PM: Women and men of Balmain, this is Unity Hall. You tell me this is where the Labor Party began. I say it began in Unity Hall and Barcaldine.
But let us not revisit the State of Origin, even for the Australian Labor Party.
The thing is we are here where the movement began, and today we have sought to give the movement its future.
What I see here are so many people who have been hardworking members of our party for years, for decades, and in some cases with our life members, more than half a century.
You are our heart and soul. You are the sinew in our bodies which makes it possible for us to function as a political party and movement.
Your values, your passion; without that we are nothing. We are absolutely nothing. With it we are everything and with those values, with that passion we can prevail.
When I look at you as hardworking members of our party, I have this simple view in my very basic Queensland heart which says this: you as members of the Australian Labor Party, our rank and file, you should have a say in the future election of the leader of the Australian Labor Party.
Our party should have nothing to fear to throw its doors open, throw its windows open, to our great rank and file, into our local communities, because we represent you therefore we should trust you to elect the best people possible to lead our movement in the future.
So I am perfectly relaxed in surrendering our future to you.
The new rule is pretty basic really. You get 50 per cent of the say, the federal parliamentary Labor Party gets 50 per cent of the say; I reckon that equals 100 per cent excellence for the future.
And before we get to the inevitable carping from the person who seeks to be Prime Minister of Australia, I would just say to him one thing. Mr Abbott, why don’t you try it yourself in your own party?
A little democracy in the Liberal Party mightn’t go astray.
I know they are normally a perfectly united mob, and I know Malcolm has his own views on that in recent days, but can I just say throwing the doors open of our major political parties is about rejuvenating the lifeblood of democracy itself.
And we are leading the way, as we have always done in the past.
Friends, the challenge which lies ahead of us is big. I make no pretence that this election, whenever it is held, is going to be easy. It will not. Hard work lies ahead of us.
They think, and they’ve thought, that they’ve had this thing in the bag. Remember Tony Abbott said he’s been busy writing his victory speech?
I think the Australian people always look askance at political arrogance when they see it.
Then we had the federal director – what’s his name – Loughnane, addressing a gathering of the Liberal party faithful in Canberra only two months ago saying we the Liberal Party have won this election.
Again I say the Australian people are very harsh judges of political arrogance when they see it.
Instead what I know is securing each and every voter’s support, for us obtaining victory at the next election will be fought suburb by suburb, town by town, city by city, state by state, branch by branch, polling booth by polling booth, and I am confident we can win.
Friends I conclude with this: the mission of Labor is to build up the house. We build things. We build the schools. We go out there and we build the universities. We build hospitals. We build things called the National Broadband Network.
We build things that matter, which create a house in which our people and the people of our nation can live and have their being and have a sense of prosperity and security for the future.
We are the nation builders. We build the house. The other mob, they have a much easier script. They tear the house down. That’s the difference.
‘National Broadband Network? No, no, not for you Sonny Jim, we’ll remove that. A Better Schools Plan for your school? No you can’t have that money over there, we’ll rip that money away from kids and from teachers.’
‘Oh, new libraries in your schools, new multipurpose facilities, new classrooms, new electronic whiteboards, no we’ll take all those away as well.’
And by the way, the National Broadband Network we’ll just rip out of the ground or disconnect it.
We build the house up, they tear it down. We’re the nation builders, the other mob would frankly just sit back and wait for the magic of the marketplace for just make it all better in the never-never.
That’s not who we are; we are Labor.
We believe in building the nation; we believe in fairness for all; we believe in a fair go for all.
We believe in building the nation through each community, each suburb, each city, right around this vast country of ours and making sure that all of us, whether we are newly arrived on these shores, have been here for generations or have been here since eternity with the First Australians, that we are one Australian family together.
That is our vision and our purpose. We build the house up, they tear it down. We unite the nation, they seek to divide it.
We have a positive plan for the future. All they’ve got is a box and barrel of negativity like you’ve never seen before.
That’s the difference folks, that’s who we are, that’s who they are.
That’s why we will fight to ensure the future remains with this Australian Labor Government.
I thank you.