Arthur, thank you very much indeed. It is a tremendous pleasure and privilege and honour to be here yet again to talk to the Liberal Party of New South Wales, to talk to the people who make each and every one of us who have the honour of representing our party in parliament.

 

Sometimes we politicians get a little bit big for our boots. Sometimes we think that it’s all us. Well, look, in the beginning it’s all you. You are the ones who choose us. You are the ones who groom us and you are the ones who elect us because you raise the money, you do the hard yards, you hand out the material on polling day. But for you not a single one of the Liberal Party members of parliament could even enter the parliament, let alone flourish, so we owe an enormous debt of gratitude to you, the lay members of our great Liberal Party. So please, know how valuable you are. Know how important you are and, please, with that note of thanks and congratulations, redouble your efforts to make sure there are more of us after the next election.

 

Now, I have been given a list of my distinguished federal colleagues who are here and, as usual, I have already noticed someone here who is not on the list but I’m going to read the list because I want all of them to stand and I want all of them to applaud all of you in the audience. Bronwyn Bishop, Alex Hawke, Craig Kelly, Philip Ruddock, Paul, Fletcher, Jo Gash, Russell Matheson, Connie Fierravanti-Wells, Louise Markus and Scott Morrison, and of course, Arthur Sinodinos!

 

Now, ladies and gentlemen, it is lucky that we are gathered here today. It is lucky that we are gathered here with high hopes and great enthusiasm because on our shoulders, in our hands is a vital national task. Our task, vital for the future of this country, our task, vital for the hopes of our people, is to defeat the worst federal government in Australian history. I’ve said it before, let me say it again: some people say this is the worst government since Whitlam but that is unfair to Gough Whitlam, who was not entirely devoid of idealism and who never sold the soul of the Labor Party to Bob Brown and the Greens. And what we have seen, ladies and gentlemen, this week is further evidence that this is a Prime Minister who will stop at nothing, stop at nothing to save her political skin. Let there be no doubt what the squalid manoeuvre that we saw in the parliament last Thursday was about. It was about ensuring that she had insurance against the fact that Andrew Wilkie is likely to withdraw support from the government and there is, as we know, the threat of criminal charges against Craig Thomson, the member for Dobell.

 

So what we saw was a desperate Prime Minister, a desperate Prime Minister bereft of principle, bereft of honour, striving to shore up her tenuous majority in the parliament. What we have seen time and time again from this Prime Minister in this parliament is that if there is an honourable way of doing something or a dishonourable way of doing something, she will choose the dishonourable way every time. That’s what we’ve seen. Ladies and gentlemen, let’s make no bones about it. Yes, for a little while, we have lost a vote in the parliament. But we have not lost our integrity. We have no lost our honour, and while for a little time the Prime Minister may have gained a vote in the parliament, she has gained a problem.

 

Ladies and gentlemen, let us review the political year. It started with the carbon tax lie and it ended with the sordid deal that we saw in the parliament this week. But what is a constant, what is a constant is that she is saddled with a toxic tax, a toxic cabinet and a toxic coalition that she cannot depend upon. If anything, her parliamentary majority is an even more motley one at the end of this week than it was at the beginning of this week.

 

Now, I don’t know whether the next election will be in two months or in two years. All I know is that what happened in the parliament this week makes it all the more certain that we will win because the Australian people do not like the kind of sordid, squalid, toxic deals that they saw in the parliament this week. The Australian people know because they’ve seen it here in New South Wales, they’ve seen it in Queensland, they’ve seen in it right around Australia – that government which is focused on its own survival and not on their welfare is not the kind of government that they are prepared to vote for.

 

Ladies and gentlemen, the Prime Minister said at the beginning of this year that it was going to be the year of decision and delivery. In fact, what we’ve seen is a series of back flips and broken promises. There’s the carbon tax based on a lie. There’s the mining tax based on a succession of secret deals and there is border protection which has completely disintegrated. The last brick in the wall of border protection that John Howard built and built so successfully has now been removed with the abandonment not just of offshore processing but even of onshore processing.

 

What we are now seeing from this government is not offshore processing. It’s not even onshore processing. It’s a policy of immediate onshore release. That’s what we’ve got and what is in fact happened is that the immigration policy of our country has now been subcontracted out to the people smugglers of Java.

 

Ladies and gentlemen, I could go through a litany of incompetence and dishonesty. I could go through the pink batts, the overpriced school halls, the National Broadband Network white elephant, the live cattle trade fiasco. I could go through the broken promises on Fuel Watch, on Grocery Watch, on the private health insurance that was never going to be means tested and then is going to be means tested, on the baby bonus that was never going to be means tested, and now is going to be means tested. I could got through and take pot shots at this government but, frankly, that’s too easy. That’s too easy. So what I want to talk to you about today is the better way that this Coalition, this Liberal Party represents for our country.

 

Our challenge is not just to prove to the Australian people that this is a monumentally bad government, our challenge is to demonstrate to the Australian people that their future can safely be placed in our hands. Now, I am confident that it can be because we have a plan for a stronger economy, for a stronger country.

 

We understand in the marrow of our bones that governments cannot live beyond their means. If there is one lesson from the crisis now afflicting so many of the countries of Europe, it is that there is a terrible judgment ultimately pronounced against the governments and the peoples of countries which keep on spending, keep on borrowing and keep on taxing. We must live within our means as a people and as a government. Families do, businesses do, and what’s right for the families and businesses of Australia is right for the federal government of Australia.

 

Now, it won’t be an easy task but we’ve done it before and we can do it again. We won’t have to learn fiscal responsibility in government because for 12 years, we practiced fiscal responsibility in government. Sixteen members of my shadow cabinet were ministers in a government that was the most fiscally responsible Australian government since Federation. The Howard Government found a $10 billion budget black hole and it turned that into a $20 billion surplus. The Howard Government inherited $96 billion worth of Commonwealth debt and it turned that into a $70 billion net asset position. By contrast, the current government has turned $20 billion of surplus into $50 billion of deficit and it’s turned $70 billion of assets, at last count, into $107 billion of debt. The four largest deficits in Australian history have been put in place by this government and they say that next year they will give us a surplus of $3.5 billion. Well, let me tell you ladies and gentlemen, they will need 50 years of Wayne Swan’s surplus to repay four years of Wayne Swan’s deficits.

 

They say it is impossible to cut the fat from the Commonwealth budget. Well, let’s be under no illusions here as Liberals that it can be done and it will be done.

 

We will abolish the mining tax. We will abolish the carbon tax and the interesting thing about Labor’s taxes – only the Labor Party, ladies and gentlemen, could do this – only the Labor Party can bring in a new tax and end up spending more money than the new tax raises.

 

The carbon tax adds $4 billion to the budget bottom line. The mining tax adds $6 billion hit to the budget bottom line. So by abolishing those two taxes alone you add $10 billion of positive revenue to the budget bottom line.

 

But we won’t just be a government of fiscal prudence. We will be a government that strengthens the muscles and sinews of our economy. We understand that important though the mining and resources sector is, it does not alone an economy make. We understand that we need more than just a mining sector. We need an agricultural sector, our traditional strength. We need a manufacturing sector because a country that doesn’t make steel and make motor cars and smelt aluminium is not a first world economy. We need a vigorous knowledge economy. We need a vigorous services economy. So we will put the policies in place to build a five pillar economy because we will build a productivity and participation economy.

 

We have a six point plan to boost the productivity of our economy. We will get more people into the workforce.

 

We will get more productivity out of our great public institutions by injecting some people power into our schools and our hospitals. We will have independent public schools along the West Australian model. We will have community controlled public hospitals.

 

We will cut red tape. We have a strong plan to save businesses a billion dollars a year by taking regulation off them, not by putting regulation on them, and it’s based on a plan that has been working for the last four or five years in the state of Victoria.

 

We will establish a genuine level playing field for large and small business by reviewing the competition laws of this country.

 

We will ensure that the federal governments massive infrastructure spend actually gets value for money by ensuring that there are no large federal infrastructure payments without a published cost benefit analysis.

 

You know, this is a government which hasn’t published a cost benefit analysis for any of its projects. This is a government which is spending $50 billion plus on the National Broadband Network, the largest infrastructure project ever undertaken in our history and it was put together on the back of a coaster in a VIP aircraft because that was the only way the relevant minister could get to see the Prime Minister at the time. Well, ladies and gentlemen, it’s not way to run a government, it’s no way to run a country and we will do things in a very different way.

 

There will be workplace relations change under the Coalition government. We will be careful, we will be cautious because we understand that you can’t take risks with people’s livelihoods, but we know that the pendulum has gone too far to one side and we will restore the balance in workplace relations.

 

Ladies and gentlemen, we do want to see more people productively in our economy. There are too many older people on welfare who would like to work and we want to ensure that the cult of youth in employment is ended. There are too many younger people on welfare who want to work and we want to put in the appropriate mix of incentives and penalties to ensure that this happens. We do think that far too many people are parked on the disability pension when they could be making an economic contribution. We do think that the welfare reforms which Labor has timidly brought in to the Northern Territory alone should be extended to the wider population and we do think that people who are young and fit and are in places where unskilled work is readily available should not be on the dole. So we will make the changes necessary to ensure that we have a more productive society with more people as economic participants, not just social and cultural participants.

 

Ladies and gentlemen, this is a great country. We know it. We know it’s a great country and because we’ve lived through the Howard-Costello era, we know just how good our country can be. Our challenge is to restore that greatness. Our challenge is to do what we can in our time and in our place to help the Australian people to be closer to their best selves. We know that government can’t do everything but government can do so much more and so much better than it is now. We know that government shouldn’t try to run people’s lives but we also know that government should try to enable people to run their own lives better. I don’t want to impose my vision on the Australian public; I want to liberate Australia’s people and families and community groups to realise their vision. That’s my dream for Australia.

 

So ladies and gentlemen, as members of this party, we have a great calling. We have a high purpose and we have a heavy responsibility but I know we are up to this task. I know we are up to this task. As I look out in this room I see people who have been working for our party for many years but I also see people who are new to our party and who want to do just as much for the next Coalition government, who want to do just as much for our country in the future as their great forebears have done in the past.

 

So ladies and gentlemen, let us steel ourselves to this task. Let us go forward as a team, as people who have confidence in each other. Let us go forward from this place to give a great country the better government that it so obviously deserves and so seriously needs at this time in our history.

 

Thank you.

 

[ends]