Well, thank you very much Michael, Rene Hidding, the leader of the Liberal Party in Tasmania, my Senate colleagues, ladies and gentlemen. The first thing I'd like to ask you is if I can take some of this beautiful rain back to the mainland, particularly back to Canberra and its environs which is going through one of the most parched times certainly in the thirty years that I have been going to Canberra.
Ladies and gentlemen, it's a great delight to be back in Launceston, to be back campaigning in the electorate of Bass and I am campaigning - I do want Michael to be the next Member for Bass. There's no point in mincing words. This election, whenever it's going to be held and can I tell you - I don't know. Despite what the media says, I haven't sort of written it down on a bit of paper and locked it away in a draw at the Lodge. I really don't know. But the election cycle in this country is three years and everyone knows the last election was on the 10th of November 2001. So if you do your sums we are approaching that time when there ought to be an election and as always Bass is going to be a tight seat.
I think you've chosen in Michael somebody who is different. Somebody who does understand the people he wants to represent. With his background in education, he brings an understanding of the importance of learning and education to the future of our country. And this next election will be more about the future than it is about the present or about the past. The present and the past are very important but it's the kind of future that we choose for our country and for our families that will most weigh on the minds of the Australian people where ever they are when they vote. And they'll be asking themselves - do they want the economy of this country in the future to be run by myself and Peter Costello or Mark Latham and Simon Crean? Do they want to turn back the clock on industrial relations and hand back authority to the trade union movement which was something of the Australia of some years ago? Do they want to put at risk the greater economic prosperity that we have achieved? Do they want to reduce the freedom of choice that my Government has brought to parents when it comes to choosing the education of their children? Because whenever you hear Jenny Macklin or the Labor Party talk about school funding it's code for reducing parental freedom of choice. My Government stands for the simple principle that parents have the right to decide where their children should be educated and governments should support parents in that choice, not frustrate parents in the exercise of that choice.
And I say that myself as a product of the government school education for which I am very grateful in New South Wales. There are a lot of those questions that people will be asking ourselves. But the most important thing that you can do in my view in public life is to identify the goals that you want for your country, state those goals, explain how you are going to achieve them and then maintain a persistence towards achieving those goals as the years go by. I know that the Australian people don't agree with everything that I have done. I know there are a lot of people who regularly disagree with every single thing I do. I understand that. I accept that. That's part of a democratic process. But at least those people know what I believe in. At least those people have an understanding of what I stand for. And I look at my opponent, I look at the alternative - the Australian Labor Party and it's very hard to work out exactly where the Labor Party stands. Take something like job security for people in the forest industry in Tasmania. On the one hand, you have Mr Latham saying to the workers, to the unions - don't worry I won't put your jobs at risk and he goes out of that room and he courts and recruits to the Labor Party a candidate in Kingsford-Smith and you all know who his name is, whose attitudes and policies and demeanor are the absolute opposite of the job security that he has talked about only the day earlier.
I hear the Tasmanian Government saying how wonderful the regional forest agreement is, they're right. But that Regional Forest Agreement was negotiated by my Government with the Liberal Government of Tasmania led by Tony Rundle. And I think Mr Lennon and all the other members of the current Tasmanian Government for the endorsement of that agreement because that agreement is at the heart of the security that the industry now has, that agreement has delivered the balance between caring for the environment and also delivering job security for the people of the industry. Michael mentioned Medicare, there were some figures that came out today issued by the Health Minister Tony Abbott which indicated that in the few months that the Government's new safety net has been in operation some 415,000 Australians have become eligible for the support of the safety net.
And let me just remind you, the safety net says - that if you are an individual or a family receiving Family Tax Benefit A and your out of hospital, out of pocket expenses are more than $300 a year then you get 80% of the excess back. Now that is a real safety net for Australia's families and for the rest of us the threshold is not $300 a year but $700 a year. Now, this is the first time that we've had a Medicare Safety Net in the 20 year experience of Medicare. Yet believe it or not the Labor Party has promised to take the safety net away if they are elected to government and that confuses me. I mean, I can't pretend to be a disinterested elector when it comes to assessing the policies of the Labor Party but if I were a disinterested elector, I would think to myself that's a bit confusing coming from a political party that says it's interested in looking after the less privileged in our community because the safety net says to an Australian family, once your out of pocket expenses that's if you can't get a bulkbilling doctor of if you go and consult a specialist or you go and have any other procedure that's out of hospital. Any of your out of pocket expenses when lumped together, once they go over $300 a year you get 80% of the excess over $300 back.
Now that's a pretty good deal. I think that gives to Australian families a lot of peace of mind and I for the life of me can't understand why a government that believes in a fair society, a government that believes in social justice, I don't know why a party would want to take all of that away. So they my friends are some of the issues that you'll be hearing from me and my colleagues about in the weeks ahead, in the months ahead or the weeks ahead, take your pick. You'll be hearing about those issues and many more from us.
But of course, underpinning all of this and underpinning the achievement of any goals that we may set for the future of our country are two things that are absolutely essential - you can't have generous social programmes, you can't fund increases in education, you can fund increased provision for roads, for the environment, indeed for all activities of society unless you have two things in place - you need to have a secure defended country and you need to have a strong growing economy.
And the whole purpose of having a strong growing economy is to give the nation the wherewithal to do the things that people want. I have often been asked over the last eight and a half years - why was I worried about reducing the deficit? Why didn't you just continue with the deficit? I keep reading articles in the newspaper where people say debt is not too bad, debt is good, go back into debt. You know, what my answer to that is, my answer is very simple, that over the last eight and a half years we've repaid 70 out of the 96 billion dollars of debt that we inherited from the Keating-Labor Government and that on average has saved us five and a half billion dollars a year in interest payments, five and a half billion dollars a year and you know where that's gone? You've received it. You've received it through increased health spending, increased defence spending, increased education spending, lower taxes, increased road funding and so the list goes on. So cutting this deficit is not just some empty exercise. If you don't go into debt, you don't have interest payments. If you are in debt big time which we were in 1996 and you reduce that debt you have lower interest payments and if you have lower interest payments and we've had them in the tune of five and a half billion dollars a year then you've got the opportunity to do these other things and that is the human dividend of good economic management and right at the moment in 2004 we have two things that we haven't had since 1968 - we've got inflation below three per cent and we've got unemployment below six per cent.
And all parts of Australia have benefited from this. Tasmania's greater economic prosperity which is clearly evident is overwhelmingly due to the national economic prosperity of this country. It's simply not possible to have high unemployment around Australia but to have low unemployment in Tasmania. It's not possible to have high inflation in Australia on the mainland and to have low inflation in Tasmania. The economy moves like a river. The whole lot, the whole national economy moves and although there are policies that can be pursued at a state or regional level that can have an impact, fundamentally the prosperity that is now being enjoyed in this State is the product of the strong national economy which has been so clearly evident over the last eight and a half years and Tasmania contrary to what the Premier said yesterday, an extraordinary inaccurate statement issued by the new Tasmanian Premier yesterday. Tasmania has not been badly treated by this Government. As a result of the GST and let me remind you all of the GST revenue goes to states. Not one single dollar of the GST is retained by the Federal Government.
Tasmania is $450 million better off over the next five years as a result of the new GST arrangements than it would have been under the old arrangements. Tasmania is the only state in Australia where the increased Medicare rebate for bulkbilling for children under 16 and cardholders where the entire state has the increased rate of $7.50. If you live in Launceston or Hobart and you're in that category everybody gets the $7.50. If you live in Sydney or Melbourne the rate's only $5 and yet I hear this man saying that we have short changed Tasmania. He appears to have forgotten the impact of I think the very reasonable and defensible and proper investments that were made in a whole multitude of communications and other things as a result of the passage of the Telstra One and Telstra Two pieces of legislation through the Federal Senate. I think of all the provisions that were made to reduce the cost disability between Tasmania and the mainland. I think, as I mentioned earlier of the contribution that was made by the Regional Forest Agreement and that Regional Forest Agreement has underpinned the resurgence of the industry and has also underpinned the growth of the eco-tourism industry in this state. Now these are all policies that have been generated and supported by the Federal Government. As a national Government we have responsibilities for all parts of Australia. Tasmania has suffered disabilities in the past and there do continue to be disadvantages brought about by separations from the mainland. But so many of those have been addressed by the policies of my Government that this proposition that in some way Tasmania has been short changed is factually incorrect and absurd in the extreme.
Ladies and gentlemen, we're here today to focus on one very important task ahead and that is to win Bass for the Liberal Party. To make sure that somebody, himself with a young family and he therefore understands the challenges of family life in Australia in 2004. Somebody who understands the value and the importance of education in framing and shaping the minds of the young. Somebody who knows the importance of a responsive and effective health system. Somebody who knows the way in which communities need each other. And individuals in a community need to support not only a network of family, but a network of friends and acquaintances within the community. To be responsive elected people to public office need to understand the communities that they seek to represent and they seek to serve. And Michael's already in 30 short but very action packed years has certainly demonstrated a great capacity for community service. To do what he's done in 30 years is pretty remarkable. To become the young achiever of the year, to get the department head of the mathematics department at a local high school, to go through university, to get married and have three children, do all of those things by the time you're 30 - that's pretty impressive. Pretty impressive indeed.
Well, I didn't have three children when I was 30. I can tell you that and I certainly wasn't head of a mathematics department by the time I was 30. No, I think you've done a very, very good job. But I think you've chosen a great candidate but it's going to be very, very hard. Winning marginal seats is always difficult. Incumbency confers great benefits no matter what side of politics you might be on.
But I'm sure that if you all work hard, if you all recruit your friends. If you all support him financially. Support him with your finances as well as with your energy and your industry and your person to person advocacy. If you do all of that, we can have that very welcome sign on election night whenever it may be when they have that barometer on the television set and you look to see whether it's going to add a bit of blue or add a bit of red, you see it adding a little bit of blue to Bass and we can all be very cheerful and happy and we can all know it's been entirely due to the people in this room because you've all gone out of here and decided to work very hard. Do that. Dedicate yourselves to getting rid of Labor in Bass and getting Michael Ferguson elected as your Member.
Thank you.