Government News Index
PM sets third term agenda
By EMMA MACDONALD
Prime Minister John Howard used yesterday's NSW Liberal State Council to perform an upbeat "reality check" on the Coalition's third-term agenda.
Following a parliamentary sitting period in which the Coalition lurched from one crisis to the next, Mr Howard turned the gloss on the Government's election win and what it planned to achieve over the next three years.
He started with the economy, noting Australia's growth was 10 times the rate of the OECD average and twice that of Britain. "Our economy is the envy of the industrialised world. When I saw the British Chancellor of the Exchequer in No 11 Downing Street a few days ago, he was asking me about our recipe for success and certainly not the other way round," Mr Howard said.
Mr Howard emphasised Australia's close links with the United States, saying while the Asia-Pacific would remain an important region, the Government had moved away from the Keating era where it had been the prime focus.
"I don't for a moment suggest that the Asia-Pacific region isn't the most important region in the world to Australia it is where our destiny will always be," he said.
"But our linkages with the Asia-Pacific region are not linkages that ought to be to the exclusion of linkages with other parts of the world."
Australia's closeness and loyal friendship with the US in the fight against terrorism had enabled the Government to partly "roll back" the Bush Administration's decision on steel tariffs and protect 85 per cent of BHP's steel exports to the US as a result.
"That was the first occasion in my federal parliamentary political memory where the Australian Government was able to persuade an American administration to change its mind after it made an adverse trade decision."
Mr Howard said Australia's global respect had been maintained and enhanced over the past six years.
"When I spoke to senior members . . . of the British Labor Government, I did not encounter any criticism of our illegal immigration policy," Mr Howard said.
"Part of the reality check we ought to face concerning Australian politics at the present time is that around the world amongst ordinary people there is a great deal of understanding and sympathy about the position that Australia has taken."
Over the next three years the Government would undertake major welfare reform, which would include safety-net provisions as well as mutual-obligation activities, reform of savings and superannuation, which would provide women with greater choice, and media-law reform.
"I've taken a few moments to talk about these things because we have this curious notion put around by our opponents in the Labor Party and elsewhere that in some way this Government was elected by accident, that this Government was elected without an agenda, that this Government was elected off the back of negative prejudice and not because of a positive embrace of a government that has done good things for this country over the last six years and offered the prospects of doing even better things over the next three years."
Canberra Times