Final days of the election campaign
27 February 1983
We are in the last days of a very important election campaign. I want to talk about the issues which are fundamental to the choice to be made on March 5. The impact of the drought, the severe world recession and irresponsible wage demands have made recent years difficult, yet your Government has responded with strength and determination. We have a record of positive achievement across every front. We have achieved new strengths in our alliances and our position in the world. We have achieved reforms by cutting taxes, substantially increasing family allowances and providing significant rebates on home loan repayments.
Recently we have embarked upon two major projects – a roads programme and a national water resources programme, part of our vision of achievement for Australia. A recent achievement has been to put in place the wages pause. Our arguments persuaded all eight Governments to support it. Only Federal Labor and their ACTU masters opposed this programme, which will lead not only to economic recovery but also free 300 million dollars to provide jobs for young Australians, the older unemployed and welfare housing. We are a Government not only of achievement but of premise.
We have promised a new deal for young Australians, with jobs especially in conservation. Lower tax rates, more finance and help with advanced technology promise a better future for small business. New child care programmes and expansion in pensioner health benefits promise more security for families. We promise major reforms in industrial relations. Secret ballots and reforms to end strikes in essential services promise security and sanity, especially compared with Labor's pledges of more power to the unions. My government has a record of achievement – a commitment to the future based upon this. In difficult times Australians have always been prepared to face up to making tough and difficult decisions. They know there are no quick and easy solutions. We know we cannot overcome this problem by a simple, crude policy of spend, spend, spend. Yet that is precisely what Labor is determined to do. They intend to spend at least an extra 4000 million dollars. In order to get that they will have to compete with you. The money you need to build or buy your own home, to develop your small business would go instead to Labor. The money which our dynamic industries need to expand, to compete, to create jobs - it would go instead to Labor.
In addition to depriving you of funds, in order to find 4000 million dollars more than is already being spent. Labor policies will mean much higher interest rates – higher interest rates on your home loan, higher interest rates which will prevent industry from growing and employing more people. Higher interest rates which will hurt all Australians. We will not let that happen.
We will ensure that money is available not for big-spending Governments, but for big-thinking Australians. The disaster of Labor's policies is so much worse when you look at Labor's deal with the unions. Most Australians agree that the unions already have too much power. For selfish and often irresponsible ends unions continually disrupt the lives of decent Australians, paralysing transport systems, drying up petrol supplies – costing you money – costing Australia jobs. Yet on March 5 the former head of the ACTU is asking you to vote for more union power. The so-called prices and incomes deal dictated by the unions and accepted by the Labor Party must be exposed.
This shameful deal gives the unions a power of veto over the policies of a Labor Government. Labor Government policies must be agreed to by the unions that's what the deal says. It means Labor would provide policies to suit the unions regardless of what's best for you. This deal commits Labor, in their own words, to being accommodating and supportive of the unions. That means no less than a Labor Government accommodating – agreeing to union demands and being supportive of the unions even when they ought to be supportive of you, the people of Australia who are the constant victims of union militancy. The deal provides a blueprint for socialist control of Australia. Every business big or small is to be regulated. They say 'comprehensive' and 'closely monitored' interventionist policies are necessary to achieve 'a transition of the economy into a planned framework'.
The lives and incomes, in their words, of 'shopkeepers, self-employed builders and tradesmen', are to be controlled. Government and unions under this deal will even be given the right to set profit levels. As if this were not enough, the deal gives unions this same right of veto over policies for your health care over your children's education, over pensions and superannuation and over immigration, which was a particular target of the last Labor Government. But most despicable of all, this deal leaves no room for you to really influence your own future. It is an exclusive deal between Labor and militant unions, a deal in which you have no say.
My Government will never permit this to happen. We propose to bring the militant unions back under the control of the law, responsible to their own members and to the people of Australia - all the people of Australia. On March 5 you will have a choice – you can elect the men and women who will actually govern for all Australia, or you can elect a party which will be the instrument of militant unions.
Australians don't want union dominance and socialist control. They want the freedom to work, to strive, to succeed, to prosper, to be rewarded for effort. We will provide a Government which values those endeavours and which seeks to promote the talents of a great people in a free society.