Mr President of the Senate, my parliamentary colleagues, my fellow candidates whenever the election may be called, ladies and gentlemen. It is great to be back in Wrest Point, it's great to be back in Hobart and it's particularly pleasing to be able to address a gathering of men and women who are very much part of the small business community of Australia. The President of the Chamber of Commerce is absolutely right, he's right on the money when he says that the Liberal Party is very much about supporting small business throughout this country and this election will be very much about what is good for the future of small business.
The election campaign when it begins will be about the future of Australia, not about the past. It will be about which side of politics is better able to keep interest rates down in an uncertain international climate which is exerting upward pressure on interest rates.
My opponent, the alternative Prime Minister of Australia claims as his great mentor Gough Whitlam, he is the Member for Werriwa as was Gough Whitlam. Now that is a very instructive association because the first Prime Minister of Australia who presided over overnight interest rates of more than 20% was Gough Whitlam.
The era of high interest rates in Australia was first experienced during the Whitlam years and one of the instructive things about looking back over a little bit of political history in Australia is that under Labor governments without fail interest rates always go up, they went up under Whitlam, they went up under Hawke, they went up under Keating and they will go up under Latham and nothing is more inimical to the long term interests of the small business community of Australia - be they metropolitan or suburban businesses or rural businesses then the spectre of high interest rates and nothing has been more important to the sense of security and stability that so many Australians have felt over the last eight and a half years than the low interest rate environment that this Government's policies have produced.
The President spoke of the importance of industrial relations and I suppose of all of the policy issues that I've been involved in in my political career, none I've argued more passionately about than the cause of industrial relations reform and it's perhaps been industrial relations reform as much as anything else that has helped deliver the prosperity of the last eight and a half years and by any measure the Australian economy over that period of time has performed remarkably well and I don't deny that State Government policies can have an influence to some degree on a local economic climate, but let's face it despite what state governments say, overwhelmingly it's the national government that determines the state of the economy throughout this country and the Tasmania economy is strong because the Australian economy is strong, that's the truth and the Australian economy is strong because of the policies that we have followed over the last eight and a half years and I can find quote after quote from Premier after Premier in difficult times for Australian saying, well, of course the economy is the fault of the Federal Government and that is right - the Federal Government is responsible for overwhelmingly for the state of the economy and I accept that responsibility and this is something that people should focus their minds on in the weeks ahead because you cannot take the economic prosperity of this country for granted and everything depends in the end on our economic capacity. We can have all the dreams in the world about more schools and more hospitals and more expenditure on defence and more this and more that, but if we don't run a strong economy we can't afford to do it and we've repaid $70 billion of debt left to us by Labor in 1996 and that has saved $5.5 billion in interest payments every year over the last few years and we have spent that on strengthening Medicare, we've spent that on investing more money in schools. We've spent that on more money for defence, we've invested more money in roads, we've invested more money in dare I say, call centres and a few other things that have been done in relation to particular needs of particular parts of Australia.
But overwhelmingly it's a story of a social dividend out of economic discipline. Economic discipline is pointless in its own right unless it has a human social dimension to it and the human social dimension of running the economy well is that we are able to invest in so many more things.
Now, I know from time to time that state governments say everything would be marvellous if only the Federal Government gave us more money. Well, the Federal Government funds the Tasmanian budget to the tune of about 60%. I mean, I don't know how much more in terms of Federal Government funding can be expected to be directed towards the coffers of this state and the truth of the matter is that the GST has given the states money they never dreamt of and over the years ahead and all of the GST revenue goes to the states, not a dollar of it goes to the Commonwealth Government. It may have been introduced as a result of Commonwealth Government initiative but the whole idea of the GST was to give the states access to a growth tax so that they could no longer complain that they didn't have enough money to provide for their government schools and their public hospitals and their police and their road responsibilities. Yet they still complain even though in the years ahead, the next four or five years they will be billions of dollars better off as a result of the GST - still they complain and I think it is important that that story be told.
60% in the case of Tasmania of the budget is funded out of the GST and the Commonwealth Government specific purpose payments and I think it's important when you hear the bleatings of the local State Government here and I say that very deliberately that that fact be born in mind. This Government has been fair and generous to Tasmania and we will be fair and generous to Tasmania in the future. What delights me no end is that Tasmania is sharing in national economic prosperity but it is a direct result of the buoyancy of the national economy and without that buoyancy, without those low interest rates, without those industrial relations reforms the benefits that are now being enjoyed of an improved business climate in Tasmania simply wouldn't be there.
Now it is a real threat - the area of industrial relations. If we lose the next election you will have Labor governments everywhere. I say coast to coast, I say in Tasmania, I say all over Australia because they will be everywhere. There'll be no anti-Labor governments anywhere in Australia until at least the next state election and then no guarantee depending on what happens. Now that represents an unrivalled opportunity, an historic opportunity in the most negative sense of that term for Labor and the trade union movement to implement their designs as fair as industrial relations are concerned and Australian Workplace Agreements will be abolished, the secondary boycott provisions of the Trade Practices Act will disappear, companies entering into contractual arrangements with the Federal Government will be required to disclose the identity of their sub-contractors so that those sub-contractors can invite the friendly local union representative for afternoon tea to discuss their collective future and so the list goes on and if anybody imagines that industrial relations reform is some kind of ideological fantasy that's been irrelevant to Australia's economic development over the last few years let me give you one statistic - in the eight and a half years that we have been in government real wages in this country have risen by 14%. In the 13 years that Bob Hawke and Paul Keating were in Government real wages rose by a miserable 2.9%. In other words, the party that understands small business has done more for the workers of Australia than the party that is to represent the interests of the trade union movement. I mean, we have delivered for the workers of Australia in a way that our political opponents couldn't hope to achieve when they were in office and we've done that because we have run a very, very strong and very effective economic policy.
The last thing I want to say to you and I say this in a very partisan fashion and that is that this will be a very difficult election. There is a sense of desperation in the tactics that are now being employed by our opponents. They are going to say and claim anything in order to secure victory. They haven't told us what they stand for, they are wallowing in old debates and past differences yet the Australian people want from both sides of politics a view of vision and attitude about the future.
This election is about the next ten years, it's not about the past three years or the past ten years - it's about which party can do the best for the people of Australia over the years ahead.
Now we have a track record. Even our opponents acknowledge that we have done a good job with the economy. When I became Prime Minister there were 35 federal electorates that had double digit unemployment or worse, now there are only four and that, perhaps more dramatically than anything else tells a story of an Australia economically recovered, an Australia economically respected, an Australia strong enough to withstand the ravages of the Asian economic downturn and the recessionary influences that followed the terrorist attack in 2001.
An Australia economy that is seen around the world now as an exemplar of what you can do and I finish on this note - that growth and that strength has been fueled by the energy and the capacity and the commitment of men and women all around our country who have responded to the new opportunities.
Governments can create opportunities but you need people willing to take the risks and invest their money to take advantage of those opportunities and you represent in the city of Hobart people that have done that and it's an experience that I want to continue with.
We need your help, we need not only your votes - we also need your resources and your advocacy and your enthusiasm because let's face it the other side of politics will pull out every stop to win. It won't be polite, it will be in deadly earnest, we do need your help, and we do need your advocacy, and I know and hope that we will receive it.
Thank you.
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