E&OE……………………………………………………………………………………
Well thank you very much Trish, Senator Grant Chapman, Mr John Dawkins, ladies and gentlemen. It would not have escaped your notice that we are in the early stages of an election campaign. But before I come to that there is an issue I would like to briefly address, very much in my role as Prime Minister as well as of course in my role as leader of the Liberal Party and therefore involving this election campaign. You’ll be aware that today there have been a number of reports of anthrax scares around Australia. A few moments ago I spoke to the head of the Protective Security Coordination Centre in Canberra, the person responsible for coordinating the responses of all of the various agencies such as the Federal Police to challenges of this kind. I’m told that thus far the investigations indicate that what are involved in these scares are hoaxes, that there is no reason for the Australian people to be concerned. That is not to say that we can afford to be complacent but it does mean that I’m able to tell you as of now that there is no indication that any of these are other than hoaxes where a powder has turned up. In some other cases suspicious envelopes have been treated as such because for example in one case the mailed address was Florida which understandably excited the concern of the people involved. Shortly the director will be, through the Attorney General, will be issuing a statement giving a little more information. But I thought as citizens and given the understandable concern you may have had, as there are some 16 reports in all in various parts of the country that you should be aware that there is no need for people to be concerned. There will always the need and the particular need in present circumstances for people to take great care and the statement that will be coming out this afternoon will be giving some guidance to people in relation to that.
It is important concerning all of these things that as soon as information is made available to me that I should seek to communicate it directly and as clearly as I possibly can to the Australian people. These are unusual circumstances for us but I know that the great cooperative spirit of the Australian people will come to the fore. We always are at our very best when there’s any kind of challenge to us. We put aside our differences, our differences of politics, our differences of background and ethnicity, our differences of sporting allegiance and we all work together to make sure that there is a full blooded and effective Australian response.
So ladies and gentlemen can I first of all having given you that report, can I thank Mr McCard very very warmly for inviting me into this club. This is volunteer Australia writ large. This is what this country is renowned for. And that is a group of citizens getting together without any material reward but just the simple pleasure of providing a sporting outlet for themselves, for their families and for the community. And most particularly providing the young of the community with a very healthy and positive diversion. I mean we all benefit from playing a bit of sport. As you know I’m fairly fanatical about different forms of sport, I’m pleased to know that this club is affiliated, has associations and sponsors and patronises the sport that I’m most identified with. Of course naturally being a South Australian club it doesn’t go down some of the football predilections of mine but I’ve got to say I’ve developed over the years a very very warm enthusiasm for Australian Rules and I’ve got to say the Grand Final, as a rugby league follower, that the AFL Grand Final this year turned out to be one of the more enthralling ones. I know you might have been happier if some other team, Trish, would have been involved.
But sport is very important to Australians. It expresses our optimism, it expresses our enthusiasm, it expresses a sense of competition and the sense of mateship, and most importantly of all it expresses through clubs like this and there are thousands of them around Australia, thousands of them around Australia, and this is really what grassroots sport is all about. So when I announced a few months ago the full detail of the ongoing support that the federal government was going to give to what you might call elite sport in Australia, in other words the ongoing support we were going to give to getting our athletes ready for the Olympic Games in Athens in three years time and making certain that the great king tide that carried us to so many medals in Sydney, that the momentum of that was maintained, I also said that we weren’t going to overlook the need to support grassroots sporting participation. And I’m therefore very happy to say that one of the things we will do if we get re-elected is out of the grassroots sports fund is to contribute a sum of $10,000 to this club to assist it with all of its sporting activities, and also to make a like contribution of $10,000 to the Pooraka Sports Club for similar purposes.
Now I understand that both the clubs field AFL, netball, cricket and softball teams. And the $10,000 to each of the clubs – the Ingle Farm Sporting Club and the Pooraka Sporting Club – will enable you to expand your junior grassroots sporting involvement. And that is what promoting sport in Australia is all about just as much as making sure that we give our best athletes the best opportunity to do their very best internationally and at Olympic Games. It’s no good having a nation full of elite sporting champions if nobody plays sport at a grassroots level, no good. And let’s face it most of the great champions start at local clubs. And you think about the stories of all of our footballers, of our cricket players, of our swimmers, of our tennis players. All of them, they started at a local club and that’s where they learnt it and they got the enthusiasm. And that of course is where so many of us make lifelong friendships. Janette and I still have friendships that we developed along the sidelines of the Greenwich Soccer Club in Sydney where our boys played prior to going to secondary school and the local cricket club. So it’s very much part of our life and I can empathise very warmly and very directly with a gathering such as this.
Now the other reason that I’m absolutely delighted to be here of course is that it’s in Trish Draper’s electorate of Makin. Now Trish is very important to me, very important to me. She has fought and won two magnificent election campaigns – one in 1996 and one in 1998. Now in the jargon of the political trade this is a classic swing seat. It goes like this, one side to the other. I wanted the barometer to settle on one side for a while, for at least another term and if it settles for another term I’ll come back and try to persuade you that it could settle for another one yet.
But ladies and gentlemen Trish has been a magnificent member for this electorate. She’s identified with the people. She’s been prepared to fight their causes. She’s been prepared to articulate the grassroots concerns of the people of Makin. When she talks about the drug problem I know she talks from experience and the tragedy of some parents in this electorate. I know that she speaks for them when she talks about interest rates and expresses the gratitude of thousands of homebuyers in this electorate, and there are thousands whose mortgage bills are hundreds of dollars cheaper now than they were in March of 1996, I know she speaks for the people of Makin. I’m sure she was speaking for the people of Makin when she complained some months ago about petrol prices. I’m pleased to say now they’re much lower. I mean I can’t give all of the credit for that to Trish. But she certainly made it known that the people of this electorate wanted something done and of course you remember we did cut the excise by 1.5 cents and we abolished the automatic indexation of petrol excise. And last August was the first August for 18 years that the tax level on petrol didn’t go up automatically as a result of an increase in the CPI. Now she has been a very active articulate local member. She’s always been somebody whose hopes have risen and fallen with the people she represents according to the challenges of the time.
The late Tip O’Neill who used to be the Speaker of the House of Representatives in the United States and was something of a mentor of the former President John Kennedy, or a friend of his, he had this famous saying, it became very famous – that all politics is local. And it is because in the end what really matters is how you are represented in the Parliament. Increasingly people demand as representatives men and women who aren’t just automatic ciphers of one particular point of view. Sure you need to act as a disciplined government. You can’t have a parliament of 148 independents. You’d never get anything done, you’d never decide anything. But consistent with proper party direction and discipline you do need people who are going to stand up for the different needs of their electorate.
Now one of the things that I’m most proud of as leader of the Liberal Party and as Prime Minister is that I’ve got a very diverse group of men and women sitting in the Parliament behind me. They’re not sort of Identikit look-a-likes. You have people that have got a business background, you’ve got people that have had an academic background, people who’ve had a background in the services, you’ve got people from rural areas, you’ve got people who’ve got a nursing background. You’ve just got a whole variety. You’ve even got one or two who’ve got a legal background as well, but fewer I must say now than used to be the case. And don’t say hear hear. But the reality my friend is that ours is a representative party. We’re no longer capable of being branded the party of the bosses or the party just of capital. We believe in free enterprise, we believe in profits, we believe in decent compassionate capitalism. It’s what generates wealth and therefore makes it possible for a community to look after its more needy. But we are a very diverse party.
And Trish has come into the Parliament over the last five-and-a-half years to represent the people of Makin. And I want to say to all of you with all the passion and conviction I can muster that she is a fantastic representative for you. You’ll do the right thing for yourselves and the right thing for the district, the right thing for the people of Makin, and the right thing for the people of Australia if you re-elect us and if you re-elect Trish as your member. We’re not going to have an easy fight to win this election if I could speak in a very partisan way for the moment.
Winning an election is always hard, it’s very hard for the third time. We face a lot of problems at the moment, many of them visited upon Australia as a result of those terrible events in America just over a month ago. But fortunately we have a number of things going for us. One of the things we have going for us is that our economy is fundamentally very strong. We’ve paid back a lot of debt, we’ve got low interest rates, our budget is balanced, we have low rates of inflation, our unemployment rate is lower now than what it was when we came to office, we’ve got a very competitive exchange rate, rural Australia is doing a lot better now than it was a few years ago with all of those things going in our favour. And of course we’re going to need them. As a result of the terrorist attack the world economy’s going to experience slower growth particularly in the United States. And we can’t avoid the ripple affect of that. It’s going to percolate around the world. It’s going to have an impact on all of us. But the good news is that we’re better able to handle it than most and the reason we’re better able to handle it is that we had the courage to put Australia’s interest first and make a number of changes that were needed. Not all of them were popular in every part of their detail. Our reform of the tax system. I know not every body like every part of it but gee it’s helped our exporters because they don’t carry the burden of indirect taxes. We have lower personal tax. We have a lower company tax rate which makes our businesses more competitive. And we have a better revenue base for the Australian states because they get all of the GST and that enables them to provide more money for government schools and for public hospitals which are very necessary parts of what state governments have got to do.
So my message ladies and gentlemen is that it is going to be difficult in the months ahead and we do need people in charge, people in government who’ve got the runs on the board, who are prepared to take tough decisions in easier times, they are therefore far better equipped to take the right decisions in tougher times. You can’t have people in charge now who can’t make up their mind where they stand. You can’t have people in charge now who go from one side of the street to the other according to the pressure of political events. I know not everything I’ve done has been popular and I know on occasions probably people in this room have grumbled about what I’ve done. I understand that, I respect that. I’ve made my share of mistakes. But the man or woman in politics who’s never made a mistake has never made a decision and over the last five-and-a-half years I’ve made a lot of decisions that have all involved putting Australia’s interests first. Whether it was gun control laws, helping the people of East Timor, introducing tax reform, reforming the waterfront. They were all very difficult decisions. All very different, all very difficult. But they were all done because they were good for Australia and they were important to Australia’s future.
Now I need Trish to remain. As Prime Minister, it’s as simple as that. If you don’t re-elect her, well the Government is not going to get returned. But more importantly than that if you want good representation please vote for her again because she really is a crackerjack member. She worries the life and bothers the life out of ministers if they don’t give her what she wants. I can testify to that. She is very persistent. Ministers run away from her in the corridor when she approaches them because she is very persistent. And that’s what you want. You don’t want somebody who’s flattered and patronised by ministerial staff. You want somebody who’s prepared to go in there and make a nuisance of herself in order to get something for you and that is exactly what she’s done. I commend her for it. I thank her and most importantly I ask you to support her on the 10th of November. She’s a great member and I hope you’ll return her to the national Parliament. Thank you.
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