The Money Men by Chris Bowen (superbooks4u .txt) 📕

into previously moated areas of the economy by insisting that government trading enterprises compete on a level playing field with the private sector. Macro-economics and micro-economics were interwoven with the ‘One Nation’ and ‘Working Nation’ economic statements, which both stimulated the economy out of recession and engineered important improvements to infrastructure, including the long-awaited national standard rail gauge.

Importantly, Keating as prime minister attempted to finalise a complete superannuation system by implementing the proposal he had floated while on the backbench. Superannuation had, prior to 1983, been far from universal, primarily the preserve of corporate executives. Several Accord negotiations had then seen wage increases forgone in return for making superannuation widely available. Almost every Australian employee had superannuation contributions of 6 per cent of their wages mandated through their industrial awards by 1991. Keating now proposed legislating for a compulsory 12 per cent superannuation guarantee for every Australian employee.

By the time Keating lost office, only a 9 per cent level had been reached, and the Howard government proceeded to renege on an election commitment to keep the superannuation guarantee growing. But although this was well shy of the full maturity of 12 or 15 per cent contributions that Keating had envisaged, this reform has nonetheless had remarkable implications for Australia. As a consequence of it, the age pension has been made more sustainable, Australia now has the fourth-largest pool of savings in the world, superannuation provided an important source of liquidity during the global financial crisis (GFC), and the superannuation industry has developed skills that provide the potential for Australia to export very significant amounts of financial services products.

Keating was remarkably successful in his first goal of turning around the electoral fortunes of the ALP before the 1993 election. He transformed parliament into a battering ram that he used against the Liberals’ Fightback! economic policy. He did not let his previous support for a consumption tax hold him back from warning against the dangers of a GST. He campaigned strongly against the radical deregulation of industrial relations. When Hewson asked him in parliament why he wouldn’t call an early election, he replied, ‘Because I want to do you slowly.’

By late 1992, the ALP was only narrowly behind the Liberals in the polls. Keating seriously contemplated calling a December election, but numbers man Graham Richardson told him he would lose, albeit narrowly, and that he would be remembered as a Labor hero who took the party back from the brink of electoral disaster and left it a viable fighting force in opposition. ‘Fuck that,’ Keating replied. ‘I want to win.’ No December election was called.

The new year saw Hewson drop the GST from fresh food to make it more politically palatable. It wasn’t enough. The opinion polls were so close in the days before the 19 March election that it was impossible to know who would win. Early on election night, however, the result was in no doubt: Labor had won a clear fifth term in office.

The joy was relatively short-lived. Dawkins’ 1993 Budget increased sales tax by 1 per cent, disappointing many who had voted Labor to stop the GST. Budget cuts included more-expensive optometrist visits and prescriptions. And the promised personal income tax cuts, which Keating had previously described as ‘L-A-W, law’, because they had been legislated, were delayed (and half would eventually be paid as a superannuation contribution rather than a tax cut). Labor’s poll standing immediately plummeted, and it never really recovered during the term. The Liberals, meanwhile, went through a long series of recriminations following the loss of what had been regarded as an unlosable election, with Hewson, Alexander Downer and ultimately former treasurer and leader Howard rotating through the leadership. Despite his previous difficulties, Howard had come to be seen as a safe and experienced set of hands.

It would have been extremely difficult under almost any circumstances for Labor to win a sixth term in 1996. Having governed for thirteen years, it was a big ask to extend the administration by another three years. There was no doubt an element of reform fatigue after all the economic developments of the Keating treasurership, and the attempted social and constitutional reforms of the Keating prime ministership. Howard promised a return to a ‘relaxed and comfortable Australia’. It was a salient message, and the Liberals won the election in a landslide.

Keating immediately announced his retirement from public life. He intervenes rarely but forcefully in the public debate when he feels the issue is important enough. Much of Keating’s commentary in his post–prime ministerial years has been in relation to substantial geopolitical issues. In August 2008, for example, he predicted that attempts by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to isolate Russia would lead to inflamed tensions in Eastern Europe. Keating is the first former prime minister since Billy McMahon not to have produced a memoir. He did, however, publish a collection of his post–prime ministerial speeches in the book After Words in 2012, and the following year he participated in a popular four-part ABC TV series on his life and career.

An Evaluation

The uninterrupted twenty-four years of economic growth that Australia has experienced since 1992 are unprecedented in world economic history. No developed country has ever experienced such a sustained period of growth. The implications of this for the Australian people have been profound and are not commonly understood. Between 1991 and 2008, the Australian economy tripled in size, growing at an average of 3.3 per cent a year, compared with a global average of 2.6 per cent. The number of countries that have grown faster than Australia over this period is small (like the countries themselves): South Korea, Israel, Luxembourg and Ireland, although the Irish economy crashed in 2008, unlike Australia.34 As Professor Michael Wesley observes, ‘Australians had become used to their economy being talked about with furrowed brows; by the end of the 1990s, Nobel laureates were dubbing it the world’s “miracle economy”.’35 In the modern era, Australia has benefited from a high-growth, low-inflationary environment that is