The difference between Cottesloe Beach and Sunshine Coast, Sunshine Beach where I grew up is that, we don't really have any stingers there either, at least not many. We deploy them purely on unwelcome foreign tourists. There is a difference between the stinger concentration along the Queensland coast - that's a matter for subsequent discussion.
Your beaches here are just extraordinary. Even I as a Queenslander have wandered along Cottesloe before and you are blessed with a beautiful natural environment here and this is truly a blessed part of God's earth.
As Prime Minister I am doing something a little different this year. In previous years, in previous decades, my predecessors of whichever political persuasion have usually and properly focused on national day celebrations in the nation's Capital. And they will occur as they should on the 26th of January in Canberra.
The nation is much bigger than Canberra. The nation extends - at least at my last report - beyond the boundaries of the Australian Capital Territory. This is a vast nation.
And what I have sought to do this week is to take some time to travel to each of our State capitals, beginning in Sydney, then to Adelaide, to Melbourne, last night to Brisbane and to here today. And back to Canberra this evening.
And the purpose is simply this, to be among the people of the nation and its leaders to reflect together across all the great diversity of this great country Australia on our achievements past and our aspirations for the future. And it is a good thing for all of our national political leaders to be with the nation's people out across this vast land.
Australia Day of course means many things. It's a day when we celebrate our achievements, our experiences and the values that we share as Australians. It's a day in which we share stories about those achievements, experiences and values as well. Stories from our past, stories from the present and hopeful stories for the future. Stories about the building of the nation, sometimes in periods of great hardship, about the forging of one people from nearly all the peoples of the world, forging a continent and a nation. Forging a nation for a continent and a continent for a nation. An extraordinary achievement.
Also, a time to reflect on the stories of indigenous Australians. Their ancient but still evolving art, their unique understanding of the land, their contribution deep and spiritual to Australia's emerging identity.
Australia Day is also a day on which we honour heroes, people who have shown outstanding leadership across the country, in education and health and business, sport, the arts and so many different fields. Australians who inspire us, particularly in terms of what can be done in the face of adversity. Through their example we see the best of what we are as a nation and who we are as a people.
But this year Australia Day has come at a time, a hard time, in our country's history. This year the celebration of Australia Day is mixed with the concern, the anxiety and the fear that is felt from the global financial crisis and economic crisis which now affects all nations across the world, including this nation, Australia.
Throughout the past year I said that 2009 was going to be a tough year and so it has come to pass. The news from around the world has not been good, nor has it been good here in Australia.
On Wednesday BHP announced it would cut more than 3,000 jobs in Australia. A large number of those jobs cut here in Western Australia. Communities like Ravensthorpe, Hopetoun. 1,800 jobs, three to four hundred immediate local jobs.
This is where the statistics of the impact of this thing called the global financial crisis translate into the lives of living Australians and the challenges they face for the future.
This is not just a crisis of nations and economies, it is one which affects real, living human beings, their lives, their families and how they seek to shape their way through it.
Also, this week we've seen new growth figures from China. We've seen a reduction in China's growth performance this last quarter and we understand the impact which then has for Australia. China, to remind everyone here present, absorbs more than 15 per cent of Australian exports. 15 per cent.
Their falling growth, which amounts to about a $200 billion reduction in Chinese output, translates into $5 billion worth of lost exports for Australia, which in turn has a massive impact on Australian exports and Australian jobs.
These announcements are of deep and immediate concern here in Western Australia as they are for the nation as a whole. The magnitude of this global financial and economic crisis is underscored by a few simple, stark facts. Let me just give you four of them.
The United States lost three million jobs last year, the biggest loss in a year since World War II. Second, the global share markets have lost half their value since they peaked in October 2007. The greatest single fall since the Great Depression. Third, last year the value of the Australian stock market fell by 43 per cent, the biggest fall in a year since 1900. And now the International Monetary Fund predicts that advanced economies will contract this year by 0.25 per cent for the first time since World War II.
These sharp and stark statistics underpin the global dimensions of that which we all face and which therefore Australia faces as well.
An unprecedented crisis demands and requires an unprecedented response. That is why the Government has moved swiftly and decisively to guarantee all bank deposits, to underpin stability in the banking system. Unprecedented in the history of the Commonwealth.
That is why the Government has moved decisively to guarantee the borrowings of our private financial institutions on global markets. Again, unprecedented in the Commonwealth's history.
That is why the Commonwealth has now invested in the last several months, $36 billion to stimulate the economy, sustain confidence and support jobs, and through our investments - $5 billion in infrastructure and local government projects and through our commitment to more than 700,000 new training places - laying the ground for a stronger, more resilient economy that will emerge from the crisis and position Australia well for the future.
Our challenge as a Government is to chart a course of strategy through this crisis. We've embarked upon that strategy, our resolve is to prosecute it and to prosecute it to the full.
There are two options available for governments in dealing with the crisis. One is do nothing and hope that it all sorts itself out in the end; that markets automatically self-stabilise. And that is what some of the market fundamentalists would have us believe.
Or the other. To act decisively through the agency of Government to seek to step into the breach where the private economy has begun to falter.
The Government I lead has decided to embark upon that second course of action. And that is our resolve and we do so without apology.
And today I would confirm a further step which the Government has taken. An again unprecedented response to the global financial crisis. And that is to intervene directly in order to support the flow of private credit to good Australian businesses and the jobs which they provide.
As I've said before, to ensure that Australian banks have funds to lend, the Government took a historic decision on October 12 to guarantee term wholesale funding for regulated banks by the Australian Prudential Regulatory Authority and building societies and credit unions.
In addition the Government as a course, as I said before, acted to guarantee all deposits.
The Government's action has helped to soothe financial markets but here is the important point, before the guarantee Australian banks were finding it increasingly difficult to raise funds off shore.
In September last year their raisings had fallen to $1.7 billion, down from more than $13 billion they averaged each month earlier in the year. Then in October offshore markets dried up almost all together and Australian banks raised no money at all. In this climate the guarantee provided by the sovereign Government of Australia had an immediate effect.
In December offshore raising was $15.4 billion, the highest in the past few years and this was all guaranteed funding by Government. In January 2009 this amount has already reached $19.8 billion, again all guaranteed by Government.
These are extraordinary measures for extraordinary times. An unprecedented crisis demanding an unprecedented response.
Our banks are strong and well capitalised and the guarantee has enabled them to raise the funds they need to lend to Australian businesses. But the Australian economy is global in nature and therefore affected by the health of foreign banks as well as Australian banks.
Some cash-strapped foreign banks are scaling back their lending in foreign markets and that includes Australia. If banks do not allow clients to refinance as they would in normal conditions then companies can be forced to sell assets, often at low value. This endangers their financial health and that of the whole economy.
According to Merrill Lynch, lending by overseas banks represents more than half of the $285 billion in syndicated loans that have been issued to Australian businesses since 2006. Of those outstanding loans $75 billion are scheduled to fall due over the next two years.
If foreign banks do not roll over their share of these loans, it will be difficult for Australia's four major banks to fill the gap on their own. The mathematics is fairly straightforward.
A significant share of this is in the commercial property sector. Foreign banks have more than $45 billion in exposure to Australian commercial property, around 28 per cent of total bank lending to the sector. And supply of credit affects real businesses and affects real jobs in this sector.
As the global financial crisis affects banks around the world, some banks, foreign banks are seeking to reduce their exposures. That is why today the Government confirms that it will establish a $4 billion Australian Business Investment Partnership with the four major Australian banks.
This $4 billion partnership is a temporary contingency measure to provide liquidity support to viable, major commercial property projects in Australia. This is an initial $4 billion and could be extended via the issuance of Government guaranteed debt to create up to $30 billion of loanable capital.
And its purpose is this - to help fill the gap left by any possible withdrawal of foreign banks from Australian businesses and therefore from Australian jobs.
Again, extraordinary measures for extraordinary times.
The alternative is to do nothing. The Government that I lead will not embark upon that course of action.
The partnership I've described will support the commercial property assets of viable Australian businesses which without financing would be forced to retrench thousands of workers. Commercial property projects that could be supported by this initiative include shopping centres, office towers and factories under construction. As well as existing properties of that nature.
The commercial property sector itself employs about 150,000 people in Australia. Many of the 150,000 workers employed in the commercial property sector are tradespeople, plumbers, electricians, carpenters.
Without action, a combination of weak demand brought about by the global financial crisis and tight credit conditions brought about the global financial crisis could see up to 50,000 people in this sector lose their jobs, according to Treasury. With flow on effects to jobs in other parts of the economy.
Small and medium sized businesses which service the commercial property sector could also be devastated by weak demand and tight credit conditions in the sector. This Government will not sit idly by and watch these jobs and small and medium sized businesses be wiped out by fluctuations in global credit markets.
Instead we have resolved to act.
The partnership I've described will be structured to minimise the exposure of risk to Australian tax payers. And any risk is equally shared between Government and the four major banks. The alternative is to do nothing and to simply carp from the sidelines while Australian businesses and jobs are sacrificed to the global financial crisis.
This Government will not do that. This Government will act.
As we approach Australia Day and the period ahead, the challenge ahead is not simply that of governments and what governments do. The responsibility of Government is to chart a course for the nation not just in good times but in hard times and to help steer the nation through and this Government is so resolved. But that is part of it.
The other part is to recognise this core principle. We are all in this together. Every State of the nation. Every community across the nation. Business leaders, union leaders, community leaders, governments at all levels, national, state and local. Working together based on one simple and single recognition - we are all in this together.
Australia did not cause this crisis. The crisis began elsewhere. And the product of values on which we should reflect in due season. But we are dealt now a practical challenge and a challenge which we must meet together. All of us, working together.
My resolve is to do so in partnership with the Government of Western Australia, in partnership with businesses here in Western Australia, in partnership with local communities here in Western Australia.
The shape which this takes over time, we will see and we will work through each of the challenges which emerges and in partnership with governments across the country.
But what governments do is one thing. What you the community do is something else.
This is a time which calls forth fundamental Australian values. Values of courage, values of resilience and values of compassion. Looking out for one another. So that when we see somebody who has been affected by this crisis by losing their job, whose lives have been thrown into turmoil, who then must move from one community to another, the kids' schooling being upset as a result, that our response as human beings and as neighbours and as members of the community is to reach out a hand of friendship and support.
If we do this together, government, business, unions, the community, those individual Australians, calling forth the great values which have shaped Australia over so many decades, then we can together see Australia through the crisis which lies ahead of us.
For me it's a great honour to be among you here today in Western Australia to celebrate this Australia Day. This State is known for its vitality, this State is known for its optimism, this State is known for its determination and its can-do attitude.
All those values and virtues are going to be needed by the nation in the year which lies ahead. I am confident in the nation's future, I am confident in this great State's future.
I wish you all a very happy Australia Day.
[Ends].