Thank you so much ladies and gentlemen. Thank you so much for the warm welcome. It is a real honour for me to be sharing the podium today with my friend and brother Prime Minister, John Key.
John Key has done mighty things in New Zealand. He has done mighty things in New Zealand. I am happy to bask in his reflective glory today and I salute him as someone who, with yet I hope many years to go in New Zealand’s top job, has already marked himself out as one of New Zealand’s most accomplished prime ministers.
Ladies and gentlemen, Parliamentary colleagues, Australian and New Zealand Ministers, particularly Joe Hockey, Malcolm Turnbull and Ian Macfarlane, Arthur Sinodinos, I see Michael Ronaldson as well here in the room.
The size and the enthusiasm of this gathering testifies to an economic relationship which is strong and getting stronger.
New Zealand is our sixth largest export destination. It’s our ninth largest source of imports. It’s our third largest destination for exports and 16,500 Australian businesses also call New Zealand home.
It isn’t just an economic relationship. We were blood brothers, beginning on the battlefields of Gallipoli and France, we have served together in so many theatres of conflict ever since, and most recently Afghanistan.
We are not two foreign countries; we are two somewhat different countries, but we are two countries united by an abundance of family ties. We are family. We are brother countries. We are sibling countries.
My wife – as many of you would know – was born in New Zealand and in fact, Prime Minister Key was one of my constituents for several years. He couldn’t vote for me, but nevertheless, he was a constituent for several years and this testifies to the depth and the strength and the affection in the relationship.
Our challenge is to turn the personal bonds, the cultural bonds, the historic bonds into ever stronger economic bonds.
Our challenge is to try to ensure that while we remain two countries, increasingly, we are one seamless market economy.
I really am thrilled that Australia has been able to invite New Zealand to participate in the full range of this year’s G20 activities.
This year, thanks to New Zealand’s presence, it will be not so much the G20 as the G21.
This G20 year will be the most significant international gathering ever held in this country. It kicks off with Finance Ministers coming here in a couple of weeks’ time. It culminates with the Heads of Government of the world’s 20 largest and most representative economies coming to Brisbane in November.
There are many countries that we could have invited but we decided that the country that we must invite was our brother country, our sibling country across the Tasman – New Zealand.
It’s an opportunity to showcase not just Australia but to showcase Australasia.
In the week leading up to the B20 – or as now I prefer to say the B21 gathering in mid-July – we will have an Australasian business week which will be an opportunity to showcase the capacities and the capabilities of the businesses of both our two countries.
We are both countries which need investment. We are both countries that are dedicated to exports and this will be our opportunity to show to the leaders of the world’s largest businesses just what we can do for them.
When I look at New Zealand I see a country which at this point in its history has much to teach us.
There was a period in the 1980s – the era of Rogernomics – when we rightly looked across the Tasman for lessons.
Just over the last five years we have rightly looked across the Tasman for lessons, lessons that perhaps weren’t very well learnt until recently on this side of the Tasman but nevertheless important lessons.
When I said on election night last year that Australia was under new management and open for business I have to say that I did have New Zealand in mind and I did have in mind many of the policies and programmes which have been pursued by the Key Government.
Thanks to the fiscal discipline of the Key Government the size of government as a percentage of New Zealand’s economy will drop from 35 per cent to 30 per cent.
As government gets smaller, citizens get bigger and that is what this government wants to achieve in this country – empowered citizens.
New Zealand is on track for a surplus next year and strong sustainable surpluses in the years ahead.
I was delighted to hear the New Zealand Health Minister explain to me and my colleagues this morning that health spending in New Zealand has grown by just three per cent over the last five years and yet by all reasonable indicators the quality of health services and health outcomes have actually expanded.
But the policies of the New Zealand Government under John Key are not just about fiscal rigor; they are about providing a better life for citizens. The point of being economically responsible is not to keep the 300 smartest economists in the country happy. The point of being economically responsible is to provide a better life for the people of our country and in New Zealand, inflation is down, mortgage interest rates are down very substantially from over five per cent to under two per cent. These are good results for the people of New Zealand. Real wages are up 13 per cent; there’s been 53,000 new jobs in just the last 12 months and this is why the New Zealand lessons have such resonance for us on this side of the Tasman. Not for nothing has Forbes Magazine recently described New Zealand as the world’s number one place to do business.
I do welcome Prime Minister Key, not just as a brother, but as soul mate. I do welcome him as someone, not just as a friend, but in very significant ways already a political mentor.
As the Australians in this audience know only too well, this new Government here in Australia is determined to get taxes down, to get red tape down and to get productivity up because that means you get prosperity up. This is not just textbook learning because across the Tasman in New Zealand we have seen precisely that happen, precisely that happen.
So I want to say in welcoming John Key to the microphone that he has been a truly exemplary leader of his country, he has been a fine leader for New Zealand, but his inspiration and his example is very, very welcome on this side of the Tasman and I am very grateful indeed to be in the company of my brother Prime Minister John Key.
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