LNP State Conference, Brisbane
20th July, 2013
Thank you Noeline for that wonderful welcome. Isn't she just the sort of candidate we need in Kennedy?She can do more than anyone to put an end to the careers of people who think they have to name a Party after themselves.
Can I also acknowledge our LNP President Bruce McIvor ad also our Federal President Christine Ferguson, my parliamentary colleagues, many distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen.
Can I also thank the Party for recognising today those members who are retiring at the next election - Ron Boswell, Paul Neville, Alex Somlyay and Sue Boyce. They've all done a fantastic job to represent Queensland over a very long period of time.
They've been faithful servants to the Party and the people of Queensland, delivering results for their electorates and, indeed, the country.
Can I also acknowledge Barnaby Joyce. Barnaby has made an incredible contribution to the Party in Queensland and I know he's going to achieve similar things in New South Wales. I'm sure he won't forget his many friends in Queensland.
I have to say, I wonder why he's leaving. It's been a pretty good week to be a Queenslander.
8-zip to the Maroons caught everyone's imagination. It was a great achievement.
And this success was built on a stable team, a clear plan, and with everyone pulling in the same direction.
It's much like the discipline the Coalition has shown over the past 6 years.
This Coalition isn't a one-man band. Though we very much value the leadership of Tony Abbott, we're a team.
There are 16 members of the shadow ministry who were ministers in the Howard government. That's a wealth of experience as there was with the Maroons on Wednesday night, with cool heads to draw on.
This depth of experience makes all the difference.
And so do the influx of new and enthusiastic members, elected for the first time. They will help deliver a government that's not only experienced but has vision and determination.
Likewise, the Coalition isn't making up policy on the run in a chaotic lurch to an election with both eyes on the polls. We have considered and long-standing policies that are in the national interest.
Those policies are based on the truths we hold dear. We believe in them. Labor, on the other hand, doesn't seem to believe in anything anymore.
Their policy is driven by union bosses or the Greens and others who give them direction. There is nothing it seems they are prepared to stand up for.
They have chopped and changed policies, not to mention leaders and ministers, so often its hard to keep up... least of all business which need surety and consistency to make plans.
If you're going to invest and put your livelihood on the line and employ Australians, you want government policies you can rely on.
Australian business hasn't had that surety at any time over the last six years. Is it any wonder that investors now have to take sovereign risk into account when looking at Australia.
That is not the kind of Australia we were accustomed to over recent decades. It's not the kind of Australia that has led to the growth and prosperity of our nation.
In just six years Labor has managed to turn the economy on its head.
Another example we can take from the Maroons, is that that success comes from backing each other in.
Our plan is for more jobs, better jobs and greater job security.
A plan to work together to achieve things and build on our strengths.
Those of us who come from regional Queensland know that a lot of our strength comes from the prosperity built up in the regions.
When something is good for our regions, it's good for our nation.
That means we can achieve more by freeing-up our mining, farming, manufacturing and tourism industries, and give small businesses a lower cost base - not artificially inflating prices through a sea of new taxes and ideological dogma given form in government policy.
That means actually axing the carbon tax - not just changing its name.
Under the Coalition, there will be no carbon tax... and no Emissions Trading Scheme either.
This week Tony Abbott and I spent a few days travelling along coastal Queensland on our journey to this convention.
We announced, along with our Candidate for Capricornia Michelle Landry, that a Coalition government will invest $500,000 towards a world-class stadium and sporting precinct in Rockhampton.
Hopefully it will be a prelude to a central Queensland team in the NRL.
We also announced that a Coalition government will contribute $2.5 million to the next Beef Australia Expo in 2015 in Rockhampton.
This will allow Beef Australia to stage this world-class industry event, which promotes Australian products to existing and, importantly, potential new markets.
The last Expo in 2012 hosted 85,000 people and saw around $31.3 million being invested into the local economy.
The event is also very timely as the Australian cattle industry is still reeling from the effects of the Labor Government's knee-jerk ban on live cattle exports. Indonesia is Australia's largest live cattle market.
The impact of this decision have seen ricochets right down the coast and damaged the industry in every sector. The ban on live exports by the Labor Government continues to cripple this billion dollar industry which employs thousands of Australians.
Tony and I also took the opportunity in Mackay with George Christensen to announce our plan to fix the Bruce Highway.
At long last a comprehensive program of works that will make a real difference to this vital arterial for our state.
It is fitting recognition of the critical importance of the Bruce as the link between most of Queensland's regional cities.
Under our works program, from Brisbane to Cairns the Bruce Highway will be safer, faster and less susceptible to flooding.
Our $10 billion 10-year package is an historic partnership with the Queensland government. It is the biggest and most comprehensive cooridinated investment ever undertaken on the Bruce Highway.
The next Coalition government will provide a direct investment of $6.7 billion to an $8.5 billion partnership with the Queensland government, for almost 70 major projects along the Bruce Highway.
It will make a real difference.
The four-lanning will extend north to Gympie and south to Gordonvale. There will be ring roads and ring round extensions in Mackay, Rockhampton and Townsville.
We'll deal with the substantial flood-prone areas, like the Haughton River and the Yeppen Floodplain and at least a dozen more.
There will be significant surface upgrades, more passing lanes and we'll be getting rid of a lot of the dangerous accident spots. This will make a real difference.
Our $8.5 billion commitment comes with another $1.5 billion commitment to the Gateway North arterial to the southern tip of the Bruce Highway.
So it's a $10 billion commitment to Queensland's vital coastal artery, making a real difference to the people who live outside the capital cities.
One-in-sixth deaths on the entire national network around Australia occurs on the Bruce Highway.
The Royal Automobile Association of Queensland estimates that without further action to upgrade the Highway, an additional 350 people will die and 5,000 will be injured over the next decade.
That's a tragedy on this road we are determined to stop.
Too much of the Highway is prone to flooding and road closures. The Highway is regularly cut off by flooding at up to 33 sites. These regular interruptions impede the economic growth of regional Queensland and cuts off communities like Rockhampton for up to a fortnight.
That's not good enough if we want to be a strong and growing state.
Fixing the Bruce Highway is an integral part of the Coalition's plan to build a strong, prosperous economy and one that backs-in regional businesses and regional people.
We'll have more to say about Queensland roads in the weeks ahead. Yoyu've already heard about our long-standing commitment to the Toowoomba Range. A tribute to Ian MacFarlane's determination that this much-needed project will finally come to fruition.
We've been talking about the need to upgrade the Warrego Highway and continue to press the case for building the Brisbane to Melbourne railway line.
I believe that project is closer to fruition now than at any time. There is real interest in investing and making this great Australian dream a reality.
It will be a tremendous boost for regional communities and for the movement of freight between Melbourne, Brisbane and all of the centres in-between.
It will help to ensure there is capacity to service new and emerging industries opening up in those regions.
And all of that was just this week.
Of course, the week before the Coalition announced our northern Australia policy.
Again, it has been a team approach with people like Ian McDonald driving the vision for opening up and developing Australia north for growth and prosperity.
We know that getting Australia back into the black isn't just about budget cuts. It's about making the right investments for growth and prosperity - building a stronger economy boosts government revenue and reduces deficits.
And northern Queensland is in the vanguard of that push for very good reasons.
By 2050, Australia's will have 42 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 world is entering an era of food shortage and shrinking farm production as water and farmland are eaten up by urban sprawl. Australia must ensure we can meet our future domestic needs but also capitalise on ever-growing world food needs.
The rising populations and bourgeoning middle-classes among our nearest neighbours know they cannot continue to feed themselves and are looking outwards to Australia for solutions.
What I have noticed in the great debates in Australia about foreign investment is how much more overseas investors value Australia's land than we do ourselves.
Australian investors are slow to take up these opportunities. They allow the companies we've developed and built up over many years to slip into foreign hands without there being any Australian bidders.
It's high time that Australians woke up to the fact that this country has enormous resources that the world values highly. They prize them, we seem to just take them for granted.
We will invest in Australia's north to make sure it can achieve its full potential.
That food bowl, producing premium products, can help to double Australia's agricultural output.
It can build an energy export industry worth $150 billion to the economy, with a major focus on clean and efficient energy, providing major increases to resource exports.
It can help grow the tourist economy in northern Australia to 2 million international visitors a year.
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 have the capacity to make regional Australia, especially the north, more productive and support that growth.
Our vision for developing northern Australia and harnessing its potential will make the regions stronger and flourish as a 21st century bonanza for this country - especially for Queensland.
It's a vision that is achievable and embraces the north's existing strengths and natural advantages in agriculture, cattle production, energy generation, tourism growth, and education and health service expansion.
But, my fellow Queenslanders, I have to say to you that those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it.
Kevin Rudd has been on a travelling road show since his three years of plotting and poisonous scheming came to a head just three weeks ago. Revenge has driven Rudd and now clinging to power is consuming him.
It's all about Kevin. But what of the nation and its people?
Mr Rudd's return already resembles his first fall from grace - lots of promises, grand gestures, sweeping statements and nothing of substance.
It reminded me of his performance last time. When before the 2007 election he looked the Australian people in the eye in his television ads and said...
'I'm an economic conservative'. 'I'm committed to balancing the budget'.
Well, his very first budget had a $27.1 billion deficit. By 2009-10 it was up to $54.8 billion. He'd doubled our record budget deficit as a nation, then he doubled it again. He produced deficit after deficit. He was no economic conservative. He had no commitment to balancing the budget and I suggest he doesn't now.
Remember his promises on broadband. His first promise was that Labor would deliver fibre to the node, with speed of 100mbps to 98% of the population by Christmas 2008 at a cost a $4.7 billion.
But then, apparently on the way home from one of his overseas trips, on the back of a drink coaster, he devised NBN mark 2. That turned out to be a $43 billion program, with fibre to the premises. Now its cost will be more than $90 billion and it's still going up, hardly anyone is connected around the country and those who are, are choosing not to take up the 100mbps speeds.
Another failed Rudd initiative from his first time around.
And remember he was going to give a new computer to every secondary school student in Years 9 to 12, at a cost of $900 million to be completed by 2009. Well, you know what happened, eventually it became only Year 9 students and the cost blew out to $2.4 billion. Now it's been axed altogether with no money for maintenance or replacement.
Or the trade training centres that were to be provided at 2,600 secondary schools. Well, they are still building them. But no longer for every secondary school, now it's just for groups of schools.
And what about the 2020 Summit or FuelWatch or GroceryWatch or the roof batts fiasco that the Queensland Coroner had a bit to say about over recent days.
The Queensland Coroner nailed Kevin Rudd's administration for its negligence and incompetence in putting the program together.
Kevin Rudd also promised Labor would lower the tax burden, but there have been 30 new taxes, raising $70 billion more now than when the Coalition left office.
Remember he promised faithfully there wasn't going to be any change to superannuation laws. None whatsoever. In his 2009 budget he slashed $4 billion from super and cut the super co-contribution scheme. Twice he deferred the super contribution increases and they've doubled the tax to 30% for people with incomes above $300,000.
Kevin Rudd broke his promises to the people then and I have no confidence he won't do it again.
And what about the 200,000 homes that were going to get loans of up to $10,000 each under the Green Loans Scheme. After 1,000 got loans he axed the program, leaving 10,000 green loan assessors who paid for their own tuition with no work.
He promised in the 2010, and I make this point because I know it's on the agenda for this conference, four-year terms for members of parliament. Kevin Rudd promised a referendum on four-year terms for members of the House of Representatives and the Senate at the 2010 federal election. He axed his own referendum in January 2010.
They promised a coast guard with purposed-built vessels and dedicated training staff, but the promises was abandoned and in every budget Labor has cut quarantine and the customs services or both.
They promised to reduce regulation. Kevin Rudd said that for every new regulation he will repeal another. In Kevin's first term as Prime Minister he introduced 12,835 regulations and repealed just 58.
When it came to asylum seekers, Kevin Rudd also has form. He said during the 2007 election campaign, Labor's policy is that if people are intercepted on the high seas then vessels should be turned around. That was Kevin Rudd, not Tony Abbott.
Well, not one vessel was tuned around. Indeed, he started the avalanche of asylum seekers which has brought more than 47,000 people to Australia.
Now we're hearing it all again. His tough new stance is, if you come by boat you will not be allowed to stay in Australia. You'll have to go to PNG. But it seems that's only singles men who come - families and women and children can stay in Australia at least for a few years.
So, I'm not sure this announcement is going to ruin the people smuggler's business plan. It just changes it a bit and makes it more dangerous. Women and children first will be the model, and sadly this horrible business will continue.
Before the 2007 Kevin Rudd described government advertising as obscene and a cancer on Australia democracy. Under Labor there would be no government advertising six months ahead of a federal election.
I fancy there's more to come, that is, if he can find any more space among the wall-to-wall advertising we are enduring at the present time.
So this is a man who has the record. He's got one other promise that I'd like to tell you about. On 17 March 2008 he said, 'we will honour every promise made to the Australian people'.
Well, if he can't honour his promise to honour his promise, why should we listen the next time he makes promises?
Ladies and gentlemen, a carbon tax, by another name, is not any sweeter. It will still be $24.15 for another year. It will still apply to road transport from next year - making everything we truck into regional Australia more expensive and everything we truck out less competitive.
It still unfairly hits families - especially in the regions, and makes businesses and our exports less competitive.
Is it any wonder that we've lost over 110,000 jobs in manufacturing since Kevin Rudd was first elected as Prime Minister? The party that is supposed to be the friend of working families has seen 110,000 jobs in manufacturing scrapped. And that number goes up week by week.
Only the Coalition can be counted on to abolish the carbon tax and Rudd's ETS immediately and in one fell swoop.
Then he created a whole new fiasco by failing to consult with the struggling Australian car industry over his FBT changes. That's what happens when you make policy on the run.
The same policy on the run style he displayed last time.
We've seen this all before. The longer he goes on the more we see the same old Kevin and same old Labor up to their same old tricks.
And the more people will remember why three years ago they knew Kevin had to go.
It didn't work out too well last time, so how can we trust any of them this time. Labor's Kevin-Julia-Kevin revolving door approach to the Office of Prime Minister is contemptuous of the Australian people.
As for regional Australians, it doesn't make much difference, we have been ignored by both of them.
When Julia Gillard was Prime Minister her idea of an expedition to the country was to go to Western Sydney. Kevin Rudd spent more time globetrotting than he ever spent in regional communities.
Kevin Rudd's legacy of policy failures are many:
It was Kevin who started to borrow $100 million every single day.
It was Kevin who got Australia to $200 billion in debt, with that debt projected to climb past $300 billion around the end of this year.
He was the one who wasted $8 billion on school hall rip-offs and who was the architect of the roofs batts disaster.
He was the one who dismantled our border protection policies and allowed asylum seekers to flood in.
He's the one who attacked the mining industry with a super tax that failed.
It was Kevin who did a back-flip on the emissions trading scheme and then voted for the world's biggest carbon tax.
His mistakes and his failures have driven up the cost of electricity bills, groceries, health insurance, childcare and education.
And now Kevin is back, again leading a divided Labor Party - with a staggering seven Cabinet ministers not willing to work with him.
Enough is enough!
Kevin is not the solution, he's the cause of the problem. It's still the same Labor, rotten and split at its core.
Its preoccupation with self-interest makes it incapable of governing in the national interest.
Meanwhile, Australian families and businesses in regional communities and across the nation are paying over the odds when it comes to the cost of living, as the carbon tax just makes life harder and harder.
I thought it was telling that not once in last week's hour-long National Press Club address did Kevin Rudd mention regional Australia or any regional issues at all. No reference to agriculture, no reference to people in regional communities. In a whole hour, he couldn't find a second to talk about regional Australia.
Yes, indeed, ladies and gentlemen, Kevin Rudd is back and nothing has changed.
In the weeks and months ahead, you'll be asked at railway stations, shopping centres, bus stops and community centres across Australia, how the Coalition will make life better for all Australians?
Here are some of the things you can tell them that we'll be doing to get Australian ahead again:
1. We'll be abolishing the carbon tax and the ETS because you don't improve the environment by damaging the economy.
2. We'll make substantial savings in government expenditure because governments, like families and businesses, can't keep living beyond their means and because lower spending will make it possible to reduce taxes responsibly.
3. We'll restore border protection policies that have been proven to work - so that people come to this country the right way.
4. We'll reinvest in the regions and the north, which has been gutted under Labor.
5. We'll cut $1 billion a year in red tape and introduce a one-stop shop for environmental approvals to slash green tape.
6. We'll scrap the mining tax because you don't improve the economy by penalising our most successful industries.
7. We'll put local communities, not bureaucrats, in charge of our public schools and hospitals so that communities get better education and health services.
8. We'll restore jobs growth by creating one million new jobs over five years and two million new jobs over the next decade.
And we have form too. We've done it before.
The Howard Government created 2.4 million jobs, oversaw a 21% increase in real wages and saw Australian families almost triple net household wealth.
These are the right priorities at the right time for Australians, so our people can take back the right to a brighter future. The kind of future we all want for our families and our country.
Only the Coalition offers a fresh start, stable government, strong leadership and a clear direction for a more prosperous Australia.
Thank you, and join us now in this critical election campaign.
