Subjects: electorate of Franklin; economic management.
E&OE..................
Well thank you very much Senator Paul Calvert, Senator Eric Abetz, the Special Minister of State, Sue Napier, the Leader of the Opposition in Tasmania, but very importantly my friend and we all hope and we will work to achieve, the next federal member for Franklin, Mr Peter Hodgman.
I always have a very strong commitment to winning seats from the Labor Party, don't we all? But my determination in relation to winning seats from the Labor Party here in Tasmania is fuelled by the spectacle of an arrogant, complacent, take-it-for-granted attitude Labor Party that believes that the five House of Representatives' seats here in Tasmania are in the bag and aren't in any way under threat.
And if you look at the Labor Party's posturing in the lead up to the election campaign, they just assume that it's a given that every seat they now hold in Tasmania will be retained at the next federal election. Well I have never known in my twenty-seven years of being in public life, I have never known a Tasmania to lightly take being taken for granted. And that is what is occurring with the Labor Party here in Tasmania, they assume that all of their seats in Tasmania are absolutely impregnable. And it is up to us, it is up to us as local Liberals, it is up to us at a national level to prove them wrong and where better to start then here in the electorate of Franklin by getting behind Peter Hodgman.
This is a lovely spot to launch an election campaign. I've launched a lot of local campaigns in my lifetime. I think this is the first one I've launched against the backdrop of a magnificent new achievement by Australian industry and I want to congratulate the company. I mean doesn't this give the lie to those who say we don't have manufacturing capacity in this country? Doesn't this give the lie to the fact that you can't generate new jobs through new industries here in the state of Tasmania? And if you look at what has occurred here in Tasmania, particularly over the last five years you see a state that is getting the benefits of the improved national economic condition.
Not only is Tasmania benefiting from the lower interest rates, the higher levels of business investment, the reductions in taxation and let me remind you that the company that is building this vessel will from the 1st of July be paying a company tax rate of only 30 cents in the dollar instead of at present 34 cents in the dollar and it was paying, any company in existence was paying 36 cents in the dollar when this Government was elected in March of 1996. And any exports of these vessels abroad will of course enjoy the total exemption from GST that is the case in relation to exports of all goods and services. So there is a lot to reflect upon in terms of the economic benefits that have come to this state from the general improvement in economic conditions in Australia over the last five years.
The unemployment rate in Tasmania is lower than what it was in '96. But in addition to that no state has derived more specific benefits to address its particular disadvantage than has the state of Tasmania. Over the last five years this state has done far better than any other state in relation to the development of educational services, information technology and many of the other benefits that have flowed from the sale of shares in Telstra. This state has been able to punch above its weight. This state has been more benignly looked upon in relation to those areas of disadvantage than any other part of Australia and I make no apology for being a prime minister that has set out to give a leg-up to the people of Tasmania. When premiers of other states have said to me 'hey John, you're giving Tasmania too much', I've said to them 'it is nothing more than they deserve'. Because this island state has disadvantages because of its separation from the mainland. It does have challenges. It has a crying need to retain its young people in employment in this island and it's the responsibility of the federal government to do something about that. And we have discharged our responsibilities to the people of Tasmania and we will go on discharging our responsibilities to the people of Tasmania. It's too early to talk at this stage about specific packages for Tasmania, but let me say we've never let the people of Tasmania down in the past and we won't be doing it the next time the federal election comes along.
Federal elections are about choices. In the end you've got to decide whether you want to return the Coalition Government, whether you want to retain me as Prime Minister and John Anderson as Deputy Prime Minister and Peter Costello as Treasurer. Or alternatively do you want to elect Kim Beazley as prime minister. I mean that is what a federal election is about in the end. You can put aside all of the other argy-bargy, all of the other debate. In the end people will have to decide do they want to go back to a man that helped give us 17% interest rates, $96 billion of national government debt and 11% unemployment when he was the minister for employment. I mean that is the Beazley record. Let no Australian forget what interest rates were like when Labor was last in office. Let no farmer forget that they were paying 21% and 22% bill rates. Let no homebuyer forget that they were paying 17% and 18% on their mortgage. Let no Australian forget that when we came to office we were spending more money in meeting the interest bill on Labor's debt than we were spending on defence. And that was a measure of the debt that had been run up. We were spending $8.5 billion a year on servicing our debt - an extraordinary figure.
And in the last five years we have repaid $50 billion of the debt that was run up irresponsibly by Mr Beazley and Mr Keating. And not only have we repaid it, but we have been obstructed and opposed and frustrated and sabotaged and undermined at every turn. Not only did they leave us with a debt but they then tried to stop us paying it back. And then they've got the nerve to give us lectures about financial responsibility. They would not understand what the term means. Because when they were last in office they gave us historically high interest rates, historically high levels of unemployment and historically high levels of government debt. And it's been our responsibility over the last five years to get the finances of this country back in order.
But in the end elections therefore my friends are about choice. They are about whether you want to return to that kind of approach, you want to rollback the industrial relations' reforms. Do you want to give the trade union movement of this country a free rein to re-visit the sort of approaches we used to have - the high levels of strikes, the crippling impact of across the board wage adjustments that paid no regard to the profitability and capacity to pay of small firms. And mark my words, if you superimpose a federal Labor government on top of five state governments of Australia in Labor hands, you will be delivering in this state, in New South Wales, in Victoria, in Western Australia and Queensland, you will be delivering the double pro-union whammy of having both a federal and a state Labor government. And in those circumstances it is inevitable that the trade union movement will disproportionably influence and exercise power over government decisions.
The last thing I want to say to you my friends is that Tasmania has always demonstrated through the years a capacity to make decisions based on personalities more than any other part of Australia. Tasmanians love their political personalities. They like a local member that they can meet on a daily basis. They like somebody who identifies with their locality. They like to feel that they're not just voting for a Liberal or a Labor person, but they're also voting for an individual they feel they can relate to them. Now Peter has demonstrated as the state representative that he's been, the state minister he's been, the contribution he's made as a senior minister in past Liberal administrations here in Tasmania, Peter has demonstrated a capacity to identify with the people of Franklin. He is not a johnny-come-lately to the electorate of Franklin. He's lived in Franklin virtually all his life, he eats and breathes and sleeps and thinks Franklin. He's identified with the area. He loves the area. He believes in it. And he'll make a great local representative and I'm just so delighted that he's your candidate and I ask you all to give your all to get him elected as the federal member for Franklin when the election is held.Thank you.