of 1973.

I know that it is now considered in some quarters to be mean-spirited, to be buck-passing, for an Australian Minister to mention international economic problems or to make international
comparisons, or to explain any of our economic problems whatsoever in international terms. But these international problems remain a fact of life and, whether we like it or not, they affect our national life.

When my Government was elected our aim was to finance our new programs from growth. But world-wide inflation and recession frustrated this objective. This is no mere selfjustification.
The whole industrialised world is currently going through the worst peacetime inflation on record and the deepest recession since the 1930' s. Within the OECD, the membership of which includes virtually every industrialised country in the world, the average rate of inflation jumped from 3.9 per cent per annum in the decade 1962 to 1972, to 7.9 per cent in 1973 and 13.4 per cent in 1974. Real Gross National Product which rose at the rate of 5.4 per cent per annum in the decade to 1972 declined slightly for the OECD countries as a whole in 1974 and is expected to show a decline of about 1.5 per cent in 1975.

The OECD Economic Outlook stated on 17 July 1975:

" The present recession in OECD countries is the most serious since the war. It is remarkable not only for its length and depth a third consecutive half-year of negative growth has now been recorded for the area as a whole but also for its widespread nature: virtually every OECD country grew by less than its medium-term average rate in 1974, and no economy is
expected to take up slack in 1975. The margin of idle resources in the OECD area is now the largest in the post-war period, with unemployment at record levels. The forecasts presented in the December Economic Outlook, and to a greater extent those being made at that time by national authorities, proved to be too optimistic. Industrial output in the major countries fell very sharply in the last quarter of 1974 and the first quarter of this year. The extent and simultaneous nature of the decline was unlike anything recorded in the post-war period. The combined GNP of the major countries, which was thought at the time to have increased marginally in the second half of 1974, is now estimated to have fallen, at an annual rate, by over one per cent. Output was expected to continue stagnating in the first half of this year; it may in fact have fallen at an annual rate of about five per cent. The December Economic Outlook gave reasons for supposing that the balance of uncertainties attaching to the forecasts was on the downside; but the extent to which this proved to be the case is astonishing."

There is no way in which Australia could have escaped being caught up in these disruptive world-wide economic developments. We are after all a major trading company, so what happens to our major trading partners the United States, Japan and the United Kingdom is bound to affect us. It is estimated that in the course of the recession industrial production fell by per cent in Japan, by over 14 per cent in the United States and by over 8 per cent in the United Kingdom. Even West Germany, which has ridden out this storm better than most, suffered a fall in industrial production of over 11 per cent. What is more, these declines should be viewed against strong upward trends previously existing at least for the Japan and West Germany; on this basis the loss of potential output has been much greater than these figures imply.

What is not widely recognised is that Australia has fared comparatively well among the industrialised countries during this period of economic turmoil. Our unemployment has been a great deal lower than that suffered by a number of industrialised countries; our loss of production has been less; and many industrialised countries have had much more severe inflation. Unlike most industrialised countries, we have moreover been entirely free of balance of payments problems.

In spite of our economic problems the Australian employee has on balance done well over the last two years. Average minimum award rates have risen by 55 per cent and average earnings by 48 per cent while the cost of living as measured by the CPI has increased by 32 per cent. There have, therefore, been substantial real gains to wage and salary earners, supplemented
by improved education, health., and other benefits by this Government. There is a widespread expectation that 1976 will see strong economic recovery across the world, accompanied by a
continued slowdown in the rate of inflation. It is important that Australia should participate in both. There is a widespread view that, to the extent that inflation is not contained, the recovery
may not be a sustained one. I share this view. I am convinced that we must get inflation down to an acceptable level in Australia, all the more if other countries with which we trade and compete in world markets do so.

I again acknowledge the awful impropriety of my making international comparisons. I'll have to bear that cross. But despite everything let me make this assertion: while Australia shares to a greater or less extent these economic problems, while in some respects we are making a better fist of dealing with them than some other nations, we are alone in this that while dealing with very difficult, with unprecedentedly complex economic problems which all nations share, we have made significant and enduring advances in social reform, in so changing the structure of welfare in this nation as to be of permanent benefit to future generations when the problems of the present are but a vague and distant memory.

Our goal now is to consolidate the reforms instituted in the past two and a half years. The 1975-76 [ Budget which the Treasurer, Bill Hayden, will introduce into Parliament next week will be a major step towards this goal. In spite of the urgency we see in proceeding with our programs, we have decided to slow down the rate of increase in outlays this year. Let me emphasise that, contrary to a lot of ill-informed comment, we are not going to reduce expenditure, but to slow down the rate of increase. Our expenditures will still increase in money terms and in real terms, but less rapidly than would otherwise have been the case.

One effect should be to leave room for the private sector of the economy to expand, to play its proper role in the recovery. Another effect will be to moderate the extent to which the
Australian Government's budget generates monetary expansion. A slowdown in the rate of monetary expansion is clearly essential if inflation is to be brought under control.

It is not appropriate, however, for me to say too much about the Budget at this stage, beyond that it will be a responsible budget consistent with out long term objectives of reform, with consolidation of what we have already achieved, and with progress towards a stable, growing economy. What I can speak of, however, are our plans stretching beyond this Budget. We plan, and I use the word advisedly, to review our programs and commitments to ensure that, in total and in each category, our expenditures will be consistent with our overall objectives for the economy and will consolidate the vast new programs we have introduced.

We have to look carefully at the question of what proportion of the resources available in the economy should be directed through the Australian Government's Budget and how these
resources should best be allocated between the various programs of the Government. I see this task as having immediate priority.

All new programs and proposals will have to be assessed against and accommodated within this framework. Now is a time for consolidation, evaluation planning for the future with an appropriate balance between welfare and economic responsibility. Policy must always reflect our concern for those in want; it must choose the most effective and efficient means to that end.

We have striven to reform the overall structure of the Australian economy. In our first year in office, before Australia was engulfed in the world-wide economic turmoil, we pushed ahead
with the revaluation of the Australian currency and tariff reductions and removed a number of anachronistic subsidies and taxation concessions which operated to support less efficient industries. We replaced the aged Tariff Board machinery with the more up-to-date and broadly constituted Industries Assistance Commission. Trade Practices Legislation has been passed and a Trade Practices Commission established to protect the consumer and enhance competition. I have no doubt that, in the long run, the Australian economy will benefit greatly from these measures. We shall certainly continue to maintain proper exchange rates and tariff policies. We have made clear our resolve to encourage and assist the Arbitration Commission to maintain a wages policy consistent with the slowdown in the rate of inflation, while protecting the position of wage and salary earners in this country.

In the context of arbitration, it is difficult to take into account the immensely enhanced value of services now provided by the ccinmunity and no longer provided from incomes. I mention in particular the Schools Commission in school year 1974 and onwards, Medibank in fiscal year 1975-76 and onwards. We are now in the process of adjusting our fiscal policies to ensure that they will now and in the long run contribute to the stability of the economy. Through the Reserve Bank and the banking system we shall maintain responsible monetary policies which ensure that credit is available, as needed, for the development of the Australian economy but that the monetary system is not awash with liquidity in a way which permits and even promotes inflation. We must all recognise that the path to price stability and full employment will not be a short one. We certainly cannot hope to get there in 1975-76. It is important, however, to make quite sure that we get on that path and stay on it.

Our aim is to consolidate what we have done, to plan ahead to produce an environment conducive to economic growth, and thereby to produce the means of completing the task we set ourselves, and which we were elected to carry out. An essential part of the consolidation relates to the provision of income security for all Australians. When we camne to power in 1972 there was need for immediate improvement in welfare services. Considerable progress has been made to effect that improvement. Further improvements of a more fundamental kind are needed. To assist in determining new directions, the Government has a number of expert reports which will form the basis of a review process over the next year. We have the reports of the Woodhouse Committee and the legislation arising from it which the Senate hasreviewed and inxotedupon. We have some of the reports of the Henderson Inquiry into Poverty. We have the interim report of the Hancock Inquiry on National Superannuation, and the final report is expected within the next few weeks. We have a report from the Priorities Review Staff canvassing issues raised in the inquiries already mentioned and discussing possibilities for social welfare reform in Australia. We are expecting a report later in the year from Mr Justice Toose on Repatriation. The Asprey Report on Taxation also needs to be mentionedt there is, of course, a very close relationship between reforms in the welfare and taxation areas.

Two of the reports I have just mentioned the Henderson and PRS reports will be released before the end of this month. They both draw attention to a number of problems which need attention and to a variety of possible solutions to those problems. They are reports which require the most careful examination by the Government. They are reports which I hope will stimulate public debate and public contribution of a kind which will assist the Government in taking decisions on them in due course. Against that background, the Government has decided that a full year should be set aside in which, in the light of published expert reports, to develop an equal, fair and workable income security system for Australia. The review will be conducted by the Government itself, with Ministers closely directing the work undertaken and reviewing the progress at regular intervals.

By the time of the 1976-77 Budget I expect the Government will be in a position to determine its long term program of reform in the welfare area and the steps which will need to be
progressively taken to achieve those reforms. The new Budget attempts to be as relevant to the implementation of the Labor program as its two predecessors. In the framing of those Budgets, we were concerned about priorities, the priorities of meeting needs as we saw them, the priorities of reaching towards goals as we saw them.

The common ground of economic debate between the parties today is the need to reduce the rate of growth of government spending. The present Leader of the Opposition makes no specific proposals about what cuts should be made, while the Leader of the other Party proposes only more subsidies and new spending. The Leader of the Opposition's most recent predecessor did at least make a specific proposal: it was to make percentage cuts across the board. We have not taken that course because it avoids the basic task for a Government the task of determining priorities. In this Budget you will find that we have been as much concerned about getting our priorities right in circumstances of great difficulty and complexity as we tried to do when both national and international circumstances permitted us a far
wider range of options.

The abiding challenge for statesmanship in a democracy is to try to get the priorities right and to resolve the conflicting demands about priorities in the context of the desirable and the possible, the politically possible, the economically possible. The nature of our Australian society is such that everyone in politics or government is faced with an ever-increasing range
of demands from the articulate, from the powerful, and equally inescapable demands and hopes from the less articulate, the least powerful, that their priorities are the ones which should be adopted.

A remarkably permanent aspect of our Australian society and Australian history is that for all our sense of independence, for all our ability to improvise, to take initiatives, our demands for action always turn into demands for Government action, for Government assistance. At this very moment, almost every demand for the protection of free enterprise, for the enhancement of business freedom, is couched in terms of Government assistance a subsidy, a quota, a tariff.

It has ever been thus. From the beginning, when we in Australia have spoken about national priorities, we have really meant priorities set for the nation by the Government. Australian political debate has always been extremely vehement. The peculiar vehemence of Australian political debate has always been about priorities set by the Government of the day, whether elected or appointed. One only needs recall that one of the principal charges against Macquarie, one of the principal items used to discredit him in the Bigge Report, was the building of the Obelisk which still stands in what is now Macquarie Place as the measure of distance from all places out of Sydney. It was charged against Macquarie-that he had got his priorities wrong. Those who govern Australia are still accused of trying to build monuments, when their real wish is to get Australians priorities right, right for the present and right for generations ahead.

Don Chipp: 'May I say that I have become disenchanted with party politics', resignation from Liberal Party - 1977

Don Chipp resignation
Don Chipp
Don Chipp.jpg

24 March 1977, Canberra, Australia

By leave I wish to announce to the House that I have resigned from the Liberal Party of Australia as from today. I believe I have conformed with the courtesies demanded of such a decision. I have informed you,

Sir, the Leader of my Party, the Right Honourable the Prime Minister (Mr Malcolm Fraser), the Victorian State President of the Liberal Party of Australia and the Chairman of the Hotham Electorate Committee of the Liberal Party. It naturally follows that I shall not be presenting myself as a candidate for the Liberal Party of Australia in the division of Hotham at the next House of Representatives election.

I shall continue to represent the division of Hotham in this House for the duration of this Parliament or until such earlier rime as circumstances may demand. Although I am proud of the high personal vote I receive from the electors of Hotham, I recognise that I am here by virtue of my former membership of the Liberal Party and therefore believe it is proper that I should generally give my vote in support of the Government in the business before the House and in the conduct of the business of the House. However, I will exercise the right- which is already held by all members of the Liberal Party- to vote against the Government on any issue which a member believes to be not in the best interests of the country or his constituents. I extend my gratitude to the many friends and members of the Liberal Party in Hotham who have loyally supported me over the years and given me the privilege of serving in this House.

I hope that my friends and colleagues in the Parliamentary Liberal Party will understand my reasons in taking this decision and that the personal friendships and relationships that I have made and enjoyed over the years will not be impaired by my action. I note in passing that notwithstanding the tag of ‘rebel’ that some people have chosen to put upon me, I have never exercised that right of voting against my Party in my 16 years in this place. In fact, I think it is fair to me to place on record that during the 15-month term of this Government, I have been publicly critical of its decisions on only 5 occasions. These were:

  1. The 25 per cent cut in overseas aid;
  2. The abolition of the Australian Assistance Plan which I, with the full authority of the joint Parties had previously commended in this House as being one of the most exciting and progressive social reforms ever undertaken;
  3. The proposed abolition of the funeral benefits for pensioners;
  4. The original breach of the promise to index pensions; and
  5. The decision to devalue the currency and, once that decision was taken, the refusal to lower tariffs so as to contain the inflationary effects of that move.

When these 5 public criticisms are put against the dozens of times I have publicly supported the Government, even on occasions when I did not agree with it, I believe the tag of ‘rebel’ is palpably unfair. There have in fact been a great number of issues with which I have strongly disagreed and on most which I have been invited by the media to criticise my Party. I have refrained from that criticism in the interests of Party unity and with a view to assisting the Government in overcoming the massive problems it faces, many of which were inherited from the results of the gross maladministration of the Labor Party’s terms in office. However, the number of significant Government actions which conflict with my own views are now so many that I feel that my continued membership of the Liberal Party, as it is now led, managed and structured, would be incompatible with my beliefs and would constitute an act of hypocrisy. Inevitably some people will impugn my action and ascribe to it the motive that I am taking this course because I am not in the Cabinet. To that I simply state without argument that under no circumstances could I, or would I, serve as a Minister under the present leadership.

Members of the House would know that one reaches a decision such as this- after giving 16 years of one’s life to it- not without a great deal of deep thought and troubled deliberation; but as one who at least in latter years has tried to pursue a course of true liberalism, I find I can no longer do that within the confines of the Party. In these circumstances I believe the only honourable thing to do is to resign.

For the record I simply state my areas of contention without debating them. I cannot agree with the Government’s current economic policy. Particularly, I am concerned with its failure to honour the promise to the private sector to give it stable and definite future guidelines to allow it to plan and invest for the future. I believe the private businessman, especially the small businessman who employs the bulk of the work force of this country, is more confused, more in the dark about the future, and less confident than he was 15 months ago. This seems to be strange behaviour for a Party that champions the cause of free enterprise.

I am very critical of the lack of consultation between the Government and the trade union movement. It would be cruel and unfair to ask the worker to be the sole bearer of the cost of reducing inflation; but wages are too high and taxes are too high to provide incentive for increased productivity by both workers and management. Interest rates are devastating, especially to the young, and yet no attempt at real, sensible and sensitive discussions between the Prime Minister and the President of the Australian Council of Trade Unions has been made. In fact the Prime Minister has refused to enter such discussions. Instead, while the economy continues to slump, these 2 leaders seem to be continuing in a public slanging match while the economy continues to deteriorate and the responsible blue and white collar Australian workers and management suffer.

I confess to a very deep concern about the intrasigence of the Prime Minister in bringing in the Industrial Relations Bureau legislation at this time- a time of remarkable industrial peace and at a time when it is being vigorously opposed by both employees and employers alike. I have been grossly disappointed with the attitude of the Government on uranium mining. Notwithstanding the repeated requests by the Fox report for a full parliamentary debate we have had 2 hours only on it and it is now off the notice paper. I am grateful to the Leader of the House (Mr Sinclair) for giving me an undertaking this morning that that matter will be restored to the notice paper.

The last straw on this issue was the action of the Deputy Prime Minister (Mr Anthony) in launching a pro-uranium book simultaneously with a statement by the Ambassador of Japan advocating the mining of Australian uranium. The breach of our promises to continue the Australian Assistance Plan, wage indexation, the value of the currency, the Social Welfare Commission, increased research on solar energy, are matters which have disturbed me greatly.

Further, our incredible attitude towards Timor; the overt and capricious provocation of Russia, an almost pathetic reliance on the nonproliferation treaty which the Fox report described as giving only ‘an illusion of protection’; the absence of strong Cabinet action to overcome the bureaucratic bungling and red tape affecting human beings seeking refuge from Indo-China are some other matters which have left me deeply concerned.

On the other hand I draw no comfort from the current attitudes and policies of the Australian Labor Party. Although the state of the world economy contributed in some way to Australia’s economic problems during its 3 years of office, its mismanagement of the economy resulting in the unique situation of causing unemployment to increase simultaneously with inflation was near catastrophic. I would be a little encouraged if I believed that it has learned some lessons from its errors but that does not seem to be the case. It is still motivated by events of the past, still obsessed with its socialist ideas and a hatred of private enterprise, and dominated by the shadowy faces in the trade union movement. In opposition its performance has been little short of ludicrous in questioning and probing the Government on the real issues that affect the country.

I draw no comfort at all from the public opinion polls which indicate a Labor Government is possible- if not probable- in the near future. I find it almost unbelievable that the Leader of the Opposition (Mr E. G. Whitlam)- a man who led his Party to its most humiliating defeat in history just 1 5 months ago- now ranks about equally in popularity and respect with the Prime Minister. Does this mean that the people of Australia hold both men and both parties in relatively low esteem?

In conclusion may I say that I have become disenchanted with party politics as they are practised in this country and with the pressure groups which have an undue influence on the major political parties. The National Country Party properly represents the interests of a small sectional group- some of the rural community- but improperly in my view, and unduly, influences national policies quite out of proportion to the small group it represents.

The Labor Party is dominated by the vested interests of trade unions. The Liberal Party, although properly concerned with the vital role of private enterprise, seems too pre-occupied with the wants of what is euphemistically known as ‘big business’ to the sacrifice and detriment of medium and small-size businessmen who form the backbone of our industrial and commercial sectors.

The parties seem to polarise on almost every issue, sometimes seemingly just for the sake of it, and I wonder whether the ordinary voter is not becoming sick and tired of the vested interests which unduly influence the present political parties and yearn for the emergence of a third political force, representing middle of the road policies which would owe allegiance to no outside pressure group.

Perhaps it may be the right time to test that proposition. That move will have to come from those people in Australia who believe in the encouragement of free enterprise, who believe it has not had a ‘fair go’ from interfering Governments who regularly change, without warning, the conditions under which they operate. It must come from people who believe in true justice for the work force and compassion for those in need, but who believe that actions must be taken to prevent social problems from occurring rather than trying to cure them and hide them once they have arrived. But above all, it must come from those people who are disgusted with those politicians and political parties who indulge mainly in cheap political point scoring in the endless pursuit of votes at any price and from people who want their Parliament to identify the real and significant problems of the future and to take action now which will make the country a good, safe and sound place for future generations.

Source: https://www.australian-democrats.org.au/do...

Lidia Thorpe: 'Being Aboriginal is not all I am, but it's the centre of who I am', maiden speech - 2017

29 November 2017, Victorian Parliament, Melbourne, Australia

Lidia Thorpe, MP Northcote, is the first aboriginal woman to be elected to a lower house seat in the Parliament of Victoria.

I would like to acknowledge the Wurundjeri Willam and Yalukit Willam clans - two of 300 clans and 38 language groups in Victoria who have never ceded sovereignty. I stand before you today a proud Gunnai-Gunditjmara woman, living on Wurundjeri country. For an Aboriginal kid who grew up in public housing and left school at 14, taking my seat in this chamber is something I was told could never happen. Too many of our kids grow up believing this. Their lives are debated but not reflected in our political system. As long as those voices are missing from the heart of our democracy, we limit our children's potential. They cannot be what they cannot see. This is why today matters. It is a moment 161 years in the making, and it does not only belong to me. I have been inundated with messages from Aboriginal people across the country. I speak today on behalf of them. I am honoured to be the first Aboriginal woman elected to the Victorian Parliament. We have sustained and protected this land for thousands of years, and now in Victoria we finally have a say in how our land is governed.

I am also proud to embark on this journey as a Greens MP, a party that shares my passion for social justice, protecting country and giving voice to those who would otherwise not have one. And I am honoured to represent Northcote, a diverse and compassionate community of vibrant multiculturalism, youthful innovation and a real sense of optimism. From the peak of Ruckers Hill all the way to the waterways that surround us on three sides - the Darebin and Merri creeks to the east and west and the mighty Birrarung flowing to the south - Northcote is a place of natural beauty, and I am so proud to call it home. I want to take this opportunity to say to every resident of Northcote, Thornbury, Alphington, Fairfield, Preston South and West Preston: whether you voted for me or not, I promise I will not let you down.

I also want to acknowledge that the road to this moment came about in tragic circumstances after the untimely passing of Fiona Richardson. I extend my heartfelt condolences to her family, friends and colleagues. As a survivor of domestic violence I am personally grateful to Fiona for the work she has done in increasing protections for women.

The possum skin cloak I wore when I walked into Parliament today was made for me by the Loddon Campaspe Indigenous family violence action group and the Centre for Non-Violence. It was hand sewn by a community who share my country and presented to me this week by Aunty Beryl, a Gunnai-Gunditjmara elder from the Victorian Aboriginal embassy.

I stand here on the shoulders of my ancestors. None of this would have been possible without the strong line of Aboriginal women before me. They taught me resilience, self-determination and the importance of standing up against injustice. My nan, Alma Previous HitThorpeNext Hit, who is here today, has worked her whole life for grassroots community change. Raised in Fitzroy, she left school at 12 to work in a shoe factory and support her family. Her mum, my great-grandmother Edna, came to the area after being forced off the Framlingham Aboriginal reserve near Warrnambool as part of the White Australia assimilation policy during the Great Depression. The house Nan grew up in was run-down and often had no electricity. Everyone had to do their bit. But she never looked for pity.

Self-determination was at the heart of everything she taught me. Her motto has always been 'You get up and you have a go', and she did. After the 1967 referendum gave Aboriginal people the right to vote she applied for a loan that helped her and my nan Edna set up the Victorian Aboriginal Health Service. That service saved lives and helped hundreds of thousands of people across this country. To this day it continues to be a vital community hub.

Growing up, Nan's house was a magnet for political discussion. I would listen to the tough conversations our elders had about how they could improve the lives of Aboriginal people. It was not just talk; my family's activism started at home. Nan took in countless people and offered them a safe place to live - like Uncle Lou, a soldier who grew up on an Aboriginal mission where he contracted tuberculosis. If it was not for Nan, he would have had nowhere to go.

It was this upbringing that taught me community is everything. They say it takes a village to raise a child, and that is the life I have known. Growing up in a public housing estate I knew everyone. When mum was out working I would go downstairs to the homework club with the other kids and feel that sense of safety and belonging. Later in life as a young single mum, public housing gave my son and I stability and community. It helped shape the father he is today. From the Turkish neighbour who brought us homemade pizza to the elderly lollipop man who lived on the ground floor, people in public housing communities took care of each other. We cannot remove the only support and security these people have.

At Walker Street in Northcote, one of nine public housing sites across Melbourne being sold to developers, I recently met a family who came to Australia from Somalia. They were anxious that being forced from the community they love will make it harder for their young Muslim son to be accepted. One of the most important jobs in this Parliament is to look after the vulnerable in our community. We cannot marginalise these families. Everyone deserves a safe place to call home, and that is why we must do politics differently. The profits of developers cannot be put before people. Gambling companies must not be allowed to destroy our communities with pokie machines. The system is rigged against the little guy because of dodgy donations flowing into politics. It has to stop.

We need fairness and we need transparency. We need leaders who understand the importance of protecting country, have the guts to tackle climate change and will stand up to the mining companies poisoning our land. We need to protect our native forests from logging and create a great forest national park. As a young woman I led the protest to save the Nowa Nowa gorge from a pipeline that would have destroyed one of the most beautiful places in our state.

I have stood in front of bulldozers, and I will continue to stand up for our communities and our environment. There is a fire in my belly for justice, equality and protecting country. I will bring that to this Parliament. Nan always said politics was my destiny. I cannot separate my culture from my politics. When your people have fought for centuries to survive, it teaches you how to face up to those who hold power.

Being Aboriginal is not all I am, but it is the centre of who I am. My mother's family lived their lives as refugees in their own country on Gunnai land in Gippsland. They were poisoned, shot and herded off cliffs in one of the most ruthless and systematic attempted genocides the world has ever seen. The survivors were rounded up onto Lake Tyers mission and imprisoned on rations. Decisions made in this very chamber took our language away, removed children from our families and forced us from our land. Those scars run deep for all Aboriginal people.

But despite the deep sense of loss, I grew up surrounded by people who refused to give in to hopelessness. Nan Alma taught me to stand up for our community and always stay true to myself: 'Never forget where you come from. Never forget our people'. So I fought hard for my identity. At school, where my cousin and I were the only two black kids, I was picked on by students and teachers for being Aboriginal. It only made me more determined. I never felt for one moment that I could be beaten down. It does not matter where you come from or who you are, education should be accessible for everyone. Today we are joined by Aboriginal students from schools across the Northcote electorate and my daughter, who is going into year 12. I promise that I will fight for you to have the opportunities that I never had. And I look forward to seeing the school funding you have been promised delivered in full.

Although I left school early, I went to work straightaway. I have not stopped working since. Every job I have had, in health, housing, employment and land rights, has been about empowering those who have been denied opportunity. As Victorian NAIDOC chair, I was proud we delivered a calendar of inclusive events, including NAIDOC's first-ever Pride Awards.

Bringing community together is at the core of who I am. I have always been a fighter, but it breaks my heart to think of all the Aboriginal people who have lost that will to survive. There is trauma passed down through generations and entrenched by society that does not see our humanity and treats us only as a problem to be fixed. Many of the kids I grew up with are gone, lost to drugs and alcohol, chronic illness and suicide. I have been to too many funerals for someone my age and I do not want my nine-year-old daughter to have to go through the same. Something has to change.

In Victoria in 2017 Aboriginal children are still being removed from families, our literacy rates are amongst the lowest in the state and our people are locked up at a rate 11 times higher than the general population. This is not because of fundamental flaws in their character but because of a system that has written them off. For some of the elders in our community it has led to a sense of profound despair. They see the extreme poverty, the forced closures of Aboriginal communities and skyrocketing suicide rates, and they ask, 'Has anything really changed since our ancestors were wiped from this land?'.

Clinton Pryor, a young Aboriginal man, walked 6000 kilometres across the country out of a sense of desperation. He walked and gathered stories, many of them soul-destroying. It was a heavy burden for a young man, but he listened - and that is what politicians must do. Our First People must be at the centre of decision-making processes. We need a clan-based treaty to ensure self-determination is at the heart of our future. We are not a problem to be fixed. We are the custodians of this land and the oldest living culture in the world. We must be heard. For those who feel they are not being counted, for those who have lost the will to fight and for those who are no longer with us, I will be that voice. I will fight for you. You have my word, and I will never sell you out.

I extend this promise to all the people of Northcote. Whatever your heritage or cultural background, you are part of a community that I am so proud to call home. My commitment to you is to act with integrity. I will have the courage to put our community first, even when those decisions are tough. And I will respect and protect this land which we all share. Together we can walk forward to a more hopeful future for our kids and grandkids.

I am grateful to many people for getting me here today: firstly, to my ancestors, whose spirit of strength and guidance I feel with me every day of this journey; to my elders, my family and my friends; to the staunch black activists who paved the way for a kid from the commission flats to make it all the way to the Victorian Parliament; to the Greens, who had faith in me from the beginning; to my parliamentary colleagues, for their support; to my campaign team and my wonderful volunteers, I will never be able to thank you enough for you hard work, dedication and passion; and to my children and my grandchildren, I know the work I do has come at a cost to you.

I want to finish today with a story that sums up what this moment means. It is a story of a seven-year-old Aboriginal boy with autism called Eli from Penders Grove Primary School in Thornbury. After the by-election results came in, his mum sent me a video she had taken of his reaction when he found out I had won. It moved me to tears. 'What do you think of that?', she asked him. 'Well,' Eli said, 'Aunty Previous HitLidia'sNext Document got the key that's going to open the door to all Aboriginal people'.

I feel so very honoured to have been given that key. My job now is to keep the door open and to make sure it never closes again. Thank you.

 

Paul Keating: ''A very ugly, resentful and xenophobic cat has been let out of the bag', The Myth of Monoculture, UNSW - 1996

11 November 1996, UNSW, Sydney, Australia

Paul Keating was the 24th Prime Minister of Australia. See his entry at Museum for Australian Democracy. He delivered this after his defeat in 1996. A growth in xenophobic sentiment through the election of Pauline Hanson and One Nation was evident in these months. 

When I last spoke in this auditorium in June, I talked about the growing interdependence between our domestic and foreign policy concerns. I said that the old divisions between what we do internally and what we do externally no longer substantially exist. 

I also spoke of the need for governments and others involved in foreign policy in Australia to confront growing fears in our society about the future and our engagement with the rest of the world.

I said these fears were linked to a yearning for an Australia which no longer exists.

Tonight I want to reflect on these problems from the other direction, from the inside. And to discuss Australia itself and what being an Australian means in the last decade of the twentieth century. And what perhaps it should mean in the twenty-first century.

Public debate in Australia over the past few months has been heavily concentrated on issues like immigration and Aboriginal affairs, on what the parameters of public debate should be and the issue of so-called political correctness.

It does seem a remarkable thing to me: here we are in the last half-decade of our first century as a nation, eighteen million of us on a continent almost the size of the United States, one of the oldest and most stable democracies in the world, sitting adjacent to the most extraordinary economic revolution in the history of the world, and what appears to concern some of us most is the colour of people’s skins.

It seems an eternity since we were talking about parallels between our own constitutional ambitions and those of Federation’s founding fathers. We who favour a republic drew some inspiration from the achievement of Federation and nationhood. We concerned ourselves with native title, education in civics, a modified multiculturalism, a new relationship with the countries of Asia. Suddenly the strongest parallel with the period in which our nation was created seems to be a preoccupation with racially based immigration.

It has been one of the saddest developments in our recent history. But we can learn from it and it may not be too late to arrest the process.

One result of the debate must surely be an improved understanding on the part of our politicians of this simple reality—there is no escaping the broad view.

Events and policies in different areas are all related. For example, what we say and do about our immigration policy has economic effects far beyond any spurious case that may be made about the effect of migrants on the availability of jobs. It affects the level of investment in Australia, the success of our business abroad—and these things by contrast have consequences for jobs which are anything but spurious. The links are not always direct but, as the business community has been making clear to the government, they exist and they are powerful.

Culture and identity, the structures and symbols of our government and the way we define ourselves as a nation are not distractions from the concerns of ordinary people, their income, their security, their mortgage payments and their children’s education and health. Rather, they are an intrinsic part of the way we secure these things.

Two years ago, some people were calling these matters diversions. They were not then, and they are not now.

In truth I think the pity is that at this mature stage of our national life we are still arguing about the most basic issues of our identity. By rights the argument should have been settled years ago. I would be glad if I never heard the word ‘identity’ again.

That is one of many reasons why I am utterly convinced that we should be a republic. It seems to me that the republic should be and can be the most natural and necessary step. We should be able to take it in our stride. And really we must.

And if Paul Keating saying these things sounds all too familiar or arouses suspicion in some hearts, here is the Australian Financial Review—hardly a republican organ or one easily diverted from the economic main game—in an editorial a month ago. We are going through ‘Throwback’, they said:

Australia cannot retreat behind a white picket fence . . . rather Australians must embrace the future and the Government must take the lead. This means adopting a positive outward-looking attitude to all parts of the world, including Asia, and encouraging an understanding of the benefits of immigration so that fear does not drive discussion of it. It means coming to terms with the various, and sometimes painful, histories of Australians and working towards creating a tolerant and inclusive society.

It means pursuing a republican constitution and a new distinctively Australian flag in time for the centenary of federation and the Sydney 2000 Olympics.

How doubly reassuring it would have been to have had such an expression of interest from the Financial Review during our days in office! Perhaps only now do they feel free to say what has been on their minds.

All this is by way of introduction.

I want to begin by saying something about the creation of the new Australia—and for all the recent signs of regression, I think the term still applies. And I want to talk about the role of government in nurturing that creation.

I feel obliged to make a few remarks about immigration and multiculturalism, including Asian migration and to touch on the issues facing indigenous Australians, their place in the new Australia and the implications of their treatment for the rest of us.

And I want to talk about the consequences of these things for the structures of Australian institutions, including the republic.

One of the strangest myths spread recently has been the one that under the Labor government debate in Australia was somehow strangled and the people cowered under a stupefying pall of ‘political correctness’. I know I have sometimes been held responsible for terrifying into silence those who disagreed with me.

Well, I obviously wasn’t much good at it. Timid little creatures like Bruce Ruxton and Alan Jones and Graeme Campbell seemed to me remarkably undeterred. Newspaper columns, letter pages and talkback radio shows were notably not unforthcoming in their criticism. During the native title debate, Aborigines, graziers and miners did not shirk from saying what they thought. Loggers and greens had their go. The monarchists were not overcome by their natural decorum.

In fact, we have to ask if we are not seeing here a classic case of the oppressors parading as victims.

To my mind, the infelicities and exaggerations of those who are trying to avoid harm and insult, or to make others feel better about their condition, is a relatively trivial sin compared with those whose aim, or effect, is to harm and to affront.

On the other hand, I don’t think I can be accused of being politically correct myself—unless expelling Graeme Campbell was politically correct, which I happen to think it was.

Over-zealousness can be an ugly thing, and I have no doubt it has done some harm here and there, but ‘political correctness’ is not the quasi-totalitarian evil some people are making it out to be.

On the other hand, it has provided a useful smoke-screen for some crude turnings in the national debate. A very ugly, resentful and xenophobic cat has been let out of the bag.

But I think it would be unwise to simply attempt to stuff the beast back and tie it up as best we can without attempting to understand why it escaped in the first place.

Or, more importantly, without developing the sophisticated political responses needed to ensure that a sense of national unity and purpose is restored and strengthened by the experience.

At least the current debate has more sharply focused the choices as we attempt to chart a course into the next century. In The End of Certainty, Paul Kelly wrote that the Australia brought into being through Federation was:

‘founded on faith in government authority; belief in egalitarianism; a method of judicial determination in centralised wage fixation; protection of its industry and its jobs; dependence upon a great power (first Britain, then America), for its security and its finance; and, above all, hostility to its geographical location, exhibited in fear of external domination and internal contamination from the peoples of the Asia/Pacific. Its bedrock ideology was protection; its solution, a Fortress Australia, guaranteed as part of an impregnable Empire spanning the globe.’

Almost a century later, as Kelly says, this introspective, defensive, dependent framework is a crumbling legacy. The major battleground of ideas in Australian politics has become one between what he calls the internationalist rationalists and the sentimentalist traditionalists— between those who know that the Australian Settlement is unsustainable and those who fight to retain it.

I am inclined to agree almost entirely with Kelly. I differ only in that I believe that fundamental philosophical differences between the two major sides of politics, in particular the approach to industrial relations and the role of government in social and economic policy, remain distinct.

But there is no doubt that his analysis is basically correct. And he is just as correct when he writes about the profound and pernicious impact of the White Australia policy—the death throes of which we are apparently still experiencing.

It is worth remembering that it was only 30 years ago that both the major parties abandoned White Australia as official policy; only twenty-odd since Whitlam gave us our first non-discriminatory immigration policy; and only fifteen since the term multiculturalism arrived in the official political lexicon under Malcolm Fraser.

The past fifteen years have been so full of rapid and profound change and, with the change, so much uncertainty, it is not so surprising that the Australia of Deakin and Hughes, Menzies and Calwell—that somewhat mythical place of cultural homogeneity and imperial benevolence— should have become an object of nostalgia.

But I think that beneath the nostalgia lies a deeper malaise which is more universal, more complex in its genesis, and altogether more difficult to grapple with. It is a condition which all modern western democracies are experiencing.

At its core is the loss of identity and spiritual frameworks wrought by the rolling tide of forces we wrap up in convenient catch-alls like ‘globalisation’: the feeling many of us have that our lives are increasingly beyond our individual control, that our cultural signposts are changing without our consent; that old definitions and boundaries are blurring; that the world is becoming an alarmingly small place, but also, paradoxically, moving beyond a human scale.

Essentially, the old certainties are passing. There is a feeling that community and nation-building are not cooperative efforts; that goals are not shared; that there is no guiding light; that modern life is leading to a greater sense of isolation; that, for all their promise, our technologies are often asocial; that modern economies spin wealth to the peripheries and away from the middle; that employment is insecure; that structural change leaves uncompensated losers in its wake; that the absence of widely shared and binding social and national values leaves people feeling disconnected and searching for some greater meaning in their lives.

The greater affluence, choices and mobility which most have is not leading to the fulfilment they had hoped for, and which they believe they had been promised.

Cynicism with the political process is one inevitable consequence of this: television hosts replace the politicians, talkback shows replace the parliaments—just about anything is seen to be more ‘empowering’ than the traditional institutions and processes of democracy.

You will not be surprised to hear me say that I find this a worrying development: nor if I tell you that I think Australian democratic institutions are no less democratic now than they have ever been and that Australian governments in recent times have never been more conscientious.

That is not to say that the traditional institutions and processes represent the limits of democracy, or that the politicians in the parliaments have not sometimes failed to deliver all that the people are entitled to expect.

But I do believe that the source of the present discontent is not the same as the target of its expression.

I think there is equally no question that what we are witnessing reflects in part a natural cycle in public affairs.

The prevailing orthodoxy is discharged for the new—only to find that the new is beginning another familiar cycle.

Writing in 1988, Arthur Schlesinger said:

‘The cycle turns and turns again. Each phase turning its natural course. The season of idealism and reform, where strong governments call for active public interest in national affairs and invoke government as a means of promoting the general welfare, eventually leaves the electorate exhausted by the process and disenchanted by the results.’

People are ready to respond to leaders who tell them they needn’t worry unduly about public affairs, that left to promote action and self-interest in an unregulated market, problems will solve themselves. This mood too, eventually runs its course. Problems neglected become acute, threaten to become unmanageable and demand remedy. People grow increasingly bored with selfish motives and vistas, increasingly weary of materialism and demand some larger meaning beyond themselves.

But what is new about the current cycle is that there is a feeling of frustration and resentment which goes beyond a rejection of the former orthodoxy.

The passing of the old certainties, the social maladies I have just mentioned, tell people that their diminished sense of fulfilment and esteem, and the disconnection they feel, has its cause in the preferences they see meted out by government.

In the effort to make sense of the frustrations they feel, they seek to stigmatise groups whom they see as a cause of their problems. Invariably, they are the weaker groups in society.

The danger, as JK Galbraith has pointed out in another context, is that ‘the tribulations of the margins will sooner or later begin to erode the contentment of the middle’. The growing number of stigmatised and disaffected will before long upset the value system of the many.

For, in the end, a society does exist as a whole and not in parts— something the Hanson devotees are finding out in another context.

If all this is a consequence of this change, we had better ask how and why we got to this point and whether there were really any alternatives.

Our starting point should be to remind ourselves just what a narrow escape from self-imposed marginalisation we have had.

In the immediate postwar decades we floated in the South Pacific as a sort of message in a bottle—a time capsule of what used to be.

We should not forget that up until the Australian Citizenship Act came into effect in 1949—less than 50 years ago—there were no Australian citizens as such. We were all simply British subjects. And it took a long time after that for many of us to stop feeling—or wishing—that we still were.

We felt secure in the assumption that the British and then the Americans stood steadfastly between us and the threat of the yellow peril. Our economy chugged along on the broad shoulders of the miners and farmers whose output more than made up for a sclerotic secondary industry camped behind a wall of protection.

Yet we may well have felt more certain of who we were and where we were headed.

We had built on the Gallipoli legend in both major theatres in the Second World War. We had stopped the Japanese on our doorstep (with a little help from our friends) and in so doing felt that we had finally earned a place in the world.

We enjoyed full employment; the first Holdens rolled off the production line and the world lined up to buy our unprocessed commodities. The 1956 Olympics and the Snowy Mountains Scheme seemed to confirm our assessment that we were finally a nation to be reckoned with.

Our sense of national identity was built on legends born of the struggle to subdue a difficult and alien landscape, on our deeds in war and sports, on a great soprano and a horse.

And, of course, we were white, and determined to stay that way.

What we didn’t realise until it was almost too late was that the paradise we thought we had exclusive possession of—bar the original inhabitants and they didn’t count—was a fool’s one.

The warning signs were all there, but no-one was really looking. So what had happened? To quote Paul Kelly again:

‘In 1870 Australia’s average income was about 40 per cent higher than any other nation. Over the next century Australia’s GDP growth per head was worse than any industrial country. World Bank statistics show that from the late nineteenth century to 1980, Australia fell from first place to fourteenth in terms of GDP per head. During the nineteenth century the Australian economy was relatively open; in the twentieth century it was relatively closed. The transition from success to failure ran parallel to a rise in protection.’

He points out that:

‘Australia’s share of world exports fell from 1.7 per cent in 1960 to 1.1 per cent in 1987, a measure of its closed economy and declining competitiveness. Australia was the only industrialised nation that failed to increase its proportion of exports to GDP over the thirty years from 1960. Australia’s ratio stayed at 13.5 per cent when the expected growth should have taken this ratio to about 19 per cent. In fact, since the mid-1980s Australia’s exports to GDP rose from 14.8 per cent to 19.2 per cent. But up until then, our performance was woeful. The rest of the world was experiencing a massive surge in trade and Australia was just not an effective participant. By the beginning of the 1970s we were well on the way to becoming an economic museum. And most of our political leaders were doing little more than wandering about the place looking uncomprehendingly at the exhibits; the rusty old factories built on tariffs with marketing objectives extending not much further than the surrounding suburbs; a primary industry still doing all right but feeling the pinch from competition in traditional markets; no service industries to speak of.’

The growing trade relationship with Japan apart, our relationship with the region in which we lived was governed mostly by ignorance and not a little fear—by prejudice. The White Australia policy was not the only expression of this, but it was the most striking. And why anybody should pretend otherwise, or suggest that we pretend otherwise to our children, I simply cannot understand.

The difficult economic and social recasting of the past couple of decades was an inevitable legacy of these misguided years and our refusal to recognise the profound changes that were occurring in a world to which our backs were largely turned.

These changes were the foundations of a modern, competitive economy. Labor was the government which made them, but it can be truly said that they were made by all Australians. Unions and business were active participants. And everyone lived with the effects. They did so because it was accepted that these changes were the only means of giving us a chance: a chance of a prosperous future in an unsentimental world which is waiting for no-one and owes no-one a living—at least not a country with our endowments.

If we are now experiencing the ripple effects of these changes, as we are, and if they have brought with them uncertainties, which they have, then it has to be said that the consequences of the alternative—to muddle along in progressive decline—are unthinkable.

And of course layered over the economic changes were others which were just as critical.

Postwar immigration, the demise of the unifying ethos of White Australia, the introduction of a non-discriminatory immigration policy, the influx of new migrants from the region, the transformation of the Asia Pacific from a region of military threat to one of economic dynamism, the belated realisation that self-reliance rather than fading historical allegiances is the key to our security, the irresistible struggle of our indigenous people for recognition and rights—all these things have rendered much of the old Australia—the one established by the Australian Settlement and still deeply embedded in the psyche of many of us—no longer relevant or useful.

Nor is it real. The great tragedy of the shamelessly regressive politics of Pauline Hanson is not so much that it is rooted in ignorance, prejudice and fear, though it is; not so much that it projects the ugly face of racism, though it does; not so much that it is dangerously divisive and deeply hurtful to many of her fellow Australians, though it is; not even that it will cripple our efforts to enmesh ourselves in a region wherein lie the jobs and prosperity of future generations of young Australians, though it will—the great tragedy is that it perpetrates a myth, a fantasy, a lie.

The myth of the monoculture. The lie that we can retreat to it.

The changes are permanent and, while we may be going through a consequent period of general uncertainty and unease, they are, in my view, almost universally for the better.

It is not going to seem this way to everyone of course, but Australia simply is a richer place these days: a far more open, creative, dynamic, diverse and worldly place.

And I’m not just talking about Double Bay and Paddington.

Our integration with the rest of the world has made more than the streets and the arts and the food more interesting: it has created new opportunities in agriculture and horticulture, tourism and hospitality, education, manufacturing, retailing, science, arts and entertainment. It has changed the nature of work and workplaces—and if there is a general hankering to go back to the old ones it can only be because a lot of people have forgotten what they were like.

This is to say nothing more than that we have joined the modern world but we could not have joined it without the changes.

Now, we can embrace this new Australia or we can reject it. That, fundamentally, is the choice I mentioned at the beginning. We can engage with it, recognise its potential and accept the fact that nothing in this world comes easy. We can work to sustain the momentum and expand the opportunities for our kids.

Or we can regress. We can retreat. We can stop to have a scratch— amuse ourselves with sectional interests. We can say this is too hard for Australians. It’s not us. They are not us. In the best traditions of the old Australia we can call a national smoko. We can relax—and be comfortable.

The latter is folly, but it is an option. We can retreat to a past that never was, and create a future that never can be anything but third-rate. But if we do, we can be sure that the world will not be in a hurry to forgive us or bail us out. Even if they forgave our prejudice they could never forget our stupidity.

In the last ten years 77 per cent of all export growth has been to East Asia. More than three-quarters of our future is there. And some Australian politicians are talking about a discriminatory immigration policy again.

Pauline Hanson or her sympathisers might say, who cares? But future generations will care—and they won’t readily understand why we were more persuaded by our prejudices or by perceived political advantage than by their needs.

In the current debate it is easy for people who do not share Pauline Hanson’s philosophy to throw up their hands and lament. You hear it around now—what has happened to the Australian people that they will listen to such prejudice and do themselves and their country such an injury?

But I don’t believe the responsibility lies principally with Pauline Hanson’s supporters or even, in the final analysis, with Pauline Hanson. You can find a Pauline Hanson anywhere and anytime. You can find substantial discontent with our immigration policy and multiculturalism anywhere and anytime. Had a referendum been held—or a people’s convention—to consider changing the White Australia policy in, say 1970, I don’t think there’s much doubt it would not have been changed. And had it not been changed, Australia would today be—deservedly—an international pariah, and in every way a much poorer country.

The fact is that it is the responsibility of governments to protect the national interest against the tide of prejudice. In all circumstances, including the present ones, the best protection is to maintain the momentum. We have to educate certainly, and you might recall that in office we were in the process of developing a national curriculum and community education program for just this purpose. But above all it is up to governments to maintain momentum. To keep the national eye on the national interest—not on the polling, at least not on crucial matters like this. If this immigration business has done nothing else, I hope it has persuaded a few more people of what an insidious caper polling can be.

If multicultural Australia, and with it our hard won good name for tolerance and fair play, falls over—the good name our generation has done more than any other to win—if that falls over, it will be because the government has stopped pedalling. And on the government’s head, not the people’s or Pauline Hanson’s, will the responsibility rest.

Australia’s postwar immigration policy was one of the greatest strategic decisions this country has made.

It transformed our country and strengthened our economy.

It has made Australia a culturally richer, more varied and much more interesting place to live. It has given us weight.

For half a century, when asked whether they supported the immigration program, most Australians would tell the pollsters, no.

But these responses—and we still see them—reflect in my view a shallow dissatisfaction, a feeling of apprehension about future competition for jobs, rather than a commentary on what has already been done.

Throughout these five decades successive governments persisted with the immigration program because it was in the national interest.

The level of the program rose and fell in reaction to economic activity.

And its composition changed too, in response to different national needs and to developments in the world.

It is important to be clear about the figures.

Forty two per cent of Australia’s population was born outside this country or have one parent who was born overseas.

The immigration program this year, including the refugee component, is about 83,000. Around one quarter are the spouses and fiancés of Australian residents. This means not just recently arrived immigrants, but young Australians who work or study overseas and want to marry—as I did—someone from another country.

The size of the program is hardly unreasonable in a population of 18 million. It is certainly not the cause of the unemployment problems in Australia.

The reasons we favour or oppose migration have more to do with the sort of country we want this to be than with any concern about migration’s impact on unemployment, or any expectation that it will provide an immediate boost to economic growth.

There is a perfectly reasonable debate to be had about immigration numbers in Australia. But that debate has hardly been absent from Australian politics over the years.

Some very sensible people worry on environmental grounds about whether Australia can sustain a much larger population.

I say that the environmental problems facing Australia, especially the quality of our soils and water, are indeed serious issues for us. And they need to be addressed. But the way to address them is not to slam down the shutters and put up a ‘house full’ sign at our borders.

My view on immigration is shaped by a belief that this country has extraordinary potential and that we will be better able to survive and prosper in the world if we have a young and growing population.

But this recent debate is not really about immigration per se— it is about Asian immigration, as most of the best known participants know full well.

The same codewords and subtext are seen in the debate about multiculturalism. It is a multiculturalism of the dark imagination which is on trial here, not the reality.

Multiculturalism is an inelegant word which has almost as many meanings as it has users. And I would be as happy as anyone to drop it from my vocabulary as soon as something better turns up.

But I wholeheartedly support its meaning and purpose.

In his book The Culture of Complaint, the critic Robert Hughes describes multiculturalism like this:

‘Multiculturalism asserts that people with different roots can co-exist, that they can learn to read the image-banks of others, that they can and should look across the frontiers of race, language, gender and age without prejudice or illusion.’

Like everything else in our society, multicultural policy reflects a balance of rights and responsibilities. It proclaims the right to express and share our individual cultural heritage, and the right of every Australian to equality of treatment and opportunity.

But it imposes responsibilities too. These are that the first loyalty of all Australians must be to Australia, that all must accept the basic principles of Australian society. These include the Constitution and the rule of law, parliamentary democracy, freedom of speech and religion, English as the national language, equality of the sexes, tolerance.

These descriptions of multicultural policy are not new. They are part and parcel of what multiculturalism in Australia has always been about, and few Australians would disagree with them.

In any case it is difficult to imagine the monocultural alternative in the late twentieth century. How could there be one model of Australianness with which we could all identify? Who would decide it? Would it ever change? How? Would it be an urban, suburban or rural Australianness? Male or female?

From the earliest times of European settlement, Australia has been a work in progress, redefining itself, shifting its image of what it means to be Australian in response to the changing world.

Yet these recent events have done considerable and utterly unnecessary harm to Australia’s reputation and to the principle of tolerance which had become a definitive part of the new Australia—and which made this country something of a model for others.

I have seen how the manifestations of the debate have played out in the region around us. I have seen the impact it has had on Asian Australians and on others in our community.

Damage has been done to our interests: our economic interests and to our international standing.

And just as important has been the effect on our confidence, and the pride we take in the society we have created here.

Ignorance and fear need to be confronted with knowledge and reassurance: not fanned by those who implicitly agree with the sentiments expressed, or who, even more culpably, seek to attach themselves for reasons of self-interest to whatever they think might be a passing current of public opinion.

There is so much more we need to do than have this futile and damaging exercise. Above all, we need to keep the momentum of our economic and social progress. This debate is a stick in our spokes—an almost incredible self-inflicted stumble.

Almost incredible not because the conditions are not ripe for grievances to be aired, but because there is so little justification for this one and so much for every one of us to lose.

Just as surely, the way we deal with the indigenous Australians will also determine how we are judged abroad and by future generations. It will always be a measure of our success as a country and the esteem in which we hold ourselves.

In 1992 I made a speech to a group of people gathered in Redfern for the launch of the International Year for the World’s Indigenous People. I said then that the way we manage to extend opportunity and care and dignity and hope to the indigenous people of Australia would be a fundamental test of our social goals and our national will: our ability to say to ourselves and the rest of the world that Australia is a first-rate social democracy, that we are what we should be—truly the land of the fair go and the better chance.

I also said, and I think it bears repeating in the current climate, that the process of reconciliation had to start with an act of recognition. Recognition that it was we non-Aboriginal Australians who did the dispossessing; and yet we had always failed to ask ourselves how we would feel if it had been done to us.

When I said these things, it was not my intention to impress guilt upon present generations of Australians for the actions of the past, but rather to acknowledge that we now share a responsibility to put an end to the suffering. I said explicitly that guilt is generally not a useful emotion and, in any case, the recommended treatment is confronting the past, not evading it.

It was the treatment we recommended to Germany and Japan after the Second World War. There are many people in this country who call the study of injustices done to Aboriginal Australians in our own past a ‘black armband’ version of history, or a ‘guilt industry’, yet who are among the first to decry any sign that Japan is hiding the facts of history from young Japanese.

It is not to inflict guilt on this and future generations of Australians that we should face the realities of Aboriginal dispossession, it is to acknowledge our responsibility and their right to know.

In fact, in recent years we have made great progress: through the Native Title legislation, the Indigenous Land Fund, the work of the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation and various social programs. It has been a more than useful start to solving our most intractable problem.

Along the way we have made the extraordinary, if belated, discovery of an indigenous culture so rich, such a unique and integral part of the fabric of this continent, that its elements have become, over a very short time, the most internationally recognisable symbols of us all. It has become part of the world’s mental image of Australia, just as it has changed the way we see ourselves.

It will be a tragedy if we now squander all this—because there is so much more which has to be done.

Yet our policy in government revolved around one central premise: that this should be the moment in our history when we made a concerted effort to break the cycle of despair and disillusion that had engulfed successive generations of Aborigines and cast them on society’s scrap heap.

We believed that such a process would nevertheless represent a sound national investment. That a real and mutual sense of reconciliation would bring immense national dividends.

Reconciliation will not solve the material problems—the health, housing, education and other problems—but it is an essential part of the process. Goodwill and honesty will be needed on both sides. And I might say that representing the forcible removal of a generation of children from their parents as being little different from sending kids to boarding school is not an expression of goodwill and honesty.

Whatever the bean counters or the paternalists might say, the challenge is psychological and spiritual as well as material. This fact seems to have been lost somewhere along the way.

It seems to me that we will be able to debate these issues and to resolve them as a community much more successfully when the structures of our government and the symbols of our nation reflect better the underlying realities of who we are, where we live, and what we must yet do together.

One of the most important of these structural shifts is the move to a republic.

Last June I set out the then government’s preferred approach to what I continue to regard as one of the most critical steps we must take as a nation.

This is much more than shallow symbolism. Those who still argue that our continuing links with the British monarchy do not handicap our international efforts, and those who think we should go on waiting until every last one of us is in total agreement, simply do not understand the stakes we are playing for.

The overwhelming logic of the argument is not difficult to follow. Australia at the end of the millennium occupies a unique place in the world and makes a unique contribution to it.

An Australian head of state can embody and represent our values and traditions, our experience and contemporary aspirations, our cultural diversity and social complexity in a way that a British monarch who is also head of state of fifteen other member countries of the United Nations can no longer adequately hope to do.

One of the impediments to the nation at large in accepting a design for the shift to a republic is the question of what powers the Head of State might have and how that person ought be appointed. Is he or she to be elected at large or appointed upon election by both Houses of Parliament?

Let me take this opportunity, on November 11, to say a few further things about this.

In the model propounded by me when Prime Minister, I proposed that the so-called reserve powers should remain with the Head of State but that the source of the Head of State’s authority should be the two democratically elected chambers of the Parliament.

Some have argued the Head of State’s power should be defined down to remove the reserve function, making it explicit that such persons may act only upon the authority of ministers via the Executive Council. Such people argue that if the powers are less, and largely ceremonial, it is then safe to have the Head of State popularly elected.

The problem with this argument is that no one will agree as to what explicit powers should remain with the Head of State, how a deadlock between the House of Representatives and the Senate should be resolved, and whether the powers of the Head of State to deal with such a deadlock ought to be removed.

There is no agreement about this—none between the political parties or even within political parties.

Yet even if agreement was likely on the general principles, writing it down explicitly and succinctly for the purposes of a referendum for a change to the Constitution would, in my opinion, be nigh on impossible. The proposals would fall under the arguments about the detail.

Yet to leave the powers as they are with the Head of State, and see that person elected at large, would be to change our system of government absolutely.

In such circumstances, and in a very quick time, the premier person of power in the political system would be the Head of State and not the Prime Minister. The whole notion of power in a Cabinet headed by a Prime Minister would change, and the greater powers in the land would be vested in one popularly elected person—the Head of State.

On November 11 each year we reflect on the events of 1975, and on the powers that Sir John Kerr used and on his use of them.

It is particularly instructive now that we are debating what powers a Head of State ought have under a republican model and now that we are more aware of the power of the Senate to frustrate or block the will of the House of Representatives.

In my view Sir John Kerr did not abuse the reserve powers per se by using them to dissolve the House of Representatives for an election.

His abuse occurred in not taking the elected Prime Minister into his confidence, and appointing as Prime Minister the leader of the party who lost the previous election. And in persisting with this appointment after the House of Representatives expressed no confidence in his appointee.

The other abuse of the powers was his failure to wait within the timeframe governed by the appropriation to see if the Opposition Senate tactic would hold—that the appropriation bills would actually be blocked. To wait for an impasse to actually occur.

But if in fact a full deadlock had occurred, if an impasse had truly been reached and he had advised the elected Prime Minister that he believed advice from the Prime Minister to him recommending an election was the best course of action, it would be difficult to argue that the use of the powers in these circumstances would have been irresponsible or abusive.

These issues are still with us. With the nexus between the House of Representatives and the Senate, the Senate is bound to grow in size as population growth expands the numbers in the House of Representatives.

And as it grows, under its system of proportional election, the quotas for the election at large of a Senator for each State will gradually get smaller. They are small now.

Many more independents and single-issue representatives will be there over time. This will diminish the stabilising influences of the major parties, perhaps leading to more institutionalised instability.

In the event of an impasse or a deadlock, how should the nation secure a resolution of a problem? Does the maintenance of a reserve power in the hands of a Head of State provide a proper device to resolve an impasse or force a resolution of a dispute? Or would it amount to an anachronistic use of a residual and old power in a contemporary political setting?

If the source of the Head of State’s power is not popular election and is the delegated authority of the House of Representatives and the Senate, if the source of the power is diffuse and, in the case of the House of Representatives, fully representative of the community, then the source—as distinct from the instrument—derives from a contemporary and representative political authority. In these terms, the use of the powers would simply allow the country to avail itself of a device that could be useful in certain circumstances.

And given that the power has been used once, and only once, in 96 years and given that its operator subsequently suffered the broad admonition of the country for what was seen as his capricious use of the power—it is unlikely that any incumbent as Head of State would want to visit the same contumely on himself or herself.

And if it was used once and only once in 96 years, and given that the Senate is becoming more inherently unstable yet enjoys a wide panoply of powers given to it under the Constitution, and given that no agreement is likely about a delineation of the reserve powers or the power of the Senate itself—I do not see a grave threat to our polity by leaving the powers with the Head of State provided that the source of his or her power derives from the House and the Senate. Any such constitutional change should also be complemented with appropriate provisions for recall for improper or dubious behaviour by the Head of State.

I believe this approach is preferable to an unpredictable, unsolvable situation between the Houses and where a collection of members in the Senate may bail up the House of Representatives and the political system with it.

And if a collection of anti-migration candidates, a collection of Pauline Hansons, or Greens, or such-like were to bail the system up, in whose hands and judgement are we best left for a measured course of action to resolve an impasse: a Bill Deane sitting above the system? Or Senate independents or a major party behaving opportunistically, given that the likely path through such an impasse would be an election?

Such a system would ensure that whoever was elected was, as far as is humanly possible, ‘above politics.’

It is surely one of the great oddities of this debate that so many people have been both against a politician becoming head of state and yet for a popular election.

It was also extraordinary that while I was advocating the minimalist position—and that to be achieved only by referendum—my opponents succeeded in convincing people that something sinister was afoot—even to the point of claiming that I wanted to be the President of ‘Keating’s Republic’—when I was advocating an approach which guaranteed that it could never be.

On this day also, Remembrance Day, many Australians who fought in war will feel a huge attachment to the ethos and symbols of their period and their youth. But they fought for the right of younger generations to make their own stamp on Australia, to make their own way in the world.

Just as younger generations of Australians have appreciated and recognised the role of those who served in these great conflicts, they must now be afforded their own rights to their time in our history.

There is no better place to argue these issues than here at one of Australia’s great universities.

Because our campuses show us more clearly than almost anywhere else in the nation how far Australia has changed in the past 30 years and, more importantly, what the next 30 years will be like.

And because what I have been talking about tonight is a debate about the future, in which our young people hold the strongest stakes.

I want to end, therefore, by saying to the students here this evening and to those at other universities and schools and workplaces—this is your debate, about your country’s future, and its resolution will be yours.

I tried in my public life to say what I thought and how I felt about these matters, and to set in train processes which would help set Australia up for the twenty-first century.

But it will be for you and your generation to provide the good ideas and see that they don’t just stay that way: good ideas never acted upon. Never made reality.

It will be for you to decide how Australia preserves its place in a globalised world; how we cement our engagement with Asia; how well we are regarded and how well we regard ourselves. You will decide how, in the information age, we construct a society in which the wealth and knowledge and the opportunity and influence flow to the many and not the few. You will decide how much the idea of the fair go—the oldest Australian idea—is a reality of Australian life in the twenty-first century.

You will decide whether we can continue to persuade ourselves and the rest of the world that we are earning our privileges or simply enjoying them; making the most of our advantages or squandering them; facing up to the realities of Australian life—past, present and future—or pretending something else about them.

As you go—if you go wholeheartedly—I can assure you of two things. You will make mistakes—you will go too far in one direction, and not far enough in another; you will bring on consequences unforseen—and you will have to wear the blame.

That’s the first thing, but it’s not the most important.

The most important thing is not to be frightened off. It’s useful to put an ear to the ground, but there’s nothing more debilitating than trying to put both of them there. Think and do. Do even the things that don’t have to be done.

Better to wear some criticism than to never take responsibility for what should be done.

After all, what does a democracy mean if not the right, the privilege, the chance to take responsibility?

And when you’ve got a democracy like we have, why settle for anything less than taking it?

For remember this—if we lose momentum, if we drift or retreat, if we begin to let fear, ignorance or prejudice govern us—it won’t be me or my generation who pays the greatest price. We’ll drop off the back of the cart. It will be young Australians who will have to ride it into the twenty-first century—and just now I reckon they should be seriously planning the means by which they can get hold of the reins.

 

Source: http://www.keating.org.au/shop/item/for-th...