EO&E...........................................................................................................................................

 

 

I want to thank Paul Sheehan and all the other staff here at Atlas for making myself and Wyatt Roy the local member so welcome. I want to thank Wyatt for the incredibly hard work he is doing in his electorate, the great impact he has made on the scene in Canberra. I am really proud to have a fine, younger Australian like Wyatt Roy as part of our team and I know he is going to be a very important part of any incoming Coalition government.

 

What I am stressing to the Australian people is that our country deserves better and the Coalition has the positive plans to build a strong and prosperous economy for a safe and secure Australia. That’s how we will deliver the hope, reward and opportunity that the Australian people deserve.

 

For a company like this which is doing fine manufacturing work, which is supplying major components to a very important international heavy equipment manufacturer and seller, for a company like this to flourish, we’ve got to do everything we humanly can to keep the governmental burden light. That’s why there will be no carbon tax, there will be no mining tax, there will be much less red tape, there will be a fairer system for companies like this to flourish and I know that the workers and businesses of Australia can take on the best in the world and win, if only they’re on a genuine level playing field and that’s what the next Coalition government wants to establish for them: a genuinely level playing field so we can show the world our creativity and competitiveness and finally, before throwing to Wyatt, I just want to congratulate Atlas for supplying so successfully a major international manufacturer. it demonstrates that Australian manufacturing does have a future under the right sort of government. It does point to the strong five pillar economy that the Coalition wants to foster with strong manufacturing, education, services and agriculture as well as a strong mining and resources sector that this particular manufacturing business helps to serve.

 

So, Wyatt, I know you’re proud of companies like Atlas and you might like to tell us a bit about the good things that are happening in your electorate.

 

 

Thanks Tony for coming and thanks Paul for showing us around today. This is a great local company that is punching above its weight and in my mind this is exactly the sort of business particularly in an area like this where people are genuinely struggling, where we have high unemployment and we should be doing everything we can to champion businesses like this not to attack them.

 

To see this business thrive and prosper in the future, the solution is not greater taxes, the solution is not more red tape and regulation, it's the exact opposite. I feel very confident if the Coalition forms the next government, businesses like this will continue to thrive, continue to prosper because we will get government out of their way and make sure they can get on and do what they do so well which is exactly what we've seen here today. So, thanks Tony and thanks Paul.

 

 

Any questions?

 

 

Mr Abbott, the Queensland LNP has lost three MPs in one week. What advice would you have for Campbell Newman and Jeff Seeney as there's dissent in the ranks?

 

 

It's a new government facing a tough challenge with a large backbench and obviously you always prefer to hang on to people, but the real challenge is to get on with the job of building a better Queensland and I think Campbell Newman and Jeff Seeney and Tim Nicholls are doing a really outstanding job of that. I don't presume to offer my state colleagues advice. I want to offer them support and encouragement and support and encouragement is what I give to Campbell and his team.

 

 

[Inaudible]

 

 

No, I don't. What Queenslanders expect of the Newman Government is a serious and sustained attempt to get Queensland's economic house in order and to deliver a better life for the people of Queensland. Now, Queenslanders understood that the former government had economically mismanaged the state. There were debt and deficit problems. There were problems with the Triple A rating which was lost. There were problems with a bloated bureaucracy. There were the usual ethical problems that we get from long-running Labor governments. Now, they've got to be tackled, they have got to be tackled. It's not easy. Not everyone is going to like all of the solutions, but Campbell is getting on with the job and I’m proud to call him a colleague and a friend.

 

 

Well, Mr Abbott, Clive Palmer is thinking of setting up his own political party. How concerned are you about that splitting the conservative vote in Queensland come the next election?

 

 

Look, that's Clive being Clive.

 

 

What do you mean by that?

 

 

Just what I said.

 

 

Well, Clive Palmer has got a big following in Queensland. Could he soak up some of the conservative vote?

 

I think what people have got to understand is that the only way to get rid of a bad Labor Government in Canberra is to vote for the LNP. If you want to change the government, if you want to change the Prime Minister, you've got to vote for the LNP. If you vote for anyone else, you are effectively saying, ‘let's keep this government, let's keep this Prime Minister’.

 

 

[Inaudible]

 

 

I've made it very clear that the Prime Minister gave the advice, made the representations that caused this association to be incorporated that facilitated the fraud. Now, I think that the Prime Minister obviously has serious questions to answer. That's why I say we need a full judicial inquiry to get to the bottom of this. If the Prime Minister has nothing to hide she won't be scared of an inquiry.

 

 

So, you still maintain she has broken the law, then?

 

 

Well, the point I make is that the Prime Minister has provided false information to the West Australian Corporate Affairs Commission and it is unlawful to provide false information to the West Australian CAC.

 

 

What's your opinion of Ralph Blewitt as a person?

 

 

Well, that's really irrelevant. Let's remember how this business began. This business most recently began when one of the Prime Minister's own former Cabinet colleagues, Robert McClelland, the former Attorney-General, said that she had some issues to deal with. We've had no less a person than the current minister for industrial relations, Bill Shorten, say that the association that the Prime Minister helped to establish was "inappropriate" and "out of bounds." Now, there are serious questions here. There is the whole question of general corruption inside the union movement which continues to this day and one of the reasons why I doubt the ability of the current government and the Prime Minister to stamp all this out is because they are simply too compromised by their own past.

 

 

Would you commit to a judicial inquiry if you were elected?

 

 

The short answer is yes but why should the decent honest unionists and the decent honest union officials of this country have to wait 12 months? Why shouldn't the government - which says that it is the workers’ friends - try to ensure that the workers of Australia aren't being ripped off by corrupt officials? Now, let's have the inquiry. Let's have it now. Let's get to bottom of these things and if the Prime Minister has nothing to hide, she won’t run scared from this inquiry.

 

 

So what specific laws has she broken?

 

 

Senator Brandis did a full press conference in Canberra this morning and he went through all of this. He's the Shadow Attorney-General. He is a senior lawyer, recently in practice. So, I will leave him to go through that kind of specificity.

 

 

How come you’re leaving the case to George Brandis and Julie Bishop and not yourself? You're the Leader of the Opposition, aren't you?

 

 

And I spoke for 15 minutes in the Parliament yesterday.

 

 

Can you summarise that?

 

 

Well, I think I have done that. The Prime Minister provided the advice, made the representations that enabled the association to be established that facilitated the fraud. This whole business from the beginning was a sham to facilitate a fraud.

 

 

Is Blewitt really a credible person [inaudible] to attack the Government?

 

Let's look at the history here. The Prime Minister had three clients - Mr Blewitt, Mr Wilson and the Australian Workers' Union. She gave advice that ultimately enabled two of her clients to defraud a third client. As a result of all of this, she unceremoniously left her firm and the AWU dumped her firm. Now, as I said in the Parliament yesterday, there are serious ethical questions here; there are serious legal issues. That’s why we need a judicial inquiry to get to the bottom of it.

 

 

You’ve just committed to that inquiry. How broad would it be should you win government?

 

Well, what I’ve called for is a judicial inquiry into the whole AWU corruption scandal. Ian Cambridge - the former National Secretary of the AWU who was appointed by the current government as a Commissioner of Fair Work Australia - has been calling ever since 1995 for a full Royal Commission. He reiterated his calls yesterday. There are plenty of decent people inside the Labor Party and inside the union movement who know that this whole business stinks to high heaven; who know that we need to have a different ethos, a cleaner culture inside the union movement.

 

So, I think the inquiry should get to the bottom of this particular issue that Ian Cambridge has been anxious about - desperately concerned about - for almost two decades. There are also, as I understand it now, various police and other inquiries on foot and I hope that these can swiftly be brought to a conclusion. But if the Prime Minister wants to put her judgment, her standards and her integrity beyond question, set up the judicial inquiry. If you’ve got nothing to hide, you’ve got nothing to fear from a full judicial inquiry. I know that there will be lots of decent people on the Prime Minister’s backbench who will be thinking, Julia, set up this inquiry and let the cards fall where they may, because they want to see an honest labour movement and an honest Labor government.

 

Thank you.

 

[ends]