Thank you very much Mark, the Mayor, thank you for you very kind words of welcome to this beautiful part of Australia, my other Parliamentary colleagues, both State and Federal, ladies and gentlemen.
My first remarks to you are about the quality and energy of your local Federal Member Mark Baker. He listed a number of things that have occurred. He was too modest to say that most of them, in relation to benefits of particular value to this area have occurred in the relatively short time that he has been the Federal Member for the seat of Braddon. We all remember the particular circumstances of his election at the end of 2004 where the people of this electorate, along with the people of Bass voted very strongly for the Coalition because the Coalition was committed to the jobs that were necessary to sustain the prosperity of local industry and local people.
I'm amused as I move around Australia, and I see this sign that says "Your Rights at Work." The most important right that anybody has is to work, not at work. And in the time that we have been in Government, we have seen a spectacular fall in the level of unemployment in this country. Over the last three months we have seen the biggest three-monthly rise in employment in the 10 years that this Government has been in office. And when you think of that, and pause for a moment, and set it against the propaganda that came from the Labor Party and the unions about the allegedly devastating effect of the Workchoices legislation, and that propaganda still goes on. We were told that this was a charter for mass sackings. We were told by Mr Shorten and Mr Beazley this would usher in an era of mass sackings. It's done nothing of the kind. It has in fact delivered over the last three months the biggest quarterly increase in employment - 159,000 throughout Australia - in the 10 years that this Government has been in office.
And in this part of the world, in the electorate of Braddon the unemployment rate has fallen, as Mark said, from around 11 per cent in 1996 to the current level of six to six-and-a-half per cent. And I frequently borrow the words of the British Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair, when shortly after being made Prime Minister of Great Britain in 1997 he addressed the Trade Union Congress and he said fairness in the workplace starts with the chance of a job. And the greatest right anybody has in the workplace is to have a job. And policies that give people jobs are the real key to fairness and justice in the workplace.
Mark is right. Australia is enjoying an era of great prosperity and the prosperity of Tasmania is overwhelmingly a product of the prosperity of the nation. I know state governments always claim the credit for economic success and when something goes wrong, well it's all the fault of the Federal Government. Now I understand that. I have been in politics for 32 years. I know how that sort of operates, and I can understand it. But let's not kid ourselves. The great drivers of national prosperity and I have to say that in the 32 years I have been in politics, I have never seen better economic conditions than I now see in Tasmania. And I am so grateful and so pleased and it's such a good thing that the whole country is enjoying this prosperity and the contribution that the strong economic policies have made have been very much part of it.
Now I do want to talk about two things in particular. I want to talk about the decision that was taken by the Vestas company in relation to its future operations because I know it's been a subject of interest and concern. And I am pleased at the remarks that have been made this morning, very positive remarks by the company's leadership about future opportunities. And I can make it very plain that we, at a Federal Government level, Mark has been working very closely with my office and with the Federal Minister for Industry Ian Macfarlane to see what assistance we can provide to ensure that there is a continuation of employment opportunities for the 65 people who are employed by that company.
It's also important to note that the principal reasons given at the news conference this morning for the company's decision which was taken by head office in Denmark are not related to the MRET scheme, but rather are a product of worldwide demand and cost issues. And simultaneously with the decision taken in relation to the operation here in northern Tasmania, another decision has been taken for the closure of one of the company's plants in Scotland, so it's hard to argue that this decision is a one-off, related to the Government's policies in relation to renewable energy.
But the important thing is that your local Member Mark Baker is working with my office and with the Federal Minister for Industry to see what assistance can be given to ensure that the opportunities that are available for a continuity of employment for the 65 Australians employed are fully investigated. And I would like to see cooperation between the Federal Government, the State Government and the local community, and not some sort of point scoring exercise between the two levels of government. And I am sure that if that happens then the opportunities that might be available, ultimately commercial decisions are involved when companies expand or companies contract, no government can guarantee the maintenance of the commercial operations of every single company in this country, and any prime minister, or opposition leader, or candidate or member who gets up and asserts that if only he had an opportunity he would keep every company going at the same level of operation and nobody would ever be affected by commercial decisions, don't take any notice of anybody who says that because there's not a man or woman alive who can deliver on such an absurd commitment.
The key thing is that we have for some time been working cooperatively with the company. Your local Member has been working with my office and with the Federal Industry Minister in order to make sure that what assistance can be properly provided is provided.
The only other thing that I do want to say ladies and gentlemen is that over the next year or 18 months there will be a lot of debate about the future management of this country. There will be a lot of claims made on the support and the affections of the Australian people from both sides of politics. We are living in an era which is characterised by a couple of things. It's an era of great economic prosperity. We saw the astonishing profit earned by BHP Billiton, the largest corporate profit in Australia's history. And before people, and I know there won't be any in this room, but there are some in the community who start taking pot-shots at the fact that BHP Billiton made $13 billion. Let me remind them that they paid almost $4 billion of that in taxation. And that $4 billion has helped to fund tax cuts for the entire community itself, but provide investment in roads, it will help to pay, in some small way, for the $10 billion extra that this Government is going to spend on increasing the size of the Australian Army over the next 11 years. Two battalions do not come cheap, they never did, they didn't come cheap in the past, and they are not going to come cheap in the future. But it's a very necessary investment in the security of this country. Because challenges to our security and maintaining our economy prosperity are the two big, national political issues, and political responsibilities that this country faces. We do live in an unsettled region, there are failing states in our region. We've seen it in the Solomon Islands, we've seen it in East Timor, we may see it in Papua New Guinea, and this country must be able to shoulder the burden more than any other country in the world of providing assistance in our part of the world.
And that's why we are increasing the size of the Army, it's also why I announced in Sydney this morning before I came here, an increase of 422 personnel in the overseas Deployment Group of the Australian Federal Police. Because with many of these operations, there are two phases, you send in the Army that provide the immediate stabilisation and when that's occurred you need to provide police on the ground to do the routine policing tasks, and we as a nation will need to invest more as the years go by in defence, and in providing the other security back-up that's so needed to meet our responsibilities, particularly, but not only, in the region.
And the other challenge of course, the other aspect of the debate in Australia over the next 18 months will be, which side of politics is better able to maintain economic prosperity. We are a prosperous country; there is no reason why the benefits of the resources boom should not continue for some time. We don't like high petrol prices; they are painful for many people in the Australian community. Ironically, one of the major of causes of high petrol prices, in fact the major cause of high petrol prices, is the huge demand for fuel coming out of the booming Chinese economy. Demand is running ahead of supply and the price has gone up, that's why petrol is dear, it's the main reason, there are other reasons at the margin, but that's the main reason. And most of the demand is being driven by the extraordinary economic growth of China.
Yet [inaudible] for us is we are paying those higher petrol prices, but we are benefiting enormously from China's economic expansion. Many other countries around are paying the higher petrol prices, but they are not benefiting from China's economic expansion. Petrol is about what $2.40 or $2.50 in Britain, it's about 50-60 per cent dearer in Germany and France than what it is in Australia except that I know that's of absolutely no comfort, or no reassurance to people in Australia who are paying the very high prices that we are at the present time. But let us remember that we do benefit more than most from the economic growth in the country which is the principal cause of those petrol prices being higher.
Now I have no doubt that there will be an enormous amount of debate about interest rates over the next 12 months and I hear that Mr Beazley is making a speech in which he's attacking the high interest rate policies of the Keating Government. Well the last time I checked, Mr Beazley was a member of the Keating Government, he was in fact Mr Keating's Deputy Prime Minister. He was, as it were, a co-conspirator in sending Australian interest rates to levels of 17 and 21 per cent, that Mark mentioned in his speech. And those people, when they were in Government, were the high interest rate specialists of this country. And many of you in businesses will remember the astronomically high small business and farming interest rates in the late 1980s and the early 1990s. So let's have no lectures about interest rates from the Leader of the Opposition who was Deputy Prime Minister in Mr Keating's Government.
Ladies and gentlemen, this country is experiencing an extraordinary chapter in its economic history and although I am very proud of the economic reforms that have made a contribution to that, the introduction of a new taxation system, the new workplace relations system that I believe is fundamentally important to maintaining our current prosperity, today's prosperity is a product of yesterday's reforms. Tomorrow's prosperity can only be a product of today's reforms.
And when people say to me, well look, you've done enough, you've fixed the tax system, you've done this, you've done that. Don't do any more, have a rest, take a holiday, leave the economy to look after itself. That is a recipe for this country running out of steam. And once governments think that they've done enough, once governments think they can rest on their laurels, that is when they begin to lose a grip on things.
And I can promise you that this Government will never rest on its oars. We need, as a nation, to continue the process and the challenge of economic reform. And that's why we've changed the workplace relations system because a workplace relations system based on getting workers and employers (inaudible) at an enterprise level is a workplace relations system that will generate more jobs and greater prosperity and higher levels of productivity.
So my friends, we have introduced policies that have been of enormous benefit, but the greatest contribution to the prosperity of this country over the last decade has been the hard work of the men and women of this country, the adaptability of Australian workers, the adaptability of Australian businessmen and women, the way in which this country has changed. You're now investing in different industries than you did here in northern Tasmania 20 years ago. You're adopting practices and attitudes that were not thought of 20 years ago, and the adaptability of this country, and its capacity to change, has, more than anything, contributed to the great economic prosperity that we now enjoy.
It's nice to be back here. Mark is a wonderful representative and the people of Braddon made a very wise choice in October of 2004 to send him the Canberra and I will do everything I can to help him remain as your local Member. You should do likewise because he's a very good investment, a very good choice. Thank you.
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