A Vision for the Nation’s Future

By Andrew Robb - Australian Polity - Volume 2 (Number 3)

Philosophy matters in politics and everything you strive to do as a party, opposition or government, should be guided by a compass consistent with your core beliefs, values and priorities.

At the moment the Australian public is looking for some strong leadership and a sense of direction from the Federal Government. The Gillard Government is all over the place, and it seems there is not a value or belief that it is not prepared to trash or walk away from if it thinks it will assist its short-term political position.

We have seen this on so many fronts with most recently the Government’s back-flip on refusing to sell uranium to India and also in its preparedness to knife its own Speaker in Harry Jenkins and replace him with Peter Slipper in order to secure an extra vote on the floor of the Parliament.

In many ways Labor’s political soul has been hijacked by Julia Gillard’s self interest, which includes her coalition with Bob Brown and the Greens. The elevation of same sex marriage as the number one issue for Labor at the recent ALP National Conference is a prime exhibit. This at a time when Europe is on the cusp of a major recession and our economy remains highly vulnerable as a result of Labor’s profligate spending and borrowing since it came to office in 2007.

For the best part of two years the Coalition has been constantly reminding the Government of the imperative of cutting back spending, paying off debt and restoring the economic resilience it inherited but squandered under the cover of the Global Financial Crisis. It has foolishly refused to heed the warnings and now finds itself staring into the face of the gathering storm in Europe with another record $37 billion deficit and $136 billion of net debt. All it has is a fig leaf in the form of an incredulous promise to deliver a wafer thin and totally manufactured surplus next year.

At the same time we have seen the greatest growth in government in my lifetime, including the disastrous Whitlam years, with a prevailing and patronising “government knows best” approach on so many fronts. The list of examples is long. We were the only country in the world to re-regulate its labour market during the Global Financial Crisis; the only country I know to be re-nationalising telecommunications; the only country to be imposing an economy wide carbon tax and the only country that sought to nationalise forty per cent of its mining industry and hit the industry with a mining tax.

All this brings an explosion of new regulation and reporting requirements as well as a blow-out in the bureaucracy, which has swelled by twenty thousand since Labor came to office, despite Kevin Rudd’s hollow pledge to “take a meat axe” to the public service.

In addition, we have witnessed the appalling way the Government shut down the live cattle trade with Indonesia virtually overnight in response to a single television segment and the failed attempt to take primary responsibility for funding hospitals from the States.

Ever since the fall of the Berlin Wall, it is deeply annoying whenever you hear that there is no longer any serious philosophical differences between the two sides of politics. If that was becoming the prevailing view of many, there is no doubt that the approach of this government has helped dispel this notion. The differences between the Gillard Government and the Coalition could not be starker.

Our fierce opposition to both the carbon tax and mining tax sends a clear message that the Coalition offers an alternative approach to Labor and its big taxing and big spending approach to government. We oppose its regressive attempts at wealth distribution which in the process undermines our strengths and comparative advantage.

As chairman of the Coalition’s policy development committee I have put priority on guiding policy development within a framework that strongly reflects our priorities, philosophical values and approach to government. Fundamental to this are four guiding principles which a Coalition government will adhere to.

Consequently, a Coalition government will: live within its means, back our nation’s strengths, reverse the nanny state, and restore a culture of personal responsibility.

While these sound little more than slogans, when combined and applied they form a road map which provides a very clear sense of the direction in which the Coalition will take the nation: a direction based on responsible economic management that is the hallmark of any Coalition government.

As the head of Coca Cola Amatil Australia Terry Davis told a business gathering—no Australian business that went into the Global Financial Crisis with high debt and short-term refinancing arrangements came out well. This is just as true of households and economies, especially small, open economies like ours. It is a critical message and explains why we came out of the Global Financial Crisis better than most, notwithstanding Labor’s panicked overspending. We went into it in better shape, with no net debt and $70 billion in the bank.

While we are blessed with a mining boom, with the highest terms of trade in 140 years, this government has failed to capitalise on it with its continued spending, borrowing and waste. Living within your means involves cutting expenditure and waste and using the dividends from the resources boom to pay down debt, build up reserves and fireproof the economy to those things that are outside the control of government—like moderating commodity prices, easing Chinese growth and reduced global liquidity.

The current structural state of our budget is such that even if commodity prices came off by fifteen to twenty per cent, not a collapse in prices, Australia would face years of continuing record deficits and rising debt. Living within your means is knowing what you can responsibly afford, and it also involves thinking laterally to implement policies that bring distinct benefits, but does not involve simply throwing more borrowed money at things like the National Broadband Network.

If you are in business or running any organisation, the first thing you typically do is identify what your top three or four strengths are. These are the things you do as well as anyone and better than most. In all my time in politics I have never heard a serious discussion about what our strengths are as a nation and what needs to be done to protect and grow them.

Minerals and resources seem the obvious key strength, agriculture also remains one of our great strengths, with strong potential for further growth, but that will never be realised under this government which is so beholden to the Greens and their anti-development policies.

Following mining and agriculture I would put education and then perhaps medical research. But if mining was truly accepted by government as our number one strength, it would not do everything it could to make it less competitive. One would not hit it with a “double whammy” of a mining tax and a carbon tax when so much depends on its continuing success. It makes no sense, it defies logic.

Understanding and backing one’s strengths means not putting lead weights around one’s best performers in the forms of new taxes and deeply onerous compliance burdens. It requires a prioritised attack on regulation and new investment in innovation to help kick-start productivity.

There needs to be a positive vision backed by a plan that can be implemented, a plan, for example, to build new dams to enhance water security, to support our mining industry and to spark new agricultural opportunities in various parts of the country. In many cases you just need to add water and you can help change the economics of communities for the better.

This extends to a determination to help develop the north, to create a new food bowl in the vast expanses of land across northern Queensland, the Northern Territory and Western Australia. We currently feed sixty million people, but over the coming decades our aim is to double that figure. The north has a major role to play in achieving that objective.

Investment in the north will also equip us to meet demand from the rapidly growing economies of Asia, including Indonesia, our important northern neighbour, as well as China, India, Thailand and others. It will also enable the development in a number of interconnected areas: infrastructure, health, research and education to name a few. It means the development of centres of excellence which will provide new opportunities and levels of support for our northern island communities and Asian neighbours.

Reversing the nanny state requires a clear philosophical shift from the instinct that government knows best, to reducing government involvement in business and people’s lives. Removing productivity sapping reporting requirements across sectors, adding flexibility to the labour market and providing greater autonomy are all powerful ways of limiting the reach of government.

Restoring a culture of personal responsibility instils faith in the individual, business or other enterprise to make decisions that are in their own interest, not in the best interest of bureaucrats and politicians. This freedom helps produce the best outcomes, for example, it fosters a spirit of enterprise, self-sufficiency, and reduces reliance on government to shape destinies.

Simply put, the Coalition looks to deregulation and the empowering of individuals as the best way to re-establish the natural order of things, as long as there is acceptance that such freedom comes with taking personal responsibility for one’s choices and accepting the consequences of those choices.

By staying true to our core values as a Coalition as expressed by the positions we adopt and the policies and ideas we champion, we are able to present a clear and unambiguous choice to a Labor government and party which has certainly lost its way.