Well thank you very much Michael, John and Lucy, Chris McDiven, my State and Federal parliamentary colleagues, ladies and gentlemen.
I could imagine that Michael Yabsley has been making a few phone calls. I think he's probably made almost as many phone calls as some of the permanent representatives on the Security Council of the United Nations. But I want to share with you a few thoughts of mine today about the choice that the people of New South Wales, the largest state in Australia and a state that is enjoying a very strong economy courtesy of the economic management of the Federal Government.
I share the results of the Yabsley poll. I think the New South Wales Government has become tired. I think it takes for granted that it will win on the 22nd of March. I think it has become arrogant. And I have to say to you John, I think you have run a very courageous and energetic and admirable and enthusiastic campaign. I know what it's like to campaign in Opposition when you're doing very badly, in Opposition when you're doing better and they expect you to win, in Government when you're doing very well and you end up not winning as well as they thought you might. I've experienced every point on the popularity compass, and I know somebody who is authentically connecting with the public when I see him, and John I think your fresh, open, intelligent approach is starting to resonate with the New South Wales public.
I think you have avoided the pitfall of earlier oppositions in that you have taken the trouble to articulate alternative policies. I think your education policies in particular have struck a chord with the public. I think the ideas that you have brought to the health debate and to the transport debate are also new and different and refreshing. And I therefore want to say to all of you, please believe me when I say that no election campaign is over until it's over, to use that old expression. And yet in the nature of modern politics, people don't really focus until the last week, especially in State election campaigns, and especially when the campaign is being fought under the shadow of very serious international issues. So I want to thank all of you for the help that you have given. I want to encourage you, to use a word from Michael Yabsley, to give even more and more. I'll leave the details to him. But it is not just a good cause, but I think it is an investment in a future for this State, which is very important to make. And I do, on behalf of all of my Federal parliamentary colleagues here in New South Wales and all around the country, wish you well John, and you and your colleagues. We will give you every help we can between now and the 22nd of March.
It would surprise you ladies and gentlemen if I didn't take this opportunity of just saying one thing about the international issue that faces the entire world at the present time. I want all of you to know and to understand that I and the Government I lead has taken the stance it has, not out of some kind of blind, automatic loyalty to the United States, although I value that alliance very dearly and so should every right thinking Australian, but we have taken the stance we have because we believe very much that it is right. I don't want this country to live in a world in which rogue states like Iraq are able to retain chemical and biological weapons and continue to aspire to the development of nuclear weapons. I don't want Iraq to get away with that because if Iraq gets away with it, other countries will seek to do the same.
And as the Prime Minister of a country in the Asian Pacific region, can I pose the simple rhetorical question - what earthly hope does the world have of disciplining North Korea if it cannot discipline Iraq? And that is one of the considerations that rests very much on my mind, and I know on the minds of all of my colleagues. It is very likely that as far as the United Nations is concerned, this issue will come to a head over the next few days. Exactly when and exactly what form, it is just not possible to say at the present time. But it is in the national interest of Australia to live in a world that is as free as possible of the threats of which I have spoken. The more nations that have weapons of mass destruction, the more likely it is that they will be used against other countries. The more that have them, the more likely it is, by either gift or chance, they will fall into the hands of international terrorists. And to me, the ultimate nightmare of the modern world is that chemical and biological weapons will get into the hands of terrorists, and believe me - they will use them. They will not care about the costs. They will not care about the trauma or the damage or the death or the destruction they do to the countries against, or the peoples against which they are used.
The world did change, not only for the United States but for all of us, on the 11th of September. And the risks that could have been taken before then can no longer be taken, and that lesson was painfully delivered to many of our own people in a different way, but nonetheless very painfully, on the 12th of October last year. We are living in a different world we would all wish we weren't. We would all wish that we could turn our back on this problem and go away and pretend that it would disappear. But it is not like that, and our history reminds us time and time again that when the community of nations recoils from doing something that is difficult in the short term, in the hope that it will go away, it learns that it must ultimately return to that problem at a later time at infinitely greater cost. And that has been the experience of the world and that is what, in many ways, is at stake at the present time.
So ladies and gentlemen, I owed you some remarks about that issue, but today is a day where I ask all of you to support, to the maximum you can, a very fine Liberal leader in John Brogden, a Coalition that has put behind it the disagreements which have bedevilled its existence in the past in this state. It has learnt the lesson of cooperation that we practice so effectively at a Federal level. I ask you to welcome, to applaud, and most importantly to vigorously support the New South Wales Liberal leader John Brogden.
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