Thank you very much Colin for those very kind and generous words of welcome. Danielle Blaine, the President of the Western Australian division of the Liberal Party, Sir Charles and Richard Court, former Premiers of Western Australia, my federal and state parliamentary colleagues - and I think all of them will forgive me for particularly singling out two who were elected on the 9th of October, Michael Keenan and Stuart Henry, who of course epitomised our success. I do remember very vividly the lunch I addressed at this very establishment deep into the election campaign that culminated in our win on the 9th of October.
I have to confess that I was surprised at the size of our victory. I thought we would win, but I didn't think we would win as well as we did, and frankly I didn't dream that we would get control of the Senate. And I do want to thank Liberals in Western Australia for the magnificent effort that was mounted in the lead-up to the election. Whenever I came to Western Australia I felt that the wind was behind us. I felt that we had a capacity to win seats from the Labor Party in this State and so it turned out to be the case that we won the seats of Stirling and Hasluck, and Don Randall turned Canning into a safe seat. Peter Costello and I are now going to get Don to come to our electorates to fundraisers for us instead of the other way around he's done so well. And can I record my tremendous gratitude to Danielle Blaine and Paul Everingham for the great job that they have done on the organisational side of things for the party in Western Australia. I haven't seen the party as well organised in this State for close to a decade as it has been under their leadership. And for what they delivered to the Federal parliamentary party and the Federal Coalition I record my very warm thanks.
I'm here today to say a few things about our agenda for our fourth term, but I'm also here to express my strong support for Colin Barnett and for the Coalition team in the forthcoming elections in Western Australia. It's rare of course that you tip a government out after it's been office for only one term, but it has happened before. It's happened before here in Western Australia, and the man who was responsible for doing it is with us today - Sir Charles Court. So there's a great inspirational, home grown example. And why do I believe that there ought to be a change of government in Western Australia? Well, first and foremost, I'm a Liberal and I always like to see Liberals in opposition go into government. But it's deeper than that, perhaps superficial, expression of party loyalty. I do believe that Western Australia could be doing even better than it's doing now as part of the enormous surge nationally in the Australian economy. The Western Australian economy is performing very strongly, but that is overwhelmingly because the national economy is doing well. Low inflation, stable fiscal policy, low interest rates, economic reform, particularly taxation reform - all of those things flow through to every part of the nation. And I predict now that over the weeks ahead the Premier of Western Australia will claim every single economic achievement of this State for his own.
Well let me state here and now a counterclaim. Let me say that Western Australia along with Queensland and Tasmania and all other states of Australia have been the beneficiaries of the strong national economic leadership of the last eight and a half years. There's no area, of course, more important when looking at the performance of the current Western Australian Government than in the area of industrial relations. As many of you know, industrial relations reform has been one of my great policy missions for the last twenty years. I think the last time I addressed a gathering like this in the lead up to the Federal election I talked about the thing that I would grieve about most if we were to lose, and that is the prospect of a federal Labor government, operating in concert with eight state and territory Labor governments, rolling back the industrial relations reforms of the last eight and a half years. Well thankfully we didn't lose. We not only won but we now have in prospect, after the 1st of July next year, control of the Senate and the opportunity to implement many more industrial relations reforms and I'll come to that in the moment. But of all the things that the State Government here in Western Australia has done since it was elected in 2001, none has been more damaging than the way in which it has rolled the industrial relations reforms of the previous Court Government - the way in which it has allowed the union movement in this state to dominate the industrial scene, particularly in the building industry in a way that it duplicated, I think, only on occasions in Victoria. And there is no doubt in the exchanges I have with men and women in business all around the country that they see disincentives about investing in Western Australia, that they don't find in other parts of the nation.
So there is a lot at stake, and state governments play a crucial role in shaping the daily lives of all people. True it is the national government determines the foreign policy, the national economic policy and the overall mood and climate of the nation, but those daily things, the quality of state education, the quality of public hospitals, the performance of the law and order agencies of the state - all of those things that affect your daily lives very directly, they are the responsibility of state governments and their quality is of very, very important concern. So my friends, I ask you to support Colin Barnett in the same generous way that you supported me. I ask you to get behind a very strong and determined party organisation. I mean all party organisations go through their difficulties, but there is a sense of direction, and a unity of purpose that I found in the lead-up to the Federal election here in Western Australia that was very warming and I know it will be available and will be directed towards bringing about a change of government here in Western Australia.
We are, or course, in the fortunate opportunity nationally of being at the beginning of a fourth term. A fourth term that sees a Labor Party demoralised by an unexpectedly large defeat, and therefore a Coalition invigorated with all the potential that an unexpectedly large victory has given us. But I sound the warning, as I do at every Liberal Party gathering around the nation, that this is not an opportunity for complacency or any kind of triumphalism. The tide of politics in Australia can change very rapidly. We live in a detribalised political environment. People's allegiances are no longer as fixed, and all those hundreds of thousands of people of traditional Labor backgrounds, that voted for us in 2001 and again in 2004, can just as easily return to the party of their father and mothers as they can to stay with us, and it's essential that we go on earning their support and earning their respect. And we have a number of goals ahead of us, and the first two are obvious but nonetheless quite fundamental and the first is to maintain the strength and direction of our economic management. The Australian economy is still very strong. It is still growing and will continue to grow at historically high levels. We have the lowest unemployment rate in something like 28 years, it's getting close to five per cent and it could have a four in front of it if only if I expect we will after the 1st of July get our unfair dismissal laws through the Senate and give a bit of breathing space to small business and give them the incentive and the opportunity to employ more people.
We face a number of challenges in managing our economy, there's always the haunting prospect in this country of drought and many areas of our countryside are still gripped by drought. And we have some challenges on the export front because of the slump in the American dollar and the correspondingly high level of the Australian dollar. But the fundamentals of our economy remain very strong, inflation is low, our budget is in an historically strong position and competition reform and other reforms have meant that our international competitiveness is better than it has been for many years.
The second and most obvious goal that we have to strive towards of course is to maintain our national security. We live in an environment of international terrorism and we're going to have to confront that for many years into the future. And it will mean our strong alliances with the United States must be maintained and further deepened. But it also means that we have to build, continue to build rather, partnerships with our friends in the Asian Pacific region. And I've had the opportunity in the two short months that have gone by since the election to renew many of my contacts with the leaders in the Asian area, the opportunity to get to know even better the newly elected President of Indonesia, the leader of the largest Islamic country in the world, a man who received 61 per cent of the popular vote in the first popular directly elected presidential election in that country, a man who brings very great promise of leadership and strength to his country. And also the opportunity to talk in detail with both the President and the Premier of China about our growing relationship and Colin was right, that the relationship between Australia and China, particularly with the exports coming out of Western Australia, is quite fundamental to this nation's economic future. And of all the things that we have achieved on the economic front on our region, none gives a greater lie to the charge that this Government could not deal with the leaders of Asia if it were elected and that was a charge made against us by our political opponents eight and a half years ago, none gives a greater lie to that proposition than to the extent to which we have deepened our relationship with China whilst at the same time taking our relationship with the United States to a level which is closer and more intimate than it has been I think at any time in the history of this country. And those two things together say to the world that this is a nation that has associations and linkages and therefore a future with different parts of the world, we are not a nation that should be totally preoccupied with the American alliance, we're not a nation that should be totally preoccupied with our historical roots in Europe, particularly with Britain and Ireland and we're not a nation that should be totally preoccupied with Asia. But we are a nation of the whole world, so to speak, and we have linkages and associations and therefore a future with all the parts of the world and not just one.
So those are the twin pillars of our future. Our fundamental economic strength and also the strength that we must find in enduring alliances and associations to deliver national security to this country in an age of terrorism. But on the domestic front there are a number of issues that will be very prominent during our fourth term. We will have further industrial relations reform. We will present to the Parliament all of the legislation that has been blocked over recent years to further reform our industrial relations system. And we also propose, consistent with the philosophy that we have articulated in that area, to propose other reforms that will deliver a better, freer and more open system. We don't intend to embrace extremism in the area of industrial relations. People have a right in this country to join or not to join a trade union. Providing the playing field is completely level and provided people are not coerced by the nature of their employment into joining a union organisation. And Australian standards of fairness require that there always be some concept of a minimum wage in this country and the idea that we should go down a radical path of getting rid of that altogether is not something that I would embrace. But further industrial relations reform is needed and it will be delivered and if it is not delivered before the 30th of June it will delivered when we get the majority in the Senate after the 1st of July. And it remains a commitment of the Government so far as further taxation reform is concerned that having provided for necessary expenditure in areas like defence and health and education and providing for a strong budget surplus, if there is room left we will embrace further taxation reform, particularly in the area of the levels of personal taxation. We will not go back into deficit, we do not believe in embracing deficit spending, we believe that the economic and psychological value of keeping a budget strongly in surplus is one of the reasons why the economic reputation of this country around the world is so very strong.
There are two particular other domestic challenges that we will need to deal with and deal with very comprehensively in our fourth term. One of course relates to the challenge of the shortage of water in this very dry continent of ours. We announced during the election that we would establish a national water trust, initially funded by an amount of $2 billion and out of that in collaboration with state governments, sometimes on our own, sometimes in collaboration with local government and private enterprise, we would fund individual projects designed to challenge the water shortages of this country. Water conservation is the great environmental challenge of our age. It is more important than any other environmental or conservation challenge that this country has, or that this country is likely to face. The solutions to it I suspect over the next 10 or 20 years might end up surprising many people who regard themselves as experts on the subject at the present time. But it's an issue that grips every part of the country, I find people talking about it wherever I go - whether it's Sydney or Melbourne or Adelaide or Perth it's the same. And the sort of things that we grew up with and took for granted that we could do because of the plentiful availability of water are no longer the case and it's brought home to people in the cities as often as people in the bush just how challenging the issue is.
And the final issue of domestic concern that we will need to address of course is the ageing of our population and most particularly the need to increase workforce participation. We are an ageing population, not ageing perhaps as rapidly as the nations of Europe, our fertility rate is at about 1.75 per cent against an average in many European countries of about 1.2 to 1.3. But it still lags behind the United States which is a little over two. We are a population that needs to increase our workforce participation, it means we need to encourage people to remain in the workforce longer. And we need to encourage the retention of older, mature workers, we need to understand that the participation rate of the age cohort between 55 and 64 in this country is significantly lower than is the case in many comparable societies. We also need to recognise that some aspects of our social security system perhaps don't provide enough encouragement and incentives for people to move off welfare and back into work. We have no desire to and we do not intend to force people who are genuinely unable to work to join the workforce. We are a compassionate government and a compassionate society and one of the great things that this country has done in my view is to strike a good balance between too harsh an approach to social welfare and the paternalistic overgenerous approach of many European governments and we're going to continue to strike that balance, but consistent with that there is an opportunity for us I think to move people off welfare and back into the workforce and to do it in a compassionate and effective way. And all of these things are designed to increase participation because unless we can respond to the ageing process in our population, unless we come to terms with the fact that as the years go by, unless we change, there are going to be fewer and fewer people in the workforce generating the taxation revenue to support the growing number of people who are not in the workforce and that represents a very big challenge to a community such as ours and a very big challenge to our desire to see not only ourselves but our children and our grandchildren enjoy the standard of living and the opportunities that we currently enjoy here in Australia.
It is a wonderfully challenging and exciting time to have the privilege again of being Prime Minister of this country of ours. It's an honour and one that should be embraced and understood for what it is and that is an opportunity to serve the Australian people for another term, to respond to their hopes and to their aspirations but always understanding that governments are there at the disposal of the Australian community. Australians do not like triumphalism, they do like arrogance, they don't like it in their leaders, they don't like it in their sportsmen and women and they don't like it in their friends. We are a nation and we are a society that treats people and accords respect to people on the basis of their character and on the basis of their contribution to our society. It's been one of the great uniting features of our nation, it's been one of the things that distinguishes us from other societies around the world.
So can I say to all of you my friends again thank you for the support you gave me, the support you gave my colleagues. There are many people in this room I know who gave very generously and very liberally to help us. And we won't forget that, I'm very grateful for the quality of the people that you've sent from Western Australia to the Federal Parliament. We've got a great new crop if I can put it that way, they're a great cross section of men and women from different parts of Australia and that once again is a Liberal strength. But as I said at the beginning in a detribalised political environment people can swing back and forth very sharply and we'll retain their support for so long as we do the job and for so long as we keep in touch. And very finally, now that we have won national government, now that we've won the Federal election, I do encourage you to support the Liberal Party and the National Party here in Western Australia, it's quite lonely at Premiers' conferences, I mean it's not that I have anything personally against any of them but it's quite lonely. And I'd like to have some Liberal colleagues and the first one who has any opportunity of winning is Colin and I do hope all of you will support him and support him very generously.
Thank you.
[ends]