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Speech
Check against delivery
DAME PATTIE MENZIES ORATION
18 April, 2005
The Honourable Bronwyn Bishop, Chairman of the Dame Pattie Menzies Foundation, members of the board, Lady Sonia McMahon, Sir Robert and Lady Cotton, parliamentary colleagues, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen.
I acknowledge the Gadigal clan of the Eora people, traditional Aboriginal people of Sydney. Their involuntary sacrifices made possible the great city we have today, built largely by the vision and hard work of our non indigenous ancestors.
Today, in this the inaugural Dame Pattie Menzies oration, we seek in our own inadequate way to honour a remarkable Australian, woman, mother and wife.
A political movement reveals itself – its values and beliefs, not only by those it elevates to lead in its highest offices, but by those whom it honours.
Some people lead from position, others by principle. Pattie Menzies did both. The debt owed her legacy by the Liberal Party of Australia and the country we serve, is one we can barely understand, let alone repay.
Born in Victoria in 1899, she married Robert Menzies in 1920 at the age of 21. Given the immediate and amiable rapport established between her father and Robert on political matters, Pattie questioned whether his interest was in her or her father!
She would give birth to three children and support her husband through 18 years as Australia’s prime minister. Sixteen of those were of course consecutive years as our nation’s first – and still longest serving, Liberal prime minister.
In 1995, death robbed her of the opportunity to see the return of a Liberal government lead by arguably her late husband’s greatest admirer.
Today is not a day for a lengthy biography. But we should not ever settle for the broad brushstrokes of our party’s history, passing over pioneering sacrifices made in our name. Today is one to reflect on our past, this woman whose life helped make us who we are and, therein our approach to the future.
She was a woman of substance where it is a much abused term.
Dame Pattie was in the parliamentary gallery when in 1939 Earl Page accused Menzies of cowardice in World War 1 and disloyalty to Joe Lyons. She neither forgave nor spoke to Page again.
When the Menzies returned to the Lodge in 1949, she insisted they give up their Melbourne home. Dame Pattie was determined that in the context of a housing shortage they should not have two. Though frequently offering her husband advice, she felt that “One politician in the family was enough”.
But it was she that first proposed to Sir Robert that the Commonwealth subsidise accommodation for the aged, having regard to the “companionship of husband and wife”. Menzies later said, “The effect of the legislation was quite remarkable....I don’t think any of our schemes was ever more widely welcomed by the public or gave us greater satisfaction.”
Although we all admire talent, it’s character that really counts.
John Bunting, who served as both Secretary to the Cabinet and to the Prime Minister’s department during Menzies’ tenure, recounts in his portrait of him an incident that, says so much of Dame Pattie.
“...inadequate as the (lodge) staff was, Dame Pattie made things just a bit worse by her preference for doing things herself. I remember on a visit to The Lodge being taken through a room where floor cleaning was in process. There was due apology, but I would understand, it was said, that the household work had to go on. I did, of course understand, but what surprised me a little was that an extra staff member engaged specially for cleaning was taking it easy in one of the chairs and that the cleaner on her knees with the scrubbing brush and soap was Dame Pattie!”
She resented the enmity and derision frequently offered in the modern political era. As a guide to the young - and not so young - she told the National Library oral historian in 1990, that we should respect the point of view of other political parties whilst disagreeing with it.
“That was their point of view and you respected it. Today I don’t like the abuse that goes on in Parliament. I think it is quite unpleasant and belittling to both sides. Those people are there to set an example to the rest of Australia and if they’re going to be like that, the rest of Australia is going to be like that.”
This was a woman of humility, self deprecation, grace, determination, good humour, wit and lifelong love of one man. Her loyalty to her husband was matched only by that to her country.
Where then should the Liberal Party head in this the 21st century? Australia faces different horizons and different challenges from those of Dame Pattie’s era.
There are two things we must do.
The first is that we should not ever lose sight of what it is in which we believe. Knowing what we’re against is not the same as getting what we want.
The deep value system that operates in all of us as Liberals will drive our ideas, responses to events and interaction with Australians.
Ours is a philosophy that cannot be learned from a scholarly manifesto. It is one of idealism, hard work and self sacrifice absorbed through everyday life. It is the belief in the inherent worth of every individual and the political expression of a philosophy that enables all human beings to both find and achieve their own potential.
Our real enemies are cynicism, disillusionment and intolerance of differing expressions of our Liberal inheritance. Rejection of social conservatism deeply rooted in Christian values should be as repugnant to us as ostracism of those who equally embrace injustice with liberal attitudes. What those at the either end of our broad philosophical movement must understand, is that what we need most is one another.
The German physicist Bernhard Philberth in Revelation put it best;
“Progress leads to chaos if not anchored in tradition. Tradition becomes rigid if it does not prepare the way for progress. But a perverted traditionalism and a misguided progressivism propel each other toward a deadly excess, hardly leaving any ground between them.”
“Progressivists” are no less essential to our party’s future than its “traditionalists”.
Our second imperative is vision.
Good management is essential to our nation’s future. It is about getting results. Vision however is what informs leadership. Like a campfire around which we sit, the vision we enunciate on behalf of our country should warm us as we reflect on who we are, the values and sacrifices of those who gave us our economic and cultural legacy and most importantly, where we want to go.
We ignore such thinking at our peril.
Australia faces a challenging future. The one hundred segmented markets that characterised the world when Sir Robert and Dame Pattie moved into the Lodge in 1949 have coalesced into three principal trading blocs. So too the agrarian, land and labour intensive industries of our past – agriculture, fishing, forestry, mining and manufacturing have undergone enormous transformation. Some are dying.
Whereas in 1949 agriculture was 21.3% of the nation’s GDP, it is now 3.4%. When I finished school in 1975, manufacturing represented 21.4% of our economic activity, it is now 11.9%.
In contrast Australia last year earned more from exporting education than wheat and wool. At 4.2% of GDP and employing 241,000 Australians in 22,000 businesses, information communication technology surpasses many traditional industries in value. So too tourism ranks alongside mining in economic value to our nation, representing 4.2 and 4.4% respectively of GDP.
This climate of sweeping economic change has parallelled fundamental changes to Australian society, much of it rooted in the excesses of the Whitlam government.
My generation was born into an Australia with a well defined mesh of values loosely defined as God, King and Country.
From the early seventies however, we saw churches and ethics based organisations progressively marginalised from public debate. The value of parenting as a fulltime occupation was diminished, volunteering was considered the domain of the “do gooder” and young people felt they were being pushed to the zeniths of educational achievement – frequently beyond their natural abilities and heartfelt preferences.
In elevating gambling to the status of a religion and having some arguing euthanasia on the basis that death is an acceptable escape from insufferable physical and emotional pain, we saw by the mid nineties the price paid by young Australians.
It wasn’t so much the peak in young male suicide at 27 per 100,000, nor illicit drug use by teenagers approaching a majority experience. We had reduced the toll taken by disease and car accident, but failed to have any impact on that exacted by despair.
When John Howard came to government a culture had emerged in which many young people felt that they had little to believe in other than themselves. The mesh of values enshrined in Dame Pattie’s “God, King and Country” contained more than a few gaping holes.
No society can flourish so long as it defines freedoms in terms of rights rather than responsibilities. To do so demeans and devalues the individual. Nor can we allow young people to adopt values for the world they think they’re going to get as distinct from the one they want. As observed by ANU social policy analyst, Richard Eckersley, young Australians frequently think that cynicism, mistrust, impatience, materialism and detachment are the values most likely to ensure success.
I was told by my father in the 13th year of my life that in the absence of family wealth and influence, the only way that I would live in a better house than the one in which I was growing up, would be to work hard at school.
The aspirations they had for us - to have a better job, live in a better house and drive a better car - have become for the next generation cruelly oppressive expectations. Still largely tethered to those ideals, young Australians see their parents’ accumulated wealth and doubt they will ever match it, let alone exceed it.
When 2,600 year eight students were surveyed for the Victorian Centre for Adolescent Health’s “Gatehouse” longitudinal study in 1999, the results were disturbing.
Only 40% could identify a person whom they felt knew them well – favourite music, best friend, dreams and deepest fears. However, only a quarter could name a single adult whom they felt they could trust. Not a parent, teacher, neighbour, doctor. No one.
The problem perhaps is not that many young Australians have not learned our values. It is that they have.
So what does all this have to do with articulated national vision? Everything.
Resilience building in young lives requires three things.
Young people must have a stable and loving relationship with at least one adult, preferably a parent.
They must secondly be a part of a school community in which identity is built. It is important they are known and understood as individuals.
But thirdly, young people must grow in a community and nation that gives meaning and purpose to their lives. The growing pilgrimage by young Australians to Gallipoli is but one manifestation of their search for meaning.
Our vision for our country must be one which embraces broad economic, human, social and cultural objectives. Subtle but powerful forces influence not so much what we think, but how we feel.
Young Australians understand the central importance of progress and economic growth, but to what end? Towards what are we striving to grow?
Fiscal consolidation and sound economic management over the past nine years has allowed a generation to escape the single biggest lifelong cause of poverty – unemployment. Gun control, the emancipation of East Timor, taking up arms against terrorist fundamentalism, defining clearly which side we’re on in the war on drugs, determined efforts to practically address the existential despair that is much of Aboriginal Australia, Tsunami relief – these things send powerful subliminal messages to young people about the future we want.
We should not ever lose sight of the fact that if all our economic and scientific problems were ever solved, all important questions would remain unanswered.
As many Australians embrace with enthusiasm the share market, broadband, the Republic, engagement with the rest of the world and multiculturalism, others feel a sense of detached grief. John Howard’s great strength has been to not uncritically bow to the ambitions of the former, whilst respecting the rights and legitimacy of fears held by the latter.
We should in all we do, show that we value the health and integrity of human life as much as achieving our economic objectives, strive to be an outward looking, competitive yet compassionate country reconciled with its indigenous history, imbued with the values of hard work, self sacrifice, tolerance and courage.
The context for future has been laid recently by the Productivity Commission.
As imprecise a science that future scenarios can be, all else being equal we face daunting challenges.
The fiscal gap (revenue minus expenditure) will grow over 40 years by 7% of GDP to cover the health and welfare impact of aging. Alternatively taxation will need to increase 23%. Although incomes will be 90% higher, we face a 10% contraction in labour market participation.
The three variables are population, participation and productivity.
Although the report assumes 1.75%, having averaged 2.05% throughout the nineties, sustaining that high productivity rate would reduce the fiscal gap from 7 to 2.5% of GDP.
One proposal is that marginal tax rates be indexed to inflation as a means of boosting productivity. Consistent with Liberal principles, the Commission puts the case for incentives for working Australians to work harder by not penalising them with static marginal tax thresholds in an environment of real wages growth.
When Dame Pattie received that honour from the Queen in 1954, an Australian had to be earning 19 times the average wage to hit the top marginal rate. That’s about $800,000. Today it is approaching 1.2 times the average wage.
The Business Council of Australia recently proposed a cut to the top marginal rate to 40% by 2007/08 at its estimated cost to the budget of $5.2 billion. It further argues that it should in the longer term align with a corporate tax rate which itself should decline from 30%.
The Howard government has already had a near death political experience in delivering lower marginal tax rates - $12 billion annually in personal income tax cuts, abolishing a raft of indirect taxes including wholesale sales tax and introducing a broad based consumption growth tax for the states to put a foundation under federation. A further $25 billion was returned to taxpayers over the forward estimates in the previous two budgets.
Yet apart from simplification of the 10,000 page tax Act, arguably our greatest challenge will be a further round of reform in this area. No Liberal Member of Parliament wants anything other than lower levels of taxation.
Our medium to long term objective should be a lowering of the top marginal rate and closer alignment with the corporate tax rate.
However, the Commonwealth is currently the nation’s only significant net saver. With the current account deficit running at 6.75% of GDP in a climate where we have a strong rise in the terms of trade and a reasonably buoyant global economy, the imperative is to continue to run strong fiscal policy.
Reducing personal and corporate taxation rates in this climate which includes strong domestic demand could threaten what has been 14 years of economic expansion.
Compounding this is the brake on expanding resource exports from inadequate antiquated rail and port infrastructure. Our forebears living in considerably more difficult times were occupied with building bridge, rail, port, road, power and telecommunications infrastructure. Perhaps it is time for our generation to make similar sacrifices and to do so through leveraging the private sector.
Although the government looks for every opportunity to return taxes to the people who paid it, there is a further consideration.
Although many argue for lower taxation, few are happy to provide a list of expenditures that should be cut.
Our government inherited from the Keating government a legacy of debt and asset sales being used to fund recurrent expenditure and essential social infrastructure. But equally crippling was the culture of unsustainable expectation that emerged in terms of what governments could and would provide.
Having emerged from the economic wreckage of the “recession we had to have”, Australians would understand now the wisdom of Thomas Jefferson, who said,
“I place economy among the first and
most important of virtues, and
public debt as the greatest of
dangers to be feared. To preserve our
independence we must not let our
leaders load us with perpetual debt.
We must make our choice between
economy and liberty, or profusion and
servitude. If we can prevent the
government from wasting the labours
of the people under the pretence of
caring for them, we will be wise.”
The challenges we face are many.
There is evidence that the world’s environment is warming and that human activity is a key contributor. Most of us appreciate that no longer can human existence be sustained on environmental capital. We must instead live on interest.
Australia has rightly refused to sign the Kyoto protocol. Exporting thousands of mining and manufacturing jobs alone to less developed countries with less stringent environmental controls serves the interests neither of our nation nor those whose jobs are at risk.
Yet we are one of only a handful of countries on track to meet our Kyoto deadline. Whereas CO2 emissions will increase by 40% from 1990 to 2012, Kyoto will only reduce it 1%. We have grown our economy by 47% since 1990 but increased greenhouse gas emissions by 1.3%.
The Howard government has invested $1.8 billion in its climate change strategy. At least a further billion dollars is leveraged from the private sector in low emission technologies, photovoltaics and renewable energies.
But in addition to this, is it not time to consider in the longer term the most obvious power source, nuclear power?
For a million years CO2 levels were between 200 and 300 parts per million. They have risen to 380 ppm in 150 years.
Although much hysteria surrounds global warming, it pales into insignificance compared to that surrounding nuclear power.
We are a part of the nuclear cycle. About a third of the world’s uranium is at Olympic Dam in South Australia. As Australia’s science minister I have had to deal with the crippling parochialism of the South Australian government refusing to allow the safe storage of low level waste at Woomera. Now it is making arrangements to store its own low and medium level waste in South Australia.
Simultaneously the same government enthusiastically eyes the economic potential of its massive uranium deposits. Australia already accounts for 19% of global uranium production earning us $427 million in 2002-03.
Reality check.
Nuclear power generates 16% of the world’s electricity from 440 stations in 31 countries. In doing so the complete nuclear process emits 2-6 grams of Carbon equivalent per kilowatt-hour. Coal, oil and natural gas emit 100-360 grams of Carbon per kilowatt.
The nuclear power that today generates 16% of the world’s electricity avoids 600 million tonnes of carbon emissions annually. In plain language that’s 8% of current global greenhouse gas emissions.
Some people seem happy to tuck themselves into bed at night comfortable in the knowledge that we earn money from exporting uranium and that it generates power in an environmentally friendly way. But they will then man the barricades if any by products are to be shipped and stored, let alone be even considered a future fuel source here at home.
It is not only in electricity production that nuclear energy offers potential for Australia. It could also be used to fuel water desalination on a large scale.
The government has no plans whatsoever in this regard, but do we not at least owe it to our future to maturely canvass all our options? Is it not a Liberal ideal to keep an open mind?
My Canberra office has its walls adorned by numerous photos, much to the amusement of most of my colleagues and the derision of some. Every one tells a story.
The largest hangs on the wall opposite my desk. It is there to remind me every single day that I am privileged to be a member of parliament and a minister of that which is really important.
Almost twice the size of a door, it is a black and white photograph of the late Neville Bonner. Neville was, of course, the first Aboriginal Australian elected to the federal parliament in 1971. He did so as a Queensland Liberal senator.
Born into a life of poverty unknown to all but a few of us here, he endured a life of adversity, prejudice, hurtful stereotyping and an education in the university of life.
It was to his grandmother, Ida Bonner that Neville attributed his ultimate success. She had said to him when he was 14 that he should go to school, having been removed from one in Lismore when he was eight - after only two days, because of intolerance of his Aboriginality.
Why, he had asked Ida should he go? She replied, “If you learn to read and write, express yourself well and treat people with decency and courtesy, it will take you a long way.”
And it did. From scrub clearer, ringer, bridge carpenter and 11 years on Palm Island, he came to the federal parliament.
In 1992 when Robin Hughes asked him to nominate his greatest achievement, he replied, “It is that I was there. They no longer spoke of Boongs or blacks. They spoke instead of Aboriginal people.”
There are two lessons in this for me. The first is that education is about “being there”. It is about the power of education to unlock human potential.
The second is that like Dame Pattie, here was a man who led not only from position – but from principle.
A special place will be accorded Neville as an early pioneer in the journey of Aboriginal Reconciliation. Another will be for John Howard.
Life expectancy for indigenous Australians remains stubbornly 15 to 20 years below that of non indigenous Australians. Only 1 in 3 will see age 65 when the rest of the country is concerned about collapsing age dependency rates. Aboriginal infant mortality, despite dramatic improvements, is 3 times higher, unemployment 4 times higher and incarceration rates 16 times higher than non indigenous Australians.
In remote areas only 1 in 10 indigenous students remains to year 12, frequently achieving barely a year 10 standard. Achievement in these areas against national literacy and numeracy benchmarks is barely 13%.
On a range of health and educational benchmarks however, there has been improvement over the past five years.
The COAG trials driven by the Prime Minister offer great promise. Pooling state and federal money, cutting through red tape and requiring mutual obligation on the part of Aboriginal communities is starting to pay off already.
The much maligned deal to install a petrol bowser in the remote community of Mulan in return for parents washing kids’ faces has seen the prevalence of trachoma plummet from 70% to zero. Well may we argue that every parent should do it anyway, but endless hand wringing and more of the same will get us nowhere.
I am responsible for nine Shared Responsibility Agreements (SRAs) signed in western NSW. Homes will be air conditioned but in return people must be formally trained in their maintenance and kids must be at school. At Burke we fund a bus and administrative support in return for which the community runs a night patrol to return kids on the night streets to their homes. Crime has dropped to 40%.
In my portfolio we are shifting indigenous specific educational funding out of cities into remote areas, unashamedly dropping programmes that don’t work for ones that do, demanding states agree to set and report on annual performance benchmarks.
It is hard, however, not to conclude that our first world welfare system is a big part of the problem.
Too much money goes too quickly on alcohol, gambling, fast food and tobacco. The diseases and events killing Aboriginal people are consequences of obesity, diabetes, tobacco, alcohol and I would add – illiteracy.
We should respond with enthusiasm to proposals which come from Aboriginal people themselves for different models of welfare delivery.
Pooling some or all individual payments in some communities to ensure food, clothing and shelter is provided, is an initiative worthy of expansion. Further incentives could be built into such initiatives to encourage their uptake where Aboriginal people themselves have decided to take control of monies in their own communities.
We are a small country in terms of population – 0.3% of world population, 1.2% of global GDP and less than 4% that of the United States.
The future will be driven not by the things we know, but by those we do not.
The standard of living to be enjoyed by the next generation will be a product of our ability to learn how to learn; to develop ideas and from them technologies we apply to sustaining traditional industries and supporting new ones.
No young person should feel that the value of their life is determined by the educational choices they make. Their choices in apprenticeships, TAFE or university must be equally valued.
It is essential that parents and students have choices affordable to them in public and private education. Australian working men and women and students should be free to join a union and be represented by it. But under no circumstances should they be forced.
Education is as much about building character as imparting a thirst for learning. Neglectful indifference to the teaching of values in Australian schools risks producing values free adults. Young Australians know they have choices to make in life and to understand them and the consequences of the path they choose. They should also be taught that there is a difference between right and wrong, and that their actions should be subject to external evaluation.
What is right or wrong is not simply a matter of personal judgement.
So too they must understand that our freedoms are in proportion to the extent to which each of us is constrained by a moral compass. If people cannot behave, governments legislate from us the freedoms we enjoy.
I challenge public education to consider a future still constrained by centralised decision making in large government bureaucracies deprived of school level administrative and financial autonomy. Collectivism rewards mediocrity and penalises excellence in the teaching profession.
I challenge also Australia’s higher education and scientific communities to contemplate the future for the nation’s pre-eminent research agency, CSIRO and our Australian National University. I have embarked on a process of identifying where and how these two great institutions collaborate and how that might be further developed.
I predict that as this century unfolds, ANU will evolve further into a research intensive university with a small undergraduate load. CSIRO will build on its national flagship programmes and further its international networks. The two should over a generation merge as one. That is a decision not of governments, but of the nation’s educational and research communities themselves.
Although symbolism is important, an Australian Republic is not our most urgent need. In the past three years the only people I’ve heard raise it have been in the federal parliament. Australia will inevitably return to the issue at some point, but let us hope they look beyond the soap opera antics of some members of the royal family to the system of government that serves us so well. The power wielded by the Queen resides not in what she exercises but that which she denies others – notably political figures.
The most pressing constitutional issue is how we can best govern ourselves as a federation in a world vastly different from that of Henry Parkes. Increasingly, international pressures demand a nationalist approach in everything from diplomacy, border protection and counter terrorism to education and industrial relations.
For Liberals there is a tension not only in adjusting to a different role for the States and the Commonwealth, but also in the fundamentals of a market economy.
On the one hand we support competition, but on the other we recognise the critically important role of newsagents and pharmacists as community anchors. Given that Coles and Woolworths have between them now almost 50% of the grocery sector and tentacles into almost every aspect of Australian life, where is the place of the corner store in any emerging national identity?
We live in a world of fundamentalist intolerance. We live in vast ignorance of the long term consequences of new knowledge and the decisions we make in relation to it. Each day brings evidence of further technological change and global markets increasingly direct monetary policy domestically.
In all of this, our greatest challenge is not to connect our children so much to new technologies. It is instead to connect them to one another.
Thomas Jefferson was his country’s third President. Although a great achievement by any standard, when asked to nominate his greatest, he did not nominate it as such.
Instead he said he should be remembered for three things.
First, co-authoring the American Declaration of Independence. The second he said would be the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom. But the third he nominated as his most enduring legacy. And that was founding the University of Virginia.
When asked why, he replied, “Because education is the defense of the nation.”
What will defend us most from that which we fear - change, people, ideas, cultures and religions we don’t always understand or like - is education. Its purpose is to inspire and educate the next generation to see their world through the eyes of others.
Socrates described ignorance as the root of all evil. The wars against terrorism, tyranny, disease and poverty will ultimately be won by overcoming ignorance - our own ignorance and that in other parts of the world.
Dame Pattie Menzies, her life and that of her husband, have given us a legacy upon which we must build the foundation for our future. Thank you for giving me the undeserved privilege of being able to honour it in some small way.
Media Contacts:
Dr Nelson’s Office: Yaron Finkelstein 0414 927 663
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