On 25 October Australians will elect a national government to take Australia into the 1970s. The campaign of the Australian Labor Party will have one dominant theme – the theme of opportunities, the taking of opportunities, the making of opportunities for Australia and for all Australians. We wish to renovate, rejuvenate, reinvigorate and liberate. It is not only time, more than time, for a change; it is time to refresh, remould and renew the whole framework of finances and functions and to end the 20 year story of opportunities needlessly deferred, delayed and denied by the Liberals.

We of the Labor Party have an enduring commitment to a view about society. It is this: in modern countries, opportunities for all citizens – the opportunity for a complete education, opportunity for dignity in retirement, opportunity for proper medical treatment, opportunity to share in the nation’s wealth and resources, opportunity for decent housing, the opportunity for civilised conditions in our cities and our towns, opportunity to preserve and promote the natural beauty of the land – can be provided only if governments – the community itself acting through its elected representatives – will provide them. Private wealth is insufficient now to provide such opportunities even for the wealthy few. The inequalities in our community now reflect not so much gross disparities in income, but the failure of successive Liberal governments to create opportunities for the overwhelming majority of our people – the lower, modest and middle income families – opportunities which only governments can make. And increasingly in Australia the national government must initiate those opportunities.

We make these assertions: Firstly, that Australians should not be deprived of opportunities which citizens of every comparable country enjoy. Secondly, there is every reason why Australia, wealthy and well-endowed, in many respects incomparably so, should be giving a lead to other nations in the equality of opportunities and the quality of the opportunities we make for our own citizens and in the help we can give to others. Twenty years ago, Australia was indeed a pioneer and a leader; now we lag behind. It is not for lack of resources; it has been for lack of resourcefulness on the part of a national leadership, bogged down in its own past, shackled by the dogmas of an outdated, doctrinaire philosophy.

We make a third assertion – central to our cause. When government makes opportunities for any of the citizens, it makes them for all the citizens. We are all diminished as citizens when any of us are poor. Poverty is a national waste as well as individual waste. We are all diminished when any of us are denied proper education. The nation is the poorer – a poorer economy, a poorer civilisation, because of this human and national waste.