E&OE...
Listen to this Speech (MP3 - 1.91Mb - 104secs)
Later today I will deliver the fourth of the Australia Rising speeches focussing on the nation's future and the need for us all to continue aiming higher.
Much has been achieved in the past 11-and-a-half years, but the Australian people are entitled to know our plans for the future.
I will use today's speech to outline the Government's goals for a fifth term in office.
One of the issues I will touch on is the relationship between different levels of government in our country.
So much of the debate about Commonwealth-State relations concerns the respective roles of the two levels of government as if an appropriate balance between the two were an end in itself.
That is the wrong approach. We should be focussed on outcomes, not systems.
We should be neither centralists, nor believers in states' rights.
We should be aspirational nationalists.
We should want and aspire to achieve the best possible outcomes for Australians wherever they might live and through whatever method of governance which will best deliver those outcomes.
Sometimes that will involve leaving things entirely to the states. Sometimes it will involve carefully put together cooperative federalism. On other occasions it will require the Commonwealth bypassing the states altogether and dealing directly with local communities.
My near universal experience of regularly travelling this great country of ours in the past decade has been that local communities want good services and good outcomes.
They care little as to which level of government delivers them as long as they are delivered. That inherent pragmatism of the Australian people should be a clear signpost to all governments.
Listen to this Speech (MP3 - 1.91Mb - 104secs)