PRIME MINISTER:
Welcome colleagues back to Canberra - 2017, another year in which we deliver for hard-working Australian families. To ensure they can get ahead, to ensure that their Government is backing them. To ensure that they have great jobs - well-paid jobs - and that the prospects for their children and grandchildren are better than ever. To tackle the scourge of unreliable and unaffordable energy.
We saw massive increases in electricity prices under the Labor Government.
The Labor Party remains the greatest enemy of affordable and reliable power.
You only have to look at South Australia to see that, where Labor Party ideology has had the result on that state – which is crying out for more investment, crying out for more industry – South Australia, thanks to the Labor Party, thanks to the same policies and plans - ideological plans that Bill Shorten adopts - thanks to that approach, South Australia has the most expensive and the least reliable electricity in Australia.
Now, that is what all of Australia will look like, if Bill Shorten were ever to become Prime Minister.
So we have set out a very clear road map to deliver affordable, reliable electricity for Australian households and businesses, and meet our emissions reduction targets.
It will be an all-of-the-above policy, using all technologies rationally, objectively, in a business-like manner, to deliver for those hard-working Australian families.
That is why we are pursuing our business tax cuts because we know that that puts more money in the pockets of Australian workers - because that will result in more investment and if you get more investment, you know what, you get more jobs. And you get better-paid jobs.
The Labor Party used to believe that, years ago, when they were more economically rational. No longer.
A wholly-owned subsidiary of left wing trade unions, Bill Shorten is a threat to every household budget, to every business, to every job.
Only a few weeks ago, I was in Portland with Dan Tehan at Portland Aluminium. What does that great enterprise need most of all? It needs markets to sell its aluminium and it needs affordable energy.
The Labor Party is the enemy of both.
Adopting his new guise as a protectionist, a populist protectionist, leading us down into a dead end of poverty. That is where that is headed under Shorten, going for every single political point, every point undermining the prospects for Australians.
Now, everything we stand for is designed to back those hard-working Australians.
We're going to make childcare more affordable and more accessible.
We're going to create the environment where there will be more investment and therefore more jobs.
Greater markets for our businesses. Greater opportunities for Australians to get ahead and ensure that they have energy that is affordable and reliable, whether it is a family or whether it's a business. That is our commitment.
The values of our parties, the Liberal and the National Parties, is grounding, focused on defending the interests of hardworking Australian families and the businesses which employ them, which provide them with the opportunities to get ahead.
Better times for Australians today, for our children and our grandchildren.
We are delivering more investment, more jobs, more opportunities. We do so, building those opportunities, on a foundation of security.
We stand for security, for borders with integrity.
You look around the world at the grief and the turmoil that you've seen through lax border protection. We have now gone over 900 days without a successful people smuggling venture coming to Australia. That is a remarkable achievement and one on which we can never be complacent.
Australians know that the Coalition - the Liberal and the National Party Coalition - will keep their borders secure. That is the foundation of our generous immigration policy. It is the foundation of our multicultural society.
Australians must know that their Government, and their Government alone, determines who comes to Australia. That is their sovereign right. That is our sovereign right as a nation.
We deliver that security, we deliver that integrity. We deliver the security that is the foundation of the opportunities that we are building for today and for generations to come.
It's great to be back. We've got a lot of work to do.
[ENDS]