It does give me great confidence in our economic future to see you all here tonight.
I've got great confidence in Australia, because I've got great confidence in you.
You're Australians who understand the big changes at work in our country and who understand the opportunities those changes create.
You're Australians who know we can be the winner in the Asian Century and who, through your presence here, also show your commitment to work together to get us there.
And you're Australians who know that in a difficult global environment, we wouldn't change places with anyone in the world.
Above all, because you know the facts.
Since Labor came to office:
Euro area: economy shrank, one point seven per cent.
Japan: economy shrank, one point seven per cent.
United States: economy grew, one point two per cent.
Australia: economy grew, ten point three per cent.
The facts speak up for Australia - but I will say to you, they don't just speak for themselves.
We'll have some detailed policy discussions tonight and tomorrow, we'll talk about some of the concrete things we can do together, identify specific problems, some of them big ones, develop new approaches and specific solutions.
That's vitally important.
It's just as important that we all leave here tomorrow determined to speak up for our economy, to speak up for the facts.
The bad news from overseas is making more noise at the moment than hailstones on a tin roof.
Those of us who know how strong our economy overall really is do have to speak up to be heard.
We know it's in the interest of business that confidence grow, we know it's in the interests of working people that confidence grow too.
We all need investment to flow, we all need jobs to grow, we all need consumers to spend.
In truth, there is strength, and the facts of our economic performance support a pragmatic, soundly-based, long-term confidence in our country and in its future.
So speak up - because we are strong today, and we do have a chance now to build that strength for the future.
We can do things now to ensure that in ten and twenty and thirty years' time, this country is still fair, still strong, and we still don't want to change places with anyone, anywhere.
That's really the job before us at this Forum.
Now, that's never easy - the strength we have today came from decades of hard work. Building tomorrow's strength will demand just as much.
And you know the challenges of the contemporary moment.
Global weakness, no one here needs reminding of that.
But I will be reminding my G20 colleagues in Mexico next week of the Australian example.
Here, we have put growth and jobs first - growth which in turn is the solid foundation for fiscal discipline in the long term.
Austerity alone is not the right path. That's the case I'll be making at the G20.
And I'll be making the case that today's challenges cannot be allowed to distract us from the importance of acting now to shape the future.
Once again, I'll point to the Australian example.
Two crucial initiatives come into force next month.
The long debate about whether an economy like ours should tax minerals rents concludes for practical purposes when the MRRT begins operation.
I know we have a better model today because of the genuine process in which you've engaged with us. And the facts of continued investment in the mining sector bear this out.
We've had an even longer debate about pricing carbon pollution and driving the shift to clean energy - and now the time for action has come with the implementation of a carbon pricing scheme which is market-based, efficient and fair.
So this is a demanding chapter in our nation's economic story.
But we have made great progress, in which we can all take pride, and last week's national accounts show that.
And it's quite false to say that this was built only on mining - consumer spending was measurably stronger this first quarter than last year - and there's a message in that for those who continue to jawbone the country down.
It's increasingly clear that we've got the macro policy settings right.
We stimulated in the down turn.
It was controversial, some in Australia wanted to go down a different path, some overseas did go down a different path.
But here, Government stimulated, in nation building, in jobs - business did the right thing, preserving employment and maintaining the skills base - unions were responsible partners and worked with the broader community to manage change.
And here we are, with growth back to trend, with more than 800 000 new jobs under our belt in five years, with more to come.
And, in line with the strict fiscal rules we adopted at that time, we're consolidating in the recovery.
The sharpest fiscal consolidation on record in Australia, giving us a Budget surplus in 2012-13 and growing in subsequent years, even while tax receipts are forecast to remain below 23 per cent of GDP across the forward estimates.
Government making savings decisions, business and unions working with us to identify priorities, to build support for plans for our economic future.
And here we are, with prices under control, with the Reserve Bank given ample room to lower rates given difficult conditions overseas, with the benefits of those hard decisions being seen and felt.
Our country's made progress and the things we've done together are making a difference.
There are big challenges still before us and the job for tonight and tomorrow is as simple as this - to follow through on our investments and reforms to lift productivity, to do more to sustain and spread growth.
Let me nominate a couple of my areas of greatest interest in pursuit of these goals.
I am especially keen to hear your thoughts on competiveness.
The business tax reform conversation has been a wide ranging one, perhaps even a diffuse discussion.
I've got no doubt the company tax rate should be lower - and no doubt the revenue base has to be maintained as well.
And we understand that the benefits of a lower corporate rate would flow to workers and the wider community in more jobs and better pay over time.
So I think that's an area where there's a lot we can discuss tomorrow.
And we have to talk about labour mobility.
Workforce is one of the real nubs of the economic discussion in Australia.
We're doing structural adjustment at a time of employment growth, and that's a good thing, but it doesn't make the fact of a business closing its doors any easier on the day it happens.
And anyone here who was a bit reluctant to leave home and get up to Brisbane for this night will have a bit of insight into why working families need some convincing that their next job is on the other side of the country.
But we've got to crack this nut and it's one of those issues which genuinely demands a range of measures because it reflects a range of factors.
We've worked on national licensing of professions and trades and on incentives for welfare to work and now we're turning attention to more improvements to jobs services and to issues like State transaction taxes on property as well.
And there's a range of other issues on the table here as well.
Innovation ... infrastructure ... skills and education, and we know skilled workers are mobile workers, and that the national curriculum is a serious contribution to mobility too.
All of them, opportunities for investment, opportunities for reform, opportunities to build on the Australian endowment, opportunities to build the new economy of the future.
It'll take hard work, good ideas, thoughtful business and union leadership, a skilled and creative workforce, generations of private endeavour.
And Governments playing their part.
I know we can do it because we've done it before.
It probably wasn't Gary Player who first said “the harder I work, the luckier I get” but he certainly made that quote his own.
He could have been talking about Australia.
If we ever were just a lucky country, we're certainly not now.
It's not luck that makes this a top-ten country on low trade barriers, openness to international ideas, sophisticated and independent economic institutions, a list that goes on.
Luck didn't give us the three triple-A ratings which only seven other economies can claim - which no previous Australian government can claim either.
Luck didn't make us a top-two country on the measures that are most important to us: political stability, social mobility, ease of starting a business.
Luck didn't keep us out of the worst global recession in eighty years.
And luck won't build us a new economy for the future.
We have to make it.
Just as we made our location an advantage when we all worked hard to open this nation to Asia.
As we made our environment an advantage when we all worked hard to protect it and to show it to the world.
As we made our natural resources an advantage by making the most of mining.
And our people aren't born with skills and knowledge - the stork doesn't bring us human capital - we are making it.
In childcare, schools and universities and workshops and TAFEs and in the learning and training that goes on throughout the working lives of millions of our people.
It's up to all of us - we all have a place in making our economy more adaptive, flexible and better able to seize new opportunities.
Government's essential responsibility to business owners and to workers is to get the economic fundamentals right.
We have done it - and we'll keep at it.
We won't ever rest on our laurels.
I know you won't either.
Australians should be confident: not because change is always good, but because Australia is always good enough to make the best of change.
What government, business and unions are already doing together is working - together we can do more.
That's why I wanted to bring you all here, to continue our good work together.
You're making a great contribution to our country by being part of the conversation tonight and tomorrow.
I look forward to joining with you.