One of Australia’s longest serving prime ministers John Howard gave an insightful keynote address at the Indian Executive Club awards night on November 9. This is what he said
I was brought up in a small business environment. My father ran a small petrol station service in a small suburb of Sydney. I know what it’s like to run a small business.
First and foremost, I would like to say thank you to the Indian diaspora in Australia for the considerable contribution you have made, are making, and will continue to make years into the future for the growth, welfare, development, harmony and stability of Australia.
Recently Mckinsey and Company produced a report for the United Nations projecting forward the population of the world and the composition of that population. And it predicted a number of very interesting things. Two of those things stood out – the first was that by 2030 there will be 2.2 billion additional middle class consumers in the world, and 1.7 billion of those consumers will live in Asia.
The other projection — also very relevant to India — is that in 2050, by then for the first time in mankind’s history, for the first time ever the total number of people in the world over the age of 65 will exceed the total number under the age of 14. Now those of you who study the demography of the world, and studied the demography of India and Australia will understand the enormous significance and the enormous potential of those statistics for our two countries.
For India remains a very young society. I was recently amazed to be told that the age cohort in India between 15 and 25 was the largest age cohort of any country in the world, and that the total number just exceeds the total population of Indonesia.
So India will have an advantage because of the relatively youthful population, not only now but in the future, compared to many other countries, not only in Europe — where the birthrate has fallen significantly — but also in Asia, particularly compared to the huge nation of China. And what that reality represents to Australia and India is an enormous opportunity for the future.
Australia and India have a lot in common. We have a common language essentially, we have some common history, and we have a common love for the greatest game in the world.
I first went to India in 1964. I travelled through Asia, went through the then Malaya, and then to India and then to Israel and Europe.
And I remember briefly a case between the Central Government of India and one of the States of India being presented in the Supreme Court of India, and I heard in the course of submissions from the various lawyers, a reference being made to a decision of the High Court of Australia in the 1920s. And it brought home to me, in my first ever visit to the country, just how much we had in common.
We had a common legal system, and we were both Federations, and of course being a Federation presents its own sets of challenges not just to the Central government but also to the state governments. So we do have many things in common, but over the years we haven’t always had as much to do with each other as we should have.
And when I went to India as prime minister in 2006, I had lengthy discussions with my counterparts on the scene. We talked about how over the years, we hadn’t had as much to do with each other as we should have. We are changing that. The relevance of a gathering like tonight, bringing together so many people from the Indian diaspora – largely but not totally here in Melbourne. You are all playing a major part in building on those fundamental strengths of the relationship. And making sure that in the years to come we have a lot more to do with each other than we have in the past.
India has enormous contributions to make to the future not only of Asia, but also of the world. But it is a contribution that I want to see her make in partnership with her friend in Australia. And those of you of the India disapora, who have come to this country to make your homes here, to become Australians and to become so much a part of our community, you are owed an enormous debt of gratitude by other Australians.
One of the greatest things that Australia has done, since the end of World War 2 all those years ago is to welcome millions of people from around the world. We ask only one thing of those people and that is they become part of the mainstream of the Australian community.
And you’ve demonstrated by what you’ve done, and you’ve demonstrated by what we’ve been told tonight, at the way in which you’re making a contribution as part of the mainstream of our nation. Nobody asked you do to anything other than retain a place in your heart for the country in which you were born. And that is always understood by Australians whether they were born here or born elsewhere.
You have brought great enrichment to our country, and one that I am particularly impressed by tonight is of course your commitment to small and medium business enterprises. As you know from the time that I was Prime Minister, I believed in private enterprise, I believed in the work ethic, I believe that one of the greatest things a man or woman can do is to start a business with absolutely nothing, and build it into a thriving enterprise, and leave it for their children to carry on.
I was brought up in a small business environment. My father ran a small petrol station service in an inner suburb of Sydney. I know what it’s like to run a small business. You don’t have any guaranteed market shares. You don’t get paid for penalty rates if you work at weekends, you don’t get paid any working overtime, you don’t have guaranteed customers you just got to rely on your own ingenuity. And that has of course been the stories that we have been told tonight of so many people who’ve started a business right across the free enterprise spectrum, and I’ve been inspired by the stories I have heard tonight, and the contributions in so many areas of business.
Both Australia and India, in order to succeed in the years to come, must retain their economic competitiveness. When I was Prime Minister I frequently said that economic reform for a nation is rather like competing in a never-ending foot race. The finishing line keeps receding, you want to give up because you know you are never going to reach that finishing line but you can’t give up because if you do, the other competitions will surge past you.
And that is the challenge in different ways and in a different scale that will be faced by India and Australia in future.
All nations go through phases of economic reform and economic change. Sometimes they grow a little weary of it and then they release because of the hot bed of competition they have to pick up and perform on the challenge again. That has happened to India – she went through a period of great economic reform in the early 1990s, but there are some signs that in recent years it has slowed down. The same thing happened on a different scale in Australia. We had some great economic reform they produced great results but over the past few years I think we have fallen off the pace so far as economic reform is concerned.
We live in a world of globalisation, and to this day, we are never turning back the clock because globalisation has done a wonderful thing. It’s lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty. When the story of the last 50 years of the world economy is written decades in the future, the principle story won’t be the global financial crisis starting in 2008. The principal story will be the extraordinary way in which through globalization and the forces of competitive capitalism, hundreds of millions of people have been lifted out of poverty. And it is a wonderful story that will be told.
Now in nations such as India, there is still an extraordinary amount of poverty, and there are great challenges, not only for the Indian government but also for the rest of the world. But you won’t take those people out of poverty unless you continue to have a strong economic and fiscal environment.
The best poverty reduction programme in the world is a growing economy. All the developmental assistance is coming from wealthier countries – and that is all well and good, and it makes a contribution — but nothing making a greater contribution than expanding trade opportunities, creation of new businesses, particularly small business because they are the businesses that employ people by their hundreds and their thousands and their millions.
So tonight ladies and gentlemen as I’ve listened to the awards and the stories of these successful companies, I’ve been reminded of the tremendous importance of free enterprise to the fabric of our community and the fabric of our society. Ethical free enterprise.Free enterprise that not only seeks to make a profit but also seeks to give something back to the community and has a sense of social responsibility, which was a driving thought through all the awards that have been made tonight and all the contributions heard tonight.
Ours two nations are so vastly different. Our topography is different, our backgrounds culturally and in many respects religiously as well are different, but we have many great things in common. We have a common commitment to freedom. India is the largest democracy in the world. And it is a democratic miracle in that in the years that have gone by since India won her Independence in 1947 she has remained faithful to the democratic ideals. And when I think of the history of the world around that period of time, India and Australia are two of the small number of countries that have remained continuously and faithfully democratic.
So tonight ladies and gentlemen can I say again how great it is to be here in Melbourne and be part of this gathering. I want to again thank the people of the vast Indian diaspora, estimated variously between a half-a-million and a million, but whatever the precise number is that doesn’t matter. What really matters is goodwill of your fellow Australians towards you, the contributions you have made to this country, but most importantly of all — because this is a night as much about the future as it is about the present and the past — the contribution that I know you and your children and grandchildren will continue to make to the further growth and the happiness and stability of our nation. Thank you for that I wish all of you good fortune and good health.
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