As has been said, it is good to be back in Sydney as this is the town where I received my eduction at the hands of the Jesuits, at Riverview. Riverview has been a successful stable for the conservative side of politics; Tony Abbott and Nick Griener are the first to come to mind. The Jesuit influence also includes Tim Fisher, Richard Alston, Brendan Nelson, Christopher Pyne, the McGauran brothers and Bill Shorten. As has been said by many a Jesuit, they are good at creating politicians but unfortunately of the wrong side.
I very rarely read speeches, it reminds of me of more sanctified occasions delivered by men of the cloth. Not being such, I prefer to fish for the interaction of the audience and concentrate on the message they react to. It is to the continual annoyance of those who wish to monitor and report on my meagre protestations, which is supposed to be the case for tonight. I am afraid this habit I have taken is worse than smoking.
What I wish to talk about tonight is the future of the National Party and the role of the Senate in that future.
No party has a guarantee of a future. Irregardless of how strong the Liberal or Labor Party are, I believe that if, by some occurrence, we were to become the next one, six or eight states of the US, the word Liberal or Labor would very quickly disappear from our lexicon to be replaced by Republican or Democrat. I do not know what faction Julius Caesar was in but to say he ruled the world and has now passed into history forgotten. People, and I mean party members, put too much to a name, especially when the philosophy of what it stands for becomes clouded.
What is Labor? It is hardly the party of blue collar workers as they do not exist like they did in the time of Prime Ministers Fisher, Chifley or Curtin. The Liberal party is certainly not liberal and really, at the majority of times, the rhetoric is far more defining than any actual differences between the two parties. I listened to a speech on Radio National the other night and, having joined mid way through, believed I was listening to one of the Treasurers leading acolytes as he espoused the great benefits of market rationalisation, especially that of the Dairy Industry. This is something I believe has been an unmitigated disaster, bringing lower farm gate prices and the loss of income and industry to many hinterland towns and higher prices in the shops. Who was the academic powerhouse I was listening to? Some pimply faced treasury sycophant on the road of regurgitated economic modelling garbage, from some theorist who has never operated so much as a school tuck shop? No, it was Lindsay Tanner whom I thought may have had a concern with where all this leads when it comes to an item called Australian workers' jobs.
Likewise, some of the social leafy green issues in the Liberal party would get you as many cups of coffee as you like in your disturbed middle class nirvana of Nimbin. When your children cannot cut the mustard, and start reading books they cannot understand, you know they are about to move to the North Coast. What every good North Shore Liberal must do is desperately connect with their wayward progeny without affecting their portfolio’s value. The way to do that is to start actually aping the dizzy social policy that would have those of the harder times in our nation’s history turning in their graves.
Yes, we drive around with I am Liberal or I am Labor stapled to our foreheads but what the hell does it mean? Most importantly for tonight, where do The Nationals fit into all of this?
Look out these windows here in the centre of Sydney. None of the people who work in those buildings actually own them. We have created a society in which the vast majority are middle managers. The differences between the floors are not defined by ownership but by schools, motorcars, funny inflections in the way people talk, clothes, imported beers and politics. The political system of the Liberal Party knows that it lives and dies by the middle class worker of the large business: a very easy world to control and pitch to. Cheap groceries, low interest rates and a sense of social position is the pitch.
My belief in the future of the National party is based on this premise that is counterintuitive to the above. The purpose of the economy is not to produce the lowest price product to the end consumer, that may be a consequence of a good economy but it is not the purpose. The purpose of the economy is to create the greatest connection between the wealth of the nation and its people, and it generally does that through small business. What is so good about small business and why is it something to be desired beyond working in this or that building across the road? Being in your own business allows you to attain a true, higher sense of freedom as you are master of your own ship. The ultimate purpose of politics, I believe, is to allow the people the highest level of freedom possible that does not impinge on the lives of others. That does not exist when you have to turn up at 8.30, leave at 5.00, work late as required and what you are paid and where you go is determined by others. If you do not to go into business and prefer to work for others, that is fair enough and is the lot of the vast majority of Australians. The potential or opportunity to go into business, from the ground level, must remain if our society is to maintain the most basic of economic and personal freedoms.
You cannot be the party of both big business and small business; on many occasions they compete against each, and so are mutually exclusive. For the potential of small business to survive it must have a policy bias in its favour. The market place is a pro-forma of big business and, as such, without policy restriction there is a latent bias to the growth of market leaders over the top of all new or small established players.
You cannot be the party of both the larger retailers and the small family retailer. The first is putting the latter out of business and the Nationals are there fighting for the small family business against the aspirations of the bigger business. My crossing the floor of Schedule 1 of the Trade Practices Amendment Bill was just that, to protect the smaller business from the absolute domination and centralisation of market power.
You cannot ignore your bigger political benefactors and the major political parties enjoy the ample largess of the major retailers. The National Party must become a proven champion, not by vague insinuation in dog whistle form at the door to parliament, but in a strident voting or motion form within the chamber.
Sydney is a great place and nearly five million people think so. Likewise, so is the South East Corner of Queensland which about 1,300 new residents call home every month. But it is hardly taking our nation to its most efficient or effective edge if that epitomises our demographic progression for the last couple of hundred years. There are economies of scale in infrastructure for water, sewerage, roads, rail and power and these have been reached with excessive logarithmic costs attached for the progression of size, beyond that infrastructure horizon. There are social infrastructure issues as well and their deterioration is evident in such things as the Cronulla / Lakemba issues. There is a definite price that you, in this room, will pay if you wish to keep stacking people up in the same corners.
Every new geographic region of a nation that develops brings with it new enterprise that would not be evident in a developed area. A new town brings new participants in the economic wealth, while growth in a town brings an increase in the size of the es