Address to New South Wales National Party State Conference
14th June, 2014
Well, thank you, Niall, very much for that welcome and may I congratulate you on all you've achieved as President of the Party in New South Wales. They've certainly been golden years for the Nationals and we very much appreciate the leadership that you've provided in this role as the party's chairman. And can I welcome Bede Burke, who's going to be your new chairman. We all know and respect Bede greatly and I'm certain that he will also lead this party with great distinction.Can I also acknowledge Christine Ferguson, our Federal President of the Party, obviously a child of the New South Wales Party and who's now leading our national organisation and doing so very well.
In particular, may I recognise my federal parliamentary colleagues, both in the House of Representatives and the Senate, Barnaby Joyce, our deputy leader and all of those who have played a part in our federal team. Andrew Stoner and Ministers and members of the New South Wales Parliament, and delegates - the people who make up the party in New South Wales, the champions of our organisation at the local level.
I was reminded yesterday that this is actually the first conference that New South Wales has had since the federal election and so even though it seems a long time ago, it would be remiss of me not to take this opportunity to thank everybody in the party in New South Wales for the contribution that you've made to help us achieve the result that occurred across the nation.
You've had a wonderfully successful state election and that's followed up with a really excellent result here in New South Wales federally. And that has been achieved because of the hard work at the local level. The fact that your branches remain active, that your people are prepared to do the work and knock on the doors and do the letterbox drop, and raise the money that's necessary in this day and age to run a successful campaign, that's very much appreciated.
And I want to acknowledge the successes also of your candidates. We won a substantial increase in our representation in the Federal Parliament. Indeed, it's the best representation the Nationals have had in Federal Parliament for many, many years, and most of that can be attributed to the results here in New South Wales.
You've had a few lean years, so the time was coming, but congratulations on everything that you've done. Kevin Hogan managed to beat a real Labor warhorse, Janelle Saffin, in Page, with a 6.7 per cent swing.
Barnaby picked up the seat of New England with a 29 per cent improvement on the primary vote - 29 per cent.
And David Gillespie brought Lyne back into the fold with an 18.8 per cent swing.
Our sitting members, Luke Hartsuyker, John Cobb, and Mark Coulton and Michael McCormack all had really excellent results. And can I particularly mention Mark Coulton, who managed to scrape up 72.35 per cent of the vote.
Now, these people did remarkably well, but we had some other candidates who deserve recognition, who went really close, but didn't quite make it. Take Matthew Fraser, in Richmond. He got a 16.4 per cent swing on the primaries, but it wasn't just quite enough to get rid of Justine Elliot, but he certainly turned it into a marginal seat. It was a wonderful result from a great candidate.
And Michael Johnsen, an 8.8 per cent two-party swing in Hunter that reduced Joel Fitzgibbon's majority to just three-and-a-half per cent.
And let's not forget Angry Anderson, 10 and a half per cent of the vote in Throsby was a very good effort.
And I thank all of our Senate team - those who got elected in particular, but let's not forget Alan Hay as well, who put in such a terrific effort in a tough position.
So I just say thank you to all those people. It was a great result in New South Wales. You restored New South Wales to, I guess, its rightful place in the National Party room, having the greatest numbers of all the states, and we now, of course, expect you to build upon that.
As a result of the election result, there are three new Nationals ministers, all from New South Wales - three people who have not served in the Ministry before and I refer, of course, to Luke Hartsuyker, to Fiona Nash, and Barnaby Joyce, who is our deputy leader.
Barnaby has a key role in our leadership group, attends all of our leadership meetings, in the morning and is involved very much in planning the strategy for our party as well as the important task of looking after agriculture, a key portfolio for the Nationals.
Luke has got the employment area, and you just heard him talking about his role in trying to rebuild the employment network, the Work for the Dole scheme, an absolutely critical part of making sure that we're able to deliver as a government in the future.
And Fiona, in health, rural health, an absolute priority that you would see on every conference agenda and she has also got a few of those really tough areas, like food policy. I've been there and know how tough that one is, but she's just the right sort of person to carry it through.
And then we've got two parliamentary secretaries, one of whom is Michael McCormack and he is in the finance portfolio, involved in the Budget - all the sort of work that's needed to be undertaken to get things going. So New South Wales is very much at the heart and the centre of our new parliamentary team, which is performing very well - which is performing well.
We have a good mix of people in our Party Room from business, from agriculture, from country and city who represent our constituency very effectively in the Parliament and in what is a very cooperative and smooth working relationship with our Coalition partners, we've been able to achieve key things - key things to the Nationals agenda to ensure that those people who live outside the capital cities, those in rural and regional areas get a fair share of our nation's growth and prosperity.
Ladies and gentlemen, we were elected with a clear mandate to get our country moving again, to restore our Budget and to build a better life for all Australians. We promised at the last election that we would repair the Budget and we would get our finances back in order to build the sort of strong and prosperous economy that's absolutely essential if we're going to have a secure nation, create the jobs and build the business opportunities for our country.
We have an economic-action strategy, which is designed to strengthen the economy and to take pressures off families and to provide better opportunities for business. You all know that after six years of Labor waste and mismanagement, the legacy of the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd Government was five record Budget deficits.
And what's worse, their projected deficits into the future added another $123 billion to our debt. Our debt is headed for $667 billion if nothing is done to turn it around. We are already paying $1 billion a month interest on Labor's debt, if it were allowed to drift on to a figure of 667 billion, that would be about $3 billion every month.
Now, Labor and some others seem to think that debt doesn't matter, that somehow or other it will look after itself. The Fairy Godmother is going to come along and wave her wand and it will drift away. Well, I don't know the bankers that offer that kind of a contract. The bankers I know expect their interest to be paid, they expect their redemption to be paid, and they expect you to get on with it and to be taking a responsible attitude to your duty to repay the money that has been borrowed.
Labor never had that approach. Yes, it will be paid off one day, but it doesn't need to happen yet. As though somehow or other things would miraculously turn around with or without any kind of government intervention. You know if we didn't have to pay $1 billion a month the sort of things that you're debating on the conference floor and delegates are saying, well, we can't afford that, may well be affordable.
We could build the whole of the Pacific Highway to which we're committed in six months, if we didn't have to pay this interest. We could build the Snowy Mountain Scheme every month if we didn't have to pay interest on the debt that Labor racked up in just six years. Imagine what would have been had they been allowed to stay longer. So our Budget, which was brought down last month, had as a key central focus rebuilding, restoring our economy and giving our country the chance it needs to build a better future.
Now, you've heard a about the Budget and the difficult decisions there have been and how tough it is. We had to make these decisions because otherwise things would have got infinitely worse. Even with Labor's big Budget deficit, they were passing off to the future outside of the forward estimates, the big increases in expenditure. They couldn't balance the Budget now, but they were promising much bigger spending in five-years' time. Remember we budget for four years at the federal level, so we have four years of figures but Labor was promising big expenditure, most starting in year five.
The Gonski education reforms, for instance. The big ramp up in expenditure was in years five and six. The hospital deal that was done with the states, the big ramp up in expenditure was beyond year five. Foreign aid - they kept talking about how we were boosting foreign aid, but it only started in years five and six and beyond.
We were ordering all sorts of Defence equipment, but it wasn't going to be paid for over the forward estimates. It was all way out there in the future. Labor was leading people to believe that we had a National Disability Insurance Scheme all ready to go, but, in fact, the funding was all out beyond years five and six.
The trouble for us, of course, is that Labor's year five in our first Budget was our year four. We had to bring it to account. We had to deal with this massive ramp up in expenditure, which was scheduled for one year beyond Labor's Budget period.
And so that's why a lot of these decisions just had to be made. They had to be made now because they could no longer be put off. They were no longer beyond the forward estimates. Much of what we're doing in this Budget is about trimming future growth rather than making cuts that severely impact on people now, pensioners are not going to have any reductions in their pension. They're going to continue to get their increases every March and every September as has been happening over recent years on exactly the same indexes. There's not going to be any changes to the rules for the pension in these three years.
But beyond then, we have to deal with some of the structural issues that are affecting our economy. You know that by 2050 there will be twice as many people in our country over 65 years of age as there are now. There will be four times as many people over 85 as there are now. One in three children born today can expect to live to 100.
If we're going to provide a safety net for the people who are living much longer than they did previously and will be a much larger proportion of the population, then we have to make sure that there are the economic circumstances in place and there is a plan to be able to fund those kinds of benefits.
Bill Shorten said in his Budget Reply Speech - and there wasn't too much in it that was memorable - but one thing he did say was that by 2050 there would be two-and-a-half people in the workforce for every one living in retirement - two and a half only in the workforce for every one living in retirement.
So that means there's a potentially enormous bill for our welfare sector. You know, we live longer because we have better medical treatment, but the medical treatment is more expensive and we want to have the best for everyone. And we've got a right to expect a higher standard of living. So we must make sure that that is affordable; that the safety net is sustainable for the long term.
And that means having an economic strategy to ensure that those who are able to care for themselves are encouraged and supported to do so, but that there is a solid and secure safety net to catch those who, for one reason or another, have not been able to put aside for themselves and will need some kind of additional help or those with disabilities or disadvantage who will always require the help of their fellow citizens.
We want a welfare system that is sustainable, that is manageable. We want people to care for themselves where they can but we have an obligation in a caring and fair society, to make sure that for those who need help, that help will be available. And some of the work that Luke is doing in relation to employment and providing opportunities for people with disabilities, that's a key part of ensuring that we have a strategy that's useable for the future.
Let me also in this regard make a couple of comments about the hospital and schools funding and, indeed, other assistance for the states. I know there has been suggestions that the Federal Budget has placed an unfair burden on the states and I do acknowledge that this is a Budget that contains some pain. It contains some really tough decisions that we would not have wanted to make but we have tried to share the pain as evenly as we can. There are significant cuts in some area of federal government programs.
There is a new levy on higher income earners so that they will pay a larger share but there is some pain to be borne also by state and local government, which have become increasingly dependent upon the Federal Government for sources of finance.
But just so the debate can be put in proper context, let me tell you that hospital funding in New South Wales under the last Labor budget amounted to $4.2 billion. In our first Budget, it's up 7.8 per cent to 4.6 billion. Next year, the increase will be almost 10 per cent and the total will top 5 billion. It will then go up another 9.7 per cent to 5.5 billion in 2016-17 and by 7.7 per cent to 5.9 billion in 2017-18. So hospital funding by then will be 40 per cent higher than what it was in the last Labor budget in New South Wales.
When it comes to schools, Commonwealth spending in government schools will rise by almost 50 per cent by 2017-18 relative to the last Labor budget and for non-government schools, the increase is around 25 per cent. There will be $1.4 billion more for schools in New South Wales than there was in the last Labor budget. So there is a significant commitment to enable there to be modest growth within these key areas of service and we are determined to make sure that there is the kind of funding available that will ensure that services can be provided for all.
Ladies and gentlemen, there is, though, a double focus in our Budget. On one side, we know that we have to trim expenditure and eliminate waste wherever we possibly can. We need to ensure that we get value for money in the activities that we undertake. But we know that there are two ways in which you can balance your budget, whether that's a household budget or a Federal Government Budget.
One is to trim your expenditure, in particular, in our instance, to trim the growth in expenditure, but the other is to boost your income. If you can bring in more income, well, then you have an opportunity to be able to do more. In this Budget, we have actually made significant taxation cuts. Tax cuts will deliver $5.7 billion extra to the taxpayers and that includes one-and-a-half percent cut in the company tax rate. And, of course, we are determined to abolish the carbon tax and the mining tax. The abolition of the carbon tax alone will save $550 a year for every Australian household on average. That is a benefit which will improve the spending power of people in their own homes.
But we have also made the biggest investment in Australian history in infrastructure. The centrepiece of this budget is our $50 billion infrastructure package. And let me say, as Infrastructure Minister, I'm very proud of that package and I know it's going to deliver real benefits right across the nation: in our cities, in our country, in the most remote parts of the nation.
New South Wales' share of that $50 billion is just under $15 billion, the biggest share of any of the Australian states.
And there are some really exciting projects. You've heard about some of those in the capital city and, indeed, the WestConnex project to which the Commonwealth will be contributing 1.5 billion plus a concessional loan of $2 billion is probably the single biggest road infrastructure project in Australia's history and will really transform the flow of traffic around Sydney.
There's also $405 million in our Budget for what's now called NorthConnex, another exciting project to help smooth Sydney's traffic flow. There will be $692 million for the northern Sydney rail corridor and another $140 million to the Port Botany rail link.
In Western Sydney, we're committing 2.9 billion to upgrade the road network for the fastest growing part of the city. Around two million people already live in Western Sydney and Western Sydney's share of the population will dramatically grow but it doesn't have the road network to make the area liveable. We've also made the decision that Sydney's second airport will be built in Western Sydney. It will be an airport primarily for the people who live in western Sydney.
There are two million people there who want to fly and go to other parts of the world and other parts of the country and they've got a long drive now to KSA. So primarily, the new Badgerys Creek airport will service the people who live in that area. It will attract services, I'm sure, from regional New South Wales but also interstate and overseas. After all, two million people is about the population of Brisbane and Brisbane has a large, vibrant airport. Why wouldn't Western Sydney also have a strong airport to service the people of that region?
We have made a decision that has been deferred for decades and now we're going to get on with the job of building it. Within 12 months, we should have an agreement as to who is going to build the airport. By that stage we will have designs available so the construction can start just as soon as possible.
But not all of the money to be spent on roads is going to the capital city. Indeed, there's a massive investment in regional New South Wales. I've already mentioned the $5.6 billion commitment to the Pacific Highway, to have the road raised to four lanes standard all the way to Queensland.
And that has been made possible because we've restored the old 80/20 split, with the Commonwealth picking up 80 per cent of the cost.
But there's lots of other roads that we're committed to as well. On the Great Western Highway, there will be $174 million between Katoomba and Lithgow. Olivia Hill will be built along the New England Highway and, of course, yesterday, we announced a Queanbeyan bypass. There is $16 million more for Bucketts Way, $3 million for Kennedy Drive in Tweed Heads, $15 million to complete the Moree bypass.
The Mount Ousley upgrade will receive $42 million and the Newell Road projects $63 million. The Newcastle Port duplication of the Tourle Street Bridge will cost another $40 million from the Commonwealth Government. We're committed to the Richmond Bridge for another $80 million. The Riverside Drive at Nambucca Heads, which I'm sure Luke Hartsuyker will be pleased about $5 million.
We will build the Scone level crossing overpasses and deliver a very substantial improvement to the traffic flow around Scone, and we will begin the planning of the Tenterfield heavy vehicle bypass. Those are the few examples of the specific projects we will be funding.
But on top of that, $2.5 billion has been committed over six years to extend the Roads to Recovery program for local roads and streets right across the nation. There will be a double payment in 15-16 to help councils get ahead of some of the backlog of works that inevitably builds up. There will be $565 million for the Black Spots program, and a range of projects were announced just this week to get rid of some of those accident areas on state and local roads across the country.
We will also be beginning this next financial year the Bridges Renewal Program that we promised at the last election to enable repairs to, and replacement of, some of the bridges that are falling down around the nation. We're told there's close to 30,000 of these bridges across Australia. So it's a big task but I hope the Commonwealth's $300 million will help start make a difference.
And then, the Heavy Vehicle Productivity program, which will build more passing lanes, build more rest stops and more road facilities for the heavy transport industry. And let me remind you that all of the money that is going to come from the excise indexation will be hypothecated to roads. It will be spent on roads in Australia.
But we've acted in other areas as well: our commitments to agriculture include a $100 million competitive grants program for increased applied research and technology; $20 million for stronger bio-security and quarantine system; $15 million to support small exporters with export costs to help them remain competitive; $8 million to assist with the registration of chemicals, both agricultural and veterinary, that are so critical to modern farming; and $9 million for new fisheries projects, including OceanWatch.
There will be a $320 million drought package to help those parts, mainly in New South Wales and Queensland, that are suffering from drought so severely at the present time. And there will be $2 billion to continue the national land care program, our new Green Army and working for the country projects.
These are examples of our commitment to regional Australia and our commitment to building a stronger economy. On top of all of that, our $1 billion National Stronger Regions Fund program will commence next calendar year and provide funding for projects right across the nation to help, particularly, those communities where unemployment is high or there's a low socioeconomic status.
So the Budget has a lot of positive messages. It includes the tough decisions that have had to be made but it does demonstrate that, as a government, we've got confidence in our nation. We believe that with help and support from a government that actually believes in the progress and development of our nation that we can, indeed, secure a strong future for all Australians.
The core message that I want to leave with you today is the determination of our Cabinet room and our party room to back the Budget because we deeply believe that what we are doing is crucial in terms of where our country is headed. Julia Gillard said to Kevin Rudd when she knifed him that she did so because their government had lost its way. I'm not sure that it ever found its way and it certainly didn't get any better after Julia Gillard had taken over, not after Kevin Rudd had taken over.
Indeed, we know that through spending and policy decisions that are now so infamous that we don't even have to mention their name, it just got worse and worse. The biggest problem and the most disastrous impact has been on our finances and the overall policy settings that they set really changed the mood of the country. Labor unashamedly had played to the leaners and not the lifters. Labor created the myth that everybody could have whatever they wanted, when they wanted it, and it could go on forever.
This alleged limitless money for schools and hospitals and aid and disability services - always way out beyond the forward estimates - was perhaps the most spectacular and most irresponsible of their mirages. I believe that Australians are intrinsically not leaners; we are lifters. We all want to do our part to build a better country. If we take the easy road or the populous route, as Rudd and Gillard and Swann tried, we won't arrive at any kind of utopia, we will end up where they were taking us: a fool's paradise, where all the roads to utopia inevitably lead. We simply have to be prepared to make the tough decisions.
Now, in the latest strategy, in the years of Rudd and Gillard, they were certainly helped by other serial offenders, like Iemma and Rees and Kenneally, and in other states, Rann and Brumby and Bligh and Beattie. This is the Labor way. Each of them compounded the Rudd and the Gillard legacy and turned both the policy and the economic dilemma that we face into a situation that was not just a Commonwealth problem; it was a state problem, a local problem, a national crisis.
So it is important for us to stay the course. We have got to deal pragmatically with the tough calls. It's crucial that we do it. New South Wales is setting about that through the course of the government and as they plan for the next election. It is so important that sound and solid and safe and reliable and responsible management is maintained both in New South Wales and at the federal level. We've had enough of Labor's shonky economics and the long line of Labor governments.
You are preparing for a critical election here also now in New South Wales. We've got to be prepared to stay the course. We've got to be prepared to take remedial action. It won't happen unless we take the action, unless we do what's necessary. We must not get ourselves lost on the road to utopia; that's the fool's paradise. We've got to get on with the job of making sure we have a strong country and then keeping it that way.
Thank you, ladies and gentlemen.
