I acknowledge the First Australians on whose land we meet and whose culture we celebrate as one of the oldest continuing cultures in human history.
And I acknowledge this great branch of the Australian Labor Party - the rank and file members and supporters who do some of the hardest jobs in politics.
Those who do the hard work of keeping our party strong and healthy.
Those who are instrumental to us staying in touch with our local communities.
Those who attend the meetings, hand out the flyers and who serve their communities on local councils and in local community organisations.
And those whose efforts help change the course of the history of this state and our nation.
Just as the efforts of an earlier generation of Tasmanians made history one hundred years ago, when the first Labor Government took office in October 1909 under Premier John Earle.
Of course that government didn't last long.
In fact, only one week, - just like the first Labor government in the world, formed in Queensland ten years beforehand.
And just as happened in Queensland, that minority Labor government fell when the conservatives patched up their differences, frightened of the party of working people being in power.
That's the thing about the conservatives: always more united in their hostility to Labor than in any common policy purpose they might share together.
How little they have changed.
It would be another five years until Labor could form a majority government in Tasmania.
Our party had modest beginnings, from the hard toil of working people.
But from little things, big things grow.
And in Tasmania, Labor has done big things.
Think back to last century, when (with one exception) for a half a century from 1934, Labor won every state election.
And now, in the early 21st century, David Bartlett is renewing the Labor vision for Tasmania - a vision built on investing in education, investing in infrastructure, and investing in the industries and jobs of the future.
Federally, Labor also now has the honour of representing every single Tasmanian seat in the House of Representatives.
And with that honour comes great responsibility.
And it's a responsibility that I take seriously.
This Australian Labor Government - now just over 18 months old - consistent with Labor tradition, is committed to building a stronger Australia, a fairer Australia and an Australia ready for the challenges of the future.
This Government is facing the deepest global economic downturn in three quarters of a century.
It was a crisis born from the ideology and policies of the political right.
Neo-liberalism delivered us free market fundamentalism, unrestrained greed among finance executives, a boom in consumer and corporate debt, and a culture of weak regulation and a culture that said there was no place for government in the modern economy.
Neoliberal ideology and policy contributed to the creation of an unsustainable boom and bust global economy.
Around the world, governments of the responsible centre have been forced to step in to rescue the economy from global collapse.
As a Labor government we took the responsible course of action in response to the global crisis.
Early action.
Strong action.
Decisive action.
Action to make a difference.
And the bottom line is that we have made a difference.
We stepped in to the economy when the private sector was weak.
We acted to save the financial system from complete implosion: by providing sovereign guarantees to the banking system for the first time in the history of the Commonwealth.
We acted to cushion Australia from the worst aspects of the ensuring global recession by implementing a bold national strategy to support jobs, business and apprenticeships today by investing in the infrastructure we need tomorrow.
And we have acted to support those who through no fault of their own have lost their job or cannot find one by implementing a $1.5 billion Jobs and Training Compact with Australians, a compact with young Australians, a compact with retrenched Australians and a compact with local communities hardest hit.
In Tasmania, our strategy is no different.
2,808 Tasmanian first home buyers have taken advantage of the doubling of the First Home Owners Boost for existing homes and the trebling of the boost for newly constructed homes.
This is leading to activity.
In Tasmania, building approvals are up 7.1 per cent over the past year.
Already, under the National School Pride program, 273 projects have been approved for Tasmania, totalling $35.3 million and benefitting 80,695 students. Work begun on these schools last month.
Under Round 1 of the Primary Schools for the 21st Century program, Tasmania had 173 projects approved, totalling $228.3 million.
A total of thirty schools in Tasmania received funding for science and language centres.
Funding of $16.1 million for 65 social houses has already been approved for additional social housing in Tasmania.
A further $9.3 million has been approved for the repair of 516 social housing dwellings.
Additional Defence houses will be constructed in Tasmania at a cost of $2.8 million.
At the same time, the Australian Government has sought to use this stimulus strategy to invest in long-term, productivity-enhancing investments needed in skills and infrastructure for the future.
In Tasmania we are also investing in transport infrastructure projects - including the Kingston bypass, the Illawarra Road Link upgrade and the Brighton Bypasses.
And we are investing in the national broadband network - rolling out first across Tasmania.
Our total national stimulus in the state of Tasmania will total of around $1.4 billion.
70 per cent of which will be invested in the infrastructure we need for the future.
And we have done so on the basis of responsible, conservative economic management - expanding the role of government while the private economy is in retreat, while reducing that role as the private economy starts to recover.
Acting to intervene when it has been necessary.
Acting also to return the budget to surplus over time - and to maintain that budget discipline as we consider other important areas of national reform, including health.
And the result: as of today, Australia has the fastest growth, the second lowest unemployment and the lowest deficit and debt of all the Major Advanced Economies.
And as of today, the only one not to have gone into recession.
But when the rubber hits the road in all of this is jobs.
Because of the global recession, unemployment will continue to go up.
The action taken by the Government will support around 200,000 jobs that would otherwise be lost in each of the next two years.
This Labor Government has been a government of action - action to make a difference.
Today, you might have read an essay that I published in the national press that looks beyond the immediate response to the global recession towards the challenges of economic recovery.
I've noticed that some don't particularly appreciate it when I write long essays.
After the publication of my last essay in The Monthly 6 months ago, I'm informed that one national newspaper published more than fifty separate articles attacking it in one way or another.
I'm also informed that's about 60,000 words the newspaper in question devoted to my mediocre prose.
Nearly ten times the length of my original essay.
We should welcome a real debate about different ideas for the nation's future - including from newspapers that declare themselves unashamed defenders of the ideological right.
The Liberals weren't exactly big fans of the February essay either.
In large part because the Liberals don't like to admit the role of the neo-liberal ideology in bringing about the global financial crisis and the economic destruction this crisis has wrought.
Nor do the Liberals like to admit that it has been the interventionist policies of governments of the responsible centre around the world that have begun to arrest the decline in global growth.
In fact, in a stunning act of political hypocrisy, the Liberals instead seek to blame the centrist governments of the responsible centre for acting to clean up the global economic mess that is so much the product of their own ideological handiwork - unrestrained greed; unlimited credit and unregulated markets.
But the essay published today seeks to take the debate to a further stage.
It is more about the future than the past.
It is less about the crisis than it is about crafting the recovery.
It is about how we build a more sustainable economic growth strategy for Australia's future than we have seen in Australia's recent past.
It is about building a global competitiveness strategy for the future rather than just relying on the boom and bust of the mining sector, the real estate sector and the stock market that has so characterised so much of our past.
It is therefore about “the Building Decade” that lies ahead - building productivity growth, building a globally competitive Australia, putting in place each of the building blocks of this plan for the future.
As we pass through the worst part of the global recession, new challenges are emerging on the horizon.
The first of the new challenges relates to the transition period that lies ahead as we slowly move from crisis to recovery.
In the last 12 months of the crisis, governments around the world have implemented a range of extraordinary policies - fiscal, monetary and financial.
These policies including a massive injection of $5 trillion in fiscal stimulus; record low interest rates in many countries, and unprecedented bank guarantees and, in some countries, bail outs have been necessary to put a floor under a crisis.
But just as it was responsible to implement these policies during the crisis, it is also necessary to coordinate globally their gradual withdrawal once the recovery becomes clear.
That challenge - the challenge of creating a smooth and coordinated global exit strategy from the extraordinary policies that the economies of the world have had to put in place - is a challenge to which Australia and the world must direct their attention.
Coordinated exit will be one focus for discussion at the next meeting of the G20 in September when Australia once again plans to be actively engaged.
The second of the emerging challenges facing Australia and the global economy is the challenge of building a sustainable growth model for the future.
This challenge begins with the recognition that the source of Australia's future growth cannot simply be the same as for our past growth.
We cannot in the future rely exclusively on the windfall profits of a mining boom, a property boom, and a stock market boom - all fuelled by an exponential rise in private debt to drive sustainable economic growth for Australia's future.
Instead, we need to put in place a long-term economic reform strategy which will require patience and persistence to put in place - a strategy designed to lift Australia's declining productivity growth.
With the mining boom over and the prospect of a slower global recovery, Australia cannot rely alone on international fortune to carry us through the decade ahead.
But just because the path to global economic recovery will be tough, does not mean that we must accept the inevitability of lower growth in Australia.
Instead, Australia must work smarter and harder to achieve better national growth in a weaker global economy - and without just depending primarily on the good fortune of an episodic mining boom.
As Opposition Leader, I often questioned where growth would come from when the mining boom was over.
The previous government ridiculed rather than ever responding to the question - the reason being that they had no substantive response at all.
Now, in Government, this Government has a responsibility to prepare for the long-term future.
In order to create sustainable growth for the decade ahead, we must lay the foundations today for a stronger and more productive economy for tomorrow.
In the long run, Australia's living standards are fundamentally determined by productivity growth.
Treasury data estimates that 80 per cent of the improvement in the living standards of Australians over our past 40 years has come from increased productivity.
The factors that make up productivity may not always be dramatic enough to make the front page of the newspaper.
But they are fundamentally important to Australia's future prosperity.
And as we have seen from the past, it is a continuing process of reform - and one where the results of reform often take upwards of a decade to become real drivers of our national economic performance.
Productivity, put simply, relates to how efficiently we produce goods and services.
In a single business, productivity is simply the amount of output the business produces for a given number of technologies and workers employed.
If that business manages to improve its production process such that it can produce more output with the same number of workers, then its productivity will increase.
And across the economy, productivity growth is simply an aggregation of all the productivity increases in all of our individual businesses.
In a single business, the productivity of its workers increases in three fundamental ways:
First, productivity increases when investment increases. With more technology, a single worker can produce more. That is why capital investment - both public and private - is critical to Australia's long term productivity performance.
Second, productivity increases when skills increase. When workers have more skills, they work more efficiently, and produce more output. That is why education, skills and training are an important driver of productivity.
Third, productivity increases when innovations are made. When research and development delivers a better production technique, a faster process or an innovative variation in the product or service being produced - then workers can produce more. That is why research, development and innovation are important for productivity.
The drivers of firm level productivity are fundamentally similar to the drivers of economy wide productivity. Investment, skills, innovation are key national drivers of our productivity, and hence of our long term living standards.
There is of course a fourth driver of productivity as well and that is the regulatory environment within which business operates. Where regulations are excessively complex or inconsistent across an economy, it impedes economic efficiency. That is why regulatory reform and regulatory harmonisation to create a seamless Australian national economy is also a core driver of long-term productivity growth.
A fundamental economic challenge for Australia is the long-term decline in productivity that we have experienced over recent decades.
During the productivity cycle of the mid-1990s, we averaged productivity growth of 3.3 per cent each year.
During the productivity cycle from 1998-99 to 2003-04, productivity growth fell to 2.1 per cent.
And in the current cycle since 2003-04, productivity growth has fallen further to just 1.1 per cent.
This productivity growth was the product of the fundamental microeconomic reforms implemented during the Hawke-Keating governments - tariff reform, competition reform, labour market reform in particular.
But over the last decade, the reform process ground to a halt.
As we look beyond the global recession our focus for the future must be on the revitalisation of the productivity agenda.
In my first major economic address as Federal Labor Leader, given to the BCA in February 2007, I set out my concerns about the long-term decline in productivity growth under the previous government.
As I said then, I believe we need a third wave of micro-economic reform to bolster Australia's flagging productivity growth, following those of the 1980s and then the 1990s.
As I said then, resources booms do not last forever.
And as I said then, it was just plain wrong that during the resources boom, that only 8 per cent of the revenue proceeds of the revenue windfall that came from the boom was being invested in education and innovation.
And just 6 per cent on infrastructure.
Both these statistics coming from Saul Eslake's analysis at the time.
These are critical investments for the nation's long-term productivity growth.
And in many respects, the last decade represents a lost decade for the long term future.
That is why the decade ahead must become a “Building Decade”.
Since coming to office 18 months ago, the Australian Government has adopted a new set of priorities, focused on building the nation's long-term productivity growth.
Turning around the productivity collapse of recent years is at the heart of our economic strategy.
We cannot build a strong, prosperous and competitive economy without turning around that productivity collapse.
That's why from day one we made productivity reforms the priority in our dealings with State governments.
That's why the Government has launched an education revolution - in early childhood education; in deep reforms in the new National Education Agreement with the states and schools; in the biggest school modernisation program in Australia's history; in the implementation of the Bradley Review of higher education; the Cutler Review on Innovation, together with a radical expansion in capital expenditure in our TAFEs, universities and research institutions.
That's also why the Government set up the Building Australia Fund. That is why we have invested some $35 billion in nation-building infrastructure projects in critical road, rail, port infrastructure, incorporating advice from Infrastructure Australia.
That is also why the Government is harmonising regulatory arrangements with the states and territories, including nationally uniform occupational health and safety laws. This will reduce costs for business, thereby encouraging enterprise.
As the OECD noted the March 2009 report Going for Growth, investment in energy, water, transport and telecommunications networks can boost long-term economic output and productivity to a greater extent that other types of physical investment.
That's why 70 per cent of our national stimulus strategy is dedicated to investing in our national infrastructure.
The centrepiece of the Government's infrastructure investment for the future will be our National Broadband Network.
A critical driver of Australia's future economic prosperity will be broadband infrastructure and the services it delivers.
Superfast broadband is likely to be one of the single biggest drivers of productivity growth in the decade ahead.
Just as railway tracks laid the future for the 19th century, and electricity grids and highways laid the future for the 20th century, so too broadband will become the core infrastructure of the 21st century.
Put simply, high-speed broadband contracts the time, space and cost of day to day business transactions - both for the private sector and the public sector.
That is why we are committed to, in partnership with the private sector, the construction of a $43 billion National Broadband Network.
Optical fibre to the home and business will deliver superfast speeds of 100 megabits per second - 50 times faster than what most people use now.
Next generation wireless and satellite technologies will aim to provide every household with fast broadband.
Like the building of the Snowy River scheme, the Sydney Harbour Bridge, Tasmania's great hydroelectric schemes, and the national highway network - this is an historic act of nation building.
At the moment, Australia's broadband infrastructure is not up to scratch.
Slow broadband is holding our nation back.
Out of 30 leading economies, our broadband speeds are behind all but three countries.
We are in the bottom half of OECD countries for broadband take-up (16 out of 30 in 2008).
Years of failed policy have left Australia as a ‘broadband backwater'.
The former Government failed to deliver fast broadband for Australia.
In 12 years they had 18 failed plans.
They never understood the importance of high-speed broadband to our long-term future.
They failed to build for our nation's prosperity beyond the mining boom.
You would think with $334 billion of extra tax revenue delivered to the Commonwealth budget off the back of the mining boom, that the previous government could have found their way to invest in at least one major national infrastructure project.
But no.
And Australia has suffered in the productivity stakes as a result.
Our Government is committed to superfast broadband because it has the potential to transform our economy.
Building a national high speed broadband network will create jobs.
* 25,000 jobs every year, on average, over the life of the project.
* At its peak, it will support 37,000 jobs.
High speed broadband will generate additional economic activity.
The National Broadband Network is expected to generate additional economic activity worth some $37 billion over the life of the project (an additional quarter per cent of GDP every year for the life of the project).
Critically, high speed broadband, once built, will also spur innovation and productivity in the long term.
It was estimated by the former Federal Department of Communications that innovation from information and communications technology is the single biggest driver of business productivity - it drives 78 per cent of productivity gains in service businesses and 85 per cent in manufacturing businesses.
How does broadband increase productivity for businesses?
Broadband allows the rapid transfer of information and saves business time and money.
* Online marketing and sales mean bigger markets without the traditional costs of expansion.
* Online communication with suppliers, employees and customers saves time.
* Online inventory management and other internal business functions save time, reduce paperwork and save money.
And it creates new opportunities for new businesses developing new broadband applications.
High speed broadband will help our regional towns grow and stay connected.
High speed broadband will plug our nation into the global economy and help us overcome the tyranny of distance.
High speed broadband can help us act on climate change.
* A 2007 study found that broadband could help reduce Australia's annual emissions of greenhouse gases by 5 per cent.
* Video conferencing can remove the need to travel for face - to - face meetings. The Australian division of Cisco claims that it achieved a 16 per cent reduction in air travel in a single year after it adopted videoconferencing and other telepresence facilities.
High speed broadband will revolutionise teaching - bringing the knowledge and experiences of the world into every classroom.
High speed broadband will revolutionise health care in our medical centres and hospitals.
* Access to specialist advice through the secure electronic transfer of diagnostic information and test results, such as x-rays, could enable early diagnosis and potentially reduce hospital stay times.
Across all key services - energy, water, health and transport - it is estimated by Access Economics in a 2009 report that the adoption of smart technologies and the roll - out of high - speed broadband could result in more than 70 000 jobs being added to the Australian economy and add 1.5 per cent to the level of Australia's Gross Domestic Product within a few years.
With so many economic and social benefits to flow from superfast broadband it is absolutely critical that we get on with the job - and that is what we intend to do.
Just this morning I was pleased to announce the appointment of Mr Mike Quigley as the Executive Chair and CEO of the National Broadband Network Company we have established to roll out the network.
Mike is an Australian who has had a distinguished career in the telecommunications industry, and was most recently President and Chief Operating Officer of Alcatel.
Mike has a big job ahead of him and we wish him well.
And where will we start the roll-out of the National Broadband Network?
Right here in Tasmania.
Why Tasmania?
Because Tasmania has for too long been neglected and is behind the rest of the country for Broadband.
This state has the lowest proportion of households with broadband of any state or territory (39% compared with the Australian average of 52%).
Just this morning I announced the next critical steps in the Tasmanian roll-out.
I opened the Aurora Energy and National Broadband Network Data Centre here in Hobart.
The Data Centre will house the critical operating and business support systems that will operate the National Broadband Network in Tasmania.
Today, I laid the first piece of optical fibre in our National Broadband Network - the first step towards pulling Australia out of broadband dark ages and into the digital economy of the future.
It is the first physical demonstration of work commencing on the ground, here in Tasmania.
Second, I announced the appointment of Doug Campbell as the Chair of the Tasmanian National Broadband Network company.
This company has been established to fast-track the rollout the NBN in this state.
Doug is an Australian who has a wealth of telecommunications experience, both in Australia and internationally, including being the primary force behind the creation of very successful Telstra Country Wide.
Third, I announced the first locations for the roll-out of optical fibre.
We will start in the towns of Smithton, Scottsdale and Midway Point.
Nearly 5000 homes and business in these towns will see fibre to the home and business rolled-out.
To support the roll-out to these towns and get ready for the next towns, we will build backbone fibre optic cable in five locations.
Broadband will accelerate development and support jobs in these regions and right across Tasmania.
That is why we are getting on the job.
We are not in government for the sake of being there.
That's what the Liberals do.
We're in government to make a difference.
To build a stronger Australia, a fairer Australia and an Australia prepared for the challenges of the future.
To build the jobs of the future.
To deliver for working families for the future.
To support those who are doing it tough now and in the future.
To build a stronger Australia for the future - while never allowing the fair-go to slide out the back door.
And to achieve this purpose, this government will move ahead with this major program of national reform.
This will be the Building Decade.
It will require consistency of purpose.
It will require persistence, patience and perseverance.
And it will require resolute political will.
But when the history is written, let us hope they will look back and say this was a Government that made a difference.