Remarks
at G20 Leaders’ Retreat
Parliament House, Brisbane
15 November 2014
Thank you, everyone. It’s a real
honour to have so many of you here in the beautiful city of Brisbane for this
first ever G20 leaders’ retreat.
I’m very conscious of the fact that
the people around this room are some of the most influential and powerful
people in this world – indeed the most powerful and influential people in this
world.
The people around this room today
are responsible for 85 per cent of the world’s Gross Domestic Product, 75 per
cent of the world’s trade, 65 per cent of the world’s population. Nowhere on
earth will there be a more influential gathering than this, and yet, as we all
know, our power and our authority is circumscribed.
We are meeting in the Legislative
Council chamber of the Queensland State Parliament and back in the 1920s, the
Queensland Government abolished the Legislative Council because it was too much
of a restriction on the power of the then Premier, who was in the Legislative
Assembly. So, this room symbolises the limitations on our power.
We have heavy responsibilities –
all of us. The world is looking to all of us right now to try to demonstrate to
an uncertain and at times anxious world that there are people who know what
they’re doing, that there are people who have a plan; a plan for growth and for
jobs. That’s our challenge: to leave this G20 meeting in 48 hours’ time having
instilled more confidence in the people of the world that there is a better and
brighter future for all of us.
But the limitations of our
authority, the clash of policy and politics, the difficulty of trying to put
good economics into practice given the political constraints that we all have,
that’s what I would like us to be able to discuss very candidly over the next
hour and a half, hour and three quarters.
We all know what we would like to
do, but we all know that there are many constraints on what we can do. What I
hope in the next hour and three quarters we can do, is speak candidly and
openly amongst ourselves.
We may not always be able to
agree, but I hope we can at least be open with each other over this time.
Obviously, I would like this
discussion to focus on the politics of economic reform. That’s what I would
like the discussion to do – to focus on the politics of economic reform. In the
end, though, this is your retreat; it is open to any of you to raise any
subject that you wish. The only rules, as far as I’m concerned, are if we can
speak from our heart rather than from a script, that would be good. If we could
be reasonably concise – five minutes, please, at the most – that would be good
and if we could use first names that would be good as well, because whatever
disagreements we might have, I think it helps if there can at least be personal
warmth amongst us.
If I could kick off very briefly
by saying that when I was elected – my Government was elected – 14 months ago,
I made four promises to the Australian people. First, that I would repeal the
carbon tax, and that’s gone. Second, that I would stop the illegal boats that
were coming to our country, and they have, thank God, stopped. Third, that we
would start building roads in particular which had been long neglected in this
country. Fourth, I said I would get the Budget under control.
Now, I have to say that this has
proven massively difficult – massively difficult – because it doesn’t matter
what spending programme you look at, it doesn’t matter how wasteful that
spending programme might appear, there are always some people in the community
who vote, who love that programme very much. So, getting the Budget under
control has proven extremely difficult. If I could speak candidly with you,
what I have tried to do is not only get the Budget back under control, but also
try to bring about important economic reforms, important liberalisations at the
same time.
Two issues in particular that I
lay before my colleague leaders: we have tried to deregulate higher education,
universities, and that’s going to mean less central government spending and
effectively more fees that students will have to pay. We think that this will
free up our universities to be more competitive amongst themselves and more
competitive internationally but students never like to pay more.
The other reform that has proven
very, very difficult for us is to try to inject more price signals into our
health system. For a long time most Australians who went to see a doctor have
been seen at no charge and we would like to see a $7 co-payment for people who
are going to see the doctor. In most countries this is not unusual. In most
countries, this is standard that the doctor can charge a fee, but it is proving
to be massively difficult to get this particular reform through the Parliament.
I don’t have any magic answers to
the problems that we face. I think that all we can do is explain the reasons as
carefully as we can and to persist for as long as we can with these reforms.
But the more gatherings like this can affirm the importance of good policy. The
more gatherings like this can affirm the importance of governments not
overpromising things that are unaffordable and undeliverable, then I think the
easier it is for all of us to deliver good policy to the people of our
countries.
So, that I hope is what we can do
over the next hour and three quarters or so: have a very candid and very honest
discussion about where we think our countries can and should go, both
individually and collectively over the next few years. |
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