Melbourne
It's great to be home in Melbourne, to be back at this Conference, where my political values have always been tested and shaped.
Here I see so many party and Parliamentary colleagues and friends, people who have served so long in the Labor cause.
Ours is a strong State branch with a lot of work ahead and I know how much you are already doing to prepare for the campaigns to come.
So I want to thank the State Secretary Noah Carroll, our Party officials and staff and just as important, every branch member and union member, every supporter and volunteer - all of you.
I want to thank our Party President, a woman of such strength and conviction, who's given her life to the Labor movement, who I know is going to bring Melbourne home for Labor, I'm so grateful for her words this morning, Cath Bowtell.
I want to thank our State Leader too, a man who has revived the Victorian Party, who's seen off one Liberal Premier, and he's certainly got another one in his sights, he gave a great speech today, Daniel Andrews.
Delegates, yesterday was the most important COAG meeting in our five and a half years in Government.
Our Party shares an abiding vision - opportunity for all who seek it, care for all who need it - yesterday your Labor Government put that vision before the nation in the most ambitious and practical form.
Opportunity for all - through a plan which will properly resource all our classrooms, teachers and kids for generations to come, the biggest changes to school funding in forty years.
Care for all - through DisabilityCare, the biggest extension to the social safety net since Medicare, our national disability insurance scheme.
DisabilityCare is vital to so many Australians - to hundreds of thousands of people with disability, to their carers, family and friends.
So many of our fellow citizens have worked so hard for so long to make this happen - the countless advocates in the community, countless Australians who have all lent their voice - I thank you.
People who know that disability can strike any one of us at any time that accident or injury can change a life and remake a family's future in a single moment.
People who already knew in their own lives what the Productivity Commission has now told us all: that care for people with disabilities in our country is underfunded, unfair, fragmented, inefficient, that people with disability have little choice and no certainty of access to care.
It took their campaign to seize the attention of the nation - and it took a Federal Labor Government to turn that community campaign into public policy.
First, our Government, your Labor Government, committed to build a national disability insurance scheme - and then we got the agreement of every State and Territory to the need for change.
That was back in 2011.
In 2012, we brought the ACT, Tasmania, South Australia and New South Wales on board for launch sites and a launch date of 1 July this year.
It took some doing, but we even got the Victorian Government to agree to launch - and yesterday the Northern Territory signed up to launch from 1 July 2014.
Your Labor Government has kept building.
Hard work led by a very fine Minister known so well to all of us here, Jenny Macklin, our Minister for Disability Reform.
21 March 2013 was a red letter day: the day we put DisabilityCare into law.
Because of all that, in ten weeks' time Australia will launch DisabilityCare Australia - on 1 July this year the NDIS begins.
Only a Federal Labor Government could deliver this result but no Federal Government could do this alone.
That was true in 2012 for agreement to launch.
That was still true this week when we signed with South Australia.
On Thursday, Premier Weatherill and I put pen to paper, signing South Australia up to the full rollout of DisabilityCare by 1 July 2018.
Yesterday, the Australian Capital Territory signed up too.
The support of State and Territory Governments - Labor and Liberal is crucial - and I know that not every Liberal leader has to be a wrecker.
We saw that back in December last year, when Premier O'Farrell signed up New South Wales - committing Australia's biggest State to the full rollout of DisabilityCare over the next five years.
The story in this State is different: the sad reality here is that Victoria has had a change of Liberal leader - but not a change of conservative heart.
Yesterday the Government of Victoria missed another chance to put the people of our state first.
My message to Premier Napthine is clear.
This State has already been drifting and directionless for too long.
Make a decision, Denis. Sign up to DisabilityCare today.
Delegates, the story of DisabilityCare is the story of school improvement.
A long community campaign for change - Labor in Government building the policies to get it done - an ambitious and practical reform plan on the table now - and a chance for every level of government and section of the community to act in the national interest.
So my message to the Premiers and the Chief Ministers is just as clear.
Do the right thing by Australia. Sign up for better schools.
Today, one in 12 Australian kids aren't meeting minimum standards in reading, writing and maths.
Kids from less well-off backgrounds can be up to three years behind their classmates.
Lifting school standards means opportunity for all of Australia's children.
Our plan will make sure no Australian child is left behind.
Today, four of the top five schooling systems in the world are in our region and we aren't one of them.
The average 15 year old maths student in Australia is two years behind a 15 year old in Shanghai.
Improving school results means strength for Australia's economy.
Our plan will make sure the Australian economy isn't left behind either.
Delegates, spreading opportunity through education is the heart of the modern Labor way. You know that as well as anyone.
That is how Labor has governed in Victoria.
John Cain's Government introduced the VCE and reformed TAFE, boosting funding for schools after decades of conservative neglect.
Joan Kirner boosted the most disadvantaged schools and promoted access and equality for all students.
Steve Bracks committed to modernise every school in Victoria - planting the seed of Building the Education Revolution.
The Blueprint for School Reform gave us inspiring curriculum, better school management and local flexibility.
The Education Act was rewritten for the first time in a century - and the school leaving age raised.
John Brumby pushed through early childhood reforms, strengthened the apprenticeship system, boosted science and maths and built international education into a major growth industry for Victoria.
So much of our agenda in education began here - so many ideas I was proud to extend nation-wide as Education Minister and now as Prime Minister.
Fittingly embodied in the goals of the Melbourne Declaration - signed back in December of 2008 by every Australian Education Minister - a pledge to every parent that your child will have a great education, no matter who you are, what system you attend or where you live.
Goals which can only be delivered with the National Plan for School Improvement.
Delegates, because of the work of this Labor Government, we now know something we have never known in half a century of federal school funding.
We can say what resources are required for a school to get excellent results - we can say which schools don't get those resources today.
We can say who needs extra funding and which children need extra help.
We can also show what a fair share is between the Commonwealth and the States - and I've offered to put an extra two dollars in for every one extra dollar I ask of them.
The policy work has been done, the discussions have been held, the experts have reported, the advice is in.
This is the big one for Australia's future.
We will fight to get it done.
Delegates, when you campaign in the Federal election later this year - this is the plan for the nation you will carry to the people.
And with it you will carry a very clear choice.
This Labor plan: to save wisely and invest in the nation's future.
The risk of our opponents: who always cut the wrong things and always cut too much.
You've seen it here in Victoria.
You know you'll see it in Canberra if Government changes this year.
I'll give the Opposition Leader this much credit: when he came to Geelong this week, he finally spat out the truth.
He didn't hide his plan to cut $2bn in co-investment with the auto industry and put a quarter of a million manufacturing jobs on the chopping block.
He didn't pretend to have a plan for jobs or a plan for the future.
This is all Tony Abbott told Victorians on Thursday: We will do some things that will hurt.
You bet they would.
Threatening to wield the axe on Indigenous affairs is just the latest Liberal plan for a cut which will hurt our people.
They want to cut our tripling of the tax free threshold and hurt 3.6 million working women.
They want to hurt every one of 3.5 million pensioners by cutting pensions.
They want to hurt every one of 1.2 million families by cutting the School Kids Bonus.
They want to hurt every one of 3.6 million low-income Australians saving for retirement by cutting the superannuation co-contribution.
Every one of these cuts is a plan they've boldly announced themselves.
They would take away high speed broadband.
They've said it's a white elephant.
They would take away funding for schools.
They've said they'll rip it up.
They even said DisabilityCare is a cruel hoax.
The Liberals will cut to the bone.
That's what the Liberals do: they are only the latest of the anti-Labor parties in Australia's history, they are just another in the line of succession, the blockers and stoppers of Australian public life.
That is the only reason they exist at all, to try to stop Labor acting and to try to reverse the things we've done.
These Liberal cuts will be bad for services, bad for families - and bad for jobs as well.
Liberal cuts will slam the brakes on for the economy at the exact time we need to be picking up speed.
They will throw away wise investments for the nation's future - they will throw Australians out of work at the same time.
All our plans and all our achievements, everything we have done for Australia's future, all this is what is at risk, all this is what our opponents want to take away.
We will walk a hard path together in the months ahead but I know you are ready for the campaign to come.
In 2010 and 2007 you fought for a Labor Government - and our Labor achievements since then should make you proud.
Our plan for school improvement - our plan for DisabilityCare.
Building a clean energy future when so many stood against us for so long.
Beating the global financial crisis and growing jobs when the rest of the world could not.
Tearing up Work Choices and protecting your rights at work.
Apologising to the Stolen Generation who had waited so long for that one precious word.
I so vividly remember this State conference in May 2008.
Our first since taking office in October the previous year.
We all met in hope and expectation for the achievements which still lay ahead.
Today those achievements and these plans are the substance of our governing record.
I know we meet today in a different mood.
Ours is the determination of seasoned soldiers, not the enthusiasm of raw recruits.
The knowledge of our achievements and plans will give us strength as we fight for Government again.
Helping families meet the pressures of modern family life - higher living standards for all our people who work so hard.
Creating and supporting jobs - for good wages and high skills - and giving you new rights at work.
Building the national broadband network - the real thing, for everyone.
Properly resourcing all our teachers and kids - improving Australia's schools - for generations to come.
The new safety net that was a dream before Labor governed - DisabilityCare, a national disability insurance scheme.
That is the choice before our nation this year.
The things Labor will do - the things the Liberals will take away.
Our Labor plans - their Liberal cuts.
Our Party, the great “Party of initiative” in Australian life - always the nation-builder - always the reforming force.
Our opponents - always fighting to wreck, to stop, to cut.
That is why this is the fight of our lives - that is why we must get out there and win.