In the space of one brief Federal election campaign, all such agonising has been dismissed. At Federal, State and local government levels, it is clear that the Liberal Party is well and is fighting its way back.
...On many occasions since taking over leadership of the NSW Opposition, I have spoken of the need for the Liberal Party to be a party for all Australians. I have found that it is difficult to convince some people of the great importance of such a move.
...Put simply the Liberal Party must be a party for ordinary Australians. We must express our policies in terms which are readily understood and accepted by ordinary Australians. There is little point in telling the business community that our policies will be good for their profits. The task it seems to me, is to convince consumers that our policies mean cheaper prices, renters and home-buyers that they mean cheaper housing, and to convince workers that our policies will result in more jobs and a higher standard of living
...The third area of concern is the emergence of what the press has dubbed The New Right. In the coming months we in the Liberal Party are going to have to decide how we will respond to this current wave of government-bashing
While it is not yet fully clear how the media will treat the so-called New Right, all the indications are that it will receive the approval of the thinking press, and a large measure of popular support as well.
Politically, the easy response will be to ride this wave of red-tape slashing and bureaucrat-bashing, and there are politicians within our Party and within the National Party who will make their reputations in the coming years by doing just that.
The Liberal Party should lead the movement towards freer enterprise, but it is essential that we do not allow ourselves to become subservient to the media in its fascination with what it calls the New Right. I issue this caution for a number of reasons.
Firstly, the so-called New Right is largely a creation of the media. Much of what they are observing is a development within economics which is now almost thirty years old, but which for very good reasons is only now having some impact on public policy.
...I am uncomfortable with the term 'deregulation'. We cannot do without regulation. Law is an essential part of an ordered, highly structured society, such as that in which we live. To remove that regulation, especially to remove it overnight, would create greater harm, greater cost than that regulation now imposes.
...The challenge is not less regulation for its own sake, but less and better. Complete deregulation will never happen, no matter which Party is in power. The challenge is to design new regulations which are, as much as possible, self-enforcing, and which work to the benefit of consumers. Government intervention must be in the public interest, not that of vested, special interest groups.
...It is my fear that in the heat of a popular campaign for deregulation we are going to remove essential regulations, or we are going to act in haste before the market has been allowed to produce its own regulatory mechanisms, and innocent people are going to be hurt. In those circumstances I can see the movement towards smaller, more effective government being destroyed before it has had an opportunity to be really tried.
Likewise, I fear the development of unrealistic expectations about expenditure control. I believe the recent visit of Peter Grace - Ronald Reagan's cost- cutter - has dene much to create the awareness that the real problem is government expenditure.
...I am reminded of the words of an American public sector administrator, commenting on a simplistic cost-cutting exercise within his domain - "Some butterflies were caught; no elephants stopped".
...My concern about the New Right - or at least the unrealistic expectations of it being created by the media - is that it will become preoccupied with the butterflies, and lose the opportunity which it now has to reform Australian government for the better.
...In the past the Party has been in the forefront of those eager to heap responsibility for the inefficiency of government on public servants .. . thereby earning the ire of those employed by government - and then doing almost nothing about the management of the public sector.
By and large, those employed by government are not responsible for its inefficiencies...Not only is it politically stupid to unnecessarily offend those who work in the public service, it is actually counter - productive if substantial reform is what you want to achieve.
...It is not necessary to contract out all government services. What should happen is that those commercially-oriented services should be placed in competition with private firms. If cleaners within the State Rail Authority can compete on an equal footing, then there is no reason why such services should be contracted out
...Likewise, we must avoid being trapped into arguing for privatisation for its own sake. Someone has suggested the term 'marketisation' - a word that is even more awkward than privatisation - but which more nearly expresses what I believe the Liberal Party should be thinking about
...The challenge is to create an institutional framework for government which resembles the mar- ket as closely as possible.
...In the end, there is no substitute for the discipline of the capital market. Except in the most extreme circumstances, no government can allow one of its enterprises to go broke. The government, which provides the capital, knows that, the managers know it, employees and their union know it, contractors know it. And that harsh fact of life puts any government agency at a disadvantage from the very start. It follows that where possible, government commercial services should be given the discipline of the capital market. Selling off an authority is not the only option. In some cases it will be enough to permit competition(r,- and create competitive neutrality between the government and private firms. In other cases, it will not be possible to do more than sell off a minority of shares to private individuals.
An Address to the 38th Annual Council of the Australian Liberal Students Federation - 14 May 1985