SPEAKER: I have received a letter from the honourable member for Werriwa proposing that a definite matter of public importance be submitted to the House for discussion, namely:
The Howard Government's failure to provide adequate opportunities for the Australian people, particularly, education and community services
I call upon those members who approve of the proposed discussion to rise in their places.
More than the number of members required by the standing orders having risen in their places—
LATHAM: It is a great honour to give my first speech in the House as the new leader of the Australian Labor Party. I could easily give the House a long list of the policy failings of the Howard government. I could go through all the government negatives, all the different areas where they have let down the Australian people. But there has already been enough negativity this week from the government; there has been a stackload of negativity. Can anyone remember a new idea the government have advanced this week? Can anyone remember a positive proposal they have advanced this week for the benefit of the Australian people? Can anyone remember a program for the future mentioned by the government in either question time or outside the House?
It has been a curious thing, Mr Speaker. I have been sitting here watching and waiting for any sort of positive proposal, any value added to the public debate for the benefit of the Australian people, and all I can conclude is this government has a very strange set of priorities. It seems to be much more interested in my past than the country's future. Is that what the Australian people want? A government living in the past, obsessed with the past, or a government that is elected for the hard work of doing things in the public interest and doing things in the national interest?
The battleground for the election campaign, to be held sometime in 2004, is already clear. A government living in the past, talking about the past versus a Labor opposition dedicated to the future, the national interest and the future of our country. I honour and respect the past—always have and always will—but I will tell you one thing about the past: you cannot live in it. You cannot live in it, and moreover history lessons do not improve people's lots in life for the future. No history lesson will produce an extra bulk-billing doctor in any part of the Australian community. No history lesson will ever improve access for university and TAFE in this nation. History lessons will not improve school results or back the students working hard in our schools today. No history lesson will find a single job for a long-term unemployed youth in this country. History lessons do not improve the quality of life of the Australian people in the future.
It is a funny thing: the government wants to talk about the things I said nine months ago, five years ago, 15 years ago. Next step: back into the university essays at this rate of progress. We can all play that game. If we all tried to live in the past, on this side of the House we would say: remember Asian immigration? Remember ‘never, ever GST'? Remember the kids overboard? Remember stabbing Medicare in the guts and getting rid of universal health care in this country? We can all talk about the past, but I have a different priority. I want to talk about the future and be positive about the future and advance Labor Party plans to make the future better for the Australian people. I am interested in bulk-billing rates nine months from now. I am interested in the education system five years from now. I am interested in the next generation of Australians and where they are going to be 15 years from now. Not the past; the future. Not the things that obsess, the petty games and political antics of the government, but the things that the Australian people want to in their House of Representatives: good policy proposals adding value to their lives and our nation.
In recent days, some commentators in the media have been pointing out the 22-year age difference between me and the Prime Minister. For me it is no big deal; my mum is just a little bit older, and I have got no problem with her. The truth is I am not worried about how old the Prime Minister is; I am worried about how old his ideas are for the Australian people. This is a government of old and tired ideas; a government living in the past—every day showing how it lacks a plan for the future. My plan is simple enough: I want Australians climbing the ladder of opportunity. I want a government that adds value for the benefit of the Australian people, putting all rungs in the ladder of opportunity—not taking them out in health care, not taking them out in education, not taking them out in all the basic services and opportunities that a decent society relies upon.
I have believed in these things all my life, and to the best of my ability I have lived it all my life. I believe in hard work, I believe in reward for effort. I know for a fact that people need to try hard in our society, but I also know the powerful combination that makes that effort worthwhile. It is the collective, civilising role of a government that cares about social justice and compassion in our society. I want to put the rungs back in. The rungs that the Howard government has taken out or ignored, I want to put them back into the ladder of opportunity—adding some value to the public policy debate and most of all adding some value to the future of our nation. Not the past; the future. That is the thing that matters.
The first rung on this ladder of opportunity is early childhood development. It is the foundation stone of lifelong learning because the truth is that learning does not start the first day school; it starts the first day of life. That is the truth of it, and that is why early childhood development is so important. It has been an undervalued and underresourced aspect of our learning society. I am struck by the international research showing how, if you want to know where someone is going to be later in life, you can sort out a lot and you can pretty well predict their pathway in life at age five.
What we need to recognise is what the professional people tell us. I remember a letter that Mem Fox, Australia's great infant storybook author, wrote to me saying that if we read three storybooks a night to our children then by the age of five they will be literate and they will be doing numbers. Every parent reading aloud three storybooks to their children every night is a real commitment to the future of the next generation. I am taking her advice as best I can. My average is down for this week, I've got to say—I've been pretty busy—but I am committed to it and I want all Australian parents to be committed to it. And for those Australian parents who have not got the skills available to them or the training, a Labor government will do it for them. It will provide special literacy programs to make reading available in all the homes and to make education valued in all the homes of our nation. We need a new national program for early childhood development, improved preschool access, putting the qualified teachers back into the childcare system, encouraging parents to read aloud to their children and special literacy programs for the parents without the skills at this stage.
That is the first rung. The second rung up the ladder of opportunity is good schooling. I know, from my own life, there is no more powerful institution in our society than a good government school. I have been fortunate to have good family and good schooling available to me earlier in my life. But I also know, from my own constituency and other parts of the country, that there are many underresourced non-government schools in Australia. I want to make this clear at the outset of my Labor Party leadership: we believe in school-funding equity, we believe in a needs based school-funding system. Not sectors fighting each other for money, but all schools—government and non-government—in this country reaching a strong national standard for resources and achievement. The basic truth is this: I will not rest easy. I will not rest for one moment in this responsibility that I now discharge until every school in this country is a high achievement school fulfilling the potential of the next generation of young Australians.
The third rung up the ladder is post-secondary education opportunity. To one of my predecessors in the seat of Werriwa—my most illustrious predecessor sitting at the back—I want to say: thank you, Gough, for your step, the step you took in 1973 to make higher education more affordable for the next generation of young Australians.
Opposition members— Hear, hear!
DEPUTY SPEAKER (Hon. I.R. Causley): Order!
LATHAM: Even today in the seat of Werriwa, people come up and say, 'You know Gough—thank him for the access we had to a higher education.' I am one of those people. Labor—we build on that tradition. We build proudly on that tradition with our Aiming Higher policy: an extra 20,000 university places; an extra 20,000 TAFE places; our commitment to VET; and our commitment to training—higher eduction opportunity for all. And we do it without the need for heavy debt early in life for students. Indeed, this is a government that has gone debt crazy. Look at their record: the highest household debt in Australia's history; the highest credit card debt; the highest foreign debt; the highest current account deficit; and their policy for university student debt. We do not want a debt society. We have to build a new culture of national savings, and a lot of it comes out of education and access.
So up the ladder we go, putting rungs back into the ladder of opportunity in this country. One of the most crucial rungs is that of health care for our families. Medicare must be a universal system of public health care—universal. If it is not universal, it is not Medicare. If there is insufficient public health care, then it is not Medicare. Labor founded Medibank and then Medicare; only Labor will save them. Only Labor truly believes in the principle of universal public health care in this country. Under a Labor government in the future we will not a safety net, because we have a target and a plan to rebuild bulk-billing. That is the principle Gough Whitlam and Bill Hayden established in 1973. It is the true principle that Neal Blewett established in 1983 and 1984: the basic principle of Medibank and then Medicare.
If you have enough bulk-billing doctors, there are two things you do not need in our society: families will not need private health insurance to go and visit their local GP and they will not need a safety net. There will be enough access for bulk-billing doctors to revive the basic standard we require: access to good, affordable—in this case bulk-billing—GPs for our children and our families. This is the Labor plan to lift the bulk-billing rate from 68 per cent to 80 per cent. It is a plan for the future—not a government talking about the past, not a government that is on its fourth cut of health policy.
Mr Abbott interjecting—
LATHAM- The minister opposite objects. They had their policy prior to the last election—the Wooldridge plan—then a policy after the election, then there was the Kay Patterson plan and the Tony Abbott plan. It just makes the point: you cannot trust the government with health care. Only Labor believes in Medicare and the principle of universal public health insurance.
Beyond that, we have other principles. We will also improve our public hospital system and take a proper federal government responsibility for dental care—I hope the minister is listening—proper federal government responsibility for dental care, not the thing that the Australian people have grown to despise, shoving the responsibility onto another level of government, but actually stepping up to the plate and doing good things for the benefit of the Australian people. Our people are worried; they are worried about the future of their health care. It will be safe in the hands of a Labor government.
There are many other rungs on the ladder of opportunity: the housing services, child care, recreation and libraries. I know these things in my own life and how much they matter to people who want to work hard and be rewarded for their effort. At the top of the rung, of course, there is aged care. The measure of a civilised society is the way in which we treat children but also the way in which we treat our elderly. But in Australia we now have a shortage of more than 13,000 aged care beds and more than 2,000 elderly Australians are waiting in hospital for an aged care place. We cannot aspire to be a decent, civilised society until we end this scandal. Labor will solve the aged care crisis in this country.
This is our ladder of opportunity. This is the Labor way. We will be working as hard as we can through next year to make it the Australian way: the way of life, the reward for effort, the hard work and aspirations that the Australian people want but they are not getting from this government.
There is one other big priority. We would not be a Labor party unless we cared about poverty. The sad truth in this country today is that there are too many Australians without a foot on the ladder, let alone climbing the ladder, they have not even got a foot on. I know of public housing estates around the nation where people have 40 per cent unemployment rates, 80 per cent rates of welfare dependency where the problems of poverty pass from one generation to the next, so we must end the government's neglect of poverty. It is a government that boasts about economic growth but a government that has not brought down the number of long-term unemployed Australians.
Growth is good but growth must be for all Australians. We must get every Australian family on that ladder of opportunity and provide opportunity for all. So we need a new national effort. We must win the war against terror internationally but also the battle against poverty domestically. There are many things that need to be done to solve poverty, many things indeed, but a good starting point is to get all governments with their shoulder to the wheel: federal, state and local government dedicated to a concerted national effort to eradicate poverty from our society.
Cooperation is important, and I am impressed by the research that says that, if you due eight government programs concurrently in a disadvantaged neighbourhood, you get 10 to 20 times the result if you do each of those programs in a sequence of years. So I give this pledge at my first meeting as Prime Minister chairing the COAG, the Council of Australian Governments: we will have a concerted intergovernmental effort to solve poverty in this country high on the agenda. It is our number one priority as a Labor party, and I want to work with my state and local government colleagues to achieve it for the nation.
We must reward effort. I believe passionately in the powerful combination of hard work, good families and communities, and the collective role of government. I just want for this nation one simple proposition and, if I can achieve this thing as leader of the Labor Party, it will fulfil the things I have always believe in. I just want a government in this place as good as the Australian people themselves. The people of this country are looking for a better way. They know the failings and excuses of a government that lives in the past; they know the failing of this government and its political strategies. They have seen a government that just really has one strategy for re-election. It talks in the past and when it comes to the future, they have one thing only at the front of their minds—that is, that political strategy of ripping Australia in two just so they can try and pick up the bigger part politically. It is the oldest trick in the book. We saw it last time. We are going to face it next time by talking about the future and doing good things for the country. I believe, and until our nation unites around the common values of work, reward for effort, aspiration and compassion, we will not truly be able to advance as a nation fulfilling our full potential. I want all Australians on the ladder of opportunity climbing upwards. That is the Labor way, and next year we will be working as hard as we can to fulfil all our beliefs and ensure that they become, in the service and good of our nation, the Australian way.
Opposition members interjecting—Hear, hear!
