Speech by
Dr David Watson MLA
Leader of the Liberal Party
to
Liberal Party State Council Policy Forum
Caloundra Civic Centre, Saturday 17 April 1999
Sixteenth century politician Francis Bacon said - They that will not apply new remedies must expect new evils. Today is about looking for new remedies.
Firstly, I want to thank you all very much for coming. I appreciate the fact that you have given up your time and spent your own money to participate in this forum. The people in this room are becoming an increasingly rare breed in society.
With all the stress and time pressure of modern life, less and less people are volunteering their time and money to community organisations. Recently in Chicago, the International World Service Clubs Leaders Conference devoted their entire agenda to the issue of falling membership in community service organisations throughout the world. They estimate a 12% decline in numbers in the last year alone.
Governments may have to look at making membership of service clubs tax deductible.
I believe the Liberal Party is the greatest service club of all in this country. I say that because the policies you will help formulate at forums like this will be the policies which will serve this state and this country for future generations.
This weekend, I’m here to listen, my Parliamentary colleagues are here to listen and the various policy committee members are here to listen. This is your forum and your chance to input into policy directions - this weekend will be as good as you make it.
It’s been said that a politician cares about the next election – but a statesmen cares about the next generation. This weekend, I’d like you all to think like statesmen - or stateswomen as the case may be.
Because at the next election, we need to go to the people of Queensland with a well thought out plan.
Not some slick, quick-fix but a real plan for the future. John Howard has shown what can be done when you go to the people with a real plan. And I’m pleased to see that even Peter Beattie now supports that plan. Creating policies to help the next generation involves looking into the future and predicting what society will be like and that is never easy.
In fact, in the past, some people have got it spectacularly wrong! For example, in 1876, an internal memo from Western Union said - "The telephone has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. The device is of no value to us."
In 1962, Decca Records, in rejecting the Beatles said: "Guitar music is on the way out."
And in 1977, Ken Olson, President of Digital Equipment Corporation said "There is no reason anyone would ever want a computer in their home."
But it is a prediction made in Australia back in 1971 which leads me to the key point I want to make this morning.
In 1971, a CSIRO scientist made this bold prediction about the future.
He said - "the biggest challenge facing people at the turn of the century will be what to do with their increased leisure time."
Boy, was he wrong! Here we are just months away from the year 2000 and the average worker is putting in more hours per week than ever.
And stress levels in the community have never been higher. Futurist Robert Theobald has described the nineties as the decade of stress. Today, as you discuss ideas and policy directions, I want you to keep in the back of your mind this issue of "stress."
I believe our greatest challenge is to develop policies which will bring stress levels down without compromising our position in a competitive world.
As I said, we are here this weekend to listen. But I would like to offer a few thought starters by making some comments on each of the three main policy areas. I intend to touch on issues as diverse as traffic problems, the changing nature of work, Australia’s attitude to world competition, stress on families, causes of crime and youth unemployment.
One big cause of stress that people in the Urban and Regional Development discussion group will be grappling with today is traffic problems. The discussion paper says in a nice under statement that "innovative ideas are needed to relieve the growing traffic problems in Brisbane."
Figures released recently by the Brisbane City Council show many motorists are spending up to 90 minutes longer in their cars every week. All major arteries in Brisbane are choking.
To take just three examples - since 1995, average speeds at 8am on Oxley Road have slowed from 37.3 kilometres per hour to 19.4 kph, Waterworks Road from 31.5 to 21.4 and Kingsford Smith Drive from 37.3 to 28.8.
Labor’s Transport Minister Steve Bredhauer has ruled out any new bridges across the Brisbane River.
He said Labor has a deliberate policy to get people out of their cars. But how do we achieve that?
And do we want to achieve that?
In the near future, technology will enable us to fit every car with a radio-controlled meter. What do you think of a system where we automatically charge vehicles for each minute spent on certain city streets, encouraging drivers to use public transport?
What do you think of an idea floated in Washington State where people are charged registration on their motor vehicles based on the number of kilometres traveled?
In grappling with transport and infrastructure issues, we need to keep in mind that everything is inter- related. For example, in America they have just launched a pilot program called Location-Efficient Mortgages. It recognizes an economic reality that has long been ignored by the mortgage system.
Families who live near public transport and who choose not to have a car can save hundreds of dollars a month, and therefore should qualify for larger mortgages. These new location-efficient mortgages, which come with a 30-year free-pass to public transport, will give families more choices, by enabling them to live in neighborhoods closer to the cities where the property values are higher.
They are just a few ideas to get you thinking and I certainly look forward to hearing your innovative solutions to relieve the growing traffic problems in the south-east corner.
Another of the discussion groups we have today is called Working Queensland.
Yet again, stress is a very pertinent issue here. And the main reason for that stress is that people are working longer hours in a more competitive environment.
A Morgan and Banks survey released in January this year found that compared to just two years ago, 74 percent of employees are working an extra 5 to 10 hours a week.
And nine out of ten of those employees are receiving no extra pay for those extra hours.
In formulating policies for work, we need to consider what work will be like in the future.
Before the industrial revolution, life and work were one entity. Before trains and clocks and mechanised factories, we all worked close to our homes and the distinction between work and home was blurred.
But the Industrial Revolution changed all that by moving work away from home. But ironically, what the Industrial Revolution pulled apart, the Information Revolution may put back together.
Technological advances now allow us to once again combine work and life at home.
Telecommuting, where people work some or all of their time from home, will be a big part of the future.
One study in the US shows telecommuting has increased worker productivity by as much as 15 to 20 percent.
It means lower business costs, lower corporate real estate costs by 25 to 90 percent and an increase of free time for many workers.
Already, 11 million Americans are telecommuting at least one day per month.
Some companies have entirely done away with physical work locations for their employees, instead relying on modern communications technology to interact with employees and clients.
Who needs an office when your mobile phone allows you to download material from the internet or print documents from a PC anywhere in the world?
The jobs of the future will not only be independent of physical location, but more independent per se.
In more and more situations, individuals will be asked to join project teams, on a limited time basis, based on the tools and knowledge base available to the individual.
This of course will mean that the individual has to become more business savvy, more competitive and better networked than ever before.
Job security will be found only in mastering those aspects.
And of course, for many this is a frightening thought which will lead to more stress, not less!
And that is one reason why I believe the concept of Lifelong Learning must be at the forefront of any of our work and education policies.
Lifelong learning, being able to retrain or learn new skills at every stage of your working life, will be essential.
Futurists predict that 25% of the jobs available by the year 2025 will be in positions that are unknown today.
And not only are many of the jobs of the 21st century not yet in existence - but many of the companies of the new millennium don’t yet exist.
The number of Australian and Queensland companies who become big players in the 21st century will depend on how we answer one big philosophical question.
That question is this – are we content to be part of the food-chain of skills, merely licensing US technology and hosting overseas companies who want to use us only as a staging post into Asia?
Or, are we prepared to use our intellectual capital, our skills and our creativity to become a main player who develops our own complete value-added, high-tech, bio-tech industries?
In other words are we going to be imitators or innovators?
In the last twenty years, there have been major changes in the composition of our exports.
Primary products have become less dominant, falling from 67.2% of exports in 1977-78 to 44.7% in 1996-97.
The biggest percentage increase has been in ETMs - elaborately transformed manufactured goods.
ETMs have gone from 8.7% in 1977-78 to 18.5% in 1996-97.
If we are to be a success in the 21st century, it is the ETM piece of the pie which must keep getting even bigger and bigger.
To achieve that requires a real commitment to Research and Development by both government and private sectors. I believe technology incubators need to be more aggressively supported in Australia.
Technology incubators are special precincts where start-up companies are nurtured and allowed to acquire the skills they need to compete in a competitive world. There are more than 50 incubators in Australia but only a handful are focused on the high-technology sector.
We need to develop policies, including tax policies, which support innovation and which encourage Australian companies to be more than just part of someone else’s food-chain.
Some of our older citizens have trouble with ATMs. But all of our citizens will be in trouble if we don’t have policies which promote ETMs.
The third policy discussion group we have today is Families and Youth. The family has never been under as much stress as it is now. And frankly, decades of misguided government policies have contributed to that stress. Instead of shoring-up marriage and the family, governments have undermined it, devalued it and discouraged it.
The recent Federal Government study "Fitting Fathers into Families" found that fathers today work an average of 47 hours per week. And I would venture to say that most mothers work a lot more hours than that. Study after study has found that women employed outside the home still do the lion’s share of the work inside the home. More hours at work means less hours at home and families are feeling the strain.
Christine Kilmartin from the Australian Institute of Family Studies says that parents who are trying to secure their career, house and finances face a dilemma when it comes to finding time for children as well. She says that fathers often tend to "borrow from the future" and think that the time they lose with the kids today will be made up in the future when the house is paid off and the family is financially secure. But as Harry Chapin told us in that great song "Cats In The Cradle," parents can never borrow time from the future. Families need the time now.
The Family Issues Paper for this weekend’s forum sums this up very eloquently.
It says: "finding a proper balance between family and workplace responsibilities in today’s society is one of the great unresolved issues that confront us."
If we are we going to be a successful society in the new millennium, we simply cannot allow this issue to remain unresolved. We have to find ways to find a proper balance between work and home.
"The home is the foundation of sanity and sobriety; it is the indispensable condition of continuity; its health determines the health of society as a whole."
Those words are as true today as they were in 1942 when Sir Robert Menzies said them in his famous "Forgotten People" speech.
The health of the home determines the health of society. The price the community pays for parents lack of involvement in their children’s lives is very high.
One of the first prices we pay is disrupted classrooms. Teachers report that more and more children are arriving at school lacking basic social skills and are far from ready to learn in a structured environment.
I believe that today’s literacy problems skills have nothing to do with class sizes or teacher skills but arise from the fact many parents do not have either the time or the will to read to their pre-school children. No government program can ever replace the magic of a parent reading to a child.
Not only does the child learn language skills but the child learns that they are important enough for the parent to spend time with them and that does wonders for their self-esteem.
The bigger price we all pay for falling parental involvement in children’s lives is crime.
Recently in Sydney I had the opportunity to meet and talk at length with Dr Lucy Sullivan, the author of the book Rising Crime In Australia.
Dr Sullivan gave me some illuminating statistics about crime in Australia. I believe they are a good start in helping us to make a genuine effort to tackle the root causes of crime.
We’ll never get honest solutions if we’re not honest about the problem.
Dr Sullivan’s analysis suggests rising crime in Australia is related to the breakdown of the family unit and the weakening of marriage.
(graph – Divorce and Serious Crime)
Her research shows a very strong correlation between the divorce rate and the serious crime rate and the sole parenting rate and the serious crime rate.
As you have already heard this morning, it is hard enough these days in a TWO-parent family to find time to raise the kids properly.
How much harder is it in a single-parent family?
These correlations aren’t saying that all children whose parents get divorced will turn into criminals or that every kid from a single parent family will rob the local service station or that every kid from a stable two parent family will turn out great.
What they are saying is that a child from a broken home is at far greater risk of becoming involved in some form of socially harmful behaviour.
As kids, many of us were kept on the straight and narrow with that old chestnut – "Wait till your father gets home!"
The tragedy of the 90s is that fewer and fewer fathers come home.
Dr Sullivan says that crime is caused by a failure of internal and external constraints to deter socially harmful behaviour.
Or in simple terms, kids with no respect FROM their parents and no respect FOR their parents are likely to have little respect for other people or other people’s property.
One of the challenges before you today – and I believe only the Liberal Party has the courage to take on this battle – is to develop policies which will help keep families intact.
Of course, not everyone in our society is stressed out because they are working LONG hours.
Many people are stressed out because they are working NO hours.
As we prepare for the new millennium, second generation unemployment is now very much a reality.
In her book Working Youth: Tackling Australian Youth Unemployment, Dr Helen Hughes says that families play a key role in determining the work prospects of their children.
The unemployment rate for 15-19 year olds who come from a sole parent family where that sole parent is either unemployed or not in the workforce is 43%.
The unemployment rate for 15-19 year olds who come from a family where both parents are unemployed is 36% while the unemployment rate for 15-19 year olds from a family where at least one parent is employed is 22%.
Helen Hughes believes that the failure of Australian society to nurture family values contributes markedly to youth unemployment.
Today in the three discussion groups, you will be confronted with a lot of problems which need solutions. I believe the basic philosophy of the Liberal Party can provide those solutions.
At the end of this forum, we really only need to ask four questions about a policy direction.
Does it adhere to the key Liberal principle of individual responsibility?
Is it fiscally responsible?
Does it respect the Liberal ideal of tolerance?
Does it respect the Liberal ideal of free enterprise?
Having given you a few thought starters this morning, I would like you all to consider and debate one simple policy idea which impacts on all three discussion areas and is a real stress-buster.
What about making it government policy that where practicable, public servants work from home one day a week? And what about giving the private-sector payroll tax breaks where they allow workers to work from home one day a week?
Currently in New South Wales they are trialling a pilot program in Gosford which allows state public servants who normally travel to Sydney or Newcastle each day to work to spend one day a week at a telecentre in Gosford where they can hook in to their office computers.
Carol Reynolds, the RTA’s employment manager said the pilot has been a great success.
Productivity has increased, stress levels are down and both staff and management are happy.
If one in five Brisbane CBD workers works from home on any given day, there is a twenty percent drop in traffic flow straight away.
And when Mum or Dad is not caught in traffic, they have more time to read to their kids!
And more time to give to their communities and that is a win-win situation for all.
In conclusion, may I once again thank you for being here this weekend.
I would particularly like to thank Ross Cartmill for his work in collating the discussion papers.
I would also like to thank the branch chairman and secretaries and policy committees and I especially acknowledge the input of the Young Liberals.
I wish you well in your deliberations today and I leave you with this simple thought.
Our future is too important to be left to chance.
Return to Liberals Looking to the 21st Century