Keynote Address - Nationals’ 2012 Federal Conference
15th September, 2012
Hotel RealmCanberra
10:30am, Saturday 15 September 2012
NATIONALS President John Tanner, Deputy Leader Senator Nigel Scullion, Senate Leader Barnaby Joyce, Deputy Premiers Andrew Stoner and Peter Ryan, Ministers, Members and Senators, delegates, ladies and gentlemen,
Can I begin by congratulating the Northern Territory and someone who isn't here, Terry Mills, the new Chief Minister of the Northern Territory, for on their great election victory three Saturdays ago.
Another Labor government has fallen, to be replaced by a government with a vision for a better future.
I also want to pay tribute to my deputy, Nigel Scullion, for his role in the CLP victory, which saw a dramatic and important 15% swing in the regions outside of Darwin.
I only ever get to speak to Nigel during parliamentary sittings. That's because as Shadow Minister for Indigenous Affairs he is forever in Aboriginal communities across the country.
I want to also want to express my appreciation and that of my parliamentary colleagues to John Tanner who retires as our Federal President after the conference.
John has been a great friend and colleague over the past six years and as president has provided committed and enthusiastic leadership for our organisation.
It is obvious to all that he leaves The Nationals' presidency with a Party that is so much stronger - politically and organisationally - and has built a Party much more able to address the challenges of the modern political age.
John, we thank you for your leadership and wish you good health and every happiness for the future.
As for The Nationals, we are now at the business end of the federal political cycle. By this time next year we should be deep into an election campaign. And it cannot come soon enough!
The cost of doing business is rising, but commodity prices are plummeting, our international competitiveness is in free-fall and business and consumer confidence has been shattered.
Family budgets are being squeezed and becoming harder to manage.
Beyond the city haze, people in regional, rural and remote communities already pay over the odds.
For too many families the notion of job security has become a day-by-day proposition.
Parents worry about a future for their children which might be worse than what they have today.
Cash handouts to a few do not cover up the litany of government incompetence and failure.
After two years of Julia Gillard's failures, the extreme dogma of the Greens and the sanctimonious grandstanding of the Independents, Australians have had enough.
The people want to cut Labor loose.
Federally, we take great heart from the clean sweep that has seen Western Australian, Victorian, NSW, Queensland and the Northern Territory elections emphatically choose Liberal-National governments.
It is a domino-effect that, federally, we have a responsibility to continue.
At each Labor fall, The Nationals have consolidated our place in Australia's political landscape.
We've recorded historic victories. Quietly, but surely, we are going from strength to strength... and there is more to come.
But it is important to understand why.
Over the past five years we've done the soul-searching and we've done the hard yards. We've been in regional communities across the country listening to people... and we have come back resolute, with a unity of purpose.
The Nationals unashamedly stand for the advancement of regional Australia and the interests of regional people.
In an era when most Australians live in the cities, that role is all the more important for our nation.
Wealth for regions
Regional communities are hungry for a positive vision that promotes confidence, opportunity, investment and growth.
A vision that creates jobs, better jobs and job security to give working families the confidence they need and deserve.
Usually it's the job they love, and in the communities they live in.
Labor's social engineering to shutdown mining towns, fishing villages, timber towns, to flip the switch on power station communities, to pick winners and losers in Murray-Darling Basin communities and tell people they should take lower paying jobs in imaginary green industries somewhere else, puts ideology above people.
As a political vision, it is blind to the wishes and needs of regional Australia.
The Nationals assert that our nation's future very much depends on putting regional Australia at the heart of a national economic and social recovery.
That the people in the regions matter... their way of life matters... what they produce for this country matters.
The overwhelming bulk of Australia's economic wealth is generated in regional Australia and always has been... mining activity, food and fibre production, manufacturing and tourism are all national icons of Australian innovation and success.
And they are also distinctly regional assets.
They need to be harnessed, not taxed to oblivion.
Since 2008, 110,000 manufacturing jobs have been lost in Australia.
In August, the Prime Minister's Manufacturing Report warned that another 85,000 manufacturing jobs are at risk.
We are now up to the fourth iteration of Labor's Murray-Darling Basin Plan. Five years on, there is no solution and no certainty for the 2.1 million Australians who live in Basin communities.
Labor's rush to buy back water before a plan was in place has undermined farms, businesses, families and entire communities.
We need to be investing in water-saving infrastructure to deliver water to the environment without pulling the economic plug on local towns and industries.
Regional Australia has been dismissed by the Rudd-Gillard governments. They have never had a Cabinet Minister who lived outside a capital city.
Well, The Nationals say loudly and proudly 'no more'.
It's time regional people were heard, listened to and respected.
Regional Australia punches above its weight and we will be there fighting for regional businesses and families.
Through the WA Nationals' Royalties for Regions policy, The Nationals' Victorian Regional Growth Fund, The Nationals' Restart NSW Fund, and Queensland's new Royalties for the Regions program, we are addressing years of regional neglect and saying 'no more'.
When wealth is generated in a region we expect that a fair share of the resulting government revenue must be returned to that region and to regional Australia.
And we also insist on fairness in spending.
People in capital cities see more of their tax dollars spent on services in their communities than anyone living in the regions.
A 2009 study by the National Institute of Industry and Economic Research showed that, on average, it costs rural residents five-times more to access essential services.
The biggest disadvantages are for hospitals, residential care services, secondary schools, TAFE colleges and universities.
At this event last year, I launched our Regional Investment Strategy, advancing initiatives to fix these imbalances.
Today, I restate our pledge to create a Regional Fair Share Fund to support local projects that build stronger communities and deliver new facilities specifically for people beyond the capital cities.
And we will guarantee that when funding is provided under regional development programs, those grants will actually go into regional Australia.
Under Labor's federal budget this year, 80% of regional development funding went to Melbourne, Adelaide and Hobart.
Specifically, $2 million for a Greek Culture Centre and $1.5 million for the Islamic Museum, both in Melbourne.
$3.4 million for an enterprise hub in Adelaide, and $8.7 million for a sports and community precinct in Hobart.
These may be worthy projects but they are hardly regional. And it's not the first time. Labor's earlier so-called 'regional' funding announcements included:
* $480 million for the Perth Airport roads - their biggest regional project ever,
* $10 million to the Geelong Football Stadium and another $10 million for the Geelong Library and Heritage Centre, and
* $6 million for a big screen TV at Dandenong - in suburban Melbourne.
How many rural communities would have loved just a small part of this money for a local kindergarten, community hall or a decent road?
Putting money back into the regions is not just payback for years of effort.
Genuine investment in regional infrastructure and communities is vital for national security, boosting productivity, economic growth, diversity and social cohesion.
Australia stands to reap huge opportunities if the regions are supported and developed. So it is investment long overdue.
There are tangible opportunities in resources, energy, research and development, education, food production, smart manufacturing, tourism, services, housing, value adding... a raft of areas where Australia's natural assets, and the ingenuity of our people, can thrive.
But the starting point is it demands a fair share of the dollars flowing out of regional Australia being poured back in.
It's a national priority and a priority for The Nationals.
Pacific Highway
Speaking of priorities, The Nationals have always known that our road networks are the arteries that feed the national economy.
They are the highways that connect us as people and deliver Australia's commodities to markets here and to our ports that are the gateways to the world.
Whether it is local roads and streets or national highways and railways, a quality land transport system is vital to a strong economy.
It was John Anderson that drove the creation of AusLink - Australia's first national roads and rail funding plan. I was Transport Minister when the last Coalition Government committed the necessary funding to complete the four lanning of the Hume Highway between Sydney and Melbourne.
We know that Australia's freight task will double by 2030 - but along the eastern seaboard it will treble.
Communities and commuters from Sydney to the Queensland border have been promised a four-lane Pacific Highway for years.
Labor pledged a duplicated Pacific Highway by 2016, but it has turned into just another broken promise.
Now Labor is saying any future money from the Commonwealth will have to be matched 50/50 by the New South Wales Government - even though Labor paid more than 80% of the cost of projects on the highway when state Labor was in office in NSW.
Labor knows that a deeply in debt NSW government cannot afford a deal like that.
The people deserve no less than what they were promised. Minister Albanese is playing politics with people's lives.
Today I am announcing that the next Liberal-National Coalition Government will provide the funding to complete the four lanning of the Pacific Highway all the way from Sydney to the Queensland border.
On top of the $3.56 billion already included in the federal budget, the Coalition will redirect $2.08 billion, which Labor had allocated to the Epping to Parramatta rail line - and which the O'Farrell Government does not regard as a priority at this time - to guarantee the completion of the Pacific Highway.
This new funding commitment brings the Commonwealth's funding offer up to the standard 80:20 ratio, and puts an end to Minister Albanese's phoney and discredited stand-off with NSW.
It now means that every day Robert Oakeshott and Tony Windsor keep this dysfunctional government in office is a day longer before the Pacific Highway is completed.
Once this project is completed, Australia will have a four-lane national highway connecting the country's three largest cities - Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane - with four-lane connections to Sale, Toowoomba, Gympie and other centres.
Bruce Highway
The Coalition has already announced major new road projects over recent months in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth and recommitted to Tasmania's Midland Highway and the Toowoomba Range Crossing... we will have more to say on roads... not just highways, but local roads and bridges too.
As many of you will know, in July, Darren Chester, Paul Neville, Ken O'Dowd and George Christensen, and half a dozen state members of parliament, joined me on a five-day road trip up Queensland's Bruce Highway from Brisbane to Cairns.
Tragically, the Bruce Highway accounts for 1-in-6 of all deaths on the national highway network and the highway is regularly disrupted by flooding at no fewer than 33 sites along its 1,652 kilometre stretch.
The new Queensland government has set up a Bruce Highway Crisis group to assess how to best achieve the huge task of building a decent Bruce.
I serve on this group and I can assure you the federal Coalition stands ready to also play our part with Queensland to build a safe, all weather, efficient highway.
Inland rail
To shift track, we remain committed to the inland rail project. Joining Brisbane to Melbourne through western NSW. This is one of Australia's most exciting rail projects.
Done right, it will improve the capacity, reliability and productivity of the highest growth freight corridor in Australia.
But it will also provide great new opportunities for communities dotted along and around its path.
None of us - not the affected communities, the farmers and mineral resource projects across the regions, not the businesses that are waiting to use it, the investors or the regional and national economies - can afford for this project to fail.
Remember the more than $50 billion Labor splashed out during the global economic downturn? Why wasn't this an opportunity to fast-track the Inland Rail project?
That sort of forward thinking, projecting down the line wasn't just late, it never left the station.
Labor is going slow on the Inland Rail and does not even propose to start construction before 2020. I am determined to drive this project forward and to work with the private sector to make it happen.
Kalgoorlie Intermodal
Last month I travelled with Tony Crook to inspect the proposed transport hub in Kalgoorlie-Boulder and the PortLink project, linking Western Australia's major ports at Esperance, Port Hedland, Karratha, Fremantle and Oakajee through Kalgoorlie.
It would make Kalgoorlie WA's gateway to the eastern states.
It is a visionary national project.
Locally it will create jobs, for Western Australia it will mean safer roads, more connected regional communities and reduced heavy vehicle traffic in and around Perth.
Nationally, it means a more efficient transport network and will allow the resources industry to have greater and more timely access to ports and the eastern states. That means they will be more competitive on the global stage.
PortLink is now in the planning stage, and I think it is an exciting project. I look forward to working with Tony Crook to see how we can make this project happen sooner rather than later.
FIRB
All my parliamentary colleagues report that Australians are increasingly concerned about sales of agricultural land and agribusinesses to foreign interests.
While the government says nothing has changed, the Queensland Foreign Land Ownership Register shows that the amount of land owned by foreigners across the state has trebled over the past five years.
FIRB figures show that foreign purchases of Australian agribusiness has increased from an average of less than $300 million a year to over $2 billion a year since Labor was elected.
There are probably no farms left in Australia that would require scrutiny by the Foreign Investment Review Board before being sold to an overseas investor.
That is probably irrelevant anyway, as the FIRB has never said no to a foreign bid to buy an Australian farm.
Yet, foreign investment rules essentially preclude a foreign investor from buying a suburban house - let alone a whole street.
It is surely anomalous that a foreign investor can buy every farm in the district without even asking, but if they want to buy a house in town - no matter how humble - they must obtain FIRB approval.
No one should say that The Nationals oppose foreign investment. We have seen magnificent examples of foreign investment bringing capital, innovation, vitality and skills to our communities.
There is no doubt that Australia would not have the industry, commerce, agriculture, services and the lifestyle we enjoy were it not for the investment that has come to this country from overseas since our first settlement.
Sadly, too often Australians do not appreciate the real value of our land and natural resources or are too impatient to invest.
We value foreign investment and we will need it always. But we do have a right and a responsibility to scrutinise purchase proposals to ensure they are not contrary to our national interest.
Over the past year I have chaired a Coalition Working Group to develop policy to improve the transparency and scrutiny of new foreign investment proposals.
Our policy discussion paper proposes:
* A national register of foreign acquisitions to ensure that all Australians have access to accurate information on what land and agribusinesses are owned by foreign interests.
* A lower threshold for FIRB assessment of proposed farm and agribusiness purchases to ensure that more acquisitions are subjected to the national interest test.
All proposed acquisitions by sovereign wealth funds and state-owned enterprises will continue to automatically attract assessment.
* A broader skills-set for FIRB membership, including agricultural expertise, and increasing its size to seven members.
* A statement by the Treasurer to emphasise the importance of food security in assessing the national interest.
Having better checks and balances in place does not threaten foreign investment in agriculture.
But it does enable Australians to have an accurately informed debate on foreign ownership to make sure that when issues of concern arise they can be addressed.
For The Nationals, this is not an academic discussion. It goes to the heart of Australia's capacity to remain in control of our own destiny.
Carbon tax
Labor's carbon tax is only 10 weeks old, but it is already clearly marked as yet another example of disastrous Labor policy failure.
You can't fix the carbon tax, it must be axed.
The Nationals opposed the carbon tax from the beginning. The Nationals will ensure it is abolished in government.
With each new backflip Labor proves how chaotic and untrustworthy they are.
They have been making it up as they go along.
There was to be 'no carbon tax under the government I lead' - then there was.
Labor could never explain how the tax would work or why it would change the climate.
Now, as the rest of the world walks away from carbon taxes, Labor is ringing the change.
The Greens have agreed to remove the carbon tax floor price because they believe the carbon price will go up and up - meaning Australian businesses and families will pay more and more. Labor says the price will go down... so why charge more than double the world price now?
Australians' lived experience of the carbon tax is already turning into a nightmare for small businesses and families. As the bills start coming in, the costs keep mounting and it is getting harder to keep the household budget or shopfront afloat.
Factories close, new projects are cancelled, Australia's competitiveness plummets, tourists travel to other destinations... when will Labor wake up to what it has done?
The rest of the world looks on in amazement as Australia destroys it natural advantages.
Real power bills make a mockery of the Prime Minister's instance that electricity prices will only go up by 10% due to the carbon tax - we've seen example after example of carbon impacts eclipsing 10% by multiple sums.
Whether it's heating your home, washing your clothes or even just watching footy on TV, Labor's carbon tax drives up electricity prices.
It's a noose that tightens for families, businesses and local jobs. Local manufacturers, farmers, tourism operators and the local shops that rely on them are all worse off.
The ultimate insult is the carbon tax is economic pain for no environmental gain. Even Labor admits it won't make a shred of difference to the temperature.
Our farmers are the most sustainable on Earth. They are recognised for having the one of the lowest carbon footprints in the world. They are truly world-leaders in environmental management and sustainable farm practices.
But even though Labor claims agriculture is exempt from the carbon tax, according to IBIS World research, the carbon tax will cost Australian farmers $3.2 Billion in 2012-13 alone - that slug ramps up to $3.7 Billion in 2014.
On top of a high Aussie dollar and falling commodity prices, this is the worst possible time to inflict the world's biggest carbon tax on our farmers - let alone that no other farm nation on Earth is following suit.
The changes to the floor price and linking to the creaky EU scheme does not change those realities.
Our businesses and families are locked into the highest carbon price on earth for three years.
It is an expensive mess that does nothing for the environment. No amount of meddling can fix the carbon tax. It must be axed entirely.
Labor's latest ploys
Ladies and gentlemen, the Gillard government has recently engaged in backflips of Olympic proportions.
The asylum seeker about-face on off-shore processing, bumbling carbon tax floor price, live animal trade debacle, fishing trawler quadruple somersault in four days, at least 100 broken promises, 26 new taxes and more to come.
Cost blow-outs, along with commodity prices in free-fall, mean any hope Labor had of achieving its $1.5 billion budget surplus have been shot and the government knows it.
As of today, the government is facing a budgetary abyss - a $120 billion black hole of unfunded promises.
Federal government debt today stands at a staggering $144 billion - we pay $1 million an hour just in interest.
Job ads are continuing their steady decline since April and retail spending is in a slump - in the last few weeks recording its lowest level in two years.
But, despite the government being broke and getting broker, Labor is on a spending spree.
The government has promised $10.5 billion a year for the National Disability Insurance Scheme, $4 billion for a new dental health package, $2.2 billion for mental health, and $6.5 billion for education - worth policy ideas, but they do not kick-in until after the next election.
Labor is up to it old tricks - do they think people are mugs?
We've heard grand plans and big promises from this government before - Grocery Watch, Fuel Watch, pink batts, green loans, over-priced school halls - they either didn't happen or ended in disaster.
The truth is, Labor is desperate and playing a cynical game with money is doesn't have, for schemes that don't happen until after one, two, three or even four elections.
They are preying on people who desperately want help, but this government has squandered its inheritance. Labor has striped Australia's cupboard bare.
The mismanagement and waste of this generation of Labor governments, both federal and state, must end.
The Nationals
For our part, The Nationals are ready.
We have an outstanding team of members and senators to lead our campaign and 5 local champions already chosen as candidates in key NSW seats... and more to come
Our steadfast championing of regional interests has struck a chord.
Now, I call upon all Nationals supporters and all people in the regions to get behind your regions by backing The Nationals.
For the regions to be heard, The Nationals need to be a major part of the next government for Australia.
We have worked hard. I am proud to say we are united, positive, energised and determined.
We have an action plan for our first 100-days in government and what we want to do in our first year.
We will restore confidence and trust in our government. We will get the important things done.
We will get our country - and the regions - back on track.
Thank you.
