Thank you David for those warm words of welcome. Nigel Scullion, Maisie Austin, the Leader of the Opposition, Shane Stone the Federal President of the Liberal Party, ladies and gentlemen. It's great to be back in Darwin. I've been, as you know, a very regular visitor to the Territory in all of the years that I've been in public life and not least the eight and a half years that I've been Prime Minister of Australia.
I've come here this morning very specifically, very unapologetically and very deliberately to urge you and your fellow Territorians to return David Tollner as your Member for the seat of Solomon whenever the federal election is held. David is a big hearted, hard working, enthusiastic representative of you in Canberra. He is a person who argues your cause. He's a person who represents the determined spirit of the Northern Territory. He's somebody who has had plenty of experience of life, and we don't want people in Parliament who don't know what life is about. We want people who have an understanding of the communities and the people that they represent. And I'm asking you therefore to think generously of him and to give him your very strong support.
But I'm also asking you to think of where the Territory is now, to think of where Australia is now. And Ronald Reagan rather famously in 1984 asked the question of his fellow Americans - did they believe their country was better off than what it had been four years earlier. And if I could borrow that question, I could ask you as my fellow Australians and ask all of my fellow Australians - do you really believe that this country is stronger, more respected, more trusted, more economically reliable and more protected and securely defended than what it was eight and a half years ago? And I believe that the affirmative answer to that question lies at the heart of the decision that the Australian public will make in the time ahead.
We have goals if we are re-elected, we have goals for Australia over the next 10 years. I outlined some of them in a speech I made in Adelaide recently. I want to see the enterprise culture of Australia grow even stronger. I want to see an even better balance of sustainability between development of Australia and care for Australia's environment. I also want to see even more steps taken to deliver a fair and decent society, a society that looks after those who through no fault of their own have fallen by the wayside, a society that gives greater opportunity for older Australians to remain in the workforce if they wish, a society that continues, as we have done, to strengthen our health system, most recently through the introduction of the Medicare safety net, which is daily looking after more and more Australian families. They are some of our goals, not only for the next three years but, indeed, for the next ten years.
But you cannot achieve goals either as a nation or as an individual or as a community or indeed as a family unless you have some underpinnings. And the two great underpinnings of the Australian nation's future are very simple but they're very basic - we must be a secure, defended nation and we must be an economically strong nation. Without those two things we can't achieve any of these other goals. Having a strong economy is not an end in itself. It is a means to an end. When I look back over the strength of the Australian economy over the last eight and a half years, I don't see it as some kind of economic statistic. I think of the 1.3 million extra jobs that have been created. I think of the fact that for the first time since 1968 our unemployment rate is below six per cent simultaneously with our inflation rate being below three per cent. I think of the fact that over the last eight and a half years, real wages in this country have risen by 14 per cent. Yet in the previous 13 years of Labor Government, it rose... they rose by only 2.9 per cent. I think of the fact that over the last eight and a half years because we have paid off $70 billion of the debt we inherited from our predecessors, we have $5.5 billion more each year to invest in the long-term future of the Australian people.
We have $5.5 billion a year less on our interest bill and we all know that when we pay off the mortgage on the business or the house, we have more to spend on something else, and so it is with Australia. Because we have paid their debt off, we have $5.5 billion more on average each year to spend on roads, to spend on health services, on education, on defence, on better facilities for aged care, on taxation reductions, on superannuation relief - all of those things. We're returning those dividends to the Australian people. And of course, over the last eight and a half years, and there would be no community in Australia more conscious of this than the people of Darwin, we have had to make unprecedented commitments to the defence of this country and to the fight against terrorism. And four to five years ago the people of Darwin were right on the doorstep of that great operation that gave freedom, justly deserved freedom, to the people of East Timor and gave them a future, gave them an opportunity to realise their own dreams and their own aspirations, and the people of Darwin responded in so many ways quite magnificently to that. And the health services of this wonderful city, the Royal Darwin Hospital, responded magnificently in the immediate aftermath of the terrible attack on the 12th of October 2002 that murdered 88 of our fellow Australians.
So this city, more perhaps than other city in our country, understands the significance of security and defence and how along with the economic growth and the economic strength of Australia it is the underpinning of all the other goals that we hope to realise for ourselves. And of course, we have been busy over the last eight and a half years in providing much needed reforms for the Australian economy. A few years ago we introduced a Goods and Services Tax and reformed our taxation system. It wasn't instantaneously popular, it was a bit difficult, it drew a lot of criticism, but now that it's been with us for a number of years and it's bedded down, it's working well. And one of the things that it's doing is that it's delivering more revenue to the states and territories.
And I had a look at some figures on the way up to Darwin last night and those figures showed me that over the next five years the Northern Territory is going to $573 million better off as a result of the GST than it would have been if the old revenue sharing formula had been maintained and the GST had not been introduced. And for a territory of fewer than 200,000 people, that is a very significant additional injection of money. And that $573 million is available without strings, without conditions, unqualifiedly, for the current government of the Northern Territory to spend according to its own priorities. Now that is the product of our reform and it's because the economy has grown so strongly we've collected more revenue. And all of the revenue from the GST goes to the states, isn't it... and the territories, isn't it ironic? They all just about voted against it, well all the Labor ones did, but they're very happy to reap the benefits. But importantly, they should be made accountable for spending that money for the benefit of the people of the Northern Territory.
So my friends, we do have a very good story to tell. We have a story of strengthening and securing and defending this country over the last eight and a half years. I never dreamt when I became Prime Minister in March of 1996 that one of my greatest responsibilities would be to lead this country in its participation in the war against international terrorism. And lying at the heart of that responsibility is of course cooperation with our friends, not only in the United States and elsewhere, but also our friends in the immediate area to the north of us, with Indonesia and the other countries of Asia. And one of the things that was said of me and my party and my colleagues when I became Prime Minister was that we wouldn't be able to get on with the leaders of Asia, that they wouldn't deal with us, they wouldn't treat with us. Well, everybody knows that over the last eight and a half years that proved to be an absolutely empty and absurd argument.
Side by side with building this very close, further building this very close association with the United States and our traditional allies, I and my colleagues have worked very hard to build a close relationship with the people of China and the Government of China. And one of our great trade successes was the signing of that massive natural gas deal with the Guangdong Province, which will give us $25 billion of export income over the years ahead. And despite the difficulties of East Timor, where we took a stand on behalf of an oppressed people, for which we should always be proud as a nation, we have been able to maintain and further develop our close relations with Indonesia. And indeed in the wake of the terrible attack in Bali, the cooperation between the Australian Federal Police and the Indonesian Police was quite remarkable.
So we do have a strong story to tell. But as the former Speaker of the American House of Representatives Tip O'Neill once said - all politics is local. And that, of course, brings me back to my colleague and friend David Tollner. He has worked very hard for all of you, he's taken issues up with me and I want to come to one that he's taken up with me very recently and I have something to say about it. But he's worked very hard in the interests of the people of the Territory. He feels for your concerns and he represents your concerns with very great energy. He does, as he said, sit on a very thin majority - I think it's 30 votes. It doesn't get much thinner than that. But that's the nature of Australian politics and we always, whatever our political persuasion is, we always have to live with those realities.
But one of the issues that David has taken up with me is something that I gather, not only from him but particularly from him but also from many other people, really niggles with the people of Darwin, and that is the question of entry fees into the Kakadu National Park. And it's my understanding that in relation to Territory national parks no such entry fees are charged. I therefore want to announce this morning that not later than the 1st of January next year and earlier if we can, the Federal Government will abolish the entry fees for the Kakadu National Park. What I intend to do is arrange for negotiations with the traditional owners and I want to assure them that there'll be no diminution of their revenue stream and we'll also explore with the tourist industry the feasibility of whether there should be any offset in relation to their operations. But I want to say to the people, those fees will go and they will go not later than the 1st of January next year. And that is an issue that's been the subject of argument and representation, indeed complaint, from David and Nigel and others to me and to my colleagues over recent weeks.
The last thing that I want to say my friends is that I attend quite a few community gatherings around the country. And what this community gathering represents in common with so many that I do attend to, is a coming together in one place of different strands of the Australian community. We are meeting here in a club, in premises which are associated with the enormous contribution that the people of the Greek Orthodox community and the Greek Cypriot community have made to the growth and development of Darwin and the character and spirit of the Northern Territory over many generations.
The Northern Territory is one of the most ethnically diverse and wonderfully cosmopolitan parts of Australia. It's one of its tremendous strengths and it's one of the things that gives it a special zest and vitality, and as I honour in particular, because we are their guests and I thank them for it, the Greek community of the Northern Territory, I also pay tribute to the great capacity of the people of the Northern Territory of different backgrounds to work together. You are building a special part of Australia in a very special country. And community gatherings, which express the volunteer spirit of the Australian people and community gatherings that bring together our wonderfully diverse mixture as a modern Australian community, are a source of extraordinary inspiration and encouragement to me.
I know, of course, of the particular contribution of the indigenous people of the Northern Territory to the community life of the Territory and of the special responsibilities and the special partnership that we have towards them and with them as we go forward as a community. And they are things that I know that are very much in the minds of Terry Mills and his colleagues and also Nigel Scullion and David Tollner. And I'm delighted to have the CLP candidate Maisie Austin on the platform, the CLP candidate for Lingiari.
But thank you all for coming. David Tollner is a good bloke. He works hard for you. He believes in you. You work hard for him and believe in him and send him back to Canberra.