Senator MASON (10:15 PM) —A few weeks ago I was asked to participate in a forum held at the University of the Sunshine Coast on `How to contain and exploit economic globalisation and the effects on rural and regional Australia'. Facing the audience of about 700 people, I was joined by Ms Pauline Hanson, Mr Bob Katter from the National Party, Senator Andrew Bartlett from the Democrats, Mr Drew Hutton from the Greens and Mr John Henderson from the Australian Labor Party. Sadly, I found myself the only speaker that evening arguing the benefits of trade.

When I started thinking about what to say that night, I was sitting behind my desk in quiet, suburban Brisbane, far, far away from the reach and all the hustle and bustle of globalisation—or so I thought. But then I realised that the desk I was sitting at was made of Indonesian wood, the computer on which I was writing the notes for this speech was made in China and the paper in my printer was from France. Then I realised that of my four staff members only one was born in Australia—the others came from Poland, Italy and New Zealand. There could be no better illustration for me of the fact that globalisation, far from something distant and abstract, is in fact everywhere around us. What is more, its fruits are now so many and so varied that we no longer consciously think about them and we take them for granted instead.

We enter the new century facing a great paradox: as Australia becomes more prosperous and the benefits of economic reform more apparent, Australian people are more scared of change, more alienated from their way of life and more uncertain about their future. We live longer and we live better; we are healthier, wealthier and wiser than at any time in our past; yet at the same time we remain confused and also unhappy. There has indeed been a lot of change in the past few decades—social, economic, political, cultural and technological change. Has it been traumatic for some? Often. Has it been largely beneficial? Yes. Can it be stopped and reversed? Well, there is nothing inevitable about globalisation. Are there any other feasible options? As has been said by one of my colleagues in parliament Mr Abbott:

Politicians in a democracy never set out to “punish” the electorate. If the Government occasionally projects an image of wanting people to “take their medicine”, it's because the alternative to economic reform is even greater pain.

Every corner of the globe, no matter how distant and isolated, has undergone great change in the very recent past. Australians living in rural and regional areas are clearly not the only ones who have to adjust to these new realities, but there the adjustment is perhaps the hardest because the ways of life are the most settled. One thing is for certain, however: there will not be a knight on a white horse coming to rescue rural Australia with bailouts and subsidies that would turn the clock back to the 1950s. While the change cannot be stopped, the process of transition can be managed and eased and the costs more evenly distributed. Ultimately, the way out for rural and regional Australia is through greater investment, better efficiency and more innovation—admittedly, that is very easy to state but much less easy to achieve. But many communities around Australia, many in Queensland, are already showing the rest of us the way forward.

There has never been a time in Australia's history when we have not been a globalised economy. Indeed, right from the start our economy has been built on foreign investment. None of Australia's industries would have existed in the first place if we had simply relied on domestic capital. Our domestic economy has always been far too small for that. Similarly, we have always been one of the world's great trading nations, be it gold or wool or minerals. We relied on trade for jobs, investment and our future, and we did not need protection because we were producing world-class materials.

Today, the prospect remains bright. Our exports have grown 3½ times over the past 20 years. Our economy is nearly $10 billion bigger as a result of the reduction in tariffs over the past decade. That has increased the annual income of an average Australian family by over $1,000 a year. Exports now employ around 1.7 million Australians—or one in five of the total workforce and one in four in regional areas. There are now 750,000 jobs that are directly reliant on trade with Asia alone.

We are a leading exporter of foodstuffs and mineral resources and also increasingly of technology and services. We are also leading the fight for free trade because we understand that we need open markets to survive and prosper. In the last half century, average tariffs in industrialised countries have fallen from around 40 per cent to now about four per cent. When that happens—despite what you may hear—everyone wins. Of course, it is often hard to sell economic reform. Costs usually come before benefits. The public's gains from reform are often spread thinly across the community and are thus not easy to see. The losers, however, of trade are identifiable and often very angry.

It is easier for politicians to exploit the dissatisfaction of the minority than to promote the gains of the majority—and don't we see that in this country today? It is an old story: you can see all the jobs lost because a certain industry has been deregulated or because tariffs have been lowered, but you cannot see all the jobs created in other industries because people no longer have to subsidise the inefficient ones and can better spend that extra money. Similarly, you can see all the overseas products being sold in Australia, but you cannot see all the Australian products being sold overseas. Globalisation is always a two-way street.

Faced with new opportunities, we cannot be too timid. We must show initiative. We need to adapt and experiment. Most important of all, we need to embrace new technologies—and we do. Half of all Australian adults now use the Internet—one of the highest figures in the world. In regional Australia, the number of Internet connections has almost doubled in the space of just one year from 17 per cent to 32 per cent of households. For rural Australia, clients and consumers are no longer deserts apart—they are only the click of a mouse away—and increasingly so are all the services: banks, post offices, doctors and educators. Change is never easy, but the world will not wait for us. The greatest crime that we can commit against future generations of Australians is to close ourselves off from the outside world, to go back while everyone else is moving forward.

The time of transition will require strong leadership. We do not need politicians who tell people what they want to hear and so, by postponing the inevitable, make the change, when it finally does come, even harder. We also do not need politicians who ignore people and who tell them that their concerns have no validity. Instead, we need leaders who can manage change, who can educate and who can reassure. I am the first to admit that I and many other politicians have in the past done a lousy job explaining to Australians the benefits of trade and globalisation. I admit that. It is a challenge for all of us in this parliament. A few weeks ago at the Sunshine Coast University, I was at least glad to have been able to join in this battle of ideas. The fear of the future is the greatest obstacle facing us on our road together. The best legacy that we, the politicians, can leave to our fellow Australians is to help turn that fear into a better understanding of the possibilities and the opportunities.