Kevin Rudd (Griffith, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade and International Security) Share this | Hansard source

Right now this country is engaged in a battle of ideas for Australia’s future. On the one side of this battle we have a vision for Australia’s future which says that, when it comes to economic prosperity, you cannot have economic prosperity and social justice—that these are incompatible. There is another view, another vision—and it is our vision—which says that this nation and this people are at their best when we are a people and a nation committed to building a prosperous nation while at the same time not jettisoning our vision for a fair Australia and a fair society. In an absolute nutshell, that is the divide between us—a view of the world which says it is about ‘me, myself and I’, and an alternative view which says that we are about an Australia which, sure, recognises that individual hard work, achievement and success are to be encouraged and rewarded but which says at the same time that we cannot turn a blind eye to the interests of our fellow human beings who are not doing well. That has been the divide between us for a century and remains the divide between us today.

Ideas in politics are important. They in fact affect everything that we do. They shape our vision of what it is possible for the government to do for the nation. They shape the concrete dimensions of policies which are brought forth in this chamber. Ideas shape the content of legislation. They shape everything that is done in this place, and that is why on this occasion it is important to revisit what actually divides us. What are our different views of the role of government and society? What are our different views of what the state can do to help human beings? This divide between us is fundamental to the debate that we are going to have in the year ahead. It is a debate which also impacts fundamentally on the interests of Australian families.

But what are the values which the Liberals stand for? They talk about liberty, they talk about security and they also talk about opportunity, and all that is fair and fine—we do not have a problem with that. But what we add to this fabric of values is a view that you can do that and still have the parallel values of equity, of sustainability and of compassion. In fact, it is time to rehabilitate the word ‘compassion’ into our national vocabulary. Compassion is not a dirty word. Compassion is not a sign of weakness. In my view, compassion in politics and in public policy is in fact a hallmark of great strength. It is a hallmark of a society which has about it a decency which speaks for itself. For us in the Labor movement from which we proudly come and have come this last century, these values of security, liberty and opportunity are not incompatible with equity, with sustainability and with compassion, because that in our view is what the Australian people are about as well.

The Australian people are a decent bunch. When you talk to Australians around the world, they cannot help but be engaged in the interests of other people. Australians are not by their nature a selfish mob. The Australian people are deeply concerned about the wellbeing of others. What we have seen instead on the other side of politics is an attempt to corral that basic decency of Australians into an alternative vision for the country’s future—a vision which simply legitimises a doctrine of ‘me, myself and I’; a doctrine which says that we as a country can only be about the aggregation of personal greed. That is what it is about. They try to make you feel good about the fact that that is what you are on about. I think that is a great tragedy of the way in which this government has attempted to shape this country over the last decade.

The great danger that we face with the modern face of liberalism, this modern Liberal Party, is that it is not the Liberal Party of old. If you go back and read what Bob Menzies had to say about social responsibility and social justice, there is no way that Bob Menzies would fit into the world view that we are now being offered. You see, the member for Kooyong recently delivered a speech on Bob Menzies’ legacy within the Liberal Party on these questions of social responsibility. It is quite clear when you read that clearly that there has been an ocean of change between that Liberal Party and what it stood for, despite our criticisms of it and our disagreements with it at the time, and the market fundamentalism which has overtaken the current Liberal Party.

We have seen this complete right-wing takeover of modern liberalism, and it is an ugly spectacle to behold. It is in its essence about everything being an economic commodity. It is about everything being about the triumph of the markets. It even says that, when it comes to commodities, human beings are no more important than any other economic commodity. That is ultimately the view. If you want to go back to basic philosophical premises here, that is where we part company.

We as a movement for more than 100 years have said that human beings have about themselves an intrinsic dignity; it does not need to be explained. Because of that intrinsic dignity, humans are deserving of fundamental protections inside the workplace and beyond the workplace. Our opponents have come from a different view. When you strip their tradition back to its absolute philosophical core, it says that human beings are of no greater worth than any other economic commodity in the marketplace. You see that writ large in the pages of the industrial relations legislation that they have brought into this parliament.

Of course, it gets very practical and very meaty indeed when we see this visited on families, when we see this visited upon how families are supposed to have their life and being. I listened very carefully to what the Prime Minister had to say in response to questions yesterday and today about the impact of Work Choices on Australian family life. The Prime Minister is uncomfortable with these questions. He knows what they go to.

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