Page 1868 - Week 06 - Wednesday, 1 May 1991
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MR STEFANIAK: Yes, I am not forgetting my own, Robyn. It is one of the great political parties of Western parliamentary democracy. It has been around for a long time. Although of late it has probably gone off the rails a little bit, in terms of Australian history it certainly has done some excellent things - initially, of course, for its members. I do not think there would be anyone in this house who would dispute that before the Second World War - certainly going back towards the 1890s - the lot of ordinary Australians was not as good as it could have been, and I think the Labor Party can take a lot of credit for early reforms which helped Australian workers.
In World War II we had some great Labor Prime Ministers. The ones that come to mind, of course, are Curtin, who basically redirected Australia's foreign policy in the dark days of World War II, and Chifley. Perhaps those great Labor leaders would turn in their graves in relation to a number of things that the present Australian Labor Party has done.
Mr Berry - I know of his concern for workers - sometimes I think misses the point. He had a bit of a harangue about John Howard. If he looks closely at what John Howard is doing and if those reforms come into being, he will realise that they will increase a lot of benefits to ordinary Australian workers. It is rather pointless just continuing a wage-cost spiral, Mr Speaker, and that is one of the dreadful things we see about inflation. The Whitlam Government was renowned for its inflation. The people who are affected by inflation are the workers; they are the ones who do not have huge wages. They are the ones who, if given a 10 per cent pay rise, will certainly have to pay for it in terms of costs passed on because they are wage and salary earners. I do not think the Labor Party does its workers and the people it purports to support any justice, really, by some of its economic theories.
Unfortunately, also, following the Whitlam Government, we have seen the national debt rise from the $33 billion it was under Fraser in March 1983 - he had not been too crash hot because he had actually increased it from about $4 billion, the figure in about 1972 - and it has blossomed to $170 billion. That really has put this country in a rather precarious economic position. It is quite horrific and that has occurred under the Hawke Labor Government. It has lost its way. Despite what the Hawke Federal Government does, I do not think it will be re-elected at the next elections. I think Australians have had just quite enough.
There are a couple of other areas which concern me locally, I suppose, Mr Speaker, in terms of the attitude of the Labor Party. Although there are many aspects where we have a bipartisan approach and where we support each other in relation to a number of beliefs, there are a few problems which I think arise from a philosophy which has been gained by a lot of left wing trendies coming into the party, perhaps in the last 30 or 40 years. Mr Berry has been one
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