It’s great to be here. It’s good to be in the company of my friend and distinguished Western Australian colleague, the Deputy Leader of the Opposition Julie Bishop who is a real power in Canberra and I’d like you to all give her the warm welcome that she deserves.
Ladies and gentlemen, leadership does matter. Leadership is what makes the difference between progress and stagnation. Leadership is what makes the difference between life staying the same and life getting better. The sun might come up every morning without leadership, the tide might come in and out every day without leadership, but in the human world, nothing worthwhile happens without leadership and if we look at this great state of Western Australia, the economic powerhouse of Australia, we can see the impact of consistent good leadership. Western Australia has just ten per cent of our population but it gives us 16 per cent of our gross domestic product, a vastly disproportionate contribution to our economy. Just ten per cent of the population, but it provides this country with no less than 46 per cent of our merchandise exports. This is a remarkable record for a state that was once regarded as the poor relation of the Commonwealth and it’s happened because over the last four decades this state has been blessed with consistently good leadership.
I’d like to see more of the spirit that has made Western Australia the powerhouse that it is in Canberra. I’d like to see a greater emphasis on development in our national capital. I would like to be, should I get the chance, a Prime Minister who revels in seeing cranes over our cities, who revels in seeing bulldozers at work and who revels in seeing water coming from where it flows to where it’s needed. That is the kind of Prime Minister that I would like to be if I get the chance.
I want us to be a country which makes the most of itself as a nation and a people who make the most of themselves as individuals. That is the kind of Australia that I want to build and to bring that about, obviously we need to have the right policies at every level of government, particularly at the federal level in Canberra.
Now, regrettably, ladies and gentlemen, Julie Bishop and myself are not in government. We are in opposition and the tragedy of being in opposition is that you cannot save the country from the wrong side of the parliament. Oppositions essentially have two jobs. The first is to hold the government to account and every day for the last three years, I believe that Julie and I have been doing just that but the second leadership task of opposition is to present to the Australian people a credible alternative, to give to the Australian people confidence that should there be a change of government, their lives will be different and better and that’s what I hope to do for you this morning.
Sensible oppositions develop their policies as part of a three stage process. Year one of opposition is essentially about articulating values. Year two of opposition is about crystalising the major commitments you are making to the Australian people and year three of opposition is releasing formal policies culminating obviously in those you release during the election campaign and that’s exactly what this opposition in Canberra, this Coalition led by myself, Julie Bishop and Warren Truss has been methodically doing.
Let me just recap on the values that motivate our Coalition. The Coalition is Liberal in the sense that we believe in lower taxes, smaller government and greater freedom. We are conservative in the sense that we cherish the family and values and institutions which have stood the test of time but above all else, we are patriotic because we want to see policies in place that we know will work and that will build a stronger Australia for our children and our grandchildren to live in.
At the beginning of this year, ladies and gentlemen, I went to the National Press Club in Canberra and I laid out a blueprint, if you like, for the coming year. I said that the essence of the Coalition’s work was to build a stronger economy for a stronger Australia and I committed us to five landmark speeches – a plan for a stronger economy, a plan for stronger communities, a plan for a cleaner environment, a plan for stronger borders and a plan for modern infrastructure. Now, the government says, show us your policies. I want to assure you that you will get our detailed policies, with dotted i’s and crossed t’s in good time before the next election but there are already, right now, very substantial commitments that I have made to the Australian people which give them a very good and clear idea of what the next Coalition government will be like.
First, there will be no carbon tax under the government I lead. Ladies and gentlemen, you know that I am telling the truth. There will be no carbon tax under the government I lead because I understand and I suspect you in the west certainly understand that you don’t clean up our environment by damaging our economy. You do not reduce emissions simply by making every Australians cost of living more expensive. If we want to boost gross national income per person by $5,000 a year by 2050, very easy, very easy to do – based on the government’s own figures, repeal the carbon tax. If we want to boost our cumulative gross domestic product by $1 trillion – by $1 trillion, that’s a thousand billion dollars – by 2050, very easy. Repeal the carbon tax. The government’s own figures show that that will be the impact on our economy and on our personal incomes of repealing the carbon tax. And let me assure you, ladies and gentlemen, that there is no mystery, no magic, no obstacle to repealing the carbon tax. It is a fundamental law of our parliamentary system that what one parliament has done by legislation, another parliament can undo by legislation and on day one of an incoming Coalition I will instruct the public servants to prepare the legislation and on day one of a new parliament, the first act, once the necessary formalities have been concluded will be to introduce the carbon tax repeal legislation.
The second, important respect in which our country will be different and better under the next Coalition government is there will be no mining tax. So these two taxes which impact so disproportionately on a resource rich energy intensive state as this one will be gone. Tax reform in this country begins with repealing the carbon tax and repealing the mining tax. It doesn’t end there but that is the strong beginning to tax reform in this country.
You understand because you’re West Australians in a way that the current government in Canberra simply doesn’t understand that you don’t speed up the slow lane by slowing down the fast lane of our economy. You understand that you do not strengthen our economy by penalising its strongest element and you understand in a way the current government simply doesn’t, remarkably, given the previous Labor governments did, they simply don’t understand that there’s in no country on earth that has ever taxed it’s way to prosperity.
The third thing that the next Coalition will do, the third clear set of commitments that we stand for that are out there, that are obvious is we will boost participation. We want to see more Australians active in our economy. We know that Australians are smart people, energetic people, we want to have a go and the best way to have a go is to be active in our economy. A stronger economy means more people making a bigger economic contribution and that’s why there will be at last a fair dinkum paid parental leave scheme based on what people earn, not on the minimum wage. We at the moment are one of only two countries of all those that have paid parental leave that base it on the minimum wage. I am proud to be the first leader of a major political party committed to this wonderful way to give the women of Australia a fair go and at the same time to strengthen our economy. For people on welfare, we will ensure that there is always a generous safety net but we will also make sure that people who can work are working, preferably for a wage but if not, for the dole.
The fourth thing we will do is boost productivity and boosting productivity starts with restoring the Australian Building and Construction Commission. This was one of the products of my time as Workplace Relations Minister. It grew out of the Cole Royal Commission. Thanks to the ABCC, we got at least $5 billion a year of productivity improvement in what had previously been and which is again, a very tough industry and all of you who are trying to get resource projects off the ground, who are looking at the difficulties of construction, particularly in the remote areas, particularly with the CFMEU and the MUA and all the others you’ve got to deal with, you need a tough cop on the beat. It will be on the beat under the next Coalition government.
We will address the problems developing in the Fair Work Act. We will act responsibly, carefully, cautiously. We won’t break faith with the decent working people of our country but we will address the flexibility problems, the militancy problems and above all else the productivity problems which are now glaringly obvious in the Fair Work Act but we will do so within the parameters of the existing Act. We will also look at the problems of union governance which are becoming increasingly obvious – not just in the Health Services Union but also we now learn with the Australian Workers Union in the 1990’s and beyond and I want to thank Julie Bishop for the work she has done to uncover the skullduggery of that era, skullduggery which has echoes right down to the present time.
If people in positions of trust and responsibility break the law, if people in positions of trust and responsibility do the wrong thing, whether it by shareholders or by members, they should face comparable penalties and one of the early acts of an incoming Coalition government will be to ensure that union officials who break the same laws will be subject to the same penalties that company directors and company officials are subject to. There will be, if I may say so, a level playing field amongst wrong doers. We don’t want union officials to be able to get away with ripping off their members almost scott free which is what we have sadly seen in this country time and time and time again.
We will get government spending under control, not by slashing and burning programmes that people are benefitting from but by ensuring that government lives within its means, by trying to ensure that we have no more government than is strictly necessary for a well regulated and well-ordered society. Do we really need 20,000 more public servants in Canberra today than we had at the end of the Howard era? We don’t and the best way to get government spending down is by eliminating unnecessary programmes, by ending duplication and overlap between different layers of government and by pulling out of the overregulation of organisations which are more than capable of running themselves.
We will cut red tape. Any of you in the resources sector would know just how hard it is to get your projects off the ground. The Business Council of Australia has recently referred to the level of regulatory burdens that needed to be overcome by one of the major coal seam gas suppliers in central Queensland. $25 million was spent, 4,000 meetings were endured, a 12,000 page environmental application was prepared. In the end, after all that work, there were 1,200 State environmental conditions, 300 Commonwealth environmental conditions and 8,000 sub-conditions that this particular project had to comply with. Is it any wonder that good Australian companies are now looking to invest offshore rather than in our country?
Now, we don't want to sacrifice necessary environmental regulation but never will a Coalition government look at the miners and the resources businesses of our country and think "environmental vandals". We know you are citizens as well as miners. We know that you are human beings as well as business people. We know that you are just as committed to the environmental amenity of our planet as people living in the inner city of Melbourne and Sydney and we will respect what you do. We will not pillory what you do.
We will improve public schools and public hospitals by having less bureaucracy and more community control and I want to congratulate the West Australian Government for the independent public schools programme which it has put in place under which essentially the school principal has a one-line budget within very broad parameters with the school council, has complete freedom to staff and to run the school. This is a good model. This is the model which should be extended to the rest of the country and this is what will happen under the next Coalition government.
There will be fair dinkum environmental protections under the next Coalition government. Rather than a carbon tax, we will spend $1 billion from savings in the budget to support more trees, better soils and smarter technology. As well as simply focusing on getting emissions down, important though that is, we will actually work on the practical environmentalism which has been so badly neglected over the last five years. One of the things I was responsible for as a minister in the former government was the green corp, a programme under which young people spent six months working on environmental restoration projects. This will be expanded into a full-time green army, 15,000-strong, marching to the rescue of degraded bush, of polluted waterways and land which has been ravaged because for too long it has been neglected. I salute the efforts of councils, volunteers and farmers to look after our land but it needs to be supplemented by a serious workforce and that's what the green army will be.
We will have modern infrastructure and the Coalition has made serious commitments to building the infrastructure that a 21st century economy needs. We support the Commonwealth's commitment to the Oakajee Project. We support the Perth Gateway project. These are important nation-building programmes and we will have a 15 year published rolling infrastructure priority list based on published cost benefit analysis. We've got to spend the money if we want to have a 21st century society and a 21st century economy but it's got to be spent in accordance with rational yardsticks. That's why there have to be published cost benefit analysis.
There will be a deeper engagement with Asia under the next Coalition government. Let me tell you a little incident just a few weeks back I experienced myself. Seven people in a room talking about Australia's relationship with our giant and increasingly powerful northern neighbour Indonesia. Myself, my Chief of Staff, the former Prime Minister John Howard, Foreign Minister Natalegawa of Indonesia and three of his most senior officials. Of the seven people in that room, six had been to university in Australia. This is a priceless asset. This is soft power in action. We must have a new Colombo plan. We must bring the best and the brightest of our region to this country where they can learn from us but we must also return the compliment. Our best and brightest must go to Asia to learn from them. So there will be a two-way street version of the Colombo plan which has been one of the enduring glories of Australian foreign policy.
Finally, ladies and gentlemen, and you'll notice I have done my best so far not to be explicitly critical of the current government in Canberra. It's difficult, but I am exercising severe self-restraint this morning. Finally, the next Coalition government will stop the boats. It won't be easy but it will be done. It's been done before. It can be done again. The Howard Government found a problem and crafted a solution. The Rudd-Gillard Government found a solution and recreated a problem. It just gets worse every day. Nothing that they do seems to have any consistent rhyme or reason. Nothing that they do seems to work because inevitably it is too little, too late and the basic problem is that their heart is not in it. That is the basic problem. Their heart is not in it because too many of their senior members are too influenced by their Green alliance partners in government.
Now I don't pretend, ladies and gentlemen, that it is going to be easy. Every time this problem recurs, it is harder to solve which is why the dismantling of the Pacific Solution by Mr Rudd and Ms Gillard back in August of 2008 was such a catastrophic blunder but if we do have genuine temporary protection visas, if we do have a serious attempt to process people offshore, if we are prepared to turn boats around where it can be done safely, we can achieve the same results that were achieved when these policies were put in place before. The difficulty with today's announcement, that people coming to Australia illegally by boat will be put on temporary bridging visas with access to welfare before more or less automatically getting permanent residency, is that it means that these people will get Australian citizenship with the worst possible preparation – five years on welfare – for life in Australia. Now I will be making further announcements about what the Coalition will be doing to rectify this situation in coming days. Suffice to say that no credible country and no serious government subcontracts part of its immigration programme out to people smugglers and no serious government and no credible country allows itself to be played for mugs by criminals. That's the situation that we have got ourselves into.
Ladies and gentlemen, it won't just be what the next Coalition government does which I hope will distinguish us from the current incumbent. It will also be how we do it. Some of you worked with me when I was a minister in the former government and you know what I'm like. My style is to talk to people before I make decisions rather than to argue with them afterwards. That is my style. I don't think that all wisdom resides within a kilometre of Lake Burley-Griffin. I understand that the people who really know what's happening are the people who are wrestling with problems and I think I've got to talk to them first before I try to improve them. So we will be a consultative and collegial government as well as a government which doesn't shirk hard decisions. If we can be that kind of government, I am very confident that we can lift the mood of despondency currently settling over so many Australians, because right now we know that we are a great country, we know that we are a great people but we have this heavy sense that we have been let down by a bad government in Canberra.
Now, one thing I will never do, should I have the honour of leading this country, is deliberately set out to divide Australian against Australian. You will never find from me invocation of a false class war. I will never try to set workers against managers because I understand, in a way I fear the current incumbents do not, that it is only by working together that we are going to generate the prosperity that all Australians have a right to expect. I think I can say with absolute confidence that you will never find from me any attempt to invoke the gender war against my political opponents. Never, ever will I attempt to say that as a man I have been the victim of powerful forces beyond my control and how dare any that Prime Minister of Australia play the victim card. If there is one thing which marks the current government as utterly unworthy of leading this country, it is the attempt to set one Australian against another for party political advantage.
Ladies and gentlemen, I am very confident our best days are ahead of us. I've got to say, it is easy to feel confident in the great state of Western Australia. You, perhaps more than any others in this Commonwealth, have a marvellous knack when things aren't going well in Canberra of ignoring Canberra, of ignoring the entire eastern states if you feel the need and getting on with things here in the golden west. It is a marvellous attitude but, frankly, you shouldn't have to adopt it because Canberra should be helping you not hindering you. The national government should be part of the solution to our country's woes, not part of the problem.
So, ladies and gentlemen, my commitment to which I am bending every fibre of my being, my commitment to which I am dedicating every ounce of energy that I possess, is to give a great country the better government that it so surely deserves. Thank you so much to The West Australian for the opportunity to address this leadership matters forum. Leadership does matter. It really does matter. The essence of leadership is knowing what you want to achieve and purposefully, methodically, setting out to bring it about and, above all else, the ability to bring people with you. I think that's exactly what we can do. I think that's exactly what our country needs now.
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