Kim Beazley's Policy Speech
Jobs, Health And Education At Forefront Of Beazley Campaign Launch
October 31, 2001 - 12.45pm
Reinvigoration of education, particularly university teaching and research, job programs, and restoration of "iconic" institutions such as the ABC and CSIRO were the centrepiece of Kim Beazley's 2001 Federal election policy speech.
Delivering the speech to an audience of Labor Party faithful in the western Sydney suburb of Hurstville, the Opposition Leader appeared relaxed, good-humoured and assertive. His speech took about 35 minutes and reiterated many of his ongoing campaign commitments, such as the GST rollback, Knowledge Nation plans, aged care funding and no privatisation of Telstra.
The most expensive new commitment made by the ALP is a one billion dollar program to reinvigorate universities. A Labor government will aim to reduce class sizes, increasing academic salaries and fund extra secondary school teachers to raise literacy standards and deal with behaviour problems.
The ALP will also increase the threshold for payment of the Higher Education Contributions Scheme.
Beazley promised to put the "care" back into aged care and promised to revitalise the health system and public hospitals. "I want a situation where your Medicare card is more important than your bankcard", Beazley said.
The Labor leader harked back to the words of Ben Chifley when he spoke of fairness and equity. He began his speech with "Men and Women of Australia", the famous words popularised by Gough Whitlam, but originally those of the war-time Labor Prime Minister, John Curtin.
In some respects, the speech contained a lot of traditional, even old-style, Labor rhetoric about jobs, equality of opportunity and the divide between rich and poor.
The speech comes ten days before the election as the campaign cranks up into top gear. Opinion polls released yesterday show the coalition ahead, but a Morgan poll published today has the ALP ahead.
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