Australia needs politicians with nation-building vision
From: Bob Day AO [ another great Australian]
MORE than at any time since World War II, Australia needs political leaders who understand how and why investment decisions are made, how markets work, how real jobs are created, and that ‘‘barriers to entry’’ to getting a job cause unemployment.Whether it’s mining, farming, manufacturing, tourism or small business – anything not based on economic reality is doomed to failure.The No. 1 challenge facing Australia over the next few years is going to be what will replace the mining boom when it ends.
The industry in which I have worked these past 30 years – housing – has seen at
least three booms during that period, and offers some insights into the broader
economic picture.
First, what the end of a boom does not permit is the continuation of huge
benefits for some, while big sacrifices are being made by others. You realise
very quickly that if something is not adding value, it is adding cost. So the
question arises: Do the Government’s and the Opposition’s promises for 2018 and
beyond add value to our lives or do they add cost?
Australia’s real wealth
Second, yes Australia is indeed blessed with abundant natural resources but
Australia’s real wealth is not beneath the ground, it is between the ears.
Which is not the same as ‘‘education, education, education’’ as the Government’s
mantra goes. Forcing young people to stay on to Year 12 when they’re clearly not
enjoying it is not only economically stupid, it is morally wrong.
There are many youngsters not enjoying school, causing strife at home, getting
in trouble with the police. But then they start working on a building site and
by Friday night they’re too tired to be hooning around in cars, setting fire to
brush fences and spraying graffiti at all hours of the night.
I know hundreds of trade contractors – carpenters, bricklayers, tilers – who
left school at 15 and have gone on to lead very happy and successful lives.
They’ve all got two or three investment properties, cars, boats and they send
their kids to private schools. They’re also members of the local CFS or surf
lifesaving club and coach local football or netball teams. They are good
citizens and yet they received very little in the way of formal education.
As the saying goes, ‘‘It’s not what you’re good at in school that matters but
what you’re good at in life.’’
My first job was with the Highways Department. In those days petrol taxes were
spent on roads – building new ones and maintaining existing ones. Now all petrol
taxes go into general revenue and only a fraction is spent on roads.
As a consequence, our roads are terrible, especially in our country areas.
Whether it’s taking kids to school or taking farm produce to market, good roads
are essential. A strong and prosperous nation builds up its infrastructure –
roads, ports, power stations, airports, telecommunications.
It also has strong defence capabilities and is able to afford the latest and
best equipment for its defence forces.
It isn’t a revenue problem, it’s a spending problem
This year Australian governments will spend $350 billion of our money and still
be in deficit. With $350 billion, governments certainly don’t have a revenue
problem. They do not need more money. They do not need an increase in the GST.
What they have is a spending problem. The South Australian Government alone will
spend close to $16 billion of our money this year. About half of this will be
spent on the key areas of health, education and police.
What are they spending the other $8 billion on?
There is no doubt politics in Australia is going through a very bad patch at the
moment. There is a lack of a clear focus on values needed to build the nation in
the interests of all citizens.
Values are the foundation
Politicians seem more interested in attacking each other than tackling the country’s problems. Values are the foundation of a nation: values like telling the truth, living within your means, hard work, respect, courtesy, compassion, courage, generosity. But when we see cronyism, wastefulness, backstabbing, price gouging by government agencies (water prices, power prices, land prices) and politicians spending millions of dollars on themselves while hospitals are being closed and pensioners can’t afford to heat or cool their homes, we know there is a lack of values and a failure of leadership. Australia deserves better. Families are under real pressure, values are deteriorating, Australia is getting weaker – not stronger. We need to re-invigorate Donald Horne’s great Australian dream of ‘‘saving your money, putting a deposit down on a house, getting married, having children, planning your retirement, hoping your children lead at least as happy a life as you have and then when you die you leave your house to your children so that it can be sold and the money used to help pay off the mortgages on their houses’’. As author Os Guinness once said, ‘‘It’s not the wolves at the door that’s the problem, it’s the termites in the floor’’.It’s not the external threats; it’s the rot within.
Bob Day AO is federal chairman of Family First and is a former National President of the Housing Industry Association.