Warren Truss Address to The Nationals – WA Annual Conference, 2 April 2011
02-April-2011
WA Nationals Conference - Canarvon 2011
2 April 2011
When I last addressed you in Albany in March 2010 Labor was in power federally and in every state except Western Australia. Some were questioning the very survival of our party.
What a difference a year makes. Government in Victoria and now a whopping victory in New South Wales, to the brink of Government Federal independents wiped out in Victoria and all but wiped out in New South Wales; two new Nationals in the Victorian Parliament, four more Nationals in the Commonwealth Parliament, five new Nationals in the New South Wales lower House and two in the upper House. From the time of the 2008 Western Australia and Northern Territory elections, the Nationals brand across the country has enjoyed its greatest resurgence in fifty years.
The Nationals took to the last Federal election a comprehensive policy rewrites. The basis of all these new policies – from health to education to infrastructure to social justice – was a fair share for regional Australia.
The Nationals believe that much of Australia’s real wealth is generated in the regions and a fair share of the resulting government revenue should be returned to those regions and to regional Australia more generally. The Nationals – Western Australian Royalties for Regions policy is based on that equity argument, as is The Nationals – Victorian Regional Growth Fund and The Nationals – New South Wales’ Restart NSW Fund.
We took to the federal election a fair share commitment to lock in growing Federal funding for regional Australia in a co-ordinated partnership with local communities, state and local governments. In the negotiations following the election, we succeeded in extending that Coalition commitment to establish a Fair Share Fund using Commonwealth royalty income from new offshore oil and gas developments. That commitment stands.
The Nationals believe in fairness in spending. Residents in the capital cities enjoy so many more services in their communities than people living in regional areas.
Medical services are inadequate. Medicare benefits paid out per person in capital cities are much higher than in rural and remote areas, and people in country areas have shorter life expectancy. That is why the Nationals will ensure increased support for doctors who provide health services in regional and remote communities, including through Medicare rebates which increase according to remoteness. That is why we will provide the necessary resources to fund new regional health services and incentives to attract and retain medical professionals in the regions.
A basic right of all Australians is equal access to educational opportunities, no matter where they live. The Nationals have been fighting to restore fairness to the independent youth allowance for regional students, and I pay special tribute to Senator Fiona Nash, who has done an outstanding job in maintaining pressure on the Gillard Government to restore equal eligibility for the Independent Youth Allowance to students in inner regional areas. No education or social security Bill enters Parliament without Fiona attempting to attach a youth allowance amendment to it. Regrettably the New England and Lyne independents, who profess their support for regional Australia, have not so far voted with us.
The Youth Allowance system was not designed as a student assistance scheme, and we are working on a plant to take to the next election a new tertiary access allowance. No one should be denied access to a tertiary education because they can not afford to live away from home and they should not be forced to take a couple of years away from school to qualify for assistance.
Our aim is an education system delivering high standards from pre-school to university, which provides lifelong learning opportunities and enables regional Australians to reach their full potential. That is why we committed, and remain committed, to the establishment of a new one billion dollar Regional Education Fund to provide 21st century education tools to regional schools; to provide incentives to encourage quality teachers to move to – and stay in – regional schools; and to give responsibility to local school boards and principals rather than the city bureaucracies.
Good infrastructure – whether it be roads, telecommunications, schools, hospitals, bridges, dams or airports – is the only way we will truly unlock regional Australia’s potential. Creating dynamic, stable, secure and viable, regional economics is essential for Australia’s future.
We need to reverse the fly-in fly-out mentality kick started by Paul Keating’s FBT changes, we need to reverse the brain drain of our best and brightest to the capital cities, we need to decentralise decision making and encourage graduates and migrants to come to and live in our regions.
We need to establish regional centres with the critical mass to compete with the capitals and in this respect I am impressed by Western Australia’s Pilbara Cities program. It is a model which I am keen to support and extend to other states.
The Nationals have an integrated plan to complement state and regional initiatives to enable regional centres to achieve their vision. Our key themes are:
- Recognition of the need for non-negotiable provision of best practice services and infrastructure for regions;
- Decentralisation of decision-making;
- Support for innovation in the regions; and
- Better funding models to enable regions to achieve their full potential.
The Nationals have a strong plan for the future of regional Australia and the capacity to deliver it. By contrast, Canberra’s Labor-Greens-Independent alliance is a bad government that has shown itself incapable of governing in the interest of regional Australians, or indeed, any Australians.
I do not intend to dwell too much on the failures of the Gillard Government – because there are plenty of them and I’ve only been given 15 minutes to speak! But that shouldn’t understate the seriousness of failures and the implications for regional Australia.
The carbon tax which the Prime Minister promised repeatedly before the election we would not have will impact on the cost of living, on jobs and economic development, particularly in regional Australia; the NBN will provide a lesser service at high cost to regional Australians a decade later than the Coalition alternative; roads and infrastructure spending has been misdirected and badly managed; education opportunities for regional Australians have been deliberately limited; and the debt, deficit, waste and mismanagement of the Gillard Government have become legendary.
The Gillard government is a government of lies, broken promises and incompetence. It does not deserve the trust of the Australian people and it will not receive it at the next election. Bring it on !
The Nationals have not wasted our time in Opposition. We have had a good look at ourselves and we’ve made changes. Reforms instigated by the Federal Nationals team and the Federal Secretariat – such as the rebranding and re-positioning of the Party – have been adopted nationally and have been well received in the electorate. I’ve already referred to just some of the suite of new policies we’ve developed and enshrined in Nationals and Coalition policy. We have modernised and professionalised our operations. We have reviewed our relationship with the Liberal Party and, as we do at every election, we examined the pros and cons of coalition.
We renewed the Coalition – a decision endorsed by our Federal Management Committee and all State Presidents – but we’ve built The Nationals’ own profile at the same time. The results in the Victorian, New South Wales and Federal elections over the last seven month period show it and even the commentators are now starting to take notice. In fact, the Australian newspaper’s Foreign Editor Greg Sheridan wrote on Thursday that
“centre-right politics in Australia is more coherent, at the moment at least, than centre-left politics. Central to this is the astonishing, and much under reported, near nationwide revival of the Nationals.”
Our Federal front bench has performed well. Nigel Scullion deals with the real issues and real solutions for Aboriginal Australians and has earned their trust. The unsung story of the last election is the movement of the indigenous vote to the coalition. Aboriginal Australians are our constituents and we are determined to restore the dignity which has been eroded by forty years of paternalism, sit down money and blind adherence to the utopian capital city policies of well meaning but ignorant politicians and bureaucrats.
Barnaby Joyce developed some new ideas for financing major infrastructure, led the charge against the Murray Darling plan to decimate our biggest food bowl, and has moulded our Senate team into a formidable and successful team of champions for regional Australia.
John Cobb has forced the government to back down on some of its more extreme cuts to quarantine, and border control, has led opposition to Coles milk marketing strategy which can only harm our dairy industry and other primary producers, and has highlighted the threat to our food security posed by the takeover of Australian agribusiness.
Luke Hartsuyker successfully exposed the absurdities of Fuel Watch and Grocery Watch, and is now taking up the fight for fair treatment and fair pricing for internet access in the regions.
And I have already mentioned Fiona Nash’s outstanding contribution in the regional education portfolio - supported as she has been by Darren Chester and others.
Without the combined and single minded focus of all our parliamentary team, Labor’s mis-named Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme – more correctly the great big new tax as Barnaby coined it – would now be a reality. It was the Nationals who first said no to the CPRS and we explained why. The Liberals joined us sometime later and eventually even Labor discarded the notion that buying and selling pieces of paper could change the climate. Our opposition to the carbon tax and the mining tax will be no less vehement.
I can not conclude without saying that our federal Nationals colleagues were dismayed when Tony Crook decided not to sit in the Nationals Party room in Canberra. We were excited by his success and the election of a National from Western Australia for the first time in so many years. Tony is a great talent and he could add greatly to our Party room. Together we could achieve so much more for Western Australia and Australia than we can deliver separately. I hope that one day soon a way can be found for Tony to join his Nationals mates and be part of a strong team fighting for regional Australia.
Ladies and Gentlemen, our Federal Nationals party room is united in our determination to return to government; never have we developed such a comprehensive platform to deliver a fair go and a fair share to regional Australia; never have we been in a better position to implement those policies; and not since 1975 have we faced a more incompetent government.
I say to regional Australians; we are ready for government.
We have a strong plan for the future of regional Australia.
And, as a tight-knit Nationals team, we can deliver it.
Bring on the next election!