Liberal Party of Australia - News Feed

Tony Abbott Doorstop: Julia Gillard’s carbon tax; Craig Thomson.

Tue, 22 May 2012 03:26:57 GMT

TONY ABBOTT:

I’d like to thank George Tremopoulos and his team here at Frozpak for making Greg Hunt and I so welcome this morning. This is one of those businesses that works while most people sleep to keep our city going and this is typical of the hundreds of thousands of Australian businesses that are going to be badly hit by Julia Gillard’s toxic carbon tax. There’s a triple whammy on this business. The carbon tax hits their power costs, it hits their transport costs and it hits their refrigerant costs and that’s why so much of the staples of our daily life are going to be significantly more expensive under the tax that Julia Gillard said would never, ever happen.

This is the spectre which is confronting Australia in just a few short weeks’ time because this Prime Minister wasn’t prepared to stand up to the Greens in the negotiations after the last election. I think as every day goes by the spectacle of this government becomes more embarrassing to the Australian people. Every day, people wake up with fresh revelations of scandal, of incompetence, of broken promises, and if you want to end the sleaze, stop the boats and end the waste, you’ve got to change this government. I think that’s the message which is coming out loud and clear from the spectacle of this government in Canberra this week.

Greg?

GREG HUNT:

George is living proof that it’s not big businesses but it is small, family businesses that are going to pay the carbon tax. The cost of their refrigerant alone is almost going to triple. It’s not a small increase: the cost of the good itself is almost going to triple under the carbon tax. The costs for Frozpak are likely to be in the vicinity of $60,000 a year extra. That’s a small family business that employs local people that’s going to be hit by the carbon tax. It’s going to hit the price of milk; it’s going to hit the price of fruit and vegetables. These are things which need to be kept cool. The reality of the carbon tax is it is small family businesses and it is goods such as milk and fruit and vegetables that are going to be hit.

TONY ABBOTT:

Ok, any questions?

QUESTION:

Mr Abbott, did you unleash a lynch mob on Craig Thomson?

TONY ABBOTT:

Look, what I’ve done is highlight the findings – not allegations, the findings – of the Fair Work Australia report. Now, Fair Work Australia was Julia Gillard’s creation. For months and months, when we raised questions about Mr Thomson’s conduct we were told, ‘Oh, just wait for the Fair Work Australia report’. Now we’ve had the Fair Work Australia report. We have had Mr Thomson’s frankly utterly implausible statement in the Parliament yesterday and the Government won’t let us debate it. Mr Thomson had one hour in the Parliament yesterday and the Opposition wasn’t given one minute to respond. Now, this is just a sign of a government which doesn’t get it when it comes to questions of public integrity.

QUESTION:

So, what did you make of his hour long statement?

TONY ABBOTT:

I don’t think he has seriously addressed any of the questions that he needed to. There are very serious findings of fact which Fair Work Australia made that he misused almost a half a million dollars of low paid union members’ money. He misused that money on his own personal expenses, getting elected, prostitution services. None of those questions were seriously addressed yesterday and I think what Mr Thomson did was a travesty of due process.

QUESTION:

He’s accused you of leading a lynch mob but he says that you are unfit to be Prime Minister and are unfit to be an MP.

TONY ABBOTT:

Look, I think that those sorts of statements will be treated basically with derision by the general public because this is someone who has failed to explain his own conduct. This is someone who has been found by Fair Work Australia to have misused almost a half a million dollars worth of low paid workers’ money. This is someone who is now in protective custody from the Prime Minister and the basic problem here is that this is someone who has betrayed the workers he was supposed to represent. This is someone who is now being protected by the Prime Minister in her desperate struggle to survive. There is no standard of integrity that this Prime Minister won’t trash in her struggle to survive and to cling to power.

QUESTION:

He’s also questioned the role of Michael Lawler, the Fair Work Australia vice president. That is someone who you previously appointed to the Australian Industrial Relations Commission. Have you had any contact with him?

TONY ABBOTT:

No. Look, sure, I appointed Michael Lawler to the Industrial Relations Commission a dozen years back, or whenever it was, but he’s now a senior officer of Fair Work Australia which is Julia Gillard’s creation and it’s interesting, isn’t it? In order to protect itself, the Government is now prepared to trash even its own creation. That’s how low this government has sunk.

QUESTION:

Have you spoken to Craig Kelly about allegations highlighted by Anthony Albanese yesterday?

TONY ABBOTT:

Look, he completely answered the claims that were made in the Parliament yesterday.

QUESTION:

Have you spoken to him personally, though?

TONY ABBOTT:

He completely answered the claims that were made in the Parliament yesterday.

QUESTION:

What about the prospect of Anthony Albanese going through other members of the Liberal and National parties?

TONY ABBOTT:

Look, this is a desperate government that is resorting to all sorts of completely unsubstantiated smear to protect itself. I think it is an increasingly revolting spectacle of a government which frankly shouldn’t be there, clinging to power and junking every standard of integrity in the process. I think the Australian people are disgusted by this spectacle. I think the Australian people think that this government has long outlived any useful role it could perform. I think the Australian people think that it’s high time that they got a new say on who should be governing our country.

QUESTION:

If Craig Thomson [inaudible] and support the Coalition in a vote in the House of Reps, would you accept his so-called tainted vote?

TONY ABBOTT:

Well, he has indicated that he is going to vote with the Labor Party.

QUESTION:

Will you move to have Kathy Jackson have a right of reply to Craig Thomson’s statement yesterday?

TONY ABBOTT:

Well, what we want at the moment is a chance to make a statement. I mean, Mr Thomson had an hour to address the Parliament yesterday. I think that we ought to have time to respond. I think all members of Parliament should have the opportunity to respond to the statement that was made. It was a statement that was made to the Parliament. It’s now the property of the Parliament. The Parliament should be able to debate it and the fact that this government wants to stop debate on the statement just shows that they don’t get it when it comes to ordinary standards of integrity.

QUESTION:

Would you move to have Kathy Jackson address Parliament and to address the claims that Craig Thomson made yesterday?

TONY ABBOTT:

Well, I certainly think that Kathy Jackson has been unjustifiably attacked by Mr Thomson. Mr Thomson produced no evidence, no evidence whatsoever, for his smearing of other people in the union, whistleblowers in the union, people who have exposed what Fair Work Australia has now found to be facts about Mr Thomson’s conduct. Certainly, there are procedures to give her a way to respond and I think those procedures should certainly be allowed to take their course.

Manufacturing; Jac Nasser’s comments; Craig Thomson; Peter Slipper; debt ceiling; Sydney airport: Tony Abbott Doorstop

Fri, 18 May 2012 00:45:26 GMT

TRANSCRIPT OF THE HON. TONY ABBOTT MHR

JOINT DOORSTOP INTERVIEW WITH MRS SOPHIE MIRABELLA MHR,

SHADOW MINISTER FOR INNOVATION, INDUSTRY AND SCIENCE,

MULGRAVE, MELBOURNE

Subjects: Manufacturing; Jac Nasser’s comments; Craig Thomson; Peter Slipper; debt ceiling; Sydney airport.

EO&E..............................................................................................................................................................

TONY ABBOTT:

It’s great to be here at Tuffa Workwear. I want to thank Franco Marateo and Damian Arthur for making me, Sophie Mirabella the Shadow Industry Minister and Senator Helen Kroger so welcome here today. This is a great example of a successful Australian business – a business which is competing with imports and succeeding – and it shows that we can succeed even in a tough industry like textiles, a labour-intensive industry like textiles, if government is prepared to allow Australian businesses to get on with the job.

Now, the problem with this government is that they are always on businesses' back with new taxes, with new regulations and this is what is making so hard for Australian manufacturing in particular to compete and to survive and to provide the jobs that Australian families so badly need. What we've seen today is two very respected people come out and slam this government. We've seen one of the great statesmen of Australian business complain, rightly, that this is a government which is taxing people too much, which is regulating people too much and which is setting Australian against Australian and it just shouldn't be doing that and we've now had the conscience of the Labor Party, Senator Faulkner, come out and say that the Prime Minister has completely mishandled the Thomson matter and by forcing the Australian Labor Party in New South Wales to actually release the details of the legal expenses that it has paid for Mr Thomson, effectively Senator Faulkner has said, look, enough is enough – the Prime Minister doesn't get it, I do. We need to take a stand for integrity. So this is a day when the government has come under attack from business and from within for not knowing how to manage the economy and not knowing how to maintain the integrity of our public institutions.

So, again, I want to thank Franco and Damian for making Sophie, Helen and myself so welcome. This is a great business. It's a sign of what Australia can do if we get the chance and as far as I'm concerned we are a great country and a great people let down by a bad government. The Coalition has a plan for a stronger economy for a stronger country. There will be lower taxes, there will be less government spending, there will be lower interest rates and that will enable businesses like this to get on with the job so that everyone's future can be so much better. Soph?

SOPHIE MIRABELLA:

It’s great to be back here at Tuffa and it's great to see a business thrive, be flexible, be competitive, be innovative and what we're hearing from Tuffa and so many good Australian businesses is that they don't want more government spending, they don't want government handouts, what they want is government to get off their back, what they want is a reduction in taxes, what they want is government to be responsible, to be grown-up, to create the right environment so that there can be confidence out there with consumers, out there in the business community so people can go out and invest knowing that there is a government responsible and planning for a positive future so that industry – which is the one that employs people and creates wealth in our nation – can get on with making our country an even better place to live.

TONY ABBOTT:

Thanks, Soph. Do we have any questions?

QUESTION:

What would you do on the question of how to fix the adversarial nature of the industrial system? What exactly would you do to address the concerns raised by Mr Nasser and others?

TONY ABBOTT:

Well, we had Jac Nasser – who is one of the great statesmen of Australian industry – point out that this government is getting it wrong on three important counts. First of all, it's over-taxing us, particularly with the carbon tax, secondly, it's over-regulating us, particularly with the Fair Work changes, and thirdly, it's dividing us when we really should be brought together and I just want to make this fundamental point: as the leader of a party, you can be the chieftain of a tribe but as the Prime Minister of the country, you have to be a leader for the whole nation and this is something that the Prime Minister just doesn't get. This is a Prime Minister who has not grown into the role. If anything, she has shrunk in office and this is a tragedy for Australia.

Now, I've made it very clear that we have a flexibility problem, we have a militancy problem and we have a productivity problem and what the Coalition is looking at in response to the demands of the community, small business, decent workers who want to have a go; what we're looking at is careful, cautious, responsible change that will bring the workplace relations pendulum back to the centre where it should always be.

QUESTION:

There are some reports that Christopher Pyne had email contact with James Ashby that contradicts previous impressions of his contact with Mr Ashby. What's going on here?

TONY ABBOTT:

Look, this is a non-story. The email in question – an entirely innocuous email – has been known

about for weeks.

QUESTION:

But why lie about it?

TONY ABBOTT:

He didn’t. No one did.

QUESTION:

Will you meet the Government's demand to disclose all contact that party members have had with James Ashby?

TONY ABBOTT:

Look, all of our contact is on the record. It's absolutely and utterly innocuous. Two points: the only reason the Government is in the Speaker mess is because the Prime Minister put Mr Slipper in the Speakership. No one made her do it – all her own doing – and in terms of the Ashby matter, all that matters is a) did the Speaker sexually harass his staffer and b) has he misused entitlements? That's all that matters. The rest is just desperate smear, desperate distraction from a desperate government.

QUESTION:

So, you are saying all contact is now on the record?

TONY ABBOTT:

Absolutely.

QUESTION:

Mr Pyne previously said that he did not have contact after the meeting. Why contradict that impression that he gave before?

TONY ABBOTT:

He did not. You're putting – if I may say so, with respect – words into his mouth. He said there was an email – an entirely innocuous email – and there was no further contact.

QUESTION:

Mr Abbott, you said that you would have a plan to bring down interest rates. Are you worried that if you refuse to lift the debt ceiling you actually increase the cost for banks, there’s less places for them to buy their bonds if there’s fewer government bonds?

TONY ABBOTT:

Look, the essential point here is that if the Government really is giving us a surplus it doesn't need to borrow more – simple as that. They do not need to increase the debt ceiling and they do not need to add $50 billion to our nation's credit card limit if they are actually getting us back in to surplus. Now, the fact that they want to borrow more shows that they don't believe their claim that they will get back to surplus.

QUESTION:

The reality is they say they need to lift the debt ceiling. If you block that, there will be fewer bonds on issue. Doesn't that have an impact for people who want to trade in bonds?

TONY ABBOTT:

Now, the Treasurer claimed in the Parliament in response to our questioning that there would be no increase in the debt ceiling beyond $250 billion from year to year. Now, if that's the case they don't need this additional increase in the limit. They can do it under existing legislation.

QUESTION:

So, if it's not going to be breached, what's the harm in lifting it?

TONY ABBOTT:

Well, the harm is that we cannot trust this government once it's got access to more money on the national credit card not to go out there and blow the dough.

QUESTION:

Can I ask you on Sydney Airport? Nick Greiner and Infrastructure Australia through their respective roles – in Infrastructure New South Wales and Infrastructure Australia – have been talked about as perhaps brokering some sort of non-political solution to the question of a second airport. What do you think of that as an idea?

TONY ABBOTT:

Well, I think it’s high time that the Federal Government stopped posturing on this and gave us a proposal. I mean, it's the Federal Government which suddenly says we need action here. Well, tell us exactly what you've got in mind.

QUESTION:

With respect, it’s not just the Federal Government. There are other people saying there's urgent action needed to select a spot for a second airport. Do you think that that's something that should be pursued perhaps outside the political debate?

TONY ABBOTT:

I think it is incumbent on the Federal Government, the Prime Minister and the Infrastructure Minister, to tell us what they think. Now, we're happy to constructively engage with the Government on this but we've got to have a proposal from the Federal Government.

QUESTION:

The Australian Greens also say a corruption watchdog should be set up to investigate claims made by politicians and their staff. Do you have any comment on that?

TONY ABBOTT:

Look, this is just a desperate distraction from a government and a government partner to the whole Thomson-Slipper scandal. Now, it's all very well talking about what they might do in the distant future. The important thing is how is this government – including the Greens – going to respond to the Slipper matter and to the Thomson matter? The fundamental point is that as long as the Prime Minister is desperately clinging to Craig Thomson's vote in the Parliament she has no integrity, no integrity whatsoever. No Prime Minister who gets it when it comes to the integrity of public life would disown Craig Thomson in the caucus but cling to his vote in the Parliament. That's what the Prime Minister's doing and that's why you've got the conscience of the Labor Party, Senator John Faulkner, effectively disowning her on this matter.

Tony Abbott doorstop interview: The Coalition's plan to revive foreign language study; Julia Gillard’s carbon tax; Craig Thomson; Newspoll.

Tue, 15 May 2012 06:30:14 GMT

TRANSCRIPT OF THE HON. TONY ABBOTT MHR

JOINT DOORSTOP INTERVIEW WITH MR ROSS VASTA MHR,

FEDERAL MEMBER FOR BONNER,

CARINDALE, BRISBANE

EO&E..............................................................................................................................................................

TONY ABBOTT:

It’s great to be here at Citipointe Christian College. I want to thank Pastor Ron Woolley and his team for making Ross Vasta and myself so welcome. This is obviously a marvellous school. It’s a very large, it’s a very dynamic school and from my perspective today, the really good thing about this school is that they have a very vigorous language programme, a very vigorous language programme that includes Asian languages such as Mandarin and very importantly, it starts right at the beginning of a child’s school life.

Today, Ross and I witnessed kids in prep already speaking Mandarin and this is exactly what our country needs to see more of and that’s why I was so very keen to commit the Coalition as I did in my Budget Reply to getting our country as quickly as we reasonably can to a situation where 40 percent of school leavers are taking a foreign language. If we are serious about engagement with the rest of the world, if we are serious about fully participating in the Asian century, we’ve got to boost our language skills and a government which is focussed on the future and not just focussed on tomorrow’s headline would take language training in our schools seriously.

I want to congratulate Pastor Ron for the work here at the school. I’m going to ask him to say a few words, then I’m going to ask Ross to say a few words and then if you’ve got some questions on languages, we’ll take them, then I might say a few words about some of the political ramifications of the day. Ron?

PASTOR RON WOOLLEY:

Well, I was delighted just to have the opportunity to have a look out our children and it’s no doubt that at that age, they have a great capacity to learn and so for the school, language – foreign language and particularly an Asian foreign language - has been a wonderful thing. I was in that classroom this morning and the teachers are very dynamic, but those children are very responsive and I think the earlier the better when it comes to languages.

ROSS VASTA:

Well, thank you very much. It was great to have the Leader of the Opposition in the electorate today because I wanted to show him how important it is for prep students to learn a language and master it when they’re very young. Then we went to see the year four students and they had progressed exponentially and that’s what the programme is all about. We need to have these young students learning a foreign language at a very young age, because they are able to absorb the language and master it in that time, but I just wanted to let you also know that we’ve been getting a lot of questions about the high cost of living and about the carbon tax especially in this area. This is a mortgage belt area and I really wanted Tony to come here and just see exactly what the people are saying and I know that we’ve got a few things to say about that.

TONY ABBOTT:

The government has begun a $70 million cash splash on carbon tax advertising, only this is the tax which dare not speak its name. The government is spending $70 million of taxpayers’ money on political propaganda and it’s too scared to actually mention the carbon tax in its carbon tax ads. Now, this is a government that just doesn’t get it. It doesn’t understand that the public are sick of dishonesty from governments; they’re sick of dishonesty from political leaders and I think these carbon tax ads are going to blow up big time in the government’s face.

Another area where the government just doesn’t get it is on the continued scandal of the Health Services Union and the Health Services Union’s Member of Parliament. This is a tainted government relying on a tainted vote. The only person in the country now who doesn’t understand this is the Prime Minister. The ACTU understands it - that’s why the Health Services Union scandal is going to dominate the first day of the ACTU national conference. The only person who will try to get through the conference without mentioning the Health Services Union, without mentioning Craig Thomson, is in fact the Prime Minister herself. She just doesn’t get it and as long as this Prime Minister is in office, it seems that she will be struggling to defend the indefensible. That’s why not only is she a Prime Minister living on borrowed money, she’s a Prime Minister who’s now on borrowed time.

QUESTION:

Have you had any more thoughts about the costs of funding for the foreign language programme?

TONY ABBOTT:

Look, I certainly think that it’s something that is affordable, particularly over the next decade, because let’s face it, if we invest more in foreign languages, if we get more Australians who can speak foreign languages, there will be a return; there will be a substantial economic return for our country. So, I think this is the kind of modest spending which will generate a long term budgetary return to our country.

QUESTION:

Is it an advantage as well having a politician, in particular maybe a Foreign Minister that speaks, say, Mandarin?

TONY ABBOTT:

Look, one of the things that I always admired about Kevin Rudd was his ability to speak Mandarin and it was quite an accomplishment, just as Alexander Downer’s ability to speak French was quite an accomplishment. I think it’s very important that more Australians have a mastery of a foreign language. That’s why I’m determined that the next Coalition Government will, within a decade, get the number of school leavers taking a foreign language back up to 40 per cent.

QUESTION:

Where are the teachers going to come from?

TONY ABBOTT:

Well, you know, we have the global village in this country. There are lots and lots of native speakers of foreign languages in our country and we should be able to make better use of them in our schools. Now, obviously, to have them teaching at a senior level, they need to have teaching qualifications but the whole point is that we shouldn’t wait until secondary education for language training and for language learning to start and that’s where I think we have a great natural resource in this country which is not being properly exploited right now.

QUESTION:

They'd need qualifications to teach at any level.

TONY ABBOTT:

Well, if you look at a pre-school, one of the things that my wife is hoping to do - if I might be personal for a moment - one of the things that Margie is hoping to do in her occasional care centre is recruit members of staff who are fluent in foreign languages, so that they can talk to the kids in foreign languages because at that age it’s amazing what youngsters can pick up and if you start young, your mastery of the language is always going to be greater than if you don’t start until you’re 12 or 13.

QUESTION:

Christopher Pyne’s told the Fin Review that you will press Parliament on privilege grounds to examine Craig Thomson’s funding of lawyers. Can you confirm that that’s something you’re looking at?

TONY ABBOTT:

Look, I certainly think this is a very serious issue. It seems that the Labor Party was paying for Craig Thomson’s lawyers, even as the Prime Minister was dumping him from the caucus and that’s why I say that there are enormous issues here for the Prime Minister. Was the story that Craig Thomson gave the rest of us on the weekend the story that he told the Prime Minister? Did the Prime Minister believe this story? If she didn’t, why did she continue to express confidence in Craig Thomson? If she did, what was it about the way he told her which was different from the way he told the rest of us?

QUESTION:

So, it that a yes? You will press Parliament to look at that?

TONY ABBOTT:

Look, there are enormous questions here that the Prime Minister and the Labor Party need to answer. Why has the Prime Minister been running a protection racket for Craig Thomson for many months now?

QUESTION:

It seems that the voters are a bit more impressed with the Budget than perhaps yourself?

TONY ABBOTT:

Look, opinion polls come and go. What never seems to change is the fact that this is a dishonest and incompetent government.

QUESTION:

Does it worry you, though, about potentially winding back some of the payments going out in terms of the reaction to the Budget from that poll?

TONY ABBOTT:

Well, I make two points. The first point is that the Coalition has always supported an educational payment that is linked to genuine educational spending. What we haven’t supported is another cash splash with borrowed money. The other point I make is that I appreciate that the forgotten families of Australia are doing it tough right now and they are going to be hit with the carbon tax in about six weeks time: their power bills are going to go up by ten per cent on day one, their gas bills by nine per cent from day one. So, I’m not going to begrudge them that extra money but, in the long term, the best thing we can do for these families is to get rid of the carbon tax.

QUESTION:

Do you think that the Federal Government needs to intervene in the Italian sisters issue?

TONY ABBOTT:

Look, this is a case which is either before the courts or about to be before the courts. It’s a very difficult case. I have enormous sympathy for everyone involved because it’s a very, very difficult case and I think the best thing I can do is avoid prejudicing any proceedings that might be taking place or about to take place.

QUESTION:

The girls have explicitly said that the don’t want to leave the country, they want to stay with their mother, but they're supposed to be on a plane by midnight tonight.

TONY ABBOTT:

And that’s why this is something which needs to be left to the appropriate legal proceedings to sort out. It’s a very difficult case. I can understand why a lot of people feel very strongly about this. I think all of us bleed for everyone involved but we’ve got to accept that there is a process here and it needs to be followed.

QUESTION:

Giving payments to parents when they do have children at school age, wouldn’t that make it more likely the money is going to be spent on the kids, than say giving them money when the kids are born?

TONY ABBOTT:

Look, the whole point about the education payment that the Coalition has always supported is that it had to be spent on education - it was a reimbursement for money spent on education. Now, the Coalition has always supported that, it does support that. What we don’t support is a payment under false pretences and that’s what this is. It’s just a cash splash. That’s all it is: a cash splash on borrowed money.

QUESTION:

So, you still don't see the similarities to that end to the Baby Bonus?

TONY ABBOTT:

There is a world of difference between the educational payments that we have always supported - which was a reimbursement for educational expense - and this current payment which is just handing out borrowed money to people as disguised carbon tax compensation.

QUESTION:

But is there a world of difference between this payment and the Baby Bonus?

TONY ABBOTT:

Look, I think we're going round and round the mulberry bush but if there are other questions I’ll take them.

Thank you.

[ends]

Julia Gillard’s carbon tax; Craig Thomson; National Disability Insurance Scheme; Commonwealth Games; Afghanistan: Tony Abbott Doorstop

Mon, 14 May 2012 06:31:10 GMT

TRANSCRIPT OF THE HON. TONY ABBOTT MHR

JOINT DOORSTOP INTERVIEW WITH MR STUART ROBERT MHR,
SHADOW MINISTER FOR DEFENCE SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY AND PERSONNEL

AND FEDERAL MEMBER FOR FADDEN,

ORMEAU, GOLD COAST

Subjects: Julia Gillard’s carbon tax; Craig Thomson; National Disability Insurance Scheme; Commonwealth Games; Afghanistan.

EO&E..............................................................................................................................................................

TONY ABBOTT:

It’s great to be here at PWR Performance Products. I would like to thank Marshall Vann and I’d like to thank the Weel family for making Stuart Robert and myself so welcome here. This is a world-leading Australian manufacturing business. About 70 percent of the cooling systems in the world's racing cars are made here at this factory on the Gold Coast and it just goes to show that we can take on the best in the world and win, even in manufacturing, if we do it right and my problem with the carbon tax is that it is going to make it so much harder for businesses like this to continue to flourish. The carbon tax is like a reverse tariff. It makes manufacturing in this country more expensive. It makes our competitors overseas relatively less expensive and that's why this tax is so toxic.

The Australian people understand that this tax will hit their cost of living. They understand that it will threaten their jobs. The only person who is in denial about the impact of the carbon tax is the Prime Minister. Now, I say that every day until the next election, I will be campaigning against the carbon tax and the first act of an incoming Coalition Government will be to abolish this toxic tax.

Now, I'm going to ask Marshall to say a few words and then I might ask Stuart Robert to speak up on behalf of manufacturing industry here on the Gold Coast and then I’ll have a couple of other comments and then we'll take some questions. Marshall, over to you, mate.

MARSHALL VANN:

Thanks, Tony. First of all I would like to welcome both of you here. It is such a thrill to have the Leader of the Opposition and our local member come visit a company like PWR. PWR is one of those family success businesses. There are lots of them but you just don’t see them in the media all the time. We, as Tony said, export around the world. Over 60 percent of what we make goes around the world to leading race teams and leading car manufacturers around the world. So, we're very thrilled to get some recognition of what we're doing here - we know it's good. Talking about the carbon tax, we've looked at it a lot and we have two main concerns with it. The first thing is, we don't actually know what it is going to cost us. We know the power costs will go up. We have no idea what other direct inputs and indirect inputs will go up, so we're sailing into the great unknown.

Secondly, as Tony said, it is a tariff on us - 70 percent almost of what we sell goes overseas. We can't ask those overseas customers to take a price rise because Australia has a carbon tax. So, where is it going to come from? It is coming out of our pocket. I ask two questions: is that fair and is that really what was intended?

Thank you.

STUART ROBERT:

Thanks, Marshall. Thanks very much for having myself and the Leader of the Opposition, Tony Abbott, here and Tony, thanks for coming now twice in the same month to have a look at the Gold Coast and Gold Coast businesses and Gold Coast manufacturing. PWR Performance - this is literally rev head central - and what you've just heard from Marshall is that costs will increase because of the carbon tax. Now, blokes doing up their utes shouldn't have to pay any more for a radiator. Blokes doing up their V8s or looking at entering the racing industry shouldn't have to pay more because of a carbon tax. People looking to get a new radiator or new cooling system for their Commodore or their Holden shouldn't have to pay more for their radiator and this is unfortunately the consequence of the carbon tax - and it is not just here at PWR Performance, but right across the Gold Coast manufacturers are saying exactly the same thing: why are we having to pay more just to employ Australians? So, Tony, thanks very much for coming along. We really appreciate it.

TONY ABBOTT:

Thank you. Just another issue that I wouldn't mind saying a few words about. The Prime Minister is now talking about a code of conduct for members of parliament. Well, as long as the Prime Minister is clinging to Craig Thomson's vote in the Parliament, we know what her code of conduct is. Her code of conduct is Craig Thomson's code of conduct as long as she is clinging to his vote in the Parliament. Now, again, it is all very well talking about a code of conduct, but no member of parliament should need to be told that fraud, theft and sexual harassment are wrong. So, what we are getting from the Prime Minister is just more window dressing; just more talk. What has been conspicuously absent from this Prime Minister - whether it is Parliamentary standards, whether it is easing the pressure on the forgotten families of Australia's cost of living, whether it is stopping the boats - what's been conspicuously absent from this Prime Minister is sustained national leadership.

QUESTION:

The Prime Minister says she's going to hold talks with Tony Windsor and Rob Oakeshott re a code of conduct. So, do you think that she's just shoring up support?

TONY ABBOTT:

Well, it's all very well saying that now after the event, but this was something that was supposed to be happening straight after the election. This was something that the independents were talking about straight after the election. What I think we are almost certain to see from this Prime Minister is a sad attempt to explain away the inexplicable, to defend the indefensible, by doing something after the event. Well, it is just not good enough, Prime Minister. As long as you are clinging to Craig Thomson's vote in the Parliament, your code of conduct is Craig Thomson's code of conduct.

QUESTION:

So, you don't support a review into a Parliamentary code of conduct?

TONY ABBOTT:

Look, I'm happy to consider anything that is put forward because obviously I think it is important that our Parliament is something that Australians can be proud of and members of parliament are people that Australians can respect, but the best way for the Prime Minister to indicate that the Parliament should be something that people can be proud of would be to repudiate Craig Thomson's vote. I mean, at the moment, she repudiates him from the caucus but clings to him in the Parliament and you can't take any talk about Parliamentary standards from this Prime Minister seriously as long as she is relying on Craig Thomson's vote in the Parliament. It is a tainted government relying on a tainted vote.

QUESTION:

The New South Wales Labor Party General Secretary Sam Dastyari says there might be an election by the end of this year. If so, are you ready and do you have your costings ready?

TONY ABBOTT:

The Coalition is ready for an election. We think that the Australian people are yearning for an election. We think that the longer the current parliament lasts, the more people are concluding that minority government is an experiment that's failed and look, in the course of a campaign, yes, people will get all the information that they want from the Coalition.

QUESTION:

You’re in Queensland and the Prime Minister is in Queensland. Is Queensland a key battleground to win the next election?

TONY ABBOTT:

Queensland is always a key battleground. Obviously, the Coalition did particularly well in Queensland at the last federal election. I think the LNP has obviously triumphed magnificently in the recent state election and I hope that we can do even better in the next federal election than we did in the last one.

QUESTION:

Mr Abbott, the Disability Insurance Scheme appears to need a tax to be funded. I know you're a supporter on the whole of the scheme of sorts. What would you do?

TONY ABBOTT:

What I’ve said is that in order to ensure that the National Disability Insurance Scheme is delivered in a timely and responsible fashion, the best way forward would be to establish a bipartisan Parliamentary committee jointly chaired by the government and opposition disability shadows. Now, according to the Productivity Commission's timetable, the NDIS will be fully rolled out over three terms of Parliament and in order to ensure that we maintain our focus, in order to make sure that we keep the momentum going, it is important that we do set up this committee to establish leadership on this; to make sure that all the details have been meticulously worked through and got right. I'm disappointed that the Prime Minister so far has shunned this offer of mine because we know from this government's experience, we know from this government's record, that they're not good on detail and they're not good on implementation, and the last thing we want is to get this wrong. This is too important for our country, too important for the hundreds of thousands of people with a significant disability to get this wrong.

QUESTION:

Mr Abbott, since you’re on the Gold Coast, the current government hasn't put its hand up to fund the Commonwealth Games. Will you make a commitment to fund the Commonwealth Games on the Gold Coast?

TONY ABBOTT:

Well, look, we support the Commonwealth Games. We think it is in the end something that the government should take the initiative on and I want to be very bipartisan when it comes to supporting the Commonwealth Games - a great national project - and we want to make them magnificent.

QUESTION:

Mr Abbott, the Prime Minister plans to increase family payments. Would you repeal that if you became Prime Minister?

TONY ABBOTT:

Well, what we’ve said is that this is effectively carbon tax compensation in disguise. For that reason, we are not going to begrudge it to the Australian people but the first thing we do in government, should we win the next election, will be to repeal the carbon tax and that's the best thing you can do for the families of Australia, repeal the carbon tax, because that's going to just go up and up and up as time goes by. As long as this carbon tax lasts, the families of Australia are going to get slugged and slugged and slugged.

QUESTION:

But what would you do with the compensation being paid?

TONY ABBOTT:

What we’ve said is that there will be a tax cut without a carbon tax and that there will be a fair go for families. We will let the families of Australia know in good time before the election all the precise details. We will take them into our confidence. We know that the last thing they want from the Coalition is the kind of trickiness that they've had from this government. We will be candid with the Australian people. They will know exactly what kind of a deal they will get from us in good time before the next election.

QUESTION:

With the carbon tax, how would you make sure [inaudible] came down again in price?

TONY ABBOTT:

Well, we will do the same thing with the carbon tax that we did with the GST, back about a decade ago under the Howard Government. The ACCC will be given a brief to ensure that what goes down in cost is legitimately and properly reflected in prices.

On Afghanistan, we have tried to give the Government bipartisan support here. We think it is very important that the forces in Afghanistan know that they have the support of the entire Australian people. We want to let the Australian fighting personnel in Afghanistan know that we're right behind them and we want them to leave Afghanistan when the job is done - when the job is done, we want them to leave that country with a win under their belt; that's what we want, and we are happy to provide them with all the support they need to get the job done.

Thank you.

Federal Budget Reply Luncheon: Tony Abbott Speech

Sun, 13 May 2012 23:10:28 GMT

TRANSCRIPT OF THE HON. TONY ABBOTT MHR

ADDRESS TO FEDERAL BUDGET REPLY LUNCHEON

SYDNEY

E&OE……………………….……………………………………………………………

Julie, thank you so much for those very kind words of introduction and, ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for supporting me and my team and for supporting my party and for supporting our cause today.

As Julie has said and as Ross Greenwood has pointed out, it was a very significant Budget because for the first time that any of us can remember, a Treasurer and a Prime Minister have deliberately set out to divide Australia into them and us. They have deliberately set out to set Australian against Australian and this is a fundamentally unworthy and fundamentally ignoble thing that they have done.

Now, there are many things that we will disagree about. There are many times that political leaders will honestly dispute between themselves what is the right course forward for our country, but one thing that no decent national leader should ever do is deliberately try to say that there are some Australians who are more worthy than others; that there are some Australians who are real and others who are not. Bob Menzies had it right when he said all those years ago that in our country the class war will always be a false war. Well, the class war is a false war. It shouldn’t be played. It shouldn’t be waged in this country. The geography war is a false war and that shouldn’t be waged in our country. As John Howard often said, we know in our hearts that the things that unite us are more important than the things that divide us and the fact that he knew that in the marrow of his bones shows that he was a great national leader, someone who could govern for all of us and the fact that the current Prime Minister doesn’t know that – or if she does, chooses to trash it and junk it to try to score political points – shows that she is fundamentally unworthy of the great office she holds.

The Prime Minister just doesn’t get it when it comes to this basic requirement of national leadership and there’s something else that she doesn’t get which is no less important when it comes to offering real national leadership, and that is the importance of business in the success and prosperity and the cohesion of our country.

Now, I know in the marrow of my bones that you cannot have a strong society and cohesive communities without strong economies to sustain them and you cannot have a strong economy without profitable business because only profitable business can invest; only profitable business can employ and without investment and without employment there is no strength, no bonds of cohesion. The social fabric unravels and this is what the Prime Minister and the Treasurer don’t understand. Success is good. We should be grateful to people who put their houses on the line so that others can be employed. We should be grateful to the people who have succeeded in attracting billions of dollars of investment into our country and who have succeeded in employing thousands and thousands of people in their enterprises. We should be grateful to them and this idea that the political contest should be somehow boiled down to some crass fight between battlers and billionaires, it is just so unworthy. Ben Chifley would never have done it. Bob Hawke would never have done it. Not even Paul Keating would ever have done it because, frankly, he wanted to be a billionaire!

So, I want to say to all of you, when I look out at this large room, I see people who are doing the right thing by their fellow Australians. I see people who are doing their best to get ahead and please, keep doing it, because if you ever stopped, our country would be in an even bigger mess than it is now, thanks to the depredations of the current government.

I want to assure you that the fundamental purpose of the next Coalition government will be to get our economy growing again, to get it growing strongly again, because our overall plan is to have a stronger economy for a stronger country and to get a stronger economy we need to start with getting government spending down, because if we get government spending down we can responsibly get taxes down. If we get government spending down and we get government borrowing down, we get the pressure off interest rates; we aren’t out there continuing to borrow $100 million every single day.

Wasn’t the great fraud of Tuesday night’s Budget this idea that we were going to produce a wafer-thin surplus? ‘Oh yes – and I’m not going to mention this in the Treasurer’s Budget speech – but we still need to increase the nation’s credit card limit by a further $50 billion.’ Well, some of you guys are bankers. What would you think? You understand what people are like when they come in there and they say, ‘I will be responsible with my spending but please extend my credit card limit’. We know they’re not fair dinkum and this Treasurer was not fair dinkum when he stood up on Tuesday night and talked about his surplus.

So, we will get government spending under control and in so doing we will get interest rates down, we will take the pressure off interest rates, we will take the pressure off tax, we will build a stronger society with stronger communities by giving the public more say over the great institutions that matter so much to them: public schools and public hospitals. We will do the right thing by our environment, not with a great big new tax on everything, but by encouraging businesses to do what you’re already in many instances doing – to reduce your energy use, your fuel costs – that’s the smart way to get emissions down.

We will give our great cities the infrastructure they need, not because we are going to borrow frantically, but because we will responsibly attract the private sector into important national infrastructure projects and we will pick them on the basis of rational analysis, unlike the current government which decided upon the biggest infrastructure project in Australia’s history, the National Broadband Network, on a coaster on the back of a VIP aircraft because the then Prime Minister couldn’t find time to meet with the Minister for Communications.

So, ladies and gentlemen, we do have the plans to put our country back on track and we will not let you down.

I know in the marrow of my bones that my job – should I be elected – will not be to cling to office; it will not be to hold office for its own sake. It will be to build a better country. That is the job of everyone in the parliament and that is why so many Australians feel so let down by the current government; they feel so let down by the current Prime Minister, because that is all they see: a Prime Minister and a government that is more interested in its own survival than it is in the welfare of the country and this is why this whole Thomson affair is so emblematic of this Prime Minister and this government.

The Prime Minister stood up there and told our nation just ten days or so back that a line has been crossed; something had to change. She was suspending Mr Thomson from the caucus, but she’s still clinging to his vote in the Parliament. She’s still paying his legal fees. I mean, really and truly, what do they think we are? Why do they keep playing us for mugs like this and there are millions of decent Labor people in our country – or people who think of themselves as Labor people in our country – and they hate it, they hate it. That’s why change is coming and that’s why change will be change for the better.

Ladies and gentlemen, I know it is dispiriting right now looking at the spectacle of Parliamentary politics in Canberra. I know there are many people who look at this and are bewildered. I think even Mr Oakeshott is starting to be a little bewildered by what he finds himself supporting and I keep saying to people that we are a great country, we are a great people, we are being let down by a bad government, but there is almost nothing wrong with our country that wouldn’t be improved by a change of government.

So, that is what all my colleagues and I are working towards: to give you the change of government that our country needs as quickly as we humanly can and I want to thank you again for your support because, in the end, it is not about making an individual Prime Minister or Deputy Prime Minister, it’s not about a benefit here or a benefit there, it is about our country – this great nation which could be so much better than it is and will be again in a very short space of time.

Julia Gillard’s carbon tax; Budget 2012; Craig Thomson: Tony Abbott Doorstop

Sun, 13 May 2012 22:58:17 GMT

TRANSCRIPT OF THE HON. TONY ABBOTT MHR

JOINT DOORSTOP INTERVIEW WITH MR JOHN ALEXANDER OAM MHR, FEDERAL MEMBER FOR BENNELONG,

TOP RYDE SHOPPING CENTRE, SYDNEY

Subjects: Julia Gillard’s carbon tax; Budget 2012; Craig Thomson.

EO&E..............................................................................................................................................................

TONY ABBOTT:

It’s great to be here with John Alexander at Top Ryde shops. This is a very vibrant shopping centre obviously but so many of the shopkeepers are concerned, as are so many Australians, about the impact of the coming carbon tax, just a few weeks away now. Julia Gillard’s gift-wrapped hit on the cost of living of Australian families and on the jobs of Australian workers. So I want to thank Chris and the other staff of Peter Roans Seafood for making John and I so welcome this morning. Peter Roans Seafood has an electricity bill of about $40,000 a year. There is a $4,000 hit on that from Day One of the carbon tax but it’s not just Peter Roans power prices that are going up. It’s all of his other costs going up because the cost of power and transport is embedded in everything. If you take a fish shop, well, there’s the fuel that the fishing boats use, there’s the power that they use at the markets to freeze things, there’s the transport which gets the fish to the markets and to the shops. All of this is going to be impacted by the carbon tax and this is why this carbon tax is so toxic for the families and the workers of Australia.

Now, the Government knows that this is a toxic tax and that is why there was disguised carbon tax compensation in the Budget released this week but essentially it was a deceptive and misleading budget. The Treasurer talked about a surplus and yet he undercuts his surplus by attempting to lift the nation’s credit card limit by a further $50 billion. The Treasurer talks about helping families to pay for educational expense. It’s just another cash splash from a government which has previously given cash splashes and we all know what happened to them.

So, more deception, more misleading conduct from the Government this week in the budget.

Finally, we had an interview with Mr Craig Thomson today. I don’t think anyone believes his story. Fair Work Australia didn’t believe his story. I don’t think the Australian public will believe his story either. This story is essentially to provide the Prime Minister with an alibi. It’s all about giving Julia Gillard an alibi so she can keep clinging to his vote and really the question for the Prime Minister is, did Craig Thomson tell her himself this story and is that why for so many months she has been declaring full confidence in Craig Thomson? Now, she needs to explain why it was that she for months was declaring full confidence in Craig Thomson and what story he told her in order to justify her statement that she had full confidence in him.

I’m going to ask John to say a few words because this is his electorate. He is a great local member. John Alexander is an Australian legend who has taken the heavy step of going into public life. I really admire John for doing this. I respect the fact that he was prepared to take on a Labor member of parliament in this seat and I think he has turned out to be not only an outstanding local member but a great contributor to our party room in Canberra.

JOHN ALEXANDER:

Thank you, Tony. Thank you for visiting and the point I would like to make is that this is an authentic story. In meeting with Peter yesterday, who is sponsoring our volunteers awards night this coming Thursday, he, with no solicitation whatsoever, said that his power bills had gone from $1,500 to $3,000 a month and that he could see them going much higher with the advent of the carbon tax on July 1. He made the point that this is a business where there is some discretion but there is no discretion on having to keep things frozen, having to pay bills to keep things cold and so this is an example of which we see so many examples of throughout Bennelong and the country of small business really struggling under the weight of the ever-increasing cost. There is very little chance to pass on. Businesses are having to absorb and there are many businesses suffering incredible hardship and inevitably may have to close down.

We are the champions of small business and here in this region we are doing what we can to take direct action.

TONY ABBOTT:

Ok. Do we have any questions?

QUESTION:

Mr Abbott, what should Mr Thomson do now?

TONY ABBOTT:

Well, he should cooperate with the police. He should have made a statement months ago to the Australian Parliament. He should give an absolutely complete and candid explanation to the parliament, to the people of Australia and to the various agencies that are looking at this whole sordid, squalid mess. But in the end, it’s not so much a question of what Mr Thomson should do. It’s a question of what the Prime Minister should do. For months and months and months she has been expressing full confidence in Mr Thomson. I think today’s statement by Mr Thomson is essentially an attempt to give the Prime Minister an alibi to continue to cling to his vote in the parliament. I don’t think anyone will believe this statement. Fair Work Australia didn’t believe this statement. The Prime Minister needs to tell us, does she believe this statement?

QUESTION:

Does he have the right to his vote in parliament?

TONY ABBOTT:

I think that the Prime Minister, if she’s fair dinkum, would disown his vote in the parliament. I mean, you cannot disown him from the caucus and cling to him in the parliament and this whole protection racket that has been run for so long by the Labor Party for Craig Thomson’s benefit has basically been about propping up Julia Gillard and her government. Now, I think the Prime Minister’s evasion, her shifty evasions about what she knew and when she knew it, what her staff knew and when they knew it, what the Labor Party did to pay his legal bills, otherwise to protect his position and when they told the Prime Minister’s office about it. I think there is an implausibility about the suggestion that the Prime Minister knew nothing about this until very, very recently.

QUESTION:

Does that mean that you don’t respect Nick Minchin’s opinion, that that would be overreaching to can his vote?

TONY ABBOTT:

Well, the point is that the Prime Minister…

QUESTION:

No, no, Nick Minchin’s opinion I’m asking about, not the Prime Minister.

TONY ABBOTT:

Well, the answer I’m giving you is that this is an issue for the Prime Minister. She cannot disown in the caucus but cling to him in the parliament. This is another issue of judgement and integrity for the Prime Minister.

QUESTION:

Wouldn’t it set a dangerous precedent though if you canned his vote?

TONY ABBOTT:

Look, you’ve got to remember that these aren’t just allegations against Craig Thomson, these are findings. This is not just a claim, these are findings of fact by Fair Work Australia, by a very, very respected senior member of Fair Work Australia. So, the idea that this is just on a par with the sort of allegations that are made from time to time is simply wrong. These are findings that have been made against Craig Thomson, findings of fact that have been made against him by a quasi-judicial body and let’s not forget that the Fair Work Australia investigation concluded that Mr Thomson had given false and misleading evidence to the investigation.

QUESTION:

So do you think a new precedent should be established?

TONY ABBOTT:

I think that a government and a Prime Minister of integrity would not try to have it both ways. They wouldn’t try to disown him in the caucus but cling to him in the parliament.

QUESTION:

So would it be right to say that you are not going to give Mr Thomson the benefit of the doubt?

TONY ABBOTT:

Well, as I said, he’s told us a story today. He’s given us a story. Fair Work Australia didn’t believe the story and I don’t think the Australian people will believe the story either.

QUESTION:

On the budget issue, in the light of your budget reply and comments that have come from Mr Turnbull and Mr Costello in the past about your economic credibility and literacy, I guess, what are you going to do to dispel the perception that really, you don’t have a good handle on it?

TONY ABBOTT:

Well, I think that what I did on Thursday night was outline a vision. A vision to get the families and the small businesses of Australia back on track. A fair deal for the families and the small businesses of Australia and I think that’s what they want. They want to know that there is a better way, that there can be hope, reward and opportunity and that’s what they’ll get from the Coalition. The message I keep giving to the Australian people is there is nothing wrong with our country that a change of government wouldn’t improve. We are a great country and a great people but we are being badly let down by the current government.

Leader of the Opposition's Address In Reply, Parliament House, Canberra

Thu, 10 May 2012 23:21:32 GMT

**CHECK AGAINST DELIVERY**

10 May 2012

ADDRESS TO THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ADDRESS IN REPLY

PARLIAMENT HOUSE, CANBERRA

……………………………….……………………………………………………………………………….

The job, Madam Deputy Speaker, of every member of this parliament is to help shape a better Australia.

It’s to listen carefully to the Australian people, respect the hard-won dollars they pay in tax, do our honest best to make people’s lives easier not harder, and honour the commitments we make to those who vote for us.

If that’s how we discharge our duties as members of parliament, politics is an honourable calling, the public can respect their MPs and MPs can respect each other even when we disagree.

My values are the product of an Australian life, a real life much like yours, with Margie, raising three daughters in suburban Sydney, paying a mortgage, worrying about bills, trying to be a good neighbour and a good citizen; appreciating that no one has a monopoly of virtue or wisdom, and grateful that our country has normally been free from the class struggle that’s raged elsewhere to other countries’ terrible cost.

In a healthy democracy, people need not agree with everything a government does but they should be able to understand its purpose and to appreciate why it could be for the long term good of the nation as whole.

The fundamental problem with this budget is that it deliberately, coldly, calculatedly plays the class war card.

It cancels previous commitments to company tax cuts and replaces them with means-tested payments because a drowning government has decided to portray the political contest in this country as billionaires versus battlers.

It’s an ignoble piece of work from an unworthy Prime Minister that will offend the intelligence of the Australian people.

So on behalf of the Liberal National Coalition, I assert these fundamental truths:

Government should be at least as interested in the creation of wealth as in its redistribution.

Government should protect the vulnerable not to create more clients of the state but to foster more self-reliant citizens.

The small business people who put their houses on the line to create jobs deserve support from government, not broken promises.

People who work hard and put money aside so they won’t be a burden on others should be encouraged, not hit with higher taxes.

And people earning $83,000 a year and families on $150,000 a year are not rich, especially if they’re paying mortgages in our big cities.

Australia needs more successful people and more opportunities for people to succeed, yet this government’s message is: the harder you try, the harder we’ll make it for you.

Madam Deputy Speaker, from an economic perspective, the worst aspect of this year’s budget is that there is no plan for economic growth; nothing whatsoever to promote investment or employment.

Without a growing economy, everything a government does is basically robbing Peter to pay Paul.

With a growing economy, it’s possible to have lower taxes, better services and a stronger budget bottom line as Australians discovered during the Howard era that now seems like a lost golden age of prosperity.

As this budget shows, to every issue, this government’s kneejerk response is more tax, more regulation and more vitriol.

The Treasurer referred just once on Tuesday night to what he coyly called the carbon price before rushing to assure people that it wouldn’t affect them.

If the carbon tax won’t hurt anyone why is the government topping up compensation in this budget?

If the carbon tax won’t hurt anyone, why did the Prime Minister promise six days before the last election that there would be no carbon tax under the government she led?

If the carbon tax won’t hurt anyone why are Labor members of parliament now frightened to go doorknocking even in their heartland?

Let’s be clear about this: no genuine Labor government would be hitting the families and businesses of Australia with the world’s biggest carbon tax at the worst possible time.

No genuine Labor government would be hitting our economy with what amounts to a reverse tariff making Australian businesses less competitive and Australian jobs less secure compared to our overseas rivals who face no such tax.

It doesn’t matter how many times the Treasurer refers to a Labor government with Labor values, the real Labor people with whom I mix beyond the parliamentary triangle despair of the politicians who have sold their party’s soul to the Greens.

Madam Deputy Speaker, I applaud the Treasurer’s eagerness to deliver a surplus – but if a forecast $1.5 billion surplus is enough to encourage the Reserve Bank to reduce interest rates, what has been the impact on interest rates of his $174 billion in delivered deficits over the past four years?

How can the Treasurer be so confident of next year’s skinny surplus when this year’s deficit, forecast to be $23 billion in last year’s budget, has now grown to $44 billion?

How can he be confident that next year’s surplus won’t evaporate completely given that it’s already shrunk from $3.5 billion in last year’s budget and the cumulative budget bottom line has deteriorated by $26 billion in just 12 months?

The forecast surplus relies on the continuation of record terms of trade even though growth in China is moderating and Europe is still in deep trouble.

Yet on Treasury’s own estimates, a decline in the terms of trade of just four per cent would turn the surplus into a $1.9 billion deficit next year and $5.1 billion the year after.

As everyone who’s managed a household budget knows, shuffling costs from one year to another, as the Treasurer has, doesn’t make them go away; and a tiny surplus in one year doesn’t outweigh huge deficits in other years.

Even if the Treasurer is right, it will take 100 years of Swan surpluses to repay just four years of Swan deficits.

Madam Deputy Speaker, I know what it’s like to deliver sustained surpluses because I was part of a government that did; indeed, sixteen members of my frontbench were ministers in the government that delivered the four biggest surpluses in Australian history.

By contrast, no one will know whether the Treasurer has actually delivered his micro-surplus till late next year; is it any wonder that he seems to be suffering from surplus envy.

If the budget really was coming into surplus, it stands to reason that the government would have no further need to borrow.

If the government really thinks that a surplus can be delivered, as opposed to being merely forecast, why is it proposing to add a further $50 billion to the Commonwealth’s debt ceiling?

I challenge the government to stop hiding this massive lift in Australia’s credit card limit in the Appropriation Bills and to present it, honestly, openly to the parliament as a separate measure where it will have to be debated and justified on its merits.

Madam Deputy Speaker, just two months ago, the Prime Minister said that “if you are against cutting company tax, you are against economic growth. If you are against economic growth, then you are against jobs”.

In dumping her commitment to company tax cuts, the Prime Minister has reinforced her trust problem: why should this year’s budget commitments be any more reliable than previous ones, especially when so much is such obvious spin.

The Treasurer boasted about his aged care changes but failed to mention that everyone who is not a full pensioner faces up to $10,000 a year more for in-home aged care and up to $25,000 a year more for residential care.

He hailed the delivery of the National Disability Insurance Scheme but neglected to mention that it was short-changed $2.9 billion from the Productivity Commission’s version.

He trumpeted more money for the states’ dental schemes but not his plans to abolish the Medicare dental scheme.

He highlighted more spending on the Pacific Highway but not the get-out clause that it has to be matched 50:50 by NSW, not 80:20 as agreed with the previous NSW Labor government.

The Treasurer insisted that military spending could be cut, breaking more commitments in the process, without harming our defence capability even though defence spending, as a percentage of GDP, will soon be at the lowest level since 1938.

Madam Deputy Speaker, the Australian people deserve better than this and they’re looking to the Coalition for reassurance that there is a better way.

The Coalition has a plan for economic growth; it starts with abolishing the carbon tax and abolishing the mining tax.

Abolishing the mining tax will make Australia a better place to invest and let the world know that we don’t punish success.

Abolishing the carbon tax would be the swiftest contribution government could make to relieving cost of living pressure; it would take the pressure off power prices, gas prices and rates; it would prevent more pressure on transport prices.

Abolishing the carbon tax would make every job in our economy more secure.

It would help to ensure that we keep strong manufacturing, vibrant agriculture, growing knowledge-based industries and a resilient services sector – as well as a mining industry – in a vigorous five pillar economy.

Madam Deputy Speaker, Australians understand that a tax reduction to compensate for a tax increase is not a real cut; they know that the only sustainable tax cuts are based on a permanent decrease in the size of government or a permanent increase in the wealth of our nation.

Under the Coalition, there will be tax cuts without a carbon tax because we’ll find the savings to pay for them.

The Howard government turned a $10 billion budget black hole into consistent surpluses averaging almost one per cent of GDP; it turned $96 billion in net Commonwealth debt into $70 billion in net assets.

The Coalition identified $50 billion in savings before the last election and will do at least as much again before the next one.

It’s not as if savings are impossible to find.

Why should the government commit nearly $6 billion to power stations that the carbon tax would otherwise send bankrupt rather than just drop the carbon tax?

Why spend billions to put people out of work rather than into it?

Why does the Defence Materiel Organisation need 7000 bureaucrats especially when major equipment purchases are being put off?

Why does Australia need to spend millions to join the African Development Bank?

Why spend $50 billion on a National Broadband Network so customers can subsequently spend almost three times their current monthly fee for speeds they might not need?

Why dig up every street when fibre to the node could more swiftly and more affordably deliver 21st century broadband?

Why put so much into the NBN when the same investment could more than duplicate the Pacific Highway, Sydney’s M5 and the road between Hobart and Launceston; build Sydney’s M4 East, the Melbourne Metro, and Brisbane’s Cross City Rail; plus upgrade Perth Airport and still leave about $10 billion for faster broadband?

And why spend another $1.7 billion on border protection cost blow outs because the government is too proud to admit that John Howard’s policies worked?

Madam Deputy Speaker, the Treasurer boasts that our economy will be 16 per cent bigger by mid 2014 than it was in mid 2008 before the Global Financial Crisis.

What he doesn’t mention is that over the previous six years growth was 22 per cent; and over the six years before that – spanning the Asian Financial Crisis, the Tech Wreck and September 11 – the Howard government achieved growth of 26 per cent while still implementing far-reaching economic reforms like the GST.

Strong economic growth will be the over-riding aim of the next Coalition government; we’ve done it before and can do it again.

We’ll cut business red tape costs by at least a billion dollars a year by requiring each government agency to quantify the costs of its reporting and compliance rules and delivering an annual savings target.

Public service bonuses won’t be paid unless these targets are met.

There’ll be a once-in-a-generation commission of audit to review all the arms and agencies of government to ensure that taxpayers are getting good value for money.

We will respond carefully but decisively to the problems that the community has identified in the Fair Work Act so that small businesses and their staff can get a fair go and our productivity can increase.

We’ll restore the Australian Building and Construction Commission, the successor of the Cole Royal Commission which I established, as a strong cop on the beat and the guarantor of $6 billion a year in productivity improvements in a vital industry.

And Madam Deputy Speaker, where union officials and business people commit the same offence they should face the same penalty; what’s more, unlike the government, we didn’t need the Fair Work report into the Member for Dobell to realise that some unions are corrupt boys clubs.

We’ll work with the states to put local people in charge of public schools and public hospitals because they should be as responsive to their patients and to their parents as businesses are to their customers.

Our objective is to bring to the running of public schools and hospitals the “have a go mindset” that the move to the Job Network, that I oversaw, brought to employment services under the former government.

Madam Deputy Speaker, the Coalition wants more Australians to be economic as well as cultural contributors.

That’s why work-for-the-dole, or some other serious undertaking, should be mandatory for long-term unemployed people under 50.

Welfare quarantining for long term unemployed people should be extended from the Northern Territory to the rest of the country.

Where unskilled work is readily available, unemployment benefits should be suspended for fit people under 30 – as recommended by Warren Mundine, a former Labor Party National President.

And yes, there will be a fair-dinkum paid parental leave scheme, giving mothers six months at full pay with their babies, to bring Australia into the 21st century, finally, and to join the 35 other countries whose parental leave schemes are based on people’s pay.

Parental leave is a workplace entitlement not a welfare benefit so should be paid at people’s real wage, like sick leave and holiday pay.

Plus there’ll be a Productivity Commission inquiry to consider how childcare can be made more flexible and more effective, including through in-home care, so that more women can participate in a growing economy if that’s their choice.

I will continue to work with Noel Pearson to help shift the welfare culture that’s sapped Aboriginal self-respect and with Twiggy Forrest to get more Aboriginal people into the workforce.

I will keep spending a week every year volunteering in Aboriginal communities and I hope that a tribe of public servants will soon have to come with me to gain more actual experience of the places we are all trying to improve.

That’s what good social policy does: it empowers people to make the most of their lives and to prove to themselves what they can do rather than what they can’t.

That way, it reinforces good economic policy.

Madam Deputy Speaker, in a productive and competitive economy, it should be easier to get things built, provided they meet the best environmental standards – so the Coalition will allow the states to be a one-stop-shop for environmental approvals.

The Coalition will reward conservation-minded businesses with incentives to be more efficient users of energy and lower carbon emitters.

Our policy means better soils, more trees and smarter technology – unlike the carbon tax which is socialism masquerading as environmentalism.

There will be a standing Green Army, an expanded version of the Green Corps that I put in place in government, to tackle our landcare problems so that beaches and waterways can be cleaner and land more productive.

The next Coalition government will fund infrastructure in accordance with a rational national plan based on published cost-benefit analyses.

We’ll also find the most responsible ways to get more private investment into priority projects so that the new roads, public transport systems and water storages that we need aren’t so dependent on the taxpayer.

Madam Deputy Speaker, too often, government’s focus is on the urgent rather than the important; on what drives tomorrow’s headline rather than on what changes our country for the better.

We are supposed to be adapting to the Asian century, yet Australians’ study of foreign languages, especially Asian languages, is in precipitous decline.

The proportion of Year 12 students studying a foreign language has dropped from about 40 per cent in the 1960s to about 12 per cent now.

There are now only about 300 Year 12 Mandarin students who aren’t of Chinese-heritage.

Since 2001, there has been a 21 per cent decline in the numbers studying Japanese and a 40 per cent decline in the numbers studying Indonesian.

If Australians are to make their way in the world, we cannot rely on other people speaking our language.

Starting in pre-school every student should have an exposure to foreign languages.

This will be a generational shift because foreign language speakers will have to be mobilised and because teachers take time to be trained.

Still, the next Coalition government will make a strong start.

My commitment tonight is to work urgently with the states to ensure that at least 40 per cent of Year 12 students are once more taking a language other than English within a decade.

Madam Deputy Speaker, the Coalition can find responsible savings to cover tax cuts without a carbon tax and emissions cuts without a carbon tax because, at least until the budget has returned to strong surplus, our plan for a stronger economy and a fairer society involves more efficiency rather than more spending.

Madam Deputy Speaker, there is little wrong with our country that a change of government wouldn’t improve.

On day one, a new government would order the carbon tax repeal and accept Nauru’s standing offer to reopen the detention centre.

Within a week, the navy would have new orders to turn around illegal boats.

Within a month, the commission of audit would be making government more efficient.

Within three months, the parliament would be dealing with carbon tax, mining tax and border protection legislation.

Within a year, national infrastructure priorities would be agreed and there would be more cranes over our cities.

Every day, with every fibre of my being, I would be striving to help Australians be their best selves.

Madam Deputy Speaker, as someone whose grandparents were proud to be working class, I can feel the embarrassment of decent Labor people at the failures of this government.

As Ben Chifley famously said, the goal of public life, our “light on the hill” should not be making someone prime minister or putting an extra sixpence in people’s pockets but rather “working for the benefit of mankind, not just here but wherever we can lend a helping hand”.

I regret to say that the deeper message of this week’s budget is that the Labor Party now only stands for staying in office.

Everyone knows that the Prime Minister is a clever politician but who really trusts her to keep any commitments?

She said she’d never challenge the former Prime Minister but did.

She said there’d never be a carbon tax but has imposed one because, she claimed, the Greens made her do it.

The Prime Minister told Andrew Wilkie: “there will be mandatory pre-commitment under the government I lead” but now tells clubs and pubs “there will be no mandatory pre-commitment under the government I lead”.

This week, the Prime Minister and the Treasurer have constantly invoked Labor values.

Were they Labor values the Prime Minister showed in carpet-bombing Kevin Rudd’s reputation; or in turfing Harry Jenkins as speaker for Peter Slipper; or in protecting Craig Thomson, the Member for Dobell, to this very day despite Fair Work Australia’s findings?

Because by a government’s actions will its values be judged.

Budget week hasn’t just been about the budget – under the circumstances how could it be; it’s been about the Prime Minister’s integrity and judgment.

As long as Labor keeps voting in this parliament to protect the Member for Dobell and keeps paying his legal fees, his suspension from the caucus won’t end the sleaze factor paralysing this government.

Decent Labor people shouldn’t be bluffed by the deal with independents into keeping a leader who is trashing a once honourable political party.

Before this government dies of shame, it should find a leader who isn’t fatally compromised by the need to defend the indefensible.

Then this parliament can once more be a proper contest of ideas between those who see bigger government and those who see empowered citizens as the best guarantee of our nation’s future.

As budget week has demonstrated, minority governments are too busy managing the parliament to manage the economy properly. While they’re surviving, not governing our country is drifting, not flourishing.

With each broken promise, with each peremptory change, with each tawdry revelation, with each embarrassing explanation, the credibility of this government and the standing of this parliament is diminished.

But a shrunken government diminishes us all; that’s why our country needs a change.

I want to reassure the people of Australia that it does not have to be like this; we are a great people let down by bad government that will pass.

There is a better way.

The Coalition stands ready to restore hope, reward and opportunity so that, once more, all Australians can face a bright future with confidence.

[ends]

The Coalition's Plan to Revive Foreign Language Study

Thu, 10 May 2012 10:24:29 GMT

JOINT PRESS RELEASE

THE HON. TONY ABBOTT MHR, LEADER OF THE OPPOSITION

THE HON. JULIE BISHOP MHR, DEPUTY LEADER OF THE OPPOSITION AND SHADOW MINISTER FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS,

THE HON. CHRISTOPHER PYNE MHR, SHADOW MINISTER FOR EDUCATION, APPRENTICESHIPS AND TRAINING

THE COALITION’S PLAN TO REVIVE FOREIGN LANGUAGE STUDY

The Coalition will revive the teaching of foreign languages in Australian schools.

Knowing the languages of our key regional partners is vital to unlocking the potential of the Asian century for Australia.

A Coalition Government will work urgently with the states to ensure that at least 40 per cent of Year 12 students are once more taking a language other than English within a decade.

The teaching of foreign languages in Australian schools has long been in decline.

The proportion of Year 12 students studying a foreign language has dropped from about 40 per cent in the 1960s to about 12 per cent today.

China is Australia’s biggest trading partner, yet across Australia there are now only about 300 Year 12 Mandarin students who aren’t of Chinese heritage.

Japan is Australia’s second biggest trading partner and there has been a 21 per cent decline in students studying Japanese since 2001.

Indonesia is a vital partner in Australia’s long term future and on current trends Indonesian will disappear from Year 12 studies within four years.

Korean has all but disappeared from our education system – and Korea is our third largest trading partner.

Similarly Australia’s relationship with India is of growing importance and the Australian-Indian community numbers more than 300,000. But there has been a steady decline in the study of Hindi in Australia – for example in 2010 only 16 students sat the NSW HSC in Hindi.

A Coalition Government will reverse this trend and revive the teaching of languages in Australian schools.

If Australians are to make their way in the world, we cannot rely on other people speaking our language.

The Coalition believes that starting in pre-school every student should have an exposure to foreign languages.

Because foreign language speakers will have to be mobilised and because teachers take time to be trained, this will be a generational shift.

We will urgently work with the states to ensure that the Australian workforce of the future can grasp the full opportunity of the Asian century.

Budget 2012; Craig Thomson: Tony Abbott Doorstop

Tue, 08 May 2012 01:31:35 GMT

TRANSCRIPT OF THE HON. TONY ABBOTT MHR

DOORSTOP INTERVIEW,

PARLIAMENT HOUSE, CANBERRA

Subjects: Budget 2012; Craig Thomson.

EO&E..............................................................................................................................................................

TONY ABBOTT:

It seems that the Treasurer has confirmed today that the budget surplus will be a wafer-thin $1.5 billion. Well, even this surplus is a surplus based on cooked books, because the Treasurer has artificially moved spending out of next year into this year and into the year after, and he’s artificially moved spending off-budget that should be on-budget. So, this is a cooked books surplus based on fiddled figures and, yet again, no one should take this government seriously.

Let’s not look at what this government says, look at what this government does and what this government has actually delivered is the four biggest deficits in Australian history. Let’s just look at what has happened to the figures for this year. It was originally a deficit of $12 billion. It became, in last year’s Budget, a deficit of $23 billion. It became in MYEFO a deficit of $37 billion and it’s almost certain tonight to become a deficit of over $40 billion. So, frankly, the $1.5 billion surplus is essentially just a rounding error.

Now, this Budget has been completely overshadowed by the Craig Thomson revelations. This is a crisis of integrity for this Prime Minister and for this government. Plainly, this is a Prime Minister who doesn’t get it when it comes to political integrity. This is a Prime Minister who says she has disowned Craig Thomson but is clinging desperately, like a drowning person, to his vote in the Parliament. Now, I think that the Prime Minister’s colleagues are running out of patience with her. I think the Prime Minister’s colleagues have put her on notice. I think that this Prime Minister is living on borrowed time as well as on borrowed money, because, frankly, what she has shown with Peter Slipper, what she has shown with Craig Thomson, is an extraordinary lack of judgment and if there’s one thing Australian prime ministers need, it’s judgment.

QUESTION:

Mr Abbott, you’ve called on the Government not to accept the vote of Mr Thomson but isn’t it true that’s not how our Westminster system works and that Mr Thomson, whatever the report says about him, can actually vote how he wants to?

TONY ABBOTT:

The Prime Minister need not accept his vote. There is certainly precedent for governments not accepting the votes of members of this parliament who have been facing serious, serious allegations. As long as the Prime Minister clings to office based on the vote of Craig Thomson this is a tainted government relying on the tainted vote of a tainted member, someone who should not be in this Parliament.

QUESTION:

Why is it not enough now for you to move a motion of no confidence then, in the Parliament?

TONY ABBOTT:

Look, as long as the Prime Minister is relying on a tainted vote, there’s no point moving no confidence. What I suggest is that the tainted vote of Mr Thomson should be disowned by this Prime Minister and I think that Mr Windsor and Mr Oakeshott should finally wake up to themselves and start listening to their electorates.

QUESTION:

What about Mr Slipper? Will you be putting a vote of no confidence in his speakership?

TONY ABBOTT:

My expectation – and I think the requirement of the vast majority of members of parliament – is that Mr Slipper not take the chair. Now, if he does what he says he has done and does not take the chair, there’ll be no necessity for the course of action that you’ve alluded to.

QUESTION:

Labor says that you guys relied on Mary Jo Fisher when she was facing criminal charges. That’s not what Craig Thomson is facing yet. I mean, what do you have in response to that?

TONY ABBOTT:

Yes, but you see the Prime Minister cannot disown his vote in the caucus and cling to his vote in the Parliament. That just shows that this Prime Minister is trying to have it both ways, that this Prime Minister doesn’t get it. She wants to claim the moral high ground while continuing to rely on the vote of someone who has utterly betrayed the people he is supposed to represent.

QUESTION:

But why didn’t you disown Mary Jo Fisher’s vote?

TONY ABBOTT:

There is a total difference between what happened in that case and what has happened in this case because the Prime Minister has disowned him in the caucus, but is still desperate to cling to his vote in the Parliament.

QUESTION:

Is it appropriate for the Liberal right to dump Helen Kroger as opposition whip in the Senate?

TONY ABBOTT:

Look, what our Senate party room does has always been a matter for the Senate party room, but my expectation is that we have a good team and we will continue to have a good team.

Tony Abbott Address to Infrastructure Partnerships Australia, Sydney - The Coalition's Plan for the Infrastructure of the Future

Wed, 02 May 2012 08:05:16 GMT

**CHECK AGAINST DELIVERY**

ADDRESS TO INFRASTRUCTURE PARTNERSHIPS AUSTRALIA

SYDNEY

E&OE……………………….……………………………………………………………

LANDMARK SPEECH

THE COALITION’S PLAN FOR THE INFRASTRUCTURE OF THE FUTURE

For most Australians, there are few more infuriating things than never being able to get a seat on the train or the bus to work; or having to leave for work earlier and earlier because the traffic jams just keep getting worse and worse.

Infrastructure matters because it helps to determine our quality of life as well as our country’s productivity and prosperity. If we can’t readily get to where we need to go, so many of the things we take pleasure in become that much harder. If we don’t have enough dams, we can’t water our gardens. If ships are banked up outside our ports, the goods we need don’t turn up on time. If the airport has monster queues, we try to avoid travel.

Infrastructure has made modern civilisation possible. Without sewerage and clean water, cities would still be places where people died young. Without power, there would be no large scale industry and none of the goods that we take for granted every day. Without railways and highways, most people would still be the prisoners of the village they were born in.

For most people, expanded ports, better railways, more roads and bigger air terminals have been the visible signs of a stronger economy and greater prosperity. They meant more trade, more customers, better goods and more leisure. Conversely, crumbling roads, unreliable ports, and unsuitable railroads were a sign of civic failure.

The provision of better infrastructure has, quite rightly, become one of the key tests for any government: more so, perhaps, for state governments which have always had the principal responsibility for it in Australia; but increasingly, also, for the Commonwealth, which is invariably held responsible for the overall state of the nation.

By any standard, Australia’s infrastructure is inadequate. Our trains are no faster than 100 years ago. Our big cities are still linked by two lane highways. No major dams have been built for 20 years. Our urban motorways mostly start and end in suburban streets. We often give the impression of being much better at arguing about big developments than getting them built.

Over the past decade, infrastructure improvements have not kept up with population growth. State Labor governments have been more inclined to employ public servants than to invest in roads and rail, especially when that’s meant braving local protests. The result has been frustrated commuters, more expensive goods and services, and an economy less able to compete against rivals that have planned ahead.

Since 2007, there has been very little significant new road infrastructure commenced in Sydney or Melbourne. There has been serious new infrastructure in Brisbane but mostly thanks to Brisbane City Council, the one local government in the country big enough to invest in major capital works.

The lines of ships outside our ports have got longer, not shorter. Sending most cargoes by rail has got harder, not easier. The Hume Highway between our two biggest cities is about to be duplicated, finally, but that’s the result of commitments made by the former government, not by the current one.

The Rudd-Gillard government’s most notable contributions to infrastructure have been roof insulation that’s caused house fires, school halls built at double the normal cost and a National Broadband Network that’s digging up streets so that families can pay three times the current price for broadband speeds they don’t necessarily want or need and that could be delivered sooner at vastly lower cost.

If the $4.4 billion that the NBN is due to spend in the coming financial year were on budget, the government would be unable to predict a surplus. But to move the NBN off-budget, the government has had to assume unrealistically high take up rates to generate a commercial rate of return.

Thus, even the government’s construction ambitions have been caught up in the spin and general untrustworthiness that taints almost everything it does. If the Treasurer predicts a surplus in next week’s budget, Australians can be confident that it will be based on cooked books, like the pretence that the NBN is not really government spending.

This government solemnly promised that it would not fund any infrastructure project without a cost benefit analysis. In practice, there has not been a single cost benefit analysis published prior to any of this government’s infrastructure commitments.

Every single programme and project has gone ahead because it has suited the government’s political agenda. Whether it actually met the long term economic needs of our nation has never been the government’s main concern. The result is an infrastructure spending gap that Infrastructure Partnerships Australia estimates would cost $800 billion over the next decade to fill.

There is a better way. The Coalition has a plan for Australia’s infrastructure of the future. It’s a key component of our overall plan for a stronger Australia. If implemented, the Coalition’s plan should mean that our economy improves and that people’s lives get better. If implemented, our plan means that new infrastructure would be less a political trophy with which MPs might beguile their electorates than part of a specific design to give our country the best possible return for the billions that it costs.

Outside the Territories, the Commonwealth’s infrastructure responsibilities were originally limited to defence facilities and, later, to soldier settlement irrigation works. First with telecommunications and the rail line to Western Australia, then with the Snowy Mountains Scheme and national highways, and finally with the Howard government’s Auslink programme, the Commonwealth has steadily become the key element in many, if not most, large infrastructure projects.

The Howard government’s instinct was to leave infrastructure to the states, other than national highways and telecommunications. The relative success of the Commonwealth in discharging its responsibilities; compared, at that time, to the relative failure of the Labor states in discharging theirs, led to strident demands for the Commonwealth to be more involved in infrastructure as it did for more Commonwealth involvement in public schools and hospitals.

In 2004, the Howard government announced Auslink, a $16 billion programme over five years, to support productivity-boosting transport projects. A further $22 billion was allocated in 2007.

Earlier, in 2001, the Howard government had established the $300 million a year Roads to Recovery programme. This has become a key element in local councils’ capacity to maintain and upgrade more than 650,000 kilometres of local roads. So far, the current government has largely continued both these programmes.

What’s been missing, though, is a long term vision for Australia’s infrastructure needs and a comprehensive plan for achieving it.

This matters because inadequate infrastructure and the convoluted regulatory systems that make new infrastructure more expensive lead to higher costs, longer travel times and millions of working hours lost in frustrating traffic jams or waiting for trains that never arrive. Goods that rely on inefficient transport networks cost more to ship to consumers, which means higher prices in shops.

By definition, people sitting in traffic jams, even using their mobile phones on hands-free, are less productive than those that are actually at work. If people spent less time travelling, they could spend more time working as well as more time with their families. If work journeys were quicker, there’d be less “dead time” in the working day and a significant improvement in output per hour.

The current government is more accustomed to link productivity with training than with investment in transport infrastructure but provided it’s responsibly funded and done in accordance with the best available cost-benefit analyses, infrastructure spending is a strong contributor to productivity growth.

A decade ago, the World Economic Forum ranked Australia among the top ten most competitive and productive economies in the world. This was driven by a series of microeconomic reforms, such as privatisation, more flexible workplaces and national competition policy impacting on telecommunications, transport and utilities.

By contrast, Australia’s worsening infrastructure inadequacies, the Forum says now, have been a fundamental element in Australia’s recent productivity decline.

Infrastructure spending is important, even when money is tight, provided it has a strong economic outcome. It can’t just be building for building’s sake. The problem with the Rudd/Gillard government’s infrastructure spending is that it has invariably been driven by political rather than economic priorities.

When it comes to delivering productivity enhancing infrastructure, the government has been more talk than shovel. Only 14 per cent of the stimulus, not the school halls and certainly not the roof batts, was spending that directly enhanced Australia’s economic capacity.

In 2008, infrastructure minister Anthony Albanese said that all infrastructure decision making would be based on “rigorous cost-benefit analysis to ensure the highest economic and social benefits to the nation over the long term.”

He also declared that the government had a “commitment to transparency at all stages of the decision-making process” and that Infrastructure Australia would routinely undertake a “proper cost-benefit analysis” of projects to ensure that “value for taxpayers' dollars” was achieved.

Only a year later, the government failed to release cost-benefit analyses for any of the 15 big projects selected for funding in the 2009 Budget. Some of them were not even on Infrastructure Australia’s priority list. A subsequent National Audit Office report found that before Infrastructure Australia had come to any conclusions about the 28 “pipeline” projects that it had identified, the government had already announced funding for 10 of them.

Not only has the government failed to deliver on due process. It’s also failed to deliver on its commitments to get things built. Its biggest single project by far, the NBN, is over-budget and way behind schedule. The latest figures show that it’s only passed 18,000 houses and that only 12 per cent of these are actually using fibre. To meet the target of 760,000 houses passed by the end of the year, it will have to pass over 3100 houses a day – or 100 times its performance up till now.

NBN Co currently has 1300 staff earning on average $148,000 a year, the highest pay of any business in the country. That’s one staff member for every five customers. As Churchill might have said: never has so little been delivered to so few by so many at such expense.

The government’s promise to duplicate the Pacific Highway by 2016 is almost certain to be unfulfilled because it will require, according to the latest estimates, $7 billion more than has been committed.

In 2007, the government promised $150 million to start planning to connect the expressway at Hornsby to the Sydney Orbital but cancelled this funding in last year’s budget. The South Sydney Freight Line was supposed to be finished early in 2010 but is still not completed. In 2007, the government promised to “get moving now” to build the missing link from Brisbane’s Gateway Motorway to the Bruce Highway. Five years on, the department says, merely, that “planning is nearing completion”.

The government has recently committed to build a government-owned and run inter-modal freight hub at Moorebank in Sydney even though this will cost more and take longer to build than the private sector alternative planned, literally, for the other side of the street. Along with the NBN and the $10 billion fund for clean energy proposals that banks won’t touch, this is another victory for Labor’s born-again socialists.

The Gillard government’s recent attempt to renew debate about Sydney’s second airport, without officially naming a preferred site or a timeframe, looks more like a ploy to defuse a Greens challenge in Labor’s inner city seats than a serious proposal.

Action is urgently required to improve air travel in and out of Sydney. For now, though, this has more to do with addressing the traffic gridlock around the airport at peak times and making better use of other airports than it does with building a new one that couldn’t be operational for many years.

After nearly five years of a government that’s wildly over-promised and massively under-delivered, Australians are looking for reassurance that our infrastructure needs will be planned for and met.

The Coalition will task Infrastructure Australia with preparing a rolling 15 year national infrastructure plan with designated priorities based on published cost-benefit analyses. There will be a published cost benefit analysis for any infrastructure project to which a Coalition government commits $100 million or more.

As well, the Coalition will have the Productivity Commission examine possible means to get more private funding into high priority infrastructure projects. While the need to repay Labor’s debt will limit the immediate scope for more Commonwealth infrastructure spending, the Coalition will ensure that existing funding is better directed and helps to leverage other funding into the projects that Australia most urgently needs.

Also, the Coalition’s recent commitment to a one-stop-shop environmental planning approval process should make it easier to maintain standards while more quickly approving new infrastructure projects.

Australia’s largest construction company, Leightons, has just published a position paper: “Australia’s Top 12 Infrastructure Priorities”. These are the projects that, on Leightons’ assessment, would add most to overall economic development and to Australia’s liveability and productivity.

Leightons’ list is: Sydney’s M5 East duplication, the second airport, the missing link from the M2 to the expressway at Hornsby, and the north west rail link; Melbourne’s second CBD bypass, the Port of Hastings, the metro rail link and a third airport; Queensland’s Bruce Highway duplication and the copper string power line between Townsville and Mt Isa; South Australia’s northern connector; and the Perth Airport freight access project.

According to Leighton’s CEO, Australia is a country that once complained about the tyranny of distance but is now unready to take full advantage of being at the centre of world growth.

Every Sydney-sider understands the need to link the Anzac Bridge to the expressway at Strathfield. This vital missing road tunnel had become a manifestation of the syndrome to which state Labor governments were increasingly prone: BANANA or build absolutely nothing anywhere near anyone.

There’s no doubt that Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth each need an integrated motorway network and improved urban rail systems under comprehensive metropolitan transport plans. The Pacific Highway in Northern New South Wales urgently needs to be duplicated. Eventually, a dual carriage way between Melbourne and Adelaide would be the last link in a vital chain: the four lane highway that should finally join our big eastern cities.

There’s no doubt that rail freight bottlenecks need to be eliminated and port infrastructure upgraded especially for coal and iron exports. The Bruce Highway along the Queensland coast needs major upgrades to service big increases in population and the resources boom as does the highway linking Perth to the Pilbara. The highway between Hobart and Launceston needs upgrading to four lanes. Within a decade, inland rail will be needed from Melbourne to Brisbane.

And yes, Australia does need faster broadband so that tele-commuting is an alternative to commuting. As Telstra has just confirmed, this doesn’t require fibre to the home and is more likely to be provided by a competitive market than a government infrastructure monopoly. The Coalition’s broadband will be national, not nationalised. It will be available sooner and at much less expense to taxpayers.

Under the Coalition, Infrastructure Australia would assess all these projects, publish cost benefit analyses for them, and provide a recommended order of priority for Commonwealth funding. If the government varied Infrastructure Australia’s priorities it would need to argue a national interest case for doing so against the yardstick of what makes the most economic sense.

Within 12 months of taking office, a Coalition government would declare what its priorities would be and, in consultation with the states, announce construction timetables. Where the states’ own infrastructure priorities adhere to the Commonwealth’s, a Coalition government would work constructively with them to fund projects as quickly as possible.

I want to see cranes in the sky and bulldozers on the ground because that means economic growth.

While the current government prefers to fund its infrastructure priorities off-budget even though they’re Commonwealth-owned, the Coalition is determined to explore responsible mechanisms for getting more private investment into infrastructure projects so that they can go ahead more quickly.

At the last election, the Coalition promised to have the Office of Financial Management consider the provision of infrastructure bonds to unlock up to $20 billion for private infrastructure investment with wider public benefit.

These tax concessions have been used in the past to help fund privately owned infrastructure such as Sydney’s Eastern Distributor. Especially in the wake of commercially unsuccessful projects such as the Cross City Tunnel, what’s needed is the best contemporary way to renew private sector investment in vital projects at the lowest cost to taxpayers.

Without a new means to encourage private investment, there could be a very long wait even for infrastructure that could be expected to contribute strongly to economic growth. The Productivity Commission would be the best source of policy advice on this, as it has been on reforms to disability services and aged care.

The best way to reduce cost of living pressures, while maintaining and improving the services that Australians want, is to return as swiftly as possible to strong economic growth.

Under the current government, GDP growth has been due to higher population, not higher productivity. Headline GDP growth has masked stagnant GDP per person. Since 2007, this has increased by under one half a per cent a year, compared with two and a quarter per cent a year increases over the life of the Howard government.

Hence the longer the Gillard government lasts, the more the Howard era looks like a golden age of prosperity, that’s now been lost.

Economic growth enabled the Howard government simultaneously to reduce taxes, to improve services and to deliver budget surpluses. Economic growth is the foundation of prosperity and productivity improvements are the foundation of economic growth.

That’s why better infrastructure is so important and why the Coalition has a plan to bring it about, even in these much tougher times.

There is nothing wrong with our country that a change of government wouldn’t improve. We are a great country and a great people let down by a government that’s going from bad to worse.

We know that we are capable of more because that’s what we’ve achieved in the recent past. My vision is for the 21st century infrastructure that we need to restore the hope, reward and opportunity that should be Australians’ birthright.

[ends]