Michael, thank you so much, but most of all, thank you so much, ladies and gentlemen, for being here today to show to me the strengths of this community and to share with me the issues which you’ve got.
I want to let you know that as far as I am concerned, I am very proud of your local Member. I think he’s doing an outstanding job and I know that the one thing that is uppermost in his mind is not being Canberra’s representative to you, but being your representative in Canberra and trying to bring the cares and concerns of the people of Deakin, of the people of the Maroondah district, to us in Canberra. In the end, that’s what a local Member’s job is: to represent his or her constituents to the government in Canberra, and Michael is doing a very good job of that.
I echo Michael’s comments that the strength of any community is not in its official institutions, it’s not in its official representatives, important though they are. The strength of any community is the quality of its citizens, and the great feature of Australian society is that there are networks upon networks upon networks of decent people who, when they see an issue, they band together to address it. The Rotary clubs, the church associations, the environmental groups, all of the bodies that come together to support our schools and our hospitals – this is the real life; certainly it’s the lifeblood of our community, and that’s what all of you are here to represent – the civil, the civic associations that are so much a part of the social fabric of our country and which do so much to strengthen the bonds of solidarity and community between each Australian.
I want to stress that the purpose of government is do whatever it can to make your life easier. I picked up the paper the other day and I was delighted to see that Melbourne is the world’s most livable city, and I reckon it is, in many respects, the world’s most livable city, and I say that as a self-confessed Sydneysider! But it could be more livable, and it would be more livable if we built the East West Link and that’s what this Government wants to do, working with the Victorian Government to build the East West Link.
It would be easier to live if we kept the pressure off everyone’s cost of living and that’s why we were so keen to abolish the carbon tax, because we wanted to see cost of living pressures reduced. As a result of abolishing the carbon tax, every household’s cost of living should go down, on average, by about $550 a year.
As many of you would know, this Government is coming up for its first anniversary. I don’t pretend for a second that it’s all been smooth sailing and I don’t pretend for a second that every single thing that the Government has done would be greeted by applause, even from people in this room. I’ve just been talking to some of the students of Melba College, and I said to one of the captains – Madison – “Have you got any issues that you want to raise with me as your Prime Minister?” And her response was, “Where do I start?” It’s good that the young people of Australia are questioning and curious of their leaders, because that is how our country has advanced, because we have not been satisfied with what is. We are constantly asking ourselves ‘what can be?’ That is the genius of our civilsation. We are constantly asking ourselves, ‘what can be’? ‘How can we do things better and be our best selves?’ That’s such a marvelous feature of life in Australia.
But I do want to say to you that the commitments that we made to the Australian public a year ago – to stop the boats, to scrap the carbon tax, to get on with building the roads of the 21st century and to bring the Budget under control – they are all substantially underway. The carbon tax is gone, the boats are stopping, road building, particularly the East West Link here in Melbourne, will shortly commence, and while we’re having our issues from time to time in the Senate, roughly half of the Budget savings and efficiencies are already in place and we will keep working with the Senate that we have to try to ensure that we get the best possible deal.
I know that there are some features of the Budget which not everyone likes. Unfortunately, it’s not easy to tackle a debt and deficit disaster. A lot of people have asked questions about the fairness of the Budget – well, I want to say that the most unfair thing that any government can do for you, the people of Australia, is saddle you with an ever-increasing debt burden. We will pay down this debt, we will get back into budget balance and then into surplus so that we’re paying off debt rather than running it up, because as all of you know, having looked at your household budgets, in some cases having to run business budgets or school budgets, or community organisation budgets, you can’t spend what you haven’t got. While it’s nice for the government to say, “We’re going to give you this handout and that handout”, if it’s borrowed money that we’re handing out, eventually everyone pays the price.
So, our challenge is to build a stronger economy so that there’ll be more wealth, more prosperity, more fairness for everyone, and that’s what we’re doing. We’re not doing it for us, this isn’t about government; this is about you, the people of Australia. Everything that we do in Canberra should be about a better life for you, the people of Australia, and certainly, that’s what I pledge myself to do my damndest to deliver – a better life for you, the people of Australia.
So, thank you so much. It’s lovely to be here and I look forward to meeting as many of you as I can in the next 40 minutes or so.
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