E&OE.......................................................................................
Well, thank you very much, Jeff, for those very kind words of introduction
and welcome. To Joy Howley, Peter Costello, Tony Staley, my other
federal and state Parliamentary colleagues, fellow Liberals.
I start by expressing my immense gratitude to you, the members
of the Victorian Division of the Liberal Party, for the very crucial
part that you played in our remarkable win on the 3rd
of October. The professionalism of the Victorian Division has been
a long practiced habit and has for a long time been a constant in
the political life of our country. Fortunately over the past two
or three elections the good professional habits of the Victorian
Division have been copied by other State Divisions around the country.
And we have started to win in those states in a more consistent
fashion than used to be the case in the past. But I don't forget
the ongoing and the long standing contribution that the Victorian
Division has made over the years to our strength at a federal level.
And it remains the case now the tremendous strength that your federal
Members bring to the Coalition Government in Canberra.
There are many who have contributed to our remarkable win and I
want to say in a few moments some things about the characteristics
of that victory. But I do want to thank Peter Costello as the Deputy
Leader as the Treasurer over the last two and a half years for the
leadership that he has given to the Federal Parliamentary Liberal
Party here in Victoria. Peter has been a great Deputy, a great Treasurer,
a great colleague and he has played a very major role in putting
together the architecture of the policy that we so successfully
took to the people on the 3rd of October. And he has
also played a very major role as Treasurer in the fact that I will
be able to go to Malaysia tomorrow as Australia's Prime Minister
to the APEC Meeting and I will be able to speak with the authority
as the leader of a country whose economy has held up remarkably
well in the face of the worst economic downturn that our region
has seen since World War II.
The real truth, and in some ways the as yet to be fully told story,
is that the Australian economy has performed better than anybody
really expected in the face of that economic downturn. We have historically
low rates of inflation, historically low levels of interest rates,
we have very high levels of business investment, we have recovering
levels of consumer confidence and we have been able to put to the
Australian people successfully a major historic tax reform plan.
And this week we have seen the lowest unemployment figures for nine
years. Peter Reith has made a great start in that new responsibility.
Now he has got a, I mean if you get 7.7 this month Peter, next month,
but I think we all are sensible enough to know that these things
can bounce around. But the job market is stronger, and that Job
Network is better than the old CES system that it replaced, much
better. And if we can get the Australian Parliament to pass the
Unfair Dismissal Law, we can generate even more jobs and if we can
challenge the Labor Party, which we have, to match its rhetoric
about youth unemployment by voting to entrench junior wage levels
within the Australian economy, we can preserve two to three hundred
thousand jobs for young people.
But ladies and gentlemen, I thank all of my colleagues here in
Victoria, all of my federal colleagues for their help and their
loyalty and their support and their commitment to our cause over
the last two and a half years and most particularly during the election
campaign.
I do want to express my sadness politically and personally at Russell
Broadbent's defeat. And I do want to thank him most warmly
for the contribution that he has made to our Parliamentary Party.
To all others who ran unsuccessfully as candidates, particularly,
but not only to those who ran in difficult Labor held seats, I express
my thanks. I congratulate Tsebin Tehen on his election as a Senator
from the State of Victoria. And I thank Karen Synon for her contribution
in the time that she has been in the Senate which will continue
until the 30th of June.
Whenever you win an election, everybody has got an explanation
as why you did it. And everybody has got a special pet theory which
is sometimes vaguely related to their own contribution as to why
you have won. Let me say there are many explanations as to why we
won this election. And I think some of the explanations have been
pretty close to the mark and there are some things about the election
that ought to be understood very clearly. There is one very important
thing about the election that should be understood and that is that
it does not represent the beginning of a Labor resurgence. On the
surface of it, yes, there were a number of seats won by the Labor
Party, and there was a two party preferred swing against the Coalition.
The reality when you look below the surface of course is that the
Labor primary vote barely moved up, but there was a reduction of
about eight or nine per cent nationally in the Coalition's
primary vote and most of that went to One Nation and through their
distribution of preferences four or five per cent of a two party
preferred swing was delivered to the Labor Party. And it is true
as Jeff said in his introduction that although Pauline Hanson lost
her seat and there will only be one One Nation representative in
the Parliament after the 30th of June next year, that
organisation is not politically dead, and we have to continue to
work hard to win back the disillusioned Coalition people who supported
One Nation. Particularly in Queensland and Western Australia. One
Nation did us a lot of damage in Western Australia. Far less damage
here and far less damage in South Australia, but a lot of damage
in Western Australia. We have to reach out to those people and we
have to persuade them to come back to the Coalition.
And I think the other thing that the election demonstrated and
demonstrated very, very dramatically is the quality of grass roots
campaigning. And the thing that gives me tremendous pride, not only
as Parliamentary Leader, but as somebody, like so many of you, has
spent 30 or more years in the Liberal Party organisation. That last
election is the best demonstration yet that when it comes to professional
grass roots campaigning and marginal seat campaigning the Liberal
Party now is much better than our Labor opponents.
I mean we had some astonishingly good results in marginal seats.
I look at the audience and I see people and I, it's always
a mistake to do this, but I make mistakes from time to time doing,
I look, I look at people like Bob Charles and Fran Bailey and Phil
Barresi and the tremendous job that the three of them for example
did in very, very marginal seats, a quite astonishing job. And you
move into the other states and the role of the three people that
I mentioned on election night of Trish Draper and Jackie Kelly and
Danna Vale and can I say as a Liberal coming from Sydney how tremendous
it was to see David Hill fall over in a heap politically.
Now that's, they are some of the personal reasons why we did
well. But I think the other reason why we won, and the other thing
that made this victory so important, and in many ways a more emphatic
and more important victory than 1996 because you all know that in
1996 the Australian public was desperate to vote out a government
that had been there for 13 years and they were desperate to get
rid of a Prime Minister who had lost all contact with the Australian
public and all resonance with the mainstream of the Australian community.
But on this time we did take a very, very difficult in some respects,
controversial taxation plan to the Australian people. But we took
something to the Australian people that from the Prime Minister
down was passionately believed in by the people who were putting
it to the Australian people. And public life is ultimately about
campaigning for those things that you believe in, trying to win
public support for those things that you believe will be of enduring
benefit to the Australian community. And when you win that support
then having the courage to implement it.
And we were successful for a lot of reasons. We were also successful
because we received magnificent support at a State Government level
from our political colleagues. And I especially want to thank Jeff
Kennett for the tremendous enthusiasm that he brought to the campaign,
the tremendous support that he has given to the cause of taxation
reform. His willingness to campaign in other parts of Australia.
And his uncompromising support for a taxation reform programme that
he and I and all of us know will be of enduring benefit, not only
to the people of Victoria, but also of enduring benefit to the entire
country.
And of course that support was continued yesterday. We had a remarkable
day in Canberra yesterday. Everybody was happy, well just about
everybody was happy. There was the odd piece of banter between Bob
Carr and Peter Beattie. As Peter Costello and I remarked it was
terrific to see it going like that instead of going like this. It
was marvellous. But Jeff's help yesterday and the leadership
that he has shown amongst the Coalition Premiers and State leaders
has been enormously constructive and I am personally very, very
grateful for it.
We now have before us, becuase we have won a second term, we have
the opportunity to remake the political map of Australia in a way
that would have been denied us if we had only been there for two
and a half or three years. You really do need two, three or more
terms at least, at least to make a really big impression and to
change some of the entrenched attitudes that need changing. Not
in a truculent or in a triumphal way. When I addressed the Party
Room in 1996 after we had won power after being in the wilderness
for 13 years, I warned my colleagues about losing touch. And I issued
the same warning when we reassembled after the 3rd of
October. We must never lose touch with the aspirations of mainstream
Australia. But in keeping in touch with them, we should never be
reluctant to take bold initiatives and to give a sense of direction
where people are looking for it. I know there were doubters about
our tax plan, and I know there were many people who probably closed
their eyes and crossed their fingers and went to mass several times
a week, but at the end of the day people do want you to tell them
what you think is right for the country and to show a determination
to pursue that course of action. And we were able to do that. And
we now have an opportunity, because we have weathered this Asian
economic storm better than most expected, we do have an opportunity
to build on the strengths we already have economically. And we all
know that the greatest piece of unfinished economic reform business
is taxation reform. And after yesterday's historic Premiers
Conference where the elected leaders of the States and Territories
of Australia, as well as the Prime Minister and the Federal Treasurer,
unitedly agreed on the principles of the taxation reform, can I
again state to the so called States house of Australia, will you
listen to the views of the Australian people rather than your own
individualised conceit.
I don't know what more you can do. We have won an election.
We have had a Premiers' Conference so you have the views of
the Premiers, the Chief Ministers, the Australian people and the
duly elected Government of Australia. I would have thought that
was a pretty emphatic expression of opinion.
But I don't underestimate the challenge that will be involved
and I just want you all to know that we do not intend to weaken
or deviate or tire or give up in any way.
I can tell you as far as my federal Parliamentary colleagues are
concerned we have only just begun this campaign. But we haven't
gone through the political fire that we went through on the 3rd
of October and in the weeks leading up to it, to give it away in
the face of an opportunistic performance by the Australian Labor
Party and the Australian Democrats. And we don't intend to
weaken in any way.
Ladies and gentlemen, we do have, as I said, an enormous opportunity.
It's very exciting, it's very exhilarating and it is quite
historic to feel that you can be part of shaping events that will
take this country into the 21st Century. Over the next
three years we have unrivalled opportunities as Australians, to
justifiably celebrate the Australian achievement of the last 100
years, and to also play a very important part in our region in taking
advantage of the fact that uniquely Australia is an intersection
of Europe, of North America, and of the Asia-Pacific region. There's
no country on Earth that is located in the Asian-Pacific region
that has such profound and enduring links with Europe and with North
America, and has within its own population now a magnificent contribution
from people who come from the Asian-Pacific region themselves.
We have a unique intersection of assets of history and geography
and economic circumstance and we can make a contribution as a result
of that in a way that no other country can. And we can be listened
to because of those perspectives in a way that no other country
can. And as I said earlier it will be a source of great strength
for me to be able to go to the APEC meeting in Malaysia tomorrow
and to speak as the leader of a successful economy. To speak as
the leader of a democratically elected government that has had the
courage to put a reform program to the Australian people. To speak
as the leader of a country who understands perhaps better than any
of the mood of all of the peoples of the Asian-Pacific region, who
understands the western liberal tradition which we share so richly
with the United States and Canada and New Zealand. But also understands
the difficulties through which Indonesia is now passing and understands
the importance of continued bilateral relations between the democratically
elected democracies of the region and those countries whose systems
of government are different from ours. And I go there greatly strengthened
by the outcome on the 3rd of October.
Finally my friends can I just say to all of you again, as a creature
of the Liberal Party organisation, how much I am in your debt. It
is an enormous privilege to be leader of the Parliamentary Liberal
Party, it is of course an even greater privilege to be Prime Minister
of Australia. Neither of those positions would have come my way
without the years I spent in the Liberal Party organisation. Without
that sustenance and without the understanding of the Australian
people and of the party organisation and the hopes and aspirations
of Liberals all around Australia that those years gave me I would
not have aspired to or achieved those positions. I thank you. It
is a proud moment, it is a great moment. I thank all of you for
the part that you played in our great victory. Thank you.
[ends]