Thank you very much Dale. Will Hodgman, the Leader of the Opposition Tasmania, Senator Eric Abetz, my other federal and state parliamentary colleagues, ladies and gentlemen. It's a huge pleasure again to be back at the annual gathering of the Liberal family here in Tasmania. And I greet you with a very strong measure of gratitude for the great support that Liberals in Tasmania have given to me and to all of my federal parliamentary colleagues over the last 12 months.
We have a task ahead of us and that task is not only to defend the House of Representative seats we hold in Tasmania, but to add to them. And I am delighted that already the party has endorsed Ben Quinn in the seat of Lyons, he did a wonderful job in more than halving Mr Adams majority at the last election, and I look forward enthusiastically to helping him and the other candidates yet to be chosen in Franklin and Denison. And to my two parliamentary colleagues in northern Tasmania, Michael Ferguson and Mark Baker, who won historic victories, which gave us such early heart on election night in 2004, thank you for the great job that you are doing in the name of the Liberal Party and in the name of the policies of this government.
Yesterday I announced here in Hobart, the decision of the Government to proceed with a sale of a portion of its 51 per cent shareholding in Telstra. And in doing that I gave effect to a promise that we have made on four occasions to the Australian people. I am amazed that Mr Beazley is attacking me for keeping my promises.
In 1996 we said we would sell one third of Telstra and we did, by 1998 it was our policy to sell the Government's remaining share in Telstra but it was not until last year that we secured parliamentary approval to do that. How on earth, therefore, can I be criticised for keeping faith with the Australian people. Some people may disagree with me on the sale of Telstra, but nobody can say that I didn't promise to do it. Nobody can say that the Government misled the Australian people, nobody can say that the Government didn't campaign to end the absurd conflict of interest, in the Government being not only the regulator, but also the majority shareholder.
Governments are bad at running businesses, ladies and gentlemen, governments have no business running major corporations. Governments are there to govern in the public interest. They are not there to run companies and it is in the long term interests of the Australian people that this giant corporation be fully privatised, and I do not apologise for that, I do not take a back step on that. I told the Australian people that I would do it, and what I did yesterday was a fulfilment of a promise that I made to the Australian people, and the Australian public voted for us at the last election in the full knowledge that that was our commitment.
Mr Beazley not only attacked me for keeping my promises, he says, oh, the price is not high enough. Well I might remind Mr Beazley that when the market price was a lot higher, he voted to stop the sale. So if he thinks the price is too low, will he now apologise to the Australian people for blocking the sale in the Senate in 1998 and 1999. The problem with Mr Beazley is that he is against everything but for nothing. That's his problem, he is the great Doctor No of Australian politics. He never supports anything. I mean, let us go through the long list.
He left us with $10 billion black hole, and together with his co-conspirator Mr Keating, who he now wants to blame exclusively for the 17 per cent interest rates that we had when they were in Government, he left us with that. Not only did he leave us with that, he also tried to stop us passing the measures to get rid of the deficit and to repay the debt. So he was responsible for the problem, and then he opposed our attempts to fix the problem.
When we tried to introduce tax reform, he opposed that and said he would roll it back. Well that promise sort of disappeared in convoluted confusion in the middle of the 2001 election campaign. He opposed our attempts to reform the tax system, he opposed Work for the Dole, he opposed the reforms on the Australian waterfront which have lifted the crane rates per hour from 17 or 18 to an unheard of 27 or 28 and made the Australian ports that were once the laughing stock of the Australian community... and the famous story told about a lady who lived in Winton in Queensland, and she was told that a hurricane was coming, and she said, oh, I'm not worried the wharfies won't let it land. Of course it was a reminder of the mindset. Now that mindset was broken in 1998 but did Mr Beazley join that? No, he didn't join that.
And so it's gone on, and I was amazed of course, two days ago when I, yesterday rather, when I announced an increase in the size of the overseas component of the Australian Federal Police, 422, the largest injection of personnel into the Australian Federal Police since that remarkably effective organisation was formed in 1979, and Mr Beazley even attacked that. He said, oh, you will take police from the state forces.
Let me say to Mr Beazley, there are 2000 people right at this moment wanting to join the Australian Federal Police, and in any event, if a man or a woman in a state police force wants to advance their career opportunities by trying to transfer to the Federal Police, what's wrong with that? I mean, is he against that? The problem with this man is that he has a mindset of opposition, he has a mindset of negativity. If John Howard is in favour of it, he's got to be against it, he's got to rummage around for a reason, instead of recognising as he should have, that increasing the size of the Federal Police, like increasing the size of the army, is necessary in Australia's national interest. And just occasionally, Opposition leaders might do themselves some good by agreeing with the Government because no matter how prejudiced you may be, the reality is that nobody in Australian public life has a monopoly on good decisions or a monopoly on wisdom. And I do think the Australian people want a positive view, and an optimistic view about our future because this country has an enormous amount to be optimistic about, and hopeful about.
On my way in I saw a familiar sign. It said, your rights at work. I am interested in people's rights at work and I thought about that sign, I looked at it and I thought, your rights at work. Well the first right at work, is actually to be at work, is to have a job. As Tony Blair famously said, as Tony Blair, a very successful and courageous Labour leader, I don't say that about many of them, but I mean it about him, he's courageous, and he's been successful because he's carried out some necessary reforms. And the most sensible thing Tony Blair did when he became Prime Minister of Great Britain was to realise that the industrial relations reforms of the Thatcher Government were good for Britain. And although they had gone against the trade union grain, it wasn't in that nation's interests to get rid of them. So he addressed the trade union congress in 1997, that's the equivalent of the ACTU in Britain, and he said famously, fairness in the workplace starts with the chance of a job.
And that is as true in this country as it is in any other country. And on that test, this has been the fairest government Australia has had in 30 years. This has been the government that's delivered more rights for people both in work and at work, of any government in 30 years. So I say to the workers of Australia, your rights at work are safer under a Coalition Government than they would be under a Labor government, and I've got the evidence to back up the statement. Unemployment now is at a 30 year low.
Since our industrial relations legislation was introduced, employment has risen by 159,000, and that's the biggest quarterly rise in employment since the Government came to power, 159,000. Mr Beazley and Mr Shorten said there were going to be mass sackings, instead there has been mass hirings.
That's how we have treated people's rights at work, and to be in work. And in the 10 and a half years that I have been Prime Minister, real wages for Australian workers have risen by 16.8 per cent, 16.8 per cent. I ask the rhetorical question, how much did they rise under Labor in 13 years? 1.3 per cent, not many rights at work then, not many at all. Not too many rights at work for the million Australians who lost their jobs when Mr Beazley was the Employment Minister, not too many rights for those million people. All the legislation in the world will not save your job if the economy is badly run. And the greatest guarantee of job security in this country, is a strong, prosperous, growing economy, and the greatest thing that we have done for the workers of this country is to deliver them, a strong and growing, and prosperous economy, so that they can enjoy, not only the right to work, but they can enjoy a good and rising wage, and a proper return on their efforts and their productivity while they have been at work.
But by all means, I say to my opponents on this issue, show your banners, display your slogans, talk about rights at work because I can out debate and point to the performance of this Government on that issue with anybody the Labor party likes to deliver in parliament. Because we have done better by the workers of Australia than the Labor party could ever dream of doing.
My friends, the question that will be asked repeatedly over the next 12 or 18 months as we move to the election next year will be which side of politics is better able to sustain and expand the prosperity that we now have, and which side of politics is better able to look after and secure the defence of this county and our vital interests in our region and around the world?
And the Government over the last 10 and a half years has demonstrated again and again its superior credentials in those two areas. And over the last week we have seen in the decisions the Government has taken, a continued determination to push ahead with economic reform, our determination to go ahead with the full privatisation of Telstra is an example of that.
You do have to take decisions that are sometimes criticised and are sometimes seen as difficult. You do have to maintain the momentum, you do have to hold your nerve and maintain your will, and in the end the Australian public will support a government that is determined to implement its agenda. But in our two announcements, and particularly the announcement to expand the size of the Australian Army, we have again invested not only enormous resources, but enormous confidence and faith in the capacity of this country to play a significant part not only in our region but around the world.
I have been saying for some time that Australia needs a bigger army and I was delighted to make that announcement on Thursday. Because I believe that by building two additional army battalions, we will add to the capacity of Australia to shoulder her share of the burden in the Pacific region, and where appropriate, contribute to coalition operations particularly against terrorism in other parts of the world. We do live in an unstable region. We have seen in East Timor and the Solomon Islands, some years ago in Fiji, and potentially in Papua New Guinea, we have seen the actuality and the possibility of instability and turbulence. And the rest of the world rightly says to Australia, you are the biggest and wealthiest and most capable country in the region, we would like you to carry the greater share of the burden, and I accept that, and I think most Australians do. Just as we expect other countries to shoulder their share of the burden in other parts of the world.
And I hope that the countries of Europe finally come up to the crease in relation to the stabilisation force in the Middle East. There's a lot of talk always, I hope it is met by the troop commitments that are needed. You need a force of 15,000 to effectively bring about stability in that part of the world, and unless that is forthcoming, then I do not hold optimistic hopes for how things will work out.
But the decision we took last week, which will over a period of 10 or 11 years, cost at least $10 billion, will give Australia for the first time, since the 1970s, eight army battalions. One of the new battalions will be located in South East Queensland, and another near Adelaide. And it will give to the Australian forces, particularly the army, a far great capacity and a far greater depth, and it needs it, and it's a decision that I know the Australian people will very strongly support.
And coupled with our commitment to strengthen the Australian Federal Police, it's a demonstration of our determination to match our economic strength and our words with a capacity where necessary, to provide both soldiers and police to bring about stability. And we need both because there often comes a point after a military intervention when you need police because the tasks are essentially policing tasks rather than military tasks.
And our men and women in both the ADF and the Australian Federal Police have done an absolutely wonderful job in our name over the past few years. So ladies and gentlemen, those three decisions, the increase in the size of the army, the increase in the size of the federal police and the announcement regarding the privatisation of Telstra, all in the space of three days, are really a metaphor, in a sense, of what this government is all about. It's about getting on with your job, it's about taking sometimes difficult decisions, it's about making long-term investments and commitments for the long-term benefit of this country.
When you think about it, one day after the other, a bigger army, a stronger federal police, privatisation of Telstra. These are the decisions of a government that remains very, very aware of, and alert to, the responsibilities we have to all of the Australian people. The response of the Opposition has been a mish-mash of negativity and confused rhetoric and criticism, not a spontaneous and genuine reaction against the background of Australia's national interest. So the last three days has seen your government looking after your long-term interests, your government doing things that are good for Australia in the long-term, doing things that strengthen us in the region, doing things that strengthen our economy, and demonstrating again that we are a government for the long-term, we are a government for the enduring interests of all of the Australian people.
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