E&OE................................
I often wanted to know, you know, how many megabites, whatever it is, made eleven thousand.
Lloyd, thank you very much, I've had some interesting introductions in my time. That was fascinating, I think you got the point across about the band width. Is Richard Alston here tonight?
Now, this isn't the sort of serious speech from me of the convention. And as you know I've sort of done a bit of flying in the last four days, so if I say Albania instead of Afghanistan or if I don't know the Prime Minister of Pakistan they don't have, or whatever, you will understand why.
The ABC's not here are they, I was assured they weren't. Henshaw!?!
But, ladies and gentlemen, can I say again, it's a huge pleasure to be with you and to first of all say to all of my fellow Liberals here in Queensland, thank you very much for what you have done for our great Party over the last twelve months. It really has been terrific.
I do want especially to thank Con for the tremendous organisational leadership that you have given to the Queensland Division. It's a pretty hard job running a volunteer organisation and in the end a political party is a volunteer organisation. I mean I've been in it for a long time as you might have noticed, the Liberal Party that is, and I mean I know how, you go through various stages, and it's, when you are doing well, everybody is your friend. I mean, when you have done very well in the election and you haven't seen, and Con was talking a lot about business men and the support they give, I mean when you do unexpectedly well and you see that businessman on the other side of the road who you haven't seen hide nor hair of for a couple of years, come racing over and say, John, didn't we do well? Last Saturday? And you remember that he hadn't been around when we weren't doing so well. And that of course is where a political organisation really counts. And the people in this room are the people who have kept the faith of the Liberal Party over so many years. And I'm, I really am very, very grateful for that.
But to you Con, and to Graham and to all of the office bearers of the Division. To all of my Federal Parliamentary colleagues from Queensland and they are a very strong team that make a tremendous contribution. Queensland is very important to the future of the national government of Australia. One of the reasons we won in 1996 and for those of you who are hooked on political statistics, in case you didn't know, in the political history of Australia since Federation, the largest single two party preferred vote, on a state basis in a federal election, ever polled by either side of politics was in Queensland in 1996 when the Coalition got 60.05% of the two party preferred vote. And it is very important that we hold all of our seats here in Queensland and on top of that win a couple that we don't hold at the moment. And I think of one, what's the first one that comes to my mind, Dickson! That's right. Now why did I get that response? I can't imagine why. But ladies and gentlemen, the next election will not be easy. The third one is always hard and there is always a tendency to think that you can experiment with change. There is always a tendency to think well the economy is going pretty well, we can have a bit of flirt with the other side, we can try another few ideas, and it's not going to be easy. We have a very strong record and I looked at that video tonight and it was almost a trailer for what we have done over the last twelve months. Because in the last twelve months we have brought about the biggest, systemic economic change that this country has seen since World War II.
I have to confess to you that tax reform has gone better than I in my wildest dreams imagined and hoped and prayed it might. I can still remember the 30th of June this year. It was sort of a mixture of Christmas Eve and election eve. And I wondered what was going to happen. And I still remember a sense of relief after spending an hour or two going around some of the small shopping centres in my own electorate in Sydney and talking to the twenty or so small businessmen and women, all of whom to my great delight were ready for it. And the thing that cheered me up even more was when I watched the television bulletins that night and I had the footage of me going around to all these shops in Top Ryde in Sydney. For those of you who know Sydney, Top Ryde is quintessential middle Australia, it's got a mixture of everything. And then I watched my opponent, the Leader of the Opposition, where was he? Not in a shopping centre in Perth or Sydney or Brisbane, he was inside the Labor Caucus room in Canberra surrounded rather coldy and icily by photographs of former Labor Prime Minister. And I drew a little bit of heart and comfort from that, that you know, I was the bloke that was meant to be on the back foot. I was the fella that was introducing this eight hundred pound gorilla of a tax reform package and I was out there meeting people and he was sort of in his comfort zone of former Labor leaders. And in a sense it marked quite a turning point in the psychology in politics. I think a lot of you wondered a bit what was going to happen on the first of July, I certainly did. And I don't mind admitting it. I was a bit nervous. And I, but as the days went by and the change was assimilated and accepted and absorbed by the Australian people, I drew a great deal of encouragement from that. And what it more than anything else demonstrated to me was that if you take our fellow Australians into your confidence, if you explain to people why you want to do something, if you persuade them that it is good for our country and you convince them that it is fundamentally fair, they will go along with you. And the news that I have for you is that reform is not finished. For anybody who thinks that having done tax reform and all these other things we spend the next fourteen months in sort of, with the motor just idling, you are wrong. Because I think what the Australian people want us to do is to continue changing things that need to be changed. And in these days of, I guess, less tribal politics where some of the ideology that existed thirty years ago is no longer present. People judge you more on what you achieve in practical terms and they expect us to keep making changes, and we will go on doing that. Sensible changes. Not changing things that continue to work. Not allowing people to push us around when we shouldn't be pushed around. We have demonstrated our determination over the last few weeks not to allow that to happen. But really changing those things that ought to be reformed. And I've always believed that the art of good political leadership and good political management is to have a nice balance between defending those traditional values and institutions that have served us well, and at the same time really willing radically if necessary to reform and change those things that no longer help.
But enough of the serious stuff. This is an occasion, as Con said, to enjoy ourselves. To you, David, good luck in your battle in the next twelve months, there have been very interesting electoral developments here in Queensland. Very, very interesting. Very interesting indeed. Very encouraging. And the best thing about tonight is the great spirit. People are in a good mood, and you ought to be in good mood, because the Liberal Party has achieved a lot over the last year. And we are living in a terrific country, the best in the world. We have got a great international focus on it. I've just spent a couple of days in New York and it was a great opportunity to remind myself of both the value of those sort of international contacts but also the enormous advantages that our country has over every other country on earth.
But ladies and gentlemen, I will say more to you tomorrow. Thanks a million for all the loyalty and support that you have given to me, to my federal parliamentary team. It's been a great year, but there is an even greater year ahead of us and I look forward to coming back again next year and many years into the future.
Thanks a lot.