Keynote Address - The Nationals 2013 Federal Council
1st June, 2013
Deputy Premier Andrew Stoner, Brendon Grylls, Nationals President Christine Ferguson, Deputy Leader Senator Nigel Scullion, Senate Leader Barnaby Joyce, parliamentary colleagues, delegates, ladies and gentlemen,What our country needs right now, more than ever, is a good dose of optimism and confidence.
A shot of optimism so businesses will grow and employ their fellow Australians.
Confidence for families to buy a home or even just buy the goods we associate with modern life.
Optimism to go about everyday life without the constant threat that government is lurking around the corner, waiting to whack you for daring to try to get ahead.
It's an optimism that is simply lacking in regional communities right now.
I see it - we all see it - every day.
The lack of confidence that Julia Gillard, Wayne Swan and Labor inspire in the community is nation destroying.
After all, Our Prime Minister's negotiating triumphs include:
* giving Telstra $11 billion to stop using its network;
* offering to take 5 asylum seekers from Malaysia for every 1 person sent by us to them;
* personally and secretly negotiating a mining tax that this year raised just 10% of what was expected - even though 100% of more of the proceeds have been spent to "share the benefits of the boom"... a boom they have already destroyed;
* paying Ford $34 million to save worker's jobs only to have it announce a shutdown;
* a poker machine policy that will cost country clubs and pubs dearly but will have zero impact on problem gambling; and
* the near destruction of Australia's northern beef industry.
It's time for the Prime Minister and Labor to undertake a long refresher course on the Opposition benches.
My friends, the carbon tax ratchets up one month from today.
Paradoxically, it's an added impost Australian businesses and families will pay while the carbon price in Europe continues to plummet - now 5 times lower than ours.
If Labor and their Green mates and Independent props get back in on September 14, the carbon tax will go up again next year.
And from next year it will also apply to road transport. There will be a distance based tax hit on fuel, which means regional families and businesses lose the most.
On top of the carbon tax increases, everything we truck into regional towns will be more expensive and everything we truck out will be less competitive.
Is it any wonder voters are looking forward to September 14 like young children look forward to December 25.
I give you this promise, there will be no carbon tax under a Liberal-National government.
You can also count on the mining tax being abolished so we can turn the investment tap back on and nurture more jobs in the regions.
After more than 40,000 illegal arrivals on Labor's watch, you can be assured the boats will be stopped and the floodgates closed on people smugglers.
Unashamedly, The Nationals have plan to build a stronger economy by playing to our strengths in the regions.
We're starting from a long way behind.
The Gillard government has ensured that the nation's finances are in chaos and that our global competitiveness is on the slide.
Getting our country back on track is not just about cutting Labor's waste.
It's a start, but we have to do more.
We have to back the regions - economically and socially.
Our miners can still produce the natural resources the world needs.
Our farmers can still produce food for an ever-hungrier world.
Our manufacturers can still make cutting-edge products.
Our electricity generators can still create low-cost power to fuel those industries.
Our tourism operators can still create a domestic and international destination of choice.
Our small businesses are still the engine room of the economy, our biggest employers.
What they desperately need is for the federal government to get out of their way - to slash red and green tape and let them get on with their job and get on with their lives.
Last week, we witnessed the news of 1,200 jobs to be lost at Ford in Victoria come 2016. And there have been so many announcements like that over recent years.
But the one and two jobs lost every day in every town do not make the evening news - the small businesses that could not carry on - those job losses just as tragic for the families involved.
Manufacturing jobs in Australia have been lost at the rate of 1 every 20 minutes under Labor.
Our plan is a recipe for more jobs, better jobs and greater job security.
The Nationals will put regional Australia at the heart of a national economic recovery. That is not only good for the regions, it's good for the nation.
While Labor has been fighting over one job - the Prime Minister's - we have committed to creating one million jobs in our first five years of government and two million jobs over a decade.
Our plan is based on the priorities of a stronger and more prosperous economy that delivers new jobs, higher wages and better services for families.
We've done it before.
The last Coalition Government created 2.4 million jobs, delivered a 21% increase in real wages and saw Australian families almost triple net household wealth.
The 16 of us who were Ministers in the Howard, Fisher-Anderson-Vaile Government know only too well the discipline required to create real benefits for real families.
Our plan to create one million new jobs starts with scrapping the carbon tax, which is a major cost on every Australian business and family, and axing the mining tax, which acts against investment and growth.
We will also cut red tape by $1 billion a year each year and create a one-stop shop for environmental approvals to cut through the green tape strangling investment and development.
We can also put downward pressure on the Aussie dollar by not borrowing money hand over fist. Right now Labor is borrowing $100 million each and every day. That madness must stop.
Last month Wayne Swan handed down his fifth straight budget deficit - a cumulative budget blowout of $192 billion since Labor came to office.
The government's gross debt - the debt we all have to pay back - will be close to $300 billion by Election Day and is hurtling towards $370 billion over the forward estimates.
But Labor does not think this debt matters. They seem to think that you can reduce debt by borrowing more.
But it is real money. If you converted $370 billion to $5 notes and laid them end-to-end, they would reach all the way to the moon 25 times - they would wrap around planet Earth over 240 times.
Such is the enormity of the task, for the next Coalition Government to pay off this debt, we will need to deliver bigger surpluses than the Howard Government ever achieved and do it 18 years in a row.
That's $20 billion a year in surpluses for almost 20 years, before we break even.
That is money that could otherwise be used to fund a National Disability Insurance Scheme, the best education system in the world or the roads we need for our cities and communities.
Getting Australia back into the black isn't just about budget cuts. Cuts alone are not the tonic for Labor's legacy of debt.
We will need to make the right investments for growth and prosperity - building a stronger economy also boosts government revenue and reduces deficits.
And regional Australia is in the driver's seat.
I say that for very good reasons.
By 2050, Australia's population will balloon to 40 million mouths to feed.
At the same time, the world population will explode to over 9 billion.
And half of these people will live in the Asia-Pacific region - literally on our northern doorstep.
The globe is entering an era of world food shortage and shrinking farm production as farmland is eaten up by urban sprawl and water diverted to quench the needs of thirsty cities.
Australia must ensure we can meet our future domestic needs but also capitalise on ever-growing world food needs.
Australia is in a prime position. But are we geared to deliver?
At the moment it seems to be taken for granted that we will just organically benefit from our geography.
But as everyone in regional Australia knows, you only reap what you sow.
We want to establish a northern food bowl, treble mineral exports, see major energy developments, a bigger high-value tourism industry, and world centres of excellence for tropical medicine and health research.
These go hand-in-hand with major education and defense facilities and a larger northern population.
Building dams and water storages to protect us from droughts and floods can make regional Australia more productive.
Australia has not built a major dam for 20 years.
In 1990, Australian dams could store more than 4 years supply of our water needs. Today, they can just store over 3 years of supply, and if we don't build new dams, by 2050, they will only be able to store just over 2 years supply.
Australia currently uses just 6% of our available water resources, compared to a world average of 9%.
If we increased our use to equal the world average (about the amount used in North America) Australia could double its food production to feed more than 100 million people.
The CSIRO has identified 5 to 17 million hectares of arable land in our north, where more than 60% of our rain falls.
Clearly, not all of this land can be developed. But the opportunities are waiting to the realised.
It can take up to 15 years for a dam to go from concept to completion.
We have done some of the work, but we need to increase the pace so we don't make the poor decisions State Labor governments made in our last drought.
Because of those decisions water prices have gone up 64% since 2007 - much of that cost for infrastructure that has been mothballed.
As the mining boom has shown, growth and development in regional parts of Australia feeds back into jobs and opportunity in our major capital cities.
Investing in the growth and prosperity of inland Australia is in everyone's best interests.
But it is a great shame that foreign interests value our land, its food producing capacity and the businesses associated with driving growth in agriculture far more than Australians.
I, and The Nationals, have had a bit to say about foreign investment in Australia.
When the West Australian Liberal-National Government announced a preferred proponent from China to bring the iconic Ord River and East Kimberly Expansion Project to fruition, we did not object.
These major projects are for the long-haul and are what is needed in the region. And they can act as a catalyst for opening up and developing more of northern Australia for agriculture.
That said, there are other purchases of Australian land and business that have been more controversial.
We are yet to have any explanation as to how the sale of Australia's most valuable farm, Cubbie Station, along with its significant water rights, was in the national interest.
Under current rules foreigners must seek approval to buy suburban home in Australia and will find it difficult to get that approval, but it seems Wayne Swan has no issue with the biggest irrigation farm in the country being bought by overseas interests.
The Foreign Investment Review Board has never said no to a foreign takeover of Australian land or agribusiness.
It now faces another critical test. The government must deal with the proposed takeover of Australia's largest listed agribusiness, GrainCorp, by Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) - a US giant that is the second largest grain business in the world.
This bid would mean that every grain export facility in Queensland, NSW, SA and all but half of one in Victoria, would be foreign owned.
It would hand ADM 280 storage sites in the eastern states with capacity for 21 million tonnes, 19 grain trains, 3 container loading facilities and vital stocks information.
It is fair to say the owners of these vital assets have the ability to decide whether eastern Australia has a grain industry or not. ADM is not offering new investment or any new commitments to Australia - just new owners at above market value. What is in this deal for Australia?
Grain storage and handling charges will rise for farmers to pay for the purchase and the profits will be transferred to the new American owners.
This purchase, along with the dominant buyouts of Australia's sugar industry, meat works, dairy industry, grain marketing, oilseed crushers, food processing, wine industry - mostly over the past 4 years, raises serious questions about the future decision-making in our agricultural industries.
We dream of becoming the food bowl of Asia but whether that can happen will increasingly be decided in boardrooms in the US, Europe, Asia and even New Zealand.
Over the last four years or so, we have lost control of our nation's agribusinesses.
It prompted GrainCorp chairman Don Taylor to note in the Financial Review last month, that...
... Australia has lost the chance to create a global agricultural champion - raided by foreign companies consuming everything from sugar refineries to grain storage and export infrastructure.
He said: I think this government has been the most anti-agriculture government that I can remember in my lifetime. Don is 62!
I agree and add that of all the Labor Government's failures, its disregard of agriculture and our food industries, which has gone largely unreported, may well have the most enduring consequences.
We support genuine foreign investment that strengthens our economy, which promotes growth and fosters confidence, but investments must not be contrary to our national interest.
The Coalition has developed a new regime to scrutinize foreign takeover bids.
We will implement a national register of foreign ownership of farmland and agribusinesses.
We will require the Foreign Investment Review Board to review any proposed foreign acquisition of agricultural land valued at $15 million or more.
The FIRB will also be required to review any proposed foreign acquisition of an agribusiness where the investment represents 15 per cent or more in an agribusiness valued at $244 million, or exceeds $53 million, whichever is smaller.
We will broaden the FIRB membership to 7, including - people with business and agricultural expertise.
But it's also time to broaden the national debate on this issue... not just question foreign investors who see the value and opportunities in our agricultural assets, but also ask why Australian investors do not.
As a government, we will be prepared to back innovative proposals to encourage and support investment in our agricultural industries and help seed projects that benefit our industry or enable it to be internationally competitive.
Our farmers are renowned the world-over for their innovation, for their high quality and sustainable production and for their green credentials.
If Australians lack the vision to see the potential of our food producing industries in a world crying out for more food, we will not be able to resist foreign investors who appreciate their real value.
Australians are also entitled to make informed choices about the food the buy - including where it is from.
There are so many complaints about misleading country of origin labelling. While much of the problem is due to a failure to promote the meaning of existing labels and a failure to police existing laws, we need to improve labelling to inform consumers where produce is grown and processed.
On election to government, The Nationals will work with the industry to develop a labelling system that clearly gives consumers the information they need to choose Australian.
We see Don Taylor's summation of this government echo through other farm industries too.
A crisis meeting in Richmond a couple of weeks ago starkly illustrated that, two years on, the cattle industry is still reeling from a government that over-reacted to a television program.
Not surprisingly, Indonesia's reaction to Labor's blanket ban on live exports was to fast-track its aspiration of self-sufficiency and reduce Australia's quota for live cattle and, I might add, boxed meat exports as well.
In all, some 13,000 direct Australian jobs depend on the sector.
But it is also particularly important to Indigenous communities with 82 Indigenous cattle properties alone directly supporting 700 Indigenous jobs and, indirectly, a further 17,000 people in station communities.
The message is clear. Our live animal export markets have been burned by an inept Australian government. Rebuilding that relationship will be a key focus for the Coalition.
But there are other lessons to be learned as well. The northern cattle industry has become too dependent on live exports. I welcome the proposals to build abattoirs in northern Australia and we stand ready to help.
There are already 14 abattoirs which have closed over the years between Townsville and Perth. There will need to be a different business plan if we are to try again.
We fervently believe the economic potential of regional Australia is unlimited and has to be facilitated.
The Coalition does not apologise for wanting to create greater economic opportunities for that part of our country that is on Asia's doorstop.
Closer engagement and effective trade relationships across Asia is an integral part of our strategy to create more jobs, higher real wages here at home and drive a stronger, more prosperous economy.
It's all about opportunities and I see nothing but upside.
A 2012 report in Victoria found that by supporting growth in the regions we can help reduce the estimated $95 billion in cumulative congestion costs associated with expanding Melbourne's outer-metropolitan areas over the next 20 years.
For example, the cumulative cost of providing critical infrastructure to support an additional 50,000 people in Victoria's regional cities is estimated at $1 billion.
This compares with inefficiency costs of $3.1 billion associated with the same number of people being accommodated in metropolitan areas.
It is my unequivocal belief that the regions will need to play an even bigger role if we, as a nation, are to see a return to the brighter future Australians want for themselves and expect for their children.
It has always been the case that regional Australia drives our country's economic prosperity.
When the regions are strong, so is our nation. Too often these days that fact is forgotten - or just plain ignored.
Unless we can bring businesses and people to regional cities and develop new commercial hubs, the 40 million people Australia is expected to have by 2050 will grind our cities into perpetual gridlock.
It's a little known fact that Australia's population is already one of the most densely concentrated in the OECD - almost double the OECD average.
Just under 90% our population is crammed into 3% of the landmass - namely Sydney and Newcastle, Melbourne, Brisbane and Queensland's south east, Adelaide and Perth.
That's not a sustainable population.
The Coalition's Plan for Fast Broadband and an Affordable NBN is a key policy to help regional Australia grow. Our plan will result in every Australian household, including every country household, having access to high-speed broadband at a minimum speed of 25 megabits per second by 2016.
We will deliver it faster and cheaper than Labor's long delayed and crisis riddled scheme.
Ensuring that every household and business in Australia has access to a minimum standard of high-speed broadband as soon as possible will deliver increases to productivity and improved living standards.
Labor's NBN will leave some communities waiting until next decade to see any improvements to their broadband services, creating a deep and lasting digital divide.
Our plan places a priority on delivering upgrades to those communities that currently have poor broadband services - not duplicating services in areas that already have fibre optic cable.
Within 90 days of the election we will require the Department of Broadband to present Parliament with a ranking of broadband services in Australia, so we can begin the process of rolling out fast broadband to the communities that need it most.
For some regional communities, our plan will use fibre-to-the-node technology to deliver fixed-line broadband where the NBN will only offer wireless services.
Poor broadband services are a key challenge for regional communities, but we will not forget that the most pressing communications issue in much of regional Australia is poor mobile phone coverage.
Two successive Regional Telecommunications Reviews have found that mobile phone coverage is the most talked about communications issue in regional Australia - but Labor has not invested a single dollar on the mobile phone network since it came to office.
The Howard Coalition Government had invested $145 million to improve mobile coverage.
And of course, The Nationals delivered the $2 billion Communications Fund, which should have been used to deliver better telecommunications services to the regions in perpetuity.
Instead, Labor raided the fund to pay for the first version of its NBN.
As a result, regional Australia has missed out on hundreds of millions of dollars in telecommunications upgrades.
The Coalition has committed to actively seek opportunities to leverage off the NBN wireless rollout to improve mobile phone coverage, and we are also working to restore a substantial mobile phone black spots program to fill in mobile telephony gaps.
So many opportunities have been lost by our city-centric government over the past 5 years.
You may or may not be surprised to know that under both the Rudd and Gillard eras, with one brief exception, every cabinet member has lived in a capital city.
For the record, six of my colleagues in the Shadow Cabinet proudly call regional Australia home.
The point is, if we are elected, we will have a government with a strong regional focus and will ensure that the regions share in our growth and development to deliver real opportunities to those who live outside the capital cities.
Making the economy strong again is the place to start.
We have a plan to get government spending under control and ensure spending is focussed on projects that benefit the nation.
The so-called Independents and Greens are now tied to their record in government with Labor. They have been complicit in the waste, incompetence, bad calls, backroom deals and scandals.
The Independent experiment has failed.
The only way regional people can be sure of getting rid of the government Julia Gillard leads is to vote for The Nationals.
The only way regional people can be sure of having a strong, concerted regional voice as part of the next government is to vote for The Nationals.
Ladies and gentlemen, I started today by talking about confidence.
I have no doubt that an Australia freed from Labor, The Greens and Independents can achieve anything.
I am positive about the future and the key role regional Australia must play in resuscitating our country - economically and socially.
Now it's the nation's turn to back the regions and invest in their growth if we are to reap the rewards and opportunities and deliver better living standards for all Australians.
The Nationals will ensure regional Australia gets its fair share so the regions can grow and achieve their full potential... and get Australia back on track.
Thank you.
[ENDS]
