In an interview with the Herald, Mr Rudd promised to make fighting inflation central to a Labor government's economic policy, describing rising prices as a cancer for ordinary families and the economy as a whole.
He said Labor would require all federal public sector wage deals with unions to match pay rises to productivity, and he would expect state governments to adopt the same approach.
As the latest opinion polls put Labor in a strong election-winning position, Mr Rudd took a combative tone on questions about how he would deal with pressure from Labor's Left or the unions to change direction if the party won government. He indicated he would not hesitate to discipline dissenters.
"If I am elected I will govern in the national interest and not in any sectional interest," he said.
"If that means we are going to have significant disagreements with individual trade unions in the future I couldn't care less. That's what will happen.
"In the last six months or so we have had periodic disagreements which resulted in the expulsion of a number of people from the party. If that were needed in the future I would do the same."
Mr Rudd is more conservative on social and economic issues than many within the party and the union movement, and does not have a strong base in his own party's machine.
But his comments indicate he would seek to use his leadership authority if Labor wins to resist pressure to shift his policy agenda further towards the left once in government.
Mr Rudd said the Senate should respect Labor's mandate on industrial relations. He would not say whether he would call a double dissolution election if the Senate modified Labor's industrial relations legislation.
"I think our mandate would be absolutely clear-cut. There has been no area of policy more debated and more canvassed than Labor's industrial relations policy over the last six months or more," he said.
Asked about the economic outlook for an incoming government, Mr Rudd said Treasury's latest forecasts did not forecast a US slowdown dragging down Australia's growth rate.
"It is very important to keep a weather eye on emerging international and national economic circumstances and adjust fiscal policy accordingly, but there is nothing in the current prognosis that would lead us to that conclusion," he said. Labor's first priority would be to bring down inflation and contain it below 3 per cent.
"I am determined through fiscal policy, skills policy, industrial relations policy, infrastructure policy to do everything possible to keep downward pressure on inflation, which I regard as a cancer on the economy and a cancer on working families.
"It is a core organising principle for our approach to economic management.
"It has taken a long, long time, since the early 1990s, to have inflation contained within the [2 to 3 per cent] band. We must exert every element of policy necessary to keep inflation at those levels."
He ruled out any Accord-style understandings to curb wages growth.
'Meat axe' to public service
KEVIN RUDD will take "a meat axe" to the bloated public service and end what he calls the Government's culture of secrecy and ministerial unaccountability.
In his final major address before the election on Saturday, Mr Rudd promised to hold cabinet meetings once a month in rural or regional areas, and have a press conference after every cabinet meeting.
He said the Coalition was so out of touch it now treated working people as "economic commodities". While confidently outlining a time frame for implementing his promises, Mr Rudd said John Howard was arrogant and absurd to seek re-election because he planned to retire and would be unaccountable.
"What's the point of re-electing him?" he said. "I will be here for the long haul. I will be accountable to the Australian people for the commitments I have made to them at this election."
"If the Liberals are successful on Saturday, Peter Costello will be handed the prime ministership without ever facing the Australian people."
As Mr Rudd addressed the National Press Club, Mr Howard issued another plea to undecided and wavering voters in a speech to business leaders in Sydney.
"It's a very winnable election," he said. "And I say to those people who think you can change a government without changing a country, you couldn't be more wrong."
To those fixed on voting Labor, "nothing I say today is really directed towards them", he said.
Mr Rudd said the secrecy and lack of accountability that had developed over the past 10 years, as shown by the "disgraceful" children overboard affair, was cancerous. He promised to improve external scrutiny of ministers and staff.
"I know that's very easy to say from Opposition because you're not in government and when the heat's on you, it all seems different," he said.
"But if you're running a decent government, you shouldn't fear these things."
Mr Rudd said he was "dead serious" about bringing back the razor gang to trim the public service while not affecting services.
"It just strikes me as passing strange that this government that supposedly belongs to the conservative side of politics has not systematically applied the meat axe to its own administrative bloating for the better part of a decade," he said.
This angered the Community and Public Sector Union, which has been happy with Mr Rudd's promise to restore independence to the public service.
"He undid all that good work by using intemperate language," the union's national secretary, Stephen Jones, said.
"If you look at Labor's policies, I can't see how they can do that with any significant downsizing of the public service."
Mr Rudd said reversing the decline in education was his biggest policy priority.
"Saturday will decide whether Australia gets stuck in the world's slow lane, letting other nations pass us by, or whether Australia decides to shift up a gear so that we can properly realise our true potential.
"More than ever, Australia needs a government that will help the nation fulfil its promise, rather than a government that makes promises it can't fulfil."
He said he would meet the premiers within 100 days to begin revamping the health system. The Kyoto Protocol would be ratified immediately and within a year there would be an interim target for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and the roll-out of national broadband would have begun.
By the end of his first term, in late 2010, he promised "concrete results" in the policies he had promised. These included having urban water recycling under way, desalination plants under construction, a more efficient health system, and Work Choices replaced with a more fair and flexible system.
News and politics
media
No comments:
Post a Comment