Keating’s Miracle
p. 18 · Read in the full issue
THE headline ‘Keating’s miracle’ said it all.
After 10 years in government with Australia in its worst recession for 50 years and with one million of our 17 million people unemployed Prime Minister Paul Keating and the Labour Party have won, what at the early stage of the campaign for the March 13 election, seemed an impossible victory.
Behind the victory was voter scepti cism about the radical plan being offered by John Hewson’s conservative Liberal/National Party Coalition.
For the Pacific islands the victory means expected cuts to the overseas aid budget will not go ahead and foreign policy and immigration will continue pretty much along the same lines.
Former Liberal leader, John Howard, described the Coalition’s loss
as “immensely disappointing”. “We clearly lost the debate about the GST (goods and services tax) and that was why we lost the election,” he said.
But it was not just the Coalition’s inability to allay people’s fears about their planned 15 per cent across the board Goods and Services Tax. It was also radical plans to restructure Australia’s universal health care system Medicare, Industrial relations legislation which would make individual contracts between employee and employer the order of the day and massive public sector cuts which would have seen big losses of both jobs and services, which scared voters.
On election night an elated Keating told the nation “It will be a long time before an Opposition party tries to divide this country again. The public of Australia are too decent and they are too conscientious and they are too interested in their country to wear those sorts of things.”
“This has very much been a victory for Australian values,” he continued, “because it was Australian values on the line.
The Liberal Party wanted to change Australia from the country it’s become a cooperative, decent, nice place to live, where people have regard for one another. “I give an assurance this victory won’t go to the heads of the government, of the Labour Party. We will take it seriously, we will take it thankfully and we will do a great deal with it.”
The hint of humility which came - across in Paul Keating’s election night speech will be something voters will be glad to see. Long criticised for being arrogant, the man who said “this is the recession we had to have” has had trouble overcoming both his own profile as a remote, uncaring politician and the ill-will created by his party room leadership battle with popular former Prime Minister Bob Hawke.
In pulling off this victory and winning a historic fifth term of office for Labour, Keating has emerged with a new stature and most importantly a mandate, as Prime Minister, gained in his own right. He will now get down to the task of implementing a $3-billion package of spending on public works and traineeships which he hopes will create 900,000 jobs in four years. He has also promised an ambitious plan to expand childcare places, $720 million to increase places available in technical and further education colleges and cuts to personal income tax.
The South Pacific did make an appearance as an election issue with Coalition foreign affairs spokesman Senator Robert Hill, launching a stinging attack on Labour’s hand ling of its relations with the region.
Both government and Opposition made major statements with the Coalition also putting out weighty Foreign Affairs Trade and Defence
blueprints. While those blueprints
will now be gathering dust they did offer some suggestions the govern ment might do well to take up and also a deal of insight into how half the house is thinking.
Speaking to the Foreign Corre
spondents Association in Sydney,
Senator Hill castigated Foreign Minister Senator Gareth Evans for “a succession of unnecessary strains
in bi-lateral relations with South Pacific neighbours”. He said Senator Evans had found himself an unwelcome visitor in Fiji, he reminded his audience the acting head of the Australian mission had been expelled from Vanuatu, the Solomon Islands had refused visiting rights to Australian naval vessels and landing rights to Australian Airforce planes and made much play of Senator Evans’ dispute with PNG’s Foreign Minister over the deportation of two Africans to Port Moresby.
Essentially the Coalition said it would pay greater attention to the Pacific with the emphasis on the economic well-being of the island states. In aid that meant some welcome initiatives. In particular the Coalition’s plan to reform DIFF (the Development Import Finance Facility) is one of which the government should take note.
The Coalition thinking of the promotion of strong island economies, however, could well smack of the very paternal ism it claimed to be trying to avoid.
Despite touting its emphasis on trade as one of its big differences with Labour the Coalition did not manage one mention of the South Pacific in its 30-page trade blueprint.
On its aid policy Senator Hill said, “Australia should be far more concerned with the lack of performance in these economies than we have been”. Senator Hill said the Coalition would spell out “what we believe to be the important policy pre-conditions for economic growth”.
The Coalition’s blind spot on South Pacific trade could well be mirrored in the new Keating government, albeit in not quite such an extreme form. Paul Keating has no history of links with the Pacific and his focus, like the Coalitions, is firmly and increasingly fixed on Asia.
It’s a trend which is now so strong in Australia, Austrade (the government’s Trade Commission) fears many Australian companies are missing out on opportunities in the Pacific.
Perhaps more aware than the political parties that most of Australia’s 51.5 billion in exports to the region is in those high value added products which create jobs, Austrade has just launched a new export assistance package for would-be exporters available only in the South Pacific. Behind the scheme is Austrade’s belief that the Pacific is a good place for new exporters to learn the ropes before tackling more difficult export markets further afield.