THE REPORTER MARCH 2014
4 TWELVE YEARS TOO LONG 8 LETTING GO 10 JAY’S LEVIATHAN 12 2013 RECAP/GALLERY
THE OPINIONS EXPRESSED HEREIN BELONG SOLELY TO THE RESPECTIVE AUTHORS AND DO NOT NECESSARILY REFLECT THE VIEWS OF THE ADELAIDE UNIVERSITY LIBERAL CLUB (AULC) OR THE LIBERAL PARTY OF AUSTRALIA (SA DIVISION). CONTRIBUTIONS TO THIS EDITION OF THE THE REPORTER ARE FROM MEMBERS AND FRIENDS OF THE AULC. AUTHORISED BY ROB KATSAMBIS, PRESIDENT OF THE ADELAIDE UNIVERSITY LIBERAL CLUB.
“Do you know that one of the great problems of our age is that we are governed by people who care more about feelings than they do about thoughts and ideas?�
Margaret Thatcher on the steps of Downing Street. Photo: AP
twelve years It’s 6:00am on Saturday morning, approximately one month out from the sate election. In the cold, crisp morning air I’ve been climbing up a ladder to zip-tie posters of my local Liberal candidate on to stobie poles. Tired and fatigued from doing this until 2:00 am the night before, just knowing that I’m working to restore a Liberal Government for the betterment of South Australia is enough to keep me motivated. I am campaigning in Ashford, one of the key marginal seats the Liberals need to win to take government on March 15. I know that the countless hours of letterboxing and campaign meetings are all worth it. This is the battleground; the chance we get to fight SA Labor every four years to hold them to account, and every effort expended is required to bring about the change that South Australia desperately needs. The Liberals need to win six seats in this election to dump Jay Weatherill and Labor from office following twelve years of chaotic policy failures and divisive factionalism which has come at the expense of good governance. Liberal students have a critical part to play in such an election victory. Young people are
Opposition leader Steven Marshall officially launching Liberal candidate Terina Monteagle’s campaign in the seat of Ashford. heavily relied upon to do the physically-intensive jobs in any election campaign that older people can’t be expected to do, namely getting up on a ladder and putting up corflutes in the early hours of the morning. It is the energy and enthusiasm of youth which brings a powerful dynamic to political movements on the ground. It enhances the efficiency of campaigns and brings about fresh ideas. This article aims to serve as a reminder of the destruction
that this Labor Government has inflicted on South Australia, but more so, it is to remind you of the reasons to gets active in this campaign to give the Liberals the power to put our state back on track. Labor’s Economic Mismanagement Over the last four years the Rann-Weatherill Government has acted consistently with its federal counterparts in wreaking tremendous havoc on the South
too long Australian economy. Once again, the imposition of big government and unnecessary taxes has failed to foster prosperity in South Australia, and has in turn made our state an unattractive destination for business and investment. At the last election, Labor promised to create 100,000 jobs in SA. Since then, unemployment in South Australia is the highest the of all the mainland states at 6.6 per cent, compared to 5.8 per cent in NSW, 5.1 per cent in Western Australia, and 3.8 per cent in the ACT. In fact, after Jay Weatherill’s budget in June last year (just eight months ago), 25,000 full-time jobs have been lost in this State and youth unemployment in the northern suburbs currently exceeds 40 per cent. To compound this problem, Labor’s dismal attempt at running the State’s economy is coupled with a profound failure to properly manage the State’s finances. Documents leaked from Weatherill’s cabinet reveal that the budget deficit will reach $1.1 billion dollars. And in typical Labor fashion, the government’s reckless spending and irresponsible borrowing will see government debt hit $14 billion. With this debt brings $1 billion in interest payments per year; that’s almost $3 million per
day just on servicing debt. It’s no wonder that Jay Weatherill lost our State its AAA credit rating, which will make it even harder to repay his mammoth debt. But for all this waste and mismanagement, it’s not Jay Weatherill who will have to repay this debt, it is not the Labor Party either. It’s you. The students of today are the workforce of tomorrow who need to pay back Jay Weatherill and Labor’s debt. Indicative of the legacy of caricature Labor governments, once you’ve devoted your life to anywhere between 3, 5 or 10 years of study at university, a Labor government will punish you for your success, hard work, skills and entrepreneurial ability.
Labor’s Dysfunction As was the case with the NSW and federal Labor governments, South Australians ended up with a Premier they never voted for. South Australia is no exception to the classic Labor Party model which determines that our State’s leaders are parachuted into office testimony to dodgy behind the scenes deals and dirty union tactics. In 2012 when Mike Rann and his Treasurer Kevin Foley decided that they needed to slash budget spending, their fairweather union mates and the faceless men of the Labor Party campaigned against them in the public arena, and forced them out behind closed doors in a
Don Farrell, one of South Australian Labor’s ‘faceless men’ bloodless coup. The factional deal that ensued propelled Jay Weatherill to lead SA, despite being unknown to most South Australians. Although since then Labor has tried to present a façade of unity, its ugly face of dysfunction and disunity has revealed itself as Labor has began to unravel upon the prospect of electoral annihilation. Who could forget the tumultuous altercation between faceless man Don Farrell and the Premier just over a month out from the election? Farrell, the Right faction powerbroker who helped knife Kevin Rudd in 2010, was said to be preselected for the safe Labor seat of Napier. Weatherill, of the Left faction, threatened to resign if Farrell was preselected, however Farrell subsequently withdrew from the race. Even this close to an election, the war-torn ALP reared its ugly face, with the Premier prepared to stand down from the highest office because of a factional dispute in an atrocious display of poor leadership. Since then, Right-aligned Labor MPs have said that they’ll “give the appearance of just moving on – until March 15” and that Jay Weatherill is a “dead man walking.” One Labor MP made it clear that the Labor Right faction is “assembling the arsenal, and it is just a matter of timing” before Weatherill gets what’s coming to him.
The Labor Party does not support Jay Weatherill, and according to the above comments, even if he is re-elected as Premier he would probably lose his job and be replaced by some other unelected factional adherent without the authority of the people. The very fact that Labor continues to undermine the structural conventions of our Westminster democracy points to a dishonest culture of electoral deception and trickery which must be reformed before the public can even begin to consider trusting the ALP. Get involved These last days of the campaign are the most important. In 2010 we won the popular vote but fell short of government by six seats, which means that we can’t get complacent. We have to be working hard in the marginal seats every day, right up until the time polls close on March 15. There are many ways you can help out, whether it be phone canvassing, manning polling booths on election day, letter boxing, helping out at street corner meetings, etc. Contact the Adelaide University Liberal Club at liberal@auu.org.au and we’ll get you in touch with your local campaign team so you can do your part in booting Labor out of office and helping South Australia flourish under a Marshall government. Robert Katsambis President Robert.Katsambis@student.adelaide.edu.au
1 You're invited to become a Member of South Australia's premier horse racing club Young Memberships for ages 18-29
JUST $165 This special offer includes membership until 31 July 2015! 2 x TattsBet Adelaide Cup Days 2 x TattsBet Adelaide Autumn Racing Carnivals 2 x Membership Cards - Member and Guest Join online at sajc.com.au/membership Cannot be used in conjunction with any other offer.
letting go With the recent announcement by Toyota that they will cease to produce cars in Australia by 2017, they follow Ford and Holden in a move that will end Australia’s car manufacturing industry. On our side of politics, we should welcome the end of massive subsidies to an inefficient industry. But we should also recognise that moving forward, the government has a part to play in creating a business environment which encourages new and innovative industry in Australia. Over the past 7 years, an estimated $10bn in government subsidies has been given to the automotive and parts industry. This money was used by Ford, Holden and Toyota in order to offset their losses and in return they would weakly promise to continue operating, at least into the near future. Finally we have a government that wants Australia to be better than this, and it starts with letting go of automotive manufacturing. To convince people that this is the right way to go, we should understand clearly the reasons why. Firstly, Australia is a relatively high-wage economy. We have one of the highest minimum wages in the OECD. This leads directly to high labour costs and indirectly to high costs of intermediate goods which are used in the production process. This subsequently flows through to a higher and much more uncompetitive priced good. As an aside I should point out that my aim is not to attack our minimum wage, and I do not believe Australia should chase competitiveness through lower wages. But if we accept that
we want to keep our minimum wage laws in place and maintain that minimum standard of living, then we also need to accept that our car industry in no longer viable. If you add to this the effect of the high Australian dollar, all together it produces a very bad environment for making cars in Australia. Compare this now to a country like China. They have lower wages than us, much more favourable exchange rate conditions and also a huge factor endowment in labour, allowing them to gain economies of scale in producing cars. Subsidising our car industry can help us compete with a country like China for the time being, at least before more money is needed. But this only papers over the cracks in our economy, it doesn’t solve the structural competitiveness problems we have. There is a better road we can go down, one which utilises our labour, capital and human capital. To remain as a high wage economy with a good standard of living for workers, we must become smarter and more innovative in our approach to manufacturing. Whilst many politicians promote this idea, little action has actually been taken to push Australia in this direction. High-tech exports currently only make up 2.8% of total exports in Australia, compared with 15% and 20% in the UK and US respectively. The US and the UK are world renowned for the quality of their higher education, and in order to emulate their success in this area, Australia should start in its universities.
Reallocating funding away from other areas and into engineering, industrial design and sciences would be a good start. Over recent years the Labor government have made some bad choices regarding education funding. In morally misguided attempts to get more people into education, a lot of funding has been directed at non-academic and vocational qualifications which have low entry requirements and on completion have very little labour market value. This is a terrible waste of funding which is providing no long term benefits for our investment. Even though the leftist intellectual snobs will put up a fight, the Liberal Government shouldn’t be afraid to target education spending in specific areas at the expense of other less productive areas, such as the humanities. Secondly, the government should work hard to expand Australia’s export opportunities. The Australian domestic market is small, and so Australian businesses need to be able to sell their products abroad if necessary. The best way to do this would be through negotiating new free trade agreements. This work has already started, with a proposed free trade agreement with China (our biggest export market) taking shape and more recently a free trade agreement with Korea. The Korea deal has resulted in Korea slashing tariffs on Australian exports by up to 555%. Free trade agreements such as these have the potential to increase our export earnings by billions of dollars. Thirdly, the government should think about expanding its funding for small business startup loans. Currently, the program of start-up loans is small, loans are difficult to win and the program is not well publicised. However, Australia has huge potential to increase its rate of entrepreneurship. In the UK, the conservative government have increased funding for startup loans and made it a big policy issue, and figures recently released show that the start-up loans program helped to create over 30,000 new businesses in the UK last year. In order to fill the gap left by car manufacturing, Australia is going to need this kind of innovativeness and entrepreneurship.
Whilst this is not an exhaustive list of things that could be done, it is a start. The government should also stick to its plans to reduce the company tax rate to 28.5% by 2015, which would still be higher than the OECD average of 24%. The process that we advocate for is essentially allowing the resources of an inefficient industry to be reallocated in a more efficient way, into more productive industries. But we should be clear that this is not just about efficiency, this is about believing that Australia can be better into the future. Listening to Labor over the past few weeks, it would be fair to say that they do not have this belief. Of course, we know why the federal Labor Party are so adamantly against us on this issue. They have to be, because they are under the whips of their union paymasters. But aside from federal Labor ministers, it is the idiocy of their progressive left followers that shocks me the most about this issue. This issue has shown more than anything else how blindly they follow lefty doctrine. If they actually opened their eyes they would see that by subsidising companies like Ford and Holden then all we are actually doing is underwriting the profits of their North American headquarters (where these generous subsidies are repatriated to). Yes, in an ironic and slightly comical twist, they are actually supporting corporate America; whom they like to complain about so much. It is clear that only our side of politics has the intelligence and belief to make Australia stronger. It starts with letting go of automotive manufacturing. But we can look forward to better days in the future if we have good policies, innovativeness and an entrepreneurial spirit to fill the gap left by our car makers. Provided we do this, we can still be a country that makes things whilst keeping our high standard of living, and we can continue to be the envy of the world. Matt Mercer Treasurer Matthew.Mercer@student.adelaide.edu.au
jay’s leviathan
le·vi·a·than (noun) - a political state; especially a totalitarian state having a vast bureaucracy Jay loves his government. He likes it big, bulky and intrusive, a get in your way kind of government. He likes to bail out failing companies, to pester the Feds for more money. If it involves big government, Jay loves it. He loves it so much he wants to curb your personal freedom or at the very least the personal freedom of someone you know. I’m talking about Jay’s draconian new driving laws of course. Jay sees it that young people can’t take care of themselves. Apparently they haven’t got a clue when it comes to responsibility so Jay sees it fit to tell them when they can drive and whom they can drive with. I’m sure he means well of course but he’s completely lost the plot. You see, Jay and his Labor Government have introduced new legislation that sees that young people on their provisional license lose the right to drive whenever they want. They’re also dictating how many people our young people can carry in their own private car. This is all in the name of ‘public safety’. It stands that the new driving laws are antifreedom. I as a private citizen (on a provisional license) going about my peaceful business am about to have the hand of leviathan swing down and stop me from driving after midnight. Say for a moment that Grandmas 80th birthday party goes into the night, well, you can forget about driving home under Jay’s new laws. You may have done nothing wrong, but Jay and his team seem to be of the opinion that you’ll be tearing up our streets and causing chaos, potentially even killing someone purely because
you’re driving after midnight. God forbid you drive with more than one passenger as well. I’m sure Jay thinks that every time more than two teenagers get together it means anarchy is imminent. I can’t fault the statistics though. Young people do have higher rates of accidents than most other people on the road. Does that mean we should curb freedoms? I think not. You see Jay and his gang have jumped straight from the ‘we need to do something about our road toll’ to ‘let’s just restrict everything’. Jay simply thinks not letting you do something will make the problem go away. Save for the fact that what he’s essentially doing is delaying an already existing problem for later years. What we should be doing is increasing driver training. This can take many forms. Increasing the hours of driving to be completed under a learner license is one. Requiring a greater number of night-time hours to be completed is another. We should also seriously look at requiring learner drivers to complete a number of lessons with a professional driving instructor. Perhaps we should also mandate higher safety standards on all our vehicles. We know the only thing that will stop young people from needlessly dying on our roads is experience and safer vehicles. In short, training and greater safety standards will reduce our road toll, not Jay’s leviathan. Leighton McDonald-Stuart AULC Member leightonst@gmail.com
SOUTH AUSTRALIA It's your state Have your say in running it. You can make a difference.
Young Liberal Membership Student prices 1 Year - $20 2 Year - $35
Join online now! www.sayoungliberals.com www.facebook.com/sayoungliberals
@sayoungliberals
2013 recap 1
2
1. AULC members tour Parliament House after dinner with the Hon. John Dawkins MLC. 2. Brad Vermeer with Penny Nugent at the AULC Parliament House Dinner. 3. AULC members attending the Australian Liberal Students’ Federation Gala Dinner hosted at the National Wine Centre.
2013 was a strong year for Liberal students in South Australia. O’Week for both the Adelaide University Liberal Club (AULC) and the Flinders University Liberal Club (FULC) was a great success with higher member intakes for both clubs than in previous years.
National Union of Students (NUS) affiliation fees.
The AULC and FULC enjoy a very close relationship. Both together and separately, the Liberal Clubs hosted new members’ drinks, dinner tours at South Australian Parliament House, pub crawls through Adelaide’s East End, quiz nights, a book launch for The Lucky Culture written by Nick Cater, Senior Editor at The Australian, Policy at the Pub evenings and finally our end of year Christmas drinks.
In 2013 AULC President Robert Katsambis was re-elected to the Adelaide University Union Board and AULC Campaign Director Joel Grieger was elected to the SRC as Rural Officer. At Flinders University, executive member Tut Tut was elected to the Flinders University Guild Council.
Both Liberal Clubs worked hard throughout 2013 to increase their presence at university with membership drives and barbeque fundraisers. The decision was also made that the clubs would work together to share a new Liberal ticket name, ‘forU’ to be used in student elections over the coming years. The rationale behind this was to stop ‘reinventing the wheel’ every year with new shirts, banners and Facebook pages and instead pool resources and repeatedly build brand recognition throughout the universities. The 2013 focus of the ‘forU’ team was giving students better access to cheaper second-hand textbooks and holding leftwing student politicians to account for rorts like SRC and Union Board President honouraria and
We also emphasised the importance of listening to the needs of students and asking what they want out of their ‘uni life’ rather than wasting their money on petting zoos and free muesli bars.
Liberal students in South Australia were also very active during the Federal Election, volunteering their time to flying squads, campaign launches, sign waving stints, hanging up corflutes, making calls to marginal electorates in phone bank and data entry sessions at state secretariat, and of course, captaining at polling booths for the Liberals on election day. All Liberal students in South Australia are now looking ahead to the state election on March 15 with the prospects of turning the last of the mainland states to a wonderful Liberal blue. Rhys Williams Vice President (Editorial) Rhys.Williams@student.adelaide.edu.au
3
1
3 4
2
1. Very happy to have participation of Adelaide University’s international students who make up an increasing percentage of the university’s student body. 2. AULC members encouraging university students to vote for a Liberal Government on campus. 3. 2013 AULC New Members Drinks at Grace the Establishment 4. Liberal students meet Steven Marshall at Parliament House with the Hon. John Dawkins MLC and the Hon. Terry Stephens MLC.
P U B C R AW L
U n i b a r - t h e c at h e d r a l - t h e a rc h e r 2 4 h o u r b a k e ry - t h e o x f o r d
A p r i l 4 , S H I R T S O N LY $ 2 5 E m a i l o r fac e b o o k u s t o o r d e r ! Adelaide university liberal club L i b e r a l @ AU U . O RG . AU fac e b o o k . c o m / l i b e r a l c l u b a d e l a i d e