POLICY SPEECH by The Rt Hon. J.D. Anthony, C.H.M.P., Deputy Prime Minister, Minister for Trade & Resources, Leader of the National Party of Australia: 21st FEBRUARY 1983.  When there are problems, as there are right now all round the world, what's needed most is firm experienced leadership. There's not much we can do about a world-wide recession, or the worst drought this century. But building on responsible, disciplined economic policies, there are some things we can do to help ourselves.  It's not a time for experiments, for taking risks. It's not time for L-plate government. It's only five years till our Bicentenary. There'll be major improvements to Australia's roads before we celebrate in 1988. We'll have the Alice Springs to Darwin railway built by then. We’ll be building standard-gauge rail links to several ports. The Bicentennial Water Resources Program is another exciting step forward. Labor says this is not the time for these great national projects, but they will mean many thousands of jobs, and we will push ahead with them. Where is Australia going? This is all building for the future. What we ought to do right now is take a good, hard look at where this country's going. How can any Australian, any Australian unionist, take pride in hearing his country described as "unreliable"? When I speak to our customers overseas, they say: "Australia! That's where you have all the strikes. "You're the people who don't keep your word on deliveries. "That's where the factories are shut so often, where the phones go out, the mail stops, the petrol dries up, the planes don't fly, the mines close; where our ships get stuck for months. That's not something to be proud of - it's something we should all be ashamed of. This reputation grew in the years when our strikes were the worst they've ever been. Those were the years of Haste leadership of the unions, Hawke presidency of the Labor Party, and Whitlam Government. Yet there's no limit to what this country can do if we all put our backs into it. It won't be easy, the way things are, but let's show we can build a better Australia, together. Unemployment worse than it need be. Everyone is worried about unemployment. When first elected, we had justifiable optimism and confidence about jobs. We brought inflation down. Investment and growth recovered. Our great resource industries surged forward. Our exporters thrived. Nearly half a million new jobs were created. And then things changed. The world got caught up in a strangling bout of high interest rates and inflation. Growth slowed down. Trade stagnated. The demand for our products fell away. Prices collapsed. The whole world plunged into recession - the worst since the Great Depression of, 50 years ago. Today around the world, 35 million people are put out of work. And we’ve found it's very hard to swim against the tide of that world-wide recession. Things have been made worse than they need be by wages and costs rising too fast. If we go on like that, there's just no way we can get people back to work, and give our young people jobs. We can start putting people back to work, but there won't be any miracles. Promises of creating half a million jobs won't do it. Summit conferences won't do it - if we don’t know what the problems are now we never will. We can turn the tide, not by spending vast amounts of your money, and setting off a new wave of inflation, but by reducing our clamour for higher wages and shorter hours, so that our businesses can compete. We can do it by stopping the strikes, the bans, the disruptions. By getting our coal and wool and sheep and machinery to our customers on time. That's how you keep the country humming, and people working, and hold out some hope to young Australians. And no one can do those things for-us but ourselves.  We don't want-union government.  Certainly leadership is important. We want leaders who can give us the confidence to get on with the job. To put jobs ahead of pay rises. To give young Australians a chance for the future. And what kind of government can give that leadership? Not a union government! Too often, the union movement has frustrated and infuriated Australians. Now Mr Hawke, who has moved from the leadership of the unions to the Labor Party says that he alone can lead us out of the darkness of division into the light of reconciliation. Don't get me wrong. We're not against unions. But I think the majority of unionists and their wives and families are just as fed up as anybody over the way some of their mates behave.  Changes in the law on unions.  That's why we're going to give them a proper secret ballot when they elect their officials. And there will be secret ballots on strikes in essential services and vital industries. We will be taking new steps to protect the community against strikes. We will seek power through a referendum for the Commonwealth to legislate to give the Conciliation and Arbitration Commission power to make sure awards and agreements are not broken, and to enable the Commission, and the Government where necessary, to prevent the community being denied essential services by the abuse of union power. The community, and union members themselves, are entitled to this protection. And while we press ahead with great national projects that create jobs, we'll continue the things we've already put into place - the tax cuts, the higher family allowances, the housing interest rebate, the increased pensions, the higher student allowances and all the other help we're giving Australian families. Interest rates are a real worry, even though they're coming down. If there were some simple way of reducing them without causing other problems, it stands to reason the Government would have done it. What we have done is give you a substantial tax rebate to reduce the interest load on home and drought loans.  Help for families will continue.  We're not offering tax cuts - we've made them. The tax reductions in the last Budget, and other benefits, are saving the average family about 17 dollars per week. In May there'll be a lift in the unemployment benefit for single people over 18. A quarter of a million people will be helped by our employment training programs. And we will be setting up a program of youth projects in conservation and reafforestation. There'll be another new program with the armed services offering places to 5,000 young people each year for two years, with trade training for as many of them as possible. I'm sure many young people and their parents will welcome this.  New tax deal for small business.  Small business is the cornerstone of so much of Australian endeavour. The foundation of employment. It has been hurt by the drought and by high wage and other costs. Carry-on finance is available in several States, although the NSW Government has so far refused it. As a further step, small business will pay a lower rate of company tax - five cents under the standard rate.... a 10 percent advantage. A special small business division of the Development Bank, with extra funds, will be-set up. Aid there is to be a new Advanced Technology Corporation to help small and medium firms develop innovative products and services. Our export development effort will be stepped up.  Drought toll unites community.  All Australians are united in their concern about the drought. All Australians, whether they realize it or not, are affected by the drought. This year, well over $350 million dollars is being provided to help farmers survive. No one begrudges that. We all hope the drought will break soon. To help farmers cope with their debts after it does, we'll continue the interest rate subsidy for a year beyond the breaking of the drought. We'll use the Rural Adjustment Scheme to help too, and a very close watch will be kept on finance for planting crops and for restocking. But drought isn't just dying crops and pastures, and starving animals. It's soil being blown away. It's the wind, and sometimes water, carrying that productive layer of earth away from our farms and into the sea. Grants to the States and tax concessions have helped, but we'll now begin a national drive against soil erosion. Five million dollars to start, building up to a total of 50 million dollars by 1988, protecting our greatest asset. And in the Bicentennial Water Resources Program, a long-awaited aspiration of my party will come closer. We'll be looking very seriously at the possibility of turning the surplus waters of some of our coastal rivers inland - something that could open up exciting prospects for large areas of Australia.  Problems must be faced.  If we're really going to put all our energies into the job that lies ahead of us, we need to face our problems realistically. A few weeks ago, it looked as if that was going to happen. All governments in Australia agreed that we needed to stop wages rising for a while. The wages pause offered us breathing space, to begin to recover. To stop, as much as possible, the loss of jobs. To begin opening up new jobs. To let us help other Australians with the money saved. Here was something we could do. Something we could control ourselves. But this great opportunity for consensus, for bringing Australians together, was met with combined Labor Party and union determination to smash the wage pause, even with strikes. And that combined attack reminds us, by the way, that Labor's leader is, after all, only one part of a package. You don't get just the leader. You get his party too. You get his party's inflationary policies. You get the powerful, militant unions. Anyone who doubts that only has to look at the long-awaited agreement on economic policy between Labor and the ACTU - the so-called prices and incomes policy. Let no-one be fooled. This policy is no mild program for reform. It is no mere tinkering with the economy as we know it. It is chilling, cold-blooded blueprint for the destruction of Australian free enterprise and the radical transformation of the Australian economy and society. This policy, if it were ever put into action, would put in place the essential framework for the creation of a Centrally Planned Economy - a State-controlled economy. 'There are other countries with Governments like this. In them, the unions are the puppets of self-appointed Governments. In Mr Hawke’s vision of Australia, the National Government would be the puppet of the union movement - and that movement, as Labor's platform makes clear, would be outside the control of Parliament and the law, and responsible to no-one but itself. There are many aspects of the agreement between the ALP and the ACTU which I believe deserve the strongest condemnation. The worst is the whole philosophy of the agreement 7 a philosophy which provides for continually increasing wages, while grinding down profits, strangling growth and extending regulation. It is a philosophy which far from boosting jobs, would slash them, and that's not surprising when you remember it comes with the blessing of the ACTU, whose wages and hours demands have already cost us thousand of jobs. But the most important thing about this policy document. and the one I want to make all Australians understand, is its basic thrust towards a centrally controlled and planned national economy. All the elements are there. Under Labor's policies, there would be State control of prices, State control of incomes, State control of finance, State control of investment, and State control of interest rates. Over and above it all would be a national economic planning mechanism, an octopus stretching its tentacles into almost every aspect of economic activity. The emphasis of industry policy, the document itself makes plain, will be "to integrate all sectors both private and public. What an admission! This document makes it plain that a Labor Government would effectively throttle the private sector as we know it today. We would have an "integrated" economy whatever that means. Frankly, this policy document scares me. I believe it will scare all Australians who value their independence. It goes far beyond anything Mr Whitlam even attempted during his three disastrous years as Prime Minister. It's what the radical wings of the ALP and the ACTU have been agitating for over many years. It would hand over control of the Government of this country to a union movement above Parliament. Socialism is an unfashionable word, I know. It's trendy to scoff at those who warn that Labor is a party based on Socialist principles. Many Labor people try to pretend that isn't true. But let's look at the basic facts about the Labor Party. The Party Platform, determined only last year, states, and I quote: “The Australian Labor Party is a democratic socialist party and has the objective of the democratic socialisation of industry, production, distribution and exchange to the extent necessary to eliminate exploitation and other anti-social features of these fields”. The platform also calls for the redistribution of income, wealth, and economic power. It spells out the Labor enthusiasm for intervention in the economy, an enthusiasm echoed in the prices and incomes policy. And it names the instruments Labor is prepared to use to intervene in the economy - instruments which include nationalisation. It is clear from this document, the prices and incomes policy, that Labor's commitment to the principles of Socialism is as strong as ever. It is a commitment which if ever put into action, would wreck the economy of this country. It is a commitment which would tear this country apart socially. And it is this commitment- spelt out in the prices and incomes policy- which sets out once and for all the absolute difference of Labor's vision of our future and the vision of the Liberal-National Party Government. The last thing Australia needs is union government.  Leaders must be strong, experienced, stable.  We can handle our problems. Not easily, or quickly - but we can do it. We can do it if there's leadership that's strong and experienced. Leadership that's respected - not necessarily loved, but respected - for its strength, its experience, its stability. We can do it if Australians accept the need for sound, safe, disciplined economic policies that continue to attack inflation. It's not easy, but it's the only way. When governments spend, you pay. Governments must do things to help. They must plan, construct, build for the future, to provide jobs and opportunities and challenges. The roads program. The water and soil conservation programs. The Territory railway, standard gauge links, mainline upgrading. A big airports program. The wage pause. The armed services job program for our young people and the forest and conservation jobs scheme. The general training programs for Australians, especially the youth of the nation. The help for industry. All these are part of our all-out effort to develop Australia and give Australians jobs.  Australia will be what we make it. But in the end, it all gets back to us as individuals. Australia will be what we make it. I know Australians don't talk much about things like pride in their country, about love of Australia. But they want to be proud. They want to see Australia grow and prosper. They want Australia to lye respected around the world. In many ways our name is respected except, that is, for our strikes. The Government must take the lead, and it is. But the Government alone can never solve all our problems. Australia isn't just the Government. Australia is all of us. Australia will be what we all make it. With leadership built on experience and strength, we can make Australia a better place. That's the kind of leadership Malcolm Fraser and I offer you. We ask for your help, your commitment, your work, to build a better Australia.