Mark, thank you very much for those extremely generous remarks. To all of my fellow Liberals and members of the National Party, collectively my fellow Australians. I welcome you to this wonderful historic event in the experience of our two parties and in the life of our nation. Can I commence my remarks by expressing gratitude, and I will come later in my remarks to individuals, but I would like to express my gratitude to the Australian people for the support that they have given to the Government, the support that they have given to my colleagues and the trust that they have invested in us over the last 10 years. I have said frequently in the past few days that there is no greater privilege that can come the way of any person than to be Prime Minister of Australia. I am very conscious of that trust. I am very conscious of the responsibility. I expressed those sentiments on the night of the 2nd of March 1996 and that feeling has never left me. And I say to my fellow Australians that I am deeply conscious of the trust that you have put in us and I am deeply grateful and I know all of my colleagues are deeply grateful for the privilege that has come our way. We have tried not to abuse it and we will try in the future never to abuse it because public life is the ultimate in terms of serving a nation and serving a community.
Politics is an honourable profession. In the end the good things that are done for nation can only be done through the political process. We rightly honour all of those who in different ways commit their lives and sacrifice their lives to the service of their fellow countrymen and women. But the service of politics is a very noble pursuit and we are all extremely privileged to have been part of it. And as we gather tonight brightly marking this event, marking it with some reflections, marking it with gratitude and giving praise where praise is due I think it is reasonable to try and reflect on the last 10 years and to try and to work out in our own minds why it is that we have stayed in office, for what is by the standards of this country, quite a long period of time. I think there are two basic reasons why we have achieved that success. I think the first of those reasons is, that all of our actions over the last 10 years have essentially been taken against the background of belief in certain principles and belief in certain values. There has been a consistency about what we have done, and that is very important in politics. Because if you are not consistent you disappoint and confuse, if you are consistent you reassure and encourage. I had occasion and I don't normally quote myself, but I had occasion in drawing together these remarks tonight at looking at what I said on the 30 of January 1995 when I was once again given the enormous honour of being made leader of the Federal Parliamentary Liberal Party. And I said this, 'that I have always believed in an Australia built on reward for individual effort, with a special place for honour for small business as the engine room of our economy. I have always believed in a safety net for those amongst us who don't make it. I have always believed in the family as the stabilising and cohering unit of our society. And I believe very passionately in an Australia drawn from the four corners of the world, but united together behind a common set of Australian values and they are the attitudes and they are the values that will instruct and guide my leadership of the Liberal Party from this day on.'
And we together as a team, we of the great partnership as Mark called it have I believe been faithful and consistent to those principles? And as I look back over the last 10 years, I think of some of the examples of that success. I think of the wonderful statistic that told me a few months ago that there are now more self-employed people in Australia than there are trade unionists. That is a symbol, a symbol of the kind of society we have built in Australia over the last 10 years. Not a society that despises trade unions, not a society that denies the men and women of Australia the right to join a trade union, but rather a society that has given greater encouragement and opportunity for men and particularly for women, because 30 per cent or more of the new businesses commenced from homes these days are commenced by women. We have created that kind of society that has brought that forth. When I think of the things that we have endeavoured to do for families, there are many things that we have done, but none has been more spectacularly successful and more important than the family tax benefit system that we have brought in. It fulfilled the commitment that Peter Costello and I made in the 1996 election campaign that we would alter the balance in the taxation system, greatly more in favour of families who had the responsibility of raising children. And if you look back over those changes, the economic position of families with children has dramatically improved over the last 10 years. In the context of the ongoing debate in this country about taxation, about taxation reform about taxation change, let me make one thing abundantly clear. This Government believes that the existing family tax benefits system has been hugely advantageous to the families of Australia and it has no intention of making any changes to that system.
When I think of the safety net that I said we were committed to I think of the enormous changes that we have made to strengthen the Medicare system. The fact that we have provided an additional underpinning to the old age pension, 25 per cent of male average weekly earnings as well as the half yearly indexation. I mention that because one of the charges made against us by our opponents 10 years ago was that we would rip up the safety net, that we would tax and axe to Medicare. It is true that in my past and it is all carefully documented because I said it in public, I was a critic of Medicare and I formed the view 10 and a half to 11 years ago that the Australian people had said to me, well John we note what you say, but we want you to know what we believe. And we believe that Medicare fundamentally is a good system. It might have flaws, you might be able to make it better and we have made it better because we've given massive support to private health insurance and we now have in this country a real balance between the provision publicly and privately of assistance in the area of health. So we have preserved that safety net.
And the remarks I made about an Australia drawn from the four corners of the earth but united behind a common set of Australian values has a particular resonance in the context of some of the debate of recent months. We have steadfastly maintained a non-discriminatory immigration policy. We have drawn people from every corner of the earth and we'll continue to do that because this country has been enriched and expanded very greatly as a result of migration. Migration has steadily risen and it's risen with the support and the consent of the Australian people because fundamentally the Australian people now believe that the immigration programme is under control. And when you get your immigration programme under control you build public confidence and public acceptance. And we ask of all of our new citizens, we ask indeed of all Australians, a very simple thing. And that is that we all unite behind a common set of Australian values. And those values are well understood. They're values of fairness, of mateship, of equality between men and women, of Parliamentary democracy, of the rule of law, of the opportunity to start a business with absolutely nothing and work your heart out and be a success and pass the proceeds of that life's work onto your children. That is what Australia has always been about. And the millions of migrants who've come to this country from around the world, from Europe, from the Middle East and from Asia have been part of that great Australian experience. They've been examplars of the Australian ethic and the Australian way of life. No country in the world has more successfully absorbed people from other lands than has Australia and in the process we have enriched our lives and in the process we have maintained a culture and a way of life that is recognisable all around the world.
My friends, the second reason why I believe that we have had some success is that we have recognised that good government, successful government is a combination of two things. It's a combination of good policy and good politics. If we had not reformed the taxation system, if we had not tackled the scandal of the Australian waterfront in 1998, if Peter Costello's first budget had not tackled the dreadful inheritance of debt that was ours in March of 1996, if we had no decided to give independent control of monetary policy to the Reserve Bank of Australia, if we had not reformed the labour exchange system or the employment services of this country we would have been thrown out of office years ago. The Australian people would have grown tired of a Government -,very quickly they would have grown tired of a Government that talked a lot and did nothing. And what the experience of the last ten years has taught me, and I hope has taught all of us is that you are elected to do things that need to be done. You are elected to reform what needs to be reformed. You are elected to change what needs to be changed. But you are also elected to understand that the Australian people want you to keep listening to them. And more than anything else in my daily life as Prime Minister over the last ten years, I have endeavoured to maintain a perpetual conversation with the Australian people and that's where the good politics comes in. Just as we needed all of those reforms to win, we also needed a political sensitivity on occasions to win. And if we had not, for example, in the first half of 2001 recognised that there was unhappiness and discontent in sections of the Australian community about aspects of our policies and taken remedial action, we may well have faced defeat at the election at the end of that year. So it is very much a combination of good politics, of good politics and also good policy. I want to say my friends that the other thing that the last ten years has taught me about government and taught all of us about government is that it does involve a capacity to respond to unexpected and substantial change. I never dreamt, and I don't think anybody in this room dreamt that when we were elected in March of 1996 that the greatest threat we would face in our ten years as a nation was the threat of terrorism. When I sat down to talk to George Bush for the very first time on the 10th September 2001 I had no idea, he had no idea that the world was to change forever the following day. And the capacity of this country and the capacity of this Government to respond to that challenge has been one of our greatest achievements. And when we came into office, I am pleased to say that we began to lay the framework for what we would ultimately have to do, because despite all the budget difficulties we faced in the budget of 1996, we put a circle around defence expenditure and said it would not carry any burden of the expenditure restraint that was needed. And in the years that have gone by since then, we have responded to those national security challenges. And I have to say that of all the experiences I have had as Prime Minister in meeting people both here and around the world, none of them have been more inspiring than the experiences of meeting, and mixing with and thanking, and I hope in a small way encouraging the men and women of the Australian defence forces who have so ably and proudly and bravely represented the values and interests of this country in so many parts of the world.
This of course has been a great team effort. Tonight is not a night for just John Howard. People have been kind enough to say nice things about me, but it is a night to celebrate and to mark a great team effort. I want to say that we would not have achieved our success without the strong and close and trusting coalition between our two parties. The very proposition that we could have tried to govern in any way except in partnership was never something that I contemplated. I try, as everybody in this room does, to be a reasonable student of Australian history and I have to say that I do not believe that our two parties could have achieved anywhere near the success we've achieved over the last ten years other than in Coalition. I say to you Mark, thank you for your friendship, for your loyalty, for your support and for your sagacity as Australia's Trade Minister. Tim Fischer and John Anderson, two very different characters, two very different personalities, two wonderful friends, two wonderful Deputy Prime Ministers. Two people who faced, in their rural constituencies the particular and at times bewildering challenge of One Nation, so apparently simplistic and absurd, yet on occasion striking a chord with many of our fellow Australians who didn't have a racist bone in their body. And they responded to that in a quite remarkable fashion. So I say three cheers for the Coalition. I say the Coalition has served us well all through the years, and the Coalition must always be the aim and the commitment of both of our parties.
I turn to my own party, and of course he is a major figure in the Government. I express to Peter Costello my great thanks, my profound admiration and my respect for the tremendous job that he's done as Treasurer. He has been the principle architect of the Government's economic policies. He's carried the argument, the advocacy and the explanation of those policies with enormous energy, on occasion when it's needed, great wit and great pugnacity, particularly on the floor of the House of Representatives. Peter Thank you for a wonderful job. And I also turn to a former leader of our Party Alexander Downer. The debt we owe to Alexander is two fold. We owe firstly to Alexander an expression of gratitude for the grace and dignity with which early in 1995 he facilitated a change in the leadership of the Party which he judged was in the Party's interests. He put party before self. He's always been a child, and I use that in the same way as I'd use it of myself, a child of the Liberal Party, somebody brought up in the values and the traditions of our Party and he put it first and I am deeply grateful to him for having done that and all of us are. And I'm also very grateful for the wonderful job that he's done as Foreign Minister. Ten years both he and Peter have held their respective portfolios and done them with tremendous distinction and ability. Might I also mention two other of my senior colleagues, Robert Hill, who has just announced his retirement as Defence Minster and his pending retirement from the Senate. Robert was the longest serving leader of the Coalition Parties in the Senate. He was a wonderful Defence Minister. He brought to the discussions of the senior levels of the Government on occasions a different perspective from mine and from others but a perspective that is as much a part of the tradition of the Liberal Party as any other perspective.
You've heard me say it before and I say it again. It's important that it be said on a night like this. We are a broad church. We are a Party which is the trustee of two traditions in the Australian polity, the classical liberal tradition and the conservative tradition. We are not exclusively a classical liberal party and we are not exclusively a conservative party. We are a combination of the two. That is our special inheritance and it is our special trust and we must always work very hard to preserve it.
One other colleague who has been with us from the very beginning and has been through the fire in two portfolios I do want to mention tonight because he's made a special contribution and that is Philip Ruddock, first as Immigration Minister and now as Attorney General. Can I also join Chris McDiven in saluting the fact that on the 6th of March Amanda Vanstone will become the longest serving female Cabinet Minister since Federation. And isn't it interesting that the parties without quotas, the parties that choose and promote people on merit and not on gender not only have in Amanda the longest serving Cabinet Minister since Federation, but in Dame Margaret Guilfoyle and Jocelyn Newman, the second and third longest serving female Cabinet Ministers since Federation.
I can't let tonight go by without expressing my gratitude to Andrew Robb, who was the Campaign Director in that wonderful victory in 1996. To Lynton Crosby who was the organisational architect of our victories in 1998 and 2001 and to Brian Loughnane, who has so ably led the organisation since taking over and took us through our wonderful victory in 2004. Tony Staley and Shane Stone, the two Federal Presidents that I have had so much to do with in the time that I have been Prime Minister, and of course I welcome Chris McGiven as Federal President of the Party in consequence of Shane Stone's retirement.
I owe a special thanks also to my staff. Being the staff of a Prime Minister is no easy job and over the years I've had wonderful staff. I want to particularly acknowledge the presence here tonight of two long standing former staffers of mine who worked with me through some of the barren years of Opposition, namely Barbara Williams and Grahame Morris. I never forget Grahame Morris on the night of the 1996 election, probably told a few of this story before but we were biting our fingernails and waiting for the first results to come through and we had the electorate office computer and we were in a large bedroom in the Intercontinental Hotel and I think Tony Staley and Nick Minchin and others may have been with us. Anyway, we finally saw some figures go up on the electorate office computer and I think it was the subdivision of Portland East in Macquarie. And the bloke from the Electoral Commission said now that's interesting, it's showing a swing of 16% in favour of the Coalition. And I sort of broke out in all sorts of delirious delight and Grahame Morris said hang on mate, there's only 83 people enrolled at that polling booth. Now as it sort of happened, although it was only 83 it proved to be a very accurate sample. But anyway, I certainly remember that night and I want to thank both of those people in particular for the wonderful work they did.
To my present staff I can't express too much to gratitude to Arthur Sinodinos and Tony Nutt and Tony O'Leary, the head of the Press Office and all the other members. Many of you know them. They're wonderful people, they keep me out of trouble, they give me great advice, they bring that blend of good policy and good politics and in the case of one of them, a passable attempt of interpreting the moods of the Australian Federal Parliamentary Press Gallery. They're a very important part of the democratic institutions of this country. But you sometimes need a bit of help in understanding them.
There is one other person I would like to mention. He's not here tonight. I think he may be at the gathering tomorrow night but as a night like this is one where you look back and think of your early and formative years in politics, there's one person who I first met when I joined the Liberal Party who I don't mind saying has had more influence on my understanding of politics and the way I've tried to practice it over the years and that's the former Senate Leader Sir John Carrick, who I regard as my political mentor, somebody who explained to me some of the great historic shifts that were underway in Australian politics in the 1950s, in the 1960s. The need for the Liberal Party in those days to diversify its vote and to break down some of the class and religious divides that had allocated in a rather random fashion, the votes of the Australian people between the Liberal Party and the Labor Party.
And that brings me to the group of people who I owe the greatest debt to in a political sense and that is the real legends of the last ten years. The real legends of the last ten years ladies and gentlemen are, in a sense, none of the ones that I've mentioned. The real legends of the last ten years have been the marginal seat holders of the Coalition parties. When I look back, particularly to the 1998 election, where we were literally saved because of the circumstances of that election, we were saved by the quality of our marginal seat holders. I want to say to all of them here tonight, indeed to all of my colleagues, thank you very much for your understanding, for your loyalty, for the solidarity that you have displayed towards me, the discipline you've demonstrated, the willingness to accept decisions that we have taken, though on occasions you may not have liked. I think the discipline and the cohesion, not only of the Cabinet but also of the entire Parliamentary Party, has been exemplary and I do express my gratitude to you.
And finally, on a personal note can I express as best I can my simple thanks and heartfelt gratitude to my family. To my three wonderful children, Melanie, Tim and Richard and to Melanie's husband Rowan who we've been wonderfully blessed to have as part of our family over the last two years, I want to say thank you to you for the great support you've given us. Richard can't be here tonight, he's in the United States, but I'll ring him up at about half past five tomorrow morning and give him a detailed account of tonight because he's rather interested in politics. But they have been a wonderful source of support and love and inspiration to me and I can't say too much of the affection I feel towards them. And finally to Janette, who over the years has not only been my wife and life's companion and a source of great emotional support and love, but she's also been a wonderful guide. Janette is a person who is deeply committed to the future of this country. She provides to me an understanding and a point of view that sometimes, I find the views a little different from mine, but that's how it should be. I always listen and I do, as I should, take proper notice. But can I say to you Janette, I could not have achieved what I have achieved in public life without you. You have been the great supporter and stabiliser and adviser and counsellor over all of these years and I do thank you very warmly for it.
I end my remarks at this dinner in going back to what I said at the beginning. And the beginning of course was the 2nd of March 1996 and that is of all the emotions we felt on that night, the most important emotion was that of humility. To be a Member of Parliament is a huge privilege, to be able to form a Government is a huge privilege and for an individual to be Prime Minister of Australia is an unbelievable privilege. But it's a privilege I am pleased to share with all of my colleagues. They've all been part of it. It's their night tonight. They are owed as much praise and gratitude as might possibly come my way.
Can I say to all of you that the Australian people expect of us a commitment, they expect of us dedication. They trust us, they believe in us, but we begin to falter, if we begin to presume on their trust and their understanding, if we lose contact with their ordinary needs and their ordinary aspirations, they will surely and rightly and justifiably turn against us. I believe very strongly that the Australian people rarely get their electoral judgements wrong. We mightn't like some of their judgements. When we look back over the last 30 or 40 years they've been right on just about every occasion, if not every occasion. We must keep that in mind. They are wonderful supporters and they're very trusting if we're doing a good job, but they can be harsh judges and dismissive of us or indeed any other group of politicians if we fall short of their legitimate expectation.
So to all of you, thank you for tonight. I thank our financial supporters who have stuck with us through thick and thin, I thank our branch members, our organisation. It's been a wonderful journey over the last ten years, but as Benjamin Disraeli famously once said 'finality is not a word owed to politics.' There is never an end. It's a bit like that ever receding finishing line that I often speak of. Tomorrow is another day, tomorrow is a day to rededicate ourselves to the ongoing service of the Australian people.
Thank you.