Towards a Fairer Future

TOWARDS A FAIRER FUTURE: ADDRESS TO CURTIN UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF MEDIA, CREATIVE ARTS, AND SOCIAL INQUIRY

CURTIN UNIVERSITY
PERTH
WESTERN AUSTRALIA

THURSDAY, 20 MAY 2021

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Acknowledgements omitted

Political volatility and the election John Curtin lost

We are living in a period of great political instability.

Western Australia has just seen an unprecedented election result.

Australia has not had a full-term Prime Minister since 2007 – when I was still a student at this university.

It was only months ago we saw an armed insurgency at the US Capitol.

And a military coup in Myanmar continues to play out.

Political instability is a certainty for the coming decade.

A century ago in the wake of the Great Depression, the story was the same.

John Curtin won the seat of Fremantle in 1928.

Three years later, he was unemployed.

Curtin was defeated by William Watson of the United Australia Party in 1931.

The Labor Party was reduced to just 14 seats in the Federal Parliament.

Watson had been in the Parliament previously and was the founder of Watsonia small goods.

He was literally in the pork barrel business.

But just like Josh Frydenberg, he gave up on responsible financial management.

Watson was a quitter.

He declared in the leadup to the 1934 election, ‘I decided I would not seek re-election unless it could be proved to me that my return would be of some definite advantage to the people.

‘And that has not been done.’

So Curtin was against Nationalist Party candidate Florence Cardell-Oliver.

One of the first women preselected for an Australian political party in a winnable seat.

Cardell-Oliver came within 500 votes of being the first woman in the Federal Parliament.

But she didn’t give up.

Three years later, Cardell-Oliver was elected to the State Parliament.

Later, aged 71, she become Health Minister and the first woman of cabinet rank in any Australian parliament.

Curtin won the seat of Fremantle with that 1.1 per cent margin.

Just one year later, in 1935, Curtin was a candidate to be leader of the Labor Party.

In another tight vote – Curtin defeated Frank Forde for the leadership by just one vote.

Five hundred votes in Fremantle.

One vote in Caucus.

Australia’s future changed forever.

Unlike politics today, his tight margin did not hold back his colleagues from making him Leader.

Undoubtedly his colleagues saw in him a strategic thinker above those who normally land in the Federal Parliament.

He could think more than one step ahead.

‘Look ever forward’

As a student at this university, like many before and after, I would drive past the quote of John Curtin that welcomes people to this campus.

Curtin’s call that we must ‘Look ever forward’.

Curtin always looked over the horizon.

He rejected short-term opportunism.

This is why many Australians were disappointed in last week’s Budget.

It was a political document disguised as an economic statement.

It had no great vision for Australia.

And it locked in thousands of cuts.

Including the cuts to higher education.

A Budget that decreased university funding by 9.3 per cent in real terms from now to 2025.

This isn’t a new phenomenon.

When I was a student here almost twenty years ago, it was university funding cuts that got me involved in the Student Guild.

The value of investment in higher education is a dividing line between Labor and conservative parties.

And it has been for more than a century.

Let’s go to the full text of that Curtin quote.

‘The great University should find its heroes in the present; its hope in the future;

it should look ever forward; for it the past should be but a preparation for the greater days to be.’

It was acknowledged a century ago that Australia’s future lies in being a smart country.

One which invests in education.

Rather than one which implements an effective Knowledge Tax for those who choose to study.

It has always been Labor Prime Ministers who have committed themselves to expanding access to education.

Is ‘Whitlamesque’ an insult?

It was at this campus where I first met Gough Whitlam.

An unnamed Liberal criticised Josh Frydenberg’s Budget as ‘Whitlamesque’ in the Australian Financial Review last week.

The unnamed Liberal meant it as an insult to their cash-splashing, credit-card tapping Treasurer.

But let’s have a closer look at the record.

Whitlam was a reformer. He built this country up.

Whitlam established our diplomatic relations with China.

Under Morrison and Frydenberg, we can’t even get our biggest economic partner to pick up the phone.

Whitlam established a universal public health insurance scheme.

Morrison tried to privatise Medicare payments, he froze Medicare rebates and tried but failed to introduce a $7 Medicare co-payment.

Whitlam made university free.

Morrison has given students an American-sized education debt.

Whitlam left Prime Minister Fraser and young Treasurer John Howard with no net debt in 1975.

Morrison will leave a debt of more than $1 trillion.

The challenge of debt is one where a sensible perspective is needed more than ever.

I remember a younger Scott Morrison lecturing Labor about debt.

‘Intergenerational theft,’ he used to yell.

‘Labor want to send the bill to their children,’ Mr Morrison would scream.

The same man is now Prime Minister.

Here in Western Australia, we have seen the Liberal Party give up on debt before.

As WA Treasurer, Christian Porter set WA on the path to $40 billion of debt.

He assumed the 2012 mining boom would last forever.

Just like Mr Porter’s time as Attorney-General – nothing in politics lasts forever.

Treasurer Frydenberg is now making the same mistake.

Assuming growth will fix all problems.

Western Australians were concerned about state debt heading to $40 billion.

Proportionately, the Federal Government now has $118.8 billion of debt on behalf of all Western Australians.

And it is heavily reliant on the Western Australian economy to repay these debts.

I worry about what happens when the Government snaps back to their ‘Back in Black’ mantra.

We know the songsheet from their 2014 budget.

Medicare co-payments.

Attacks on Paid Parental Leave.

$80 billion in cuts to the states and territories.

And I worry as a Western Australian that the Federal Government will come for a slice of WA’s GST.

We have already seen this flagged by the NSW Treasurer.

Then, two days after the Budget, Scott Morrison’s hand-picked chair of the Tax and Revenue Committee was out attacking WA’s GST share.

I am certain that WA will again be defending our GST share in coming years.

A government that was willing to side with Clive Palmer in the High Court will have no concerns raiding the WA GST share.

In fact, only last weekend, our new Attorney-General, Senator Cash, was reminding Western Australians that it’s ‘easy to forget’ just how much we benefit from the Government’s fix to the GST system.

Easy to forget?

Try telling that to the hardworking Western Australians who, during conditions like no other, have worked harder than ever to keep the national economy moving.

Senator Cash also reminded us of two more things.

Firstly, that she was part of the team that fought for the current GST deal.

Second, that she’s part of the present team that’s delivering it.

The distinction is important.

This used to be a Government that had strong representation for Western Australian at its top levels.

Those days are long gone.

We now have, instead, an imposing Prime Minister, one that loves rugby league and reminding Western Australians that he delivered the ‘landmark’ GST deal for WA.

Not the ‘fair’ GST deal.

Not the GST deal Western Australians earned.

But the ‘landmark’ GST deal.

According to this Government, 70 cents in the dollar for Western Australians is not just what they deserve. It’s a miracle.

We shouldn’t be surprised.

The distribution of GST revenue among the States requires long term thinking.

Thinking beyond just the next boom.

Thinking, instead, about how we ensure the nation’s finances are structured fairly.

But the Morrison Government isn’t capable of thinking about the future.

Last week’s Budget showed us that.

The long-term impact of the 2021 Budget

The 2021 Budget was not a Labor budget.

It was not a women’s budget or a recovery budget.

It was not a caring budget.

It was not a budget for the future.

It was a budget for the past.

It was a budget that tried to fix problems of the last decade.

But did nothing to prepare for the challenges of the next decade.

Climate change is a challenge for the next decade.

If we are to meet net zero emissions by 2050, we need to start putting in place the policy settings to achieve it now.

That’s what Anthony Albanese proposed in his Budget Reply speech last week.

Positive action on climate change. Action that will create jobs, lower energy prices and lower emissions.

There is much to be done and Labor is prepared to do it.

Labor is prepared to help families and communities play their part too.

Labor will make electric cars more affordable and support the rollout of community batteries.

We’ll work together with Australians to address an issue that will affect us all.

The Government wants to ignore the issue.

This means ignoring the energy jobs of the future.

Ignoring the opportunities for young Australians to lead the world in the development of renewable energy technology.

Labor won’t ignore the issue. We have a plan for it.

A Federal Labor Government will create a New Energy Apprenticeships program to train 10,000 young Australians.

We’ll ensure Australians have the skills they need to meet the challenges of the future.

That’s the difference between Liberal and Labor.

We’re not obsessed with the past and we’re not afraid of the future.

We know that the future holds opportunities.

A Labor Government will help guide Australians through the future, and find these opportunities, by creating Jobs and Skills Australia.

We’ll also establish a National Reconstruction Fund to prepare our industry for the future.

And we will partner with the private sector, including the superannuation industry.

We’ll make sure it has the certainty it needs to unlock investment in the future.

It’s trite to say, but if we’ve learned anything from the last year it’s that the future is uncertain.

But that shouldn’t mean we sit back, wait and don’t do anything.

If we do, the world will pass us by.

Australians should be part of solving today’s problems and inventing tomorrow’s solutions.

There are more opportunities than ever before to use technology to change the way we live and work.

But it won’t just happen.

Elsewhere in the world, forward-thinking Governments will support their local industry to unlock these opportunities.

Australia’s Government must do the same.

That’s why a Labor Government will establish the Startup Year program to help drive innovation and increase links between universities and entrepreneurs.

We’ll support students and new graduates in their ventures and help accelerate their development.

Labor believes in identifying opportunities – this program will help do it.

Because unlike the Morrison Government, we believe in supporting universities, not ignoring them.

The Decade that will test democracy

Michelle Obama in her autobiography, Becoming, talks about what drove her and her husband in political life.

‘You may live in the world as it is, but you can still work to create the world as it should be.’

Create the world as it should be.

This fundamental principle is what ties everyone in public policy together.

Be it the student studying on how they can shape their world throughout their career.

The associate professor working to build their research impact.

Or those who seek election to parliament.

Whatever you do, we have all had to reimagine what the ‘world as it should be’ looks like after a pandemic.

Is democracy still the inevitable model of government?

What does the value of freedom mean in a COVID-restricted world?

Once the public have seen big-spending governments, what is the path back?

We need to have the discussion about preserving our Parliamentary democracy.

Democracy has been tested during the pandemic.

Our politics is volatile.

I believe that investing in democracy is one of the cheapest ways to strengthen Australia and to ensure peace across the world.

That’s why I have argued that Australia should seek to build a new role for ourselves as the leading international voice for democracy.

China has the ‘Belt and Road’ infrastructure initiative.

Australia can have the ‘Ballot and Representation’ democracy initiative.

Democracy also relies on strong values-based parties.

We are seeing a hollowing out of the values that parties once stood for.

Australians need political parties that stand for clear values.

The Nationals have become an anti-city party, rather than a pro-regions party.

The Greens political party have become little more than an anti-Labor party.

Building their policy platform in response to Labor rather than in line with a defined values set.

The alternate parties of the right, Hanson’s One Nation and Clive Palmer’s United Australia Party, have always been personality-driven.

The Liberal Party is undergoing a crisis of purpose too.

Led by a Prime Minister who is the ultimate pragmatist.

Driven by opportunism so far that he has become what he once despised.

A surplus destroying, debt enabling, photo-op seeking political machine.

And while Labor too has changed – it has been a modernisation rather than a metamorphous.

We are still the Party of Curtin.

We still hold the values of opportunity, equality and fairness at work central to our being.

And those values will need to be put into action if Labor forms the next Government of Australia.

We need a government that is truly committed to democracy.

For Australia, our most immediate democratic challenge is responding to the Uluru Statement from the Heart.

Our governance will be substandard until our democracy can truly listen to our First Australians.

A constitutionally enshrined Voice to the Parliament.

A Makarrata Commission that will oversee agreement and treaty-making.

A national process of truth-telling.

Following through on these commitments is the sign of a healthy democracy.

A healthy democracy also treasures our next generation.

Young Australians are the ones who look at the decisions of today with a 20- or 50-year view more than any others.

Millennials are slowly taking more seats in the Federal Parliament.

I’m pleased to be doing my bit.

But you only need to look at the words of the Deputy Prime Minister of Australia to know not all politicians see the world as young Australians do.

The Deputy Prime Minister has declared he is ‘not worried about what might happen in 30 years' time’.

This is the attitude that risks Australia missing out on the jobs and economic opportunities of a renewable energy future.

It is also an attitude that shows why we need more young Australians to engage in their democracy.

Close

I’m optimistic about Australia’s future.

Just as we did in the past, we face considerable challenges.

Managing significant public debt.

Maintaining a fair distribution of Government revenue

Making sure democracy represents all.

Democracy doesn’t always get it right in the short run, but it normally does in the long run.

Sometimes it’s obvious and the margin is large.

Other times it’s close.

Maybe just one per cent.

Or just one vote.

But we get there in the end.

It’s not always certain and it isn’t easy.

What matters, is we keep trying.

I’ll never be invited to speak at a university named in William Watson’s honour.

Because William Watson gave up on democracy.

John Curtin refused to give in.

Curtin kept his faith in democracy.

Curtin kept trying.

And so tonight, I had the privilege of speaking at Curtin University.

Thank you.

ENDS