Thank you very much. To Eric, Ursula, my federal parliamentary colleagues, all our candidates in the field, friends, supporters, all. Well at the end of a big week there is nothing better than to be back home.
It's great to be here today with you. I've been given a great honour and the weight of responsibility to lead our Party into the next election campaign. We do that for the things we believe in, we do it also for the national interests of our great nation.
On an occasion like this, on Tuesday when the ballot was resolved you think of many, many things. But the thing that was etched in my mind was that balmy January 1979 evening in Sydney when I walked from my public housing home in Ashcroft up to the first meeting I attended of the Green Valley branch of the Labor Party. It was one of those beautiful balmy Sydney summer nights and I didn't know what I was getting into but I just knew I needed to be part of it. I needed to get down to the branch and support the cause of Labor.
I grew up at that time with a sense of social injustice, that somehow our society was fundamentally imbalanced and the way of Labor, the cause of Labor was the way to do something about those issues and build a fairer society. So to think back to my first branch meeting here in Sydney in 1979 and then come through to the parliamentary leadership of course makes me feel there is something fundamentally good about our Party, something fundamentally good that you can come out of a public housing estate in Sydney's West and then lead our Party and aspire to be our nation's Prime Minister.
So I feel good about that, I feel honoured, I feel the responsibility and I'll be working as hard as I can with all the people here, all the supporters, all the people who want the best for our country right around Australia to do my very, very best job.
I've always believed in local community. I started out in that public housing estate in Green Valley and then moved into local government. I've believed in localism, community service all my life. And I would urge you to see your campaign as a form of community service. Of course, it's a political battle, an engagement of ideas, an engagement of fundamental beliefs about Australia's future.
But it's also service to the community. That is one of the great things about a public life, the honour and opportunity to serve the people we know at a local level. So see your campaign as personal contact and service.
And the other thing I would urge you to do is stay positive. The good thing about public life is that you can advance ideas, add to the quality of our public debate, advance ideas and policies consistent with the Labor approach, stay positive and focus on the very good things we can do for this country's future.
I don't believe in opposition for Opposition's sake. The Government, sure, has many failings but where they do something good for Australia I'll be giving them credit and I urge you in the field to recognise that approach. For instance, I strongly support the Prime Minister's stance on Zimbabwe and I wish him all the very best and all success in CHOGM in the next few days in advancing that position. When it comes to human rights and decency in Zimbabwe the Prime Minister has the bi-partisan support of the Labor Opposition.
So it's a Government that has its shortcomings and failings but where they do something right, where they need the support of all Australians in our political system we need to step forward with that sense of national interest, that sense of national interest ahead of particular Party interest.
So stand up and fight for our beliefs, that's the way in which we campaign, I urge you to see the campaign as community service, a positive approach, tell the public the things we believe in. that's always been the Labor Party way.
My plan as leader is simple enough: I want Australians climbing the ladder of opportunity. I've practiced that all my life, I believe in hard work, I believe in reward for effort. There's nothing more powerful in our society and that combination of good family and community support, hard work and the collective civilising role of government.
If you've got the good government services, people who work hard and with good family and community we can have a nation where nobody lives in poverty, we can have a nation of equal opportunity. It's a powerful combination, it's always been Labor's combination, Labor's vision for Australia's future and it's the thing that we will be articulating in the coming months and period into the next federal election campaign.
That powerful combination is unstoppable and I believe passionately in putting all Australians on the ladder of opportunity. So let me just take some time to outline that agenda and the way in which we can help Australians improve themselves at their family, community and personal level.
The first rung on the ladder of opportunity is early childhood development. I see this as a crucial issue. Early childhood development is very much the missing foundation stone in our system of life long learning. I've always believed that learning doesn't start the first day of school it starts the first day of life. And now I see that very much as a parent. I was struck by the international research that says that if you want to work out where someone is going to be later in life you've got a very, very good guide at age five those crucial early years of learning and development.
I'm struck by the advice I received from one of our great children's authors Mem Fox that as parents if we read books to our infant children, three books a night read aloud and we do that consistently then by the age of five our children will have literacy and do numbers. And practising this, I've got to say I was a bit short earlier in the week in my capacity to read books to Oliver and Isaac at home I was engaged with other things, but it was the little bloke's birthday yesterday and we read a few books.
It is a great experience. I urge all parents to read aloud to their children. The children learn but also the parents learn much more about the way their children develop. It's those early years, they pick up everything, they notice everything, their minds are alive and we've got to fill their minds with learning opportunities.
I know this from my own son Oliver who is aged three because my favourite book reading to him is Green Eggs and Ham' and it's a very elaborate style of book: I do not like green eggs and ham, Sam I am'. And this elaborate style, I have seen Oliver pick it up because he says I will not do that dad, I can not do that dad'. So his style is good and you can see the impact of reading I've just got to improve his substance of course, that's the challenge of fatherhood, of parenthood.
So it is a great experience, the children learn and develop and the parents learn all about that process. So I urge that, not just as a matter of personal responsibility, parenting responsibility but as a great national program that we will be launching as a Party to improve early childhood development in Australia.
I believe in improved childhood access, I believe in increasing the number of qualified teachers in our childcare system, encouraging parents to read and for those parents who mightn't necessarily have the skills or the confidence at this stage we need special literacy programs to help them along their way. We can provide that first rung on the ladder of opportunity for the next generation. It's the Labor way and it will be one of the foundation stones of our policies for Australia's future.
The next rung is good schooling. All my life I've been a beneficiary of a good family and a good government schooling system. No institution in my experience is more powerful than a good government school. It is one of the basic opportunities we need in a civilised society.
But I also know that right around Australia there are many under resourced non-government schools. And I want to make it clear from the outset that Labor believes in school funding equity, a needs based system not sectors fighting each other for money, but all schools, government and non government reaching a strong national standard for resources and achievement.
And I will not rest easy, I give you this commitment: I will not rest easy until every school in this country is a high achievement school, a high achievement school fulfilling the wonderful potential of the next generation of young Australians.
The third rung on our ladder of opportunity as people try and improve themselves is post-secondary a vital issue given this is a week in which the Government's regressive higher education package has past through the Australian parliament.
We have a positive alternative: out Aiming Higher policy, an extra 20,000 university places, and an extra 20,000 TAFE places without the need for punishing upfront expenses and debt, without the need for heavy debt early in the life of students.
I want one thing in our post secondary opportunities: I don't want a single Australian student who has worked hard and got the results through school to think that they can't go on to their next opportunity in life through TAFE or university because it is too expensive, because they would be weighed down by heavy debt burdens early in their life.
We need opportunity for all in post secondary education. We just can't tolerate a situation where just one child would be prevented from taking his or her best opportunity in life. So we will introduce our Aiming Higher policy, we will reverse the Government's 25% increase in HECS plus abolish its full fees system. We believe in equity and opportunity for all through the power of education.
The fourth rung on our ladder of opportunity is health care for our families. This is one of the fundamental divides in Australian politics. Medicare needs to be a universal system for public health care, not a means tested or two-tiered system. If it's not universal then it's not Medicare. We've known that for thirty years since the time of the Whitlam government.
If it's not universal its not Medicare.
What we've got now is a replay of the Fraser years where slice by slice, slice after slice they are trying to weaken the universality of Medicare and turn it into something else, something that is unacceptable to our side of politics and I believe the great bulk of Australian people. If there's insufficient public health care then it's not Medicare.
We founded the Medibank and the Medicare systems and only Labor will save them. Under a Labor Government Medicare won't need a safety net because we've got a plan to rebuild bulk billing, to lift the rate of bulk billing in this country from 68% where it's fallen under the Howard Government to over 80% in the future.
Of course if you improve the rate of bulk billing in Australia you avoid two very scary prospects. If you have enough bulkbilling doctors in a community then you don't need private health insurance to see a GP. So this was the Kay Patterson plan that people would need private health insurance to go see their local doctor. Well Labor's way is to ensure that the bulk billing is sufficiently available in our community to mean that people don't need private health insurance just for the basics of getting their kids down to the GP and getting themselves fixed up.
If you've got enough bulkbilling doctors you avoid something else. You don't need a safety net, you don't need a safety net, a means tested system if you've got a sufficient number of bulk billing doctors in the community. In fact you only need a safety net if you've turned Medicare into a highwire act where families can easily fall off. And that's what the Howard Government is doing, they are turning Medicare into a highwire act, a tightrope where families can fall off. And that's why they are talking about a safety net.
Well Labor believes in the universal system of Medicare enough bulk billing doctors to avoid private health insurance, to avoid the need for a safety net in the first place.
We're also committed very strongly and I urge you to campaign strongly on our commitment to a better public hospital system plus taking a proper federal government responsibility for dental care. There is a crisis in this country the dental waiting lists are huge. We will be announcing policies to institute a proper federal responsibility for dental care.
So people are worried about these health changes. They know fundamentally that you can't trust the Liberals when it comes to health care. They had their policy prior to the last election the Wooldridge scheme, they had a policy after the 2001 election, and the Patterson and the Abbott plans all the time slicing away the decency and effectiveness of Medicare. The Australian people know they can't trust the Government on health care but they can trust the Labor Party, they've done it in the past, I want them to do it for a Labor Government in the future.
The fifth rung on our ladder of opportunity is an issue that is particularly important in New South Wales, and particularly here in the most expensive housing market in the country here in the city of Sydney. I worry, I worry as a parent, I worry as a citizen that we are losing sight of the great Australian dream of home ownership.
They say about the system, almost a rule of thumb in this country, that about 24% of the people in the housing market buying a home are doing it for the first time. The participation of first homebuyers in the Australian housing market was about one in four. That was the thing that kept the great Australian dream of home ownership alive. It's now fallen to 13% under the Howard Government. The first home buyers are slipping out of the Australian housing market.
So we need a new culture of saving, helping people save for the future, save for a home deposit and we have released impressive research reports about nesting accounts, matched savings accounts, new ways of helping families to get into the tough and challenging home ownership market.
We also need to minimise the extent of any interest rate rises in 2004. We end this year with two interest rate rises in just two months. And I again urge the federal Government to sit down with the Reserve Bank of Australia and address the sort of policy concerns that they have been talking about: the housing bubble, the excessive level of household debt in Australia.
The Government should be sitting down with the Reserve Bank addressing the policy concerns and ensuring that any interest rate increases in 2004 are kept to a minimum. Now it's a funny thing on interest rate policy and I hope you make this point in shopping centres, in the streets and as you campaign: when the rates come down the Government takes all of the credit, when the rates go up as they've done in the last two months somehow there is an independent Reserve Bank that is responsible for everything that has happened.
The truth is that if the rates go up it does indicate that that there is a problem with federal Government policy. That's out there in the public agenda and the Government needs to address it as quickly as possible. Let's keep the great Australian dream of home ownership alive.
And the other issue on housing that I want to mention is about the public cost and value to the tax payer. I'm a supporter of public housing but if I become Prime Minister I won't need to live in two full time Prime Ministerial residences. I will be living in the Lodge and that will lower the cost to the taxpayer of accommodating the Prime Minister. I think as Prime Minister you only need one full time residence, not two. I believe in the principle of the Prime Minister living in the national capital.
The final rung I want to mention on the ladder of opportunity is about aged care. I regard the measure of a civilised society is the way we treat our children, the way we treat our elderly both ends of the age spectrum.
In Australia we have a shortage of more than 13,000 aged care beds. And more than 20,000 elderly Australians are waiting in hospitals, waiting in hospital for an aged care place. So we can't really aspire to be a decent civilised society until we end this scandal. And Labor will solve the aged care crisis in this country.
So that's our ladder of opportunity, we want to put the rungs in. The rungs of a decent education system, health care, housing affordability, aged care right through the age groups providing additional opportunities for the Australian people.
If you refer to recent times the Howard Government is always taking the rungs out, always taking the opportunities away, always narrowing our society down to the individual.
I believe in the civilising capacity of government to work with families and communities and the hard work ethic to get things done for a better society. So we will be putting the rungs back in and wanting all Australians to have a foot and an opportunity on the ladder of opportunity itself.
So in conclusion let me say that our campaign is about rewarding effort, it's about justice, it's about fairness, it's about helping the people who are willing to help themselves. We need to put together that powerful combination of hard work, good families and community and the collective civilising role of government.
I just want at the end of the day and I thought about this during the week and when you think about the responsibility and the great things we can achieve as a country at the end of the day I just want a government that is as good and as decent as the Australian people themselves. That's our aspiration for Australia: a government, a federal government that is just as good as the people themselves.
That's the Labor way and next year we will be working as hard as possible to restore it as the Australian way. We will be giving people a choice, a real choice in the next election campaign, the Labor way: the Australia that is forever young and forever fair, or the Howard way: a nation that is weighed down by a government of old ideas and a divisive style of politics.
So let's work hard in our communities, let's advance the good ideas and policies we have for the country's future. Let's work as hard as we can on a positive campaign to restore decency and opportunity to our country. There's a lot of work to be done.
But I give you this final message in 2004 the Howard Government is beatable, we can form a Labor Government for the Australian national interest.
Thank you for your support and I look forward to working with you at every opportunity to make it a reality. Many Thanks.
