Max Trenorden's Inaugural Speech in the Legislative Assembly
Author: Max Trenorden
Published on: 25-June-1986
I appreciate your attendance, Mr Speaker, and also the attendance of the officers of the Legislative Assembly at the seminar for new members held a few weeks ago. It made my position in this Chamber much easier and I trust that the three years in front of you, Mr Speaker, will be very successful ones.
Since 1890 the boundaries of my seat of Avon have produced four Premiers of this State. They are in order, Hon. George Throsell, Sir Hal Colebatch, Sir James Mitchell and Hon. A.R.G. Hawke. Considering that this is the thirty-second Parliament of Western Australia, that is not a bad effort from the Avon Valley and it is fair reason to lay claim to being the premier electorate.
The death of Hon. A.R.G. Hawke was received in the Avon Valley with a great deal of sorrow. He may have been born in South Australia and, indeed, he died in that State, but he was truly a son of Northam. He will be well-remembered in Northam for a considerable time. I apologise to the Hawke family for not speaking on the condolence motion in this House last Thursday. The reason I did not do so is that I believe it is correct to obey the traditions of this House and not speak in the House before one’s maiden speech. However, I can assure the family that the name “Hawke” is well and truly entrenched in the town of Northam.
By coincidence, the seat of Avon was held for 12 years by each of my two predecessors. The first member I shall speak about is Hon. H.W. Gayfer who held the seat of Avon from 1962-1974. In 1974 he was elected to the other place and still represents the area in the Upper House. He is a very popular man and well-respected in my electorate, certainly by me and in particular for his staying power.
I wish to spend more time speaking about Hon. Ken McIver. Mr McIver won the seat of Avon in 1974 but he held the seat of Northam from 1968 until 1974.
There was no question whatsoever that Ken McIver was a man of the people. None of his electors had a problem too big or too small for him to handle. He continued the extremely high level of representation for the seat of Avon. The hardest thing I had to do during the campaign was to receive a telephone call from Ken conceding defeat. I got no joy from that because I really do respect the man. I wish him well in the years ahead. I hope those years will give him time to play bowls and do the things he would like to do as a reward for the 18 years he gave to the State.
No matter how complex or sophisticated society believe it is, its roots and origins lie in the tribes and villages of thousands of years ago. Whether we like it or not, the rules of those times still apply today. One cannot take from a community or society without giving. No able-bodied Australian has the right to a car, a house or a good standard of living without contributing. Unfortunatley, we have build up a different attitude over a number of years.
Our forefathers came to a harsh land. They worked for little reward; certainly little financial reward. They possessed better values than we. Their values lay with the family and building for the future. I could not imagine my grandparents saying, as I have heard at many social functions today, that one cannot let one’s children rule one’s life. They are not words my grandparents would have even thought of.
My generation has mortgaged the assets that were left for us. Such assets are not only left for us, they are left for the future. By mortgaging those assets we have stolen them. We are not giving back to the future as much as we have taken.
We have an undoubted attitude problem in our nation. That attitude can be measured by the presence of repetitive strain injury. RSI is of epidemic proportions in this nation whereas in other western nations it has hardly been heard of. I am not saying there are no RSI suffers in our community at all. I know there are. I am saying without any doubt, too many Australians are only too happy to jump on the gravy train of RSI, workers’ compensation, and security security.
We have an even greater problem with the attitude of our youth. One year 11 class in a metropolitan high school was recently asked what they thought they would be doing at the age of 25 years. Can anyone guess what the majority of that class said? Members probably cannot guess – they said they would be dead. They said that some clown would press that red button and everyone would be blown away. If that is their attitude and they do not believe they have a life beyond the age of 25 years, why study or get a job, why not go to the beach, why not be like the words in the song by the group Mental as Anything, and just “live it up”?
A few days ago I listened to a speaker from the Jesus People Youth and Community Services talking about the troubles of our youth and drugs. He was pointing out – and I believe he has the correct attitude – that is not the broken families, it is not the inability to cope with work or school, or the inability to cope with relationships, that has forced our young children to drugs. Our young children are taking drugs because they want to. It is a basic fact and we should accept it. Why do these children want to take drugs? Because my generation has given our kids too much and it has asked too little of them. They have not found the joy that is experienced from doing a hard day’s work and the physical stimulation of being tired at the end of the day. They have not experienced doing a job well enough to receive the joy of succeeding. Those kids are turning to another area for their buzz. It is most unfortunate.
The power word for 1980 is “I” – “I want”, “I am”. We have developed a selfish community. No community can exist unless there is interaction between groups and a bit of give and take. The “I’s” of this world are filling up our courts, and in particular the Family Court. We hear the words, “I was not happy.” We hear the “I wants” of the trade unions and business organisations. Those “I’s” and “wants” are costing this country an enormous amount.
We are churning out homeless children, bankrupts, broken dreams, broken families, broken hearts, and broken people. We need to address this problem of attitude. We cannot address that problem by legislation because legislation does not give liberty. It takes liberty away. We need to look at people.
One of the real problems of the 1980s and our society – and even earlier I presume – is that the pressure is to be “average”. If one performs above average in our community and one works longer, is keener for whatever reason – whether it be for financial reward or for personal reward – too many of our unions and certainly our community deem one to be unclean. If members do not accept that statement, then we should look at the Prime Minister’s address to the nation a few days ago. If we take away from that address those people he referred to as achievers – the sportsmen and the entertainers – whom do we have left? Nobody!
The achievers in the work force and in business in our nation are not respected. Those who cannot or do not want to make the average are deemed to be disadvantaged. The pressure is to reduce the average down to their level to make it easier for them. That is crazy. That is what I call the, “Melbourne Cup syndrome”. In the Melbourne Cup the horse which performs well by working hard gets all the weight. It is a crazy world, but that is what we have developed. We need to look at ourselves.
We are putting too much emphasis on the negative and not enough on the positive, and by way of example, I refer to a State Energy Commission worker on a night like last night. He goes home, has his dinner, relaxes, and watches television with his family. It is pouring with rain outside and he gets a phone call to say that the lines are down. He has a job to do and no doubt he does it well. He gets rewarded well for doing that, but on receiving his pay packet he notices that the tax man has taken to his pay packet with an axe and reduced his incentive back to average.
One cannot have a community where the individual does not have incentive. We are developing a “no incentive” situation and we need to get that incentive back. It is not only the individual who is lacking in incentive; it is the small businessman too. The definition of a small businessman is anyone who employs fewer than 100 people. It does not matter if that employer owns an engineering works in your electorate, Sir, or is a farmer in my electorate, a fisherman in Geraldton, or a miner in Leonora, he is still a small businessman. Those people directly employ 65 percent of our workforce. It is those people we are asking to go out and employ others to get our nation going again. What do we do to help them? We tell them they must remit PAYE payments on a monthly basis, payroll tax on a monthly basis, fringe benefits tax, and that horrendous anticountry tax. How would members like to own the hotel on the Nullabor? They would be out of it before they could blink.
The fringe benefits tax has to be remitted quarterly. We have a prescribed payments tax, sales tax, workers compensation premiums, and survey forms. The list goes on and on. They are the imposts on a small business that take away valuable, productive time. That time is not measured in minutes per week; it is measured in hours per week. Those people who run those small businesses do not have a legal department to turn to. They do not have a massive number of people in their organisation to remit these forms. Some forms have to be remitted up to 50 times a year, as is the case for the fringe benefits tax. They are people with their feet on the ground. There is a job to be done and there is no-one around to do it but themselves. So the hours these people spend in this “Z-class” activity of filling in Government forms is time that is taken away from the family. The cost of that is tremendous.
In fact, a Federal Government report, as members know, put that cost at $80 million a year. The red tape and the time impost on small business is totally antiemployment.
The simplest way to get rid of red tape is to sack employees. If there are no employees, there is no payroll tax, PAYE payments, nor fringe benefits tax. The pressure is for small businessmen not to employ, and I can tell the House that that is what is happening.
What does the future have to offer them? We, the legislators of this country, are telling them to go out and employ some more people; that we have great things in store for them. We have a three per cent productivity deal, but as soon as it is introduced, the percentage will blow out. We have a 2.3 percent wage case and, more importantly, we have these wonderful redundancy clauses which we are putting into employment contracts and which amount only to retrospective debts on business. They are horrendous imposts, and small businesses cannot afford the redundancy clauses which are appearing like mushrooms in this State.
We have a problem in this country. What is the solution? Our Prime Minister appeared on the television set and addressed the nation, saying that we needed a new direction. I agree with him totally – we do need a new direction. There are some prophets in this country, some people who are meant to be leaders, and I refer in particular to Mr Clive Brown, the President of the Trades and Labour Council. He says that direction is wrong, and that we must protect the wage earner. I have no argument about protection of the wage earner, but I have a great argument against his idea of how to do it. He says there are actually people in this country who are making profits! He used that evil word – profit. He says we must find those profit-makers and tax them – get into them!
I would like Mr Brown to come to Avon one day and show me who is making these profits. I think he would be hard pressed to find anyone. I would like him to come to Perth one day and see the small businessmen here, and show me who is making the profits. Again, he will be hard-pressed to find those people.
I am sure that if Mr Brown were here today he would read out a list of profit-makers, and it would be a true and fair list, but it would comprise all large companies and conglomerates, which have the ability to manoeuvre in these difficult times.
People like Mr Brown – and they have union weight in the system these days – would mount their white charges, dress themselves up in silver armour, put their lances at the level, and charge into the fray to do battle with the evil profit-makers. But when they made impact, and opened their eyes – and that is certainly the first time they would look – the lance would be stuck fair in the neck of small business, because the target they aimed at is big enough and quick enough to manoeuvre out of the way, as it has always done in the past. Unfortunately for some small businesses, the golden goose of small business has been deemed too fat, and so it has been slaughtered to give a feast to the needy.
But those members in this House and the people in the State who have not felt the hunger pains will soon do so because the source of that feast is running out. The new rich of the 1980s is the family comprising a husband and wife who both work for the middle orders of the Public Service, pulling in between $60,000 and $100,000 a year, and benefitting from a superannuation scheme that is beyond the limits of private enterprise.
I congratulate the Premier on his words yesterday in regard to the superannuation scheme. Such action has long been necessary. It amounts to a 25 percent pay increase for public servants over and above the 10 per cent that private enterprise usually gets, and it is beyond the pale. I do congratulate the Goverment for its actions in that area yesterday.
I feel for the small business sector because I have been there. I have experienced the sick feeling in the bottom of the gut when the bank manager has rung and asked when some money would be put into the account.
I have run a business for long enough to know that when outgoings exceed income, one’s upkeep becomes one’s downfall. That is what is happening to small business. It is happening too often and we are not sufficiently aware of it.
In the 1980’s the Labor Party has had tremendous successes, and there is no doubt that it has the right – and has been given a definite right – to transfer the wealth of those whom it has deemed rich to those whom it has deemed poor. The urban people who have this power have used it, and the country people and the small business earner of this nation – the real income earner – is really in trouble because of that power.
What does the future hold? It holds a clenched fist of cold steel, with one-man-one-vote in that fist ready to carve some more flesh off the carcass. I am really concerned for the future.
Small business finds problems in other areas as well. It finds problems with Government because Government is always meddling in private enterprise, and it does that very badly. A prime example in my area is that of Westrail and Western Quarries. Westrail is a 50 percent owner of Western Quarries and because of that partnership Western Quarries is moving its produce right throughout the country areas of Western Australia at a fraction of the rate being charged for superphosphate and wheat.
But more importantly, and even more dangerous, is the fact that Westrail is moving Western Quarries’ freight at a fraction of the rate which it charges other competing quarries.
That is not the only problem. In Northam we have heard stories about Westrail reducing employees, and we know that will happen. How does one explain to a shunter in the Avon rail yard that his job is going, that he is redundant and is not required any more; that the lean, mean machine – the new look Westrail – does not require him? How can one explain to him that his job is on the line when these other sorts of activities are going on?
Westrail is not the only area in which Government is playing around with private enterprise. In a few days’ time there will be a new creation – the State Government Insurance Commission. It will get on its white charger also, dash out into the fray, and do battle with those evil insurance companies.
For decades, reports in this country have complained that there are too many insurance companies in a market that is too small, competing for too little business, making too little profit, and making it very unsafe for the consumer. So what does this Government do about it? It makes the market even more unsafe. It is absolutely crazy!
And when jobs are lost by these actions – and they will be – why is it always the little man who loses his job? Why is it always the man who is doing the job on the spot who becomes redundant? Why cannot some of the fat cats in the upper and middle orders of Government management have their jobs on the line?
The Government needs to be much more responsible when these jobs are being carved off in organisations like Westrail. It will need to demonstrate to the public that it is not only taking from the bottom of the triangle. Otherwise, it will find that its own support base will move away.
Small businesses have other problems. In the country areas we live by the same rules as city people, but we apply them a little more sanely and with our feet a little more firmly on the ground. If one’s car were to break down in a country town at the end of the business day I am sure it would be fixed, and also, in most cases the employee who did the job would not charge the employer overtime. I am also sure that sometime later on, when that employee wanted to go to see his daughter perform at the local school assembly or in the school sports, he would be given time off to do that. In the country we have that sort of relationship between employees and employers.
In 1985 the town of Northam was hit by a group of people who were more like the Mafia than members of a union. They were members of the Builders Labourers Federation and the Plumbers and Gasfitters Union. I may not be Aesop but I have a tale to tell about a couple of teenage boys in Northam who wanted to work and who asked their parents if they could do so. The parents agreed. They approached a friend who happened to be a tradesman, and he agreed to take them on for a very small amount of money.
They went to El Caballo Blanco, which would be well-known to all members here, to do a job. The boys did work, but they also spent most of the hot January day going up and down the water slides. When they arrived back at Northam the tradesman’s car was pulled over “Z-cars” style by the union which demanded full wages for the boys on the spot from the employer. When he quite correctly refused, the union took those boys from the care and control of that family friend and took them home and presented them to their mothers.
One of the mothers in particular was extremely irate and told the unionists what she thought of them. They told her in no uncertain terms that she was a very poor mother and unfit to be a mother, and that they knew better than she what was in the boy’s best interests.
This is not acceptable behaviour where I come from; we do not operate like that. Unfortunately, some of our unions do. The BLF came to Northam, approached our builders, demanded some overaward payments, and said that if those payments were not made immediately they had ministerial approval to knock back any Government job those builders applied for. I have asked the Minister for Industrial Relations whether that is a fact, and he told me that it is not. I believe the Minister, but I know it to be absolutely true that when such a threat is put in front of one there can be no more real threat, because the BLF has the power to take away the livelihood of small businesses, and it uses that power.
No union should be above the law. In 1985 we saw many building with “Free Norm” painted across their fronts. If I got my paintbrush and bucket of paint and went to the home of the general secretary of the BLF and wrote “Goal Norm” across the front of his house, would I be treated in the same way as BLF members in the eyes of the law? I think not.
I am a member of two unions; I believe in unionism and the collective rights of workers; but I cannot and will not condone violence and blackmail, and this is what is running the situation now.
In summary, those of us who are in a position to legislate need to look at providing incentives for the individual. We must get back to the situation where the individual can dream and work towards fulfilling that dream. That possibility has gradually been eroded over the years, and we must return it. We must recognise the contribution made by small business, and unchain it and let it go about the job it is so good at doing.
Somehow we have to educate Government that it is a lousy private enterprise operator. It operates poorly in private enterprise and should get out of that arena.
Above all we cannot have a community in which some sections are more equal than others before the law. Every individual must be equal before the law.
In closing I ask the House to remember the words of John F. Kennedy who said “Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country”.
