Tony Abbott Address to the Convoy of No Confidence Rally

22/08/11

TRANSCRIPT OF THE HON. TONY ABBOTT MHRADDRESS TO THE CONVOY OF NO CONFIDENCE RALLY,

CANBERRA

E&OE…………………………………………………………………………………………

Ladies and gentlemen, I want to say how pleased I am to see that the people of Australia want to make this the peoples’ house, not just the politicians’ house. I also want to inform you that as I speak here now the Prime Minister is about to do a press conference in the prime minister’s courtyard. She’s talking to the political insiders and she should be here with you talking to you because the first responsibility of prime ministers, the first responsibility of politicians is to stay in touch with the people they represent. That is my problem, my problem is that this Prime Minister is fundamentally out of touch with the Australian people.

Now, I want to say thank you to all of you for coming from all around this country to this meeting today. I particularly want to thank the people who’ve come very long distances, the people who’ve come from Perth, the people who’ve come from Darwin, the people who’ve come from Cairns, and I particularly want to thank the people who’ve come from Port Hedland, that is a big trip. The fact that so many of you have come so far shows that you care a very great deal about the future of our country. Our democracy will be in safe hands as long as the people of this country continue to care about it and you care about it.

Now, ladies and gentlemen, there are hundreds of you here, there are thousands of you who would like to be here and there are millions of you who are sick of being ripped off by a bad government. Now I’ve got to say that there are some pretty hard-bitten characters here because I met a few of you last night and not all of you always agree with me and I don’t always agree with everything that people put to me either, but all of us here today agree that we don’t need a carbon tax and we do need an election.

Ladies and gentlemen, we say no to a carbon tax because we say yes to manufacturing industry, we say yes to affordable transportation, we say yes to affordable energy and affordable power in this country and what we don’t need is for the truckies of Australia to have to pay another half a billion dollars a year out of pockets that are emptier and emptier because of the charges and charges which are heaped upon them. You do not deserve a half a billion dollar a year slug on your bottom line because of this carbon tax.

So I want to give you this absolutely categorical assurance on behalf of the Coalition I lead: we will oppose the carbon tax in opposition and we will rescind it in government. But the more of you who come out, the more of you who make your views known to your Labor or independent member of parliament, the more likely we are to stop this bad tax stone dead. The terrible thing at the moment is we have this tax, the most complex tax change in Australia’s history, a tax that will just go up and up and up if it gets in and if it stays in. It’s the most complex change in our history and it’s being managed by the most incompetent government in our history.

If you can’t trust the government to put pink batts in people’s roofs without them catching fire, if you can’t trust the government to build school halls without rip off after rip off, if you can’t trust the government to keep the live cattle trade going in the face of a TV programme, you can never trust the government with a tax like this. You just can’t trust them.

Now, ladies and gentlemen, should there be a change of government – yes, there should, yes, there should – and if and when there is a change of government, I cannot promise you that all of your problems will be solved but I can promise, I can promise that I will respect the Australian people, I will listen to the Australian people and I will be straight with the Australian people. That’s what we need. We need governments that listen, governments with respect and governments that are straight and the problem at the moment is that this country of ours, is a great country, it’s a great country with a lousy government and our task is to give a great country and a great people the better government that they deserve.

Thank you so very much.