A vision for Australia

Peter Dutton outlines his vision for australia at the victorian Liberal Party state council.

When I look at our team I see experience.

I see new energy.

I see a common purpose.

I see unity – and we are united.

We’re united because, sadly for our country at the moment, we’re being led by a bad Government in Canberra and Victorian is being led by a bad government in Melbourne.

I’m here today to say to Victorians, and to the Australian people that the Victorian Liberal Party is back in town. We really are.

Now, they’ll be votes today and there’ll be winners and losers – as there always is in any ballot – but we go from this venue today as a united team. We present in a united way and if we do that, we can win the next federal election and we can win the next Victorian election as well.

Friends, we do gather at a difficult time.

I cannot recall a time in my life when Australians have been more worried than they are now.

They’re suffering from Labor’s cost of living crisis.

They’re alarmed by the crime on our streets and the breakdown of social cohesion across society.

They’re troubled by conflicts abroad and tensions in our region, which certainly do have the hallmarks – as many commentators note – of the 1930s.

Australians are worried about the here and now.

But they’re also worried, rightly, about the future – especially for their children and grandchildren.

When we win the next election, the Coalition Government I lead will do three things:

We will steer our nation out of our current domestic crises.

We will not simply talk about the challenges of our time – we will meet them head-on with action to carve out a more secure future.

And most importantly, we will make the decisions that set up our nation for success for generations to come.

To do all these things, a clear vision for our country is needed.

Regrettably – for some time – our nation has suffered from a lack of vision from its leaders.

Vision has fallen victim to many things.

To political short-termism.

To small target strategies.

To the elevation of sectional interests above the national interest.

To pandering to identity politics which has undermined national unity.

Australians are not being offered a vision from their current Prime Minister.

He mistakes platitudes for vision.

Australians want and deserve something better.

A vision aligned with their aspirations and ambitions.

A vision which can channel our best selves.

A vision which turns concern into confidence.

I want to tell you about, at least in part today, my vision for our country.

I want Australia to be energy self-sufficient.

A country where Australians pay some of the lowest electricity prices in the world – not the highest power prices in the world.

A country where our grid works 24/7 and is not reliant on the whims of the weather.

A country where we can reach net zero emissions with nuclear power as part of an energy mix, but not break our economy through a reckless renewables only policy.

I want Australia to have that cheap, clean and consistent power that ensures that food is cheaper – cheaper to produce, cheaper to manufacture, to transport, to store.

I don’t want Australians going into supermarkets and taking items from the grocery basket when they get to the checkout because they realise that they can’t afford to pay the bill.

That has no place in our country.

I want a country where we can have a sensible energy system because of cheap, cleaner and consistent power providing the opportunity for manufacturers to stay on shore – not to continue to leave our shores and to take the jobs with them.

A country where because of cheap, clean and consistent power businesses not only stay open, but employ more people and become thriving success stories across our great country.

I want Australia to play to its strengths.

A country which is a mining, manufacturing and agricultural powerhouse, and a leader in technology and of innovation.

A country where the tax contributions from surging industries help us to build the infrastructure of the future and sustain our safety net, our health system, and our aged care system.

I want Australia to be a place where home ownership is possible for every Australian.

A country where the ability to buy a house is not something within the reach of the few who can rely on the bank of mum and dad – but something assured for the hardworking many.

A country where renting is seen as a choice – not as an only option, as it is for far too many today.

I want Australia to be a place where law and order prevails in our communities and on our streets.

I want people to feel safe again in their own homes.

A country where everyone feels safe – especially women, children and the elderly.

A country where criminals are deterred in the knowledge they will face the full force of the law.

A country where repeat offenders are locked-up, instead of being released to reoffend.

I want Australia to have a well-managed migration program with sustainable levels of migration.

A country where we continue to attract people with the skills we need – but not where we bring in a new migrant every minute and overwhelm our housing market, infrastructure and services.

A country where we admit those migrants who want to embrace Australia – they’re the top of the list – and we should be proud of it because we have a wonderful story of migration in this country.

But we don’t want to bring people into our country who seek to tear it down.

We want a country where non-citizens who sow division, incite violence, and commit crimes are booted out.

I want Australia to be well defended.

A country where we are building munitions and platforms at speed and scale, to provide support to our allies.

A country where any adversary – small or large – will be deterred from acts of aggression and coercion in the knowledge of the fire-power and cyber-power we can unleash.

A country where we play a critical role in a coalition of nations that maintains peace through strength.

I want Australia to be a nation which preserves the innocence of our young children and nurtures their minds in a responsible way.

A country where teaching the basics – reading, writing, and maths – through explicit instruction occurs across our primary education system.

A country where we reinstate critical thinking and eradicate indoctrination from our classrooms.

My friends, a country where we foster a love of country and not a sense of perpetual national guilt.

I want Australia to be a nation of united people.

A country where we push back against those determined to define and to divide us by class, sex, race, religion and more besides.

A country where we renew our focus on the things that we have in common:

Our love of family.

Our attachment to community.

Our custodianship of our forebears’ legacy.

Our sense of duty – to the present and to the future.

And our devotion to our great democracy and its values.

This is part of our vision as a Liberal Party and as a Liberal family for our country.

Under my leadership, the Coalition continues to develop a suite of policies to get our country back on track.

The policies we seek to implement are not just about the next election cycle.

They are a foundation for bringing to fruition the vision I have outlined – for forging a better Australia.

Our policies are not political, but they are patriotic.

And through our policies and our vision, I seek to reach out to all patriotic Australians.

Australians who want the best for their families, Australians who want the best for their communities, and Australians that want the best for their country – regardless of how they have voted in the past.

We seek to govern as a unifying party, proud of our country.

A party with a vision which reflects the views, the values, the aspirations, and the ambitions of everyday Australians.

Come the next election, I believe our policy platform is something Victorians – and indeed all Australians can get behind – and get behind with great vigour.

Friends, when Victorians look at the Allan Government – and when Australians look at the Albanese Government – they’re certainly not saying that ‘our best days are ahead’.

They’re worried that the worst is yet to come.

And we’ve seen this movie before in Victoria.

By 2028, Victoria’s debt will reach a shocking $188 billion – a 750 per cent increase since it came to power ten years ago.

Victoria’s debt is now more than that of New South Wales, Queensland, and Tasmania combined.

Interest repayments on this debt are more than $25 million a day.

And yet the Allan Government wants to pretend to Victorians that they can afford the $200 billion Suburban Rail Loop – and by the time you apply the CFMEU tax that is completely out of reach for every Victorian.

It is no wonder this tired Labor Government is slugging Victorians with some of the most onerous property taxes in the country and raking in some $21 billion in the process.

And the Federal Government is doing a fine job emulating the economic mismanagement of its Victorian state counterpart.

Over three federal Budgets, the Albanese Government has added to homegrown inflation by lifting spending by a startling $315 billion.

That equates – as you’ll hear Jane Hume saying everyday between now and the election – to $30,000 per Australian household.

In the last Budget, it increased spending by $4 for every $1 it raised.

It’s no wonder Australians are paying 20 per cent more in personal income tax than they did before the last election.

It’s no wonder Federal Labor has put in place new taxes on franking credits and superannuation, including on unrealised capital gains.

It’s no wonder that the Albanese Government won’t rule out a capital gains tax on the family home, or abolishing negative gearing for future housing investors – or even, potentially, all housing investors.

Governments which spend recklessly, save inadequately, and tax excessively are not just lazy.

We know that they are guilty of a dereliction of duty – and the real impact is being felt by every Australian this very day.

John Pesutto and I are both committed to leading Coalition governments with a back-to-basics economic agenda.

We will rein in wasteful spending to take the pressure off inflation – because you will have more money to spend on the things you need and want.

We will eliminate regulatory roadblocks – because we must kickstart economic activity.

We will provide lower, simpler and fairer taxes for all – because you should be able to keep more of what you work hard for.

It’s not that these basics are lost on Labor.

Rather, it’s that Labor governments always lack the discipline to adhere to them.

When you do the hard work and get the basics right, you create the conditions, the incentives and the opportunities which allow the economy to flourish.

I want to commend all of my colleagues here today. As I mentioned before, the work that Michael Sukkar’s doing in the housing space, the work that James Paterson is doing in national security, the work that the whole team is doing at the moment will provide an opportunity for Australians to hit the reset button come the time of the next election.

I’ve run a successful small business as have many in this room.

Ultimately, the Liberal Party is the party of small business.

I was pleased to announce in my Budget in Reply a policy to support small businesses across the nation.

We will increase the instant asset write-off to $30,000 and make this arrangement ongoing.

We will also revert to the simple definition of a casual worker and create certainty for our nation’s 2.5 million small businesses.

Now, we’ve all read the recent stories in The Age, the Financial Review, the Herald Sun and in The Australian.

But we know that the CFMEU is costing taxpayers hundreds-of-millions of dollars with its rip-offs and rorts.

For more than a decade, Australians have known about the CFMEU’s criminal links.

They’ve known about the corrupt and thuggish behaviour of some of its members who see themselves, well and truly, above the law.

Only last week, as you know, the CFMEU was fined $168,000 for intimidation in 2019 while working on Melbourne’s West Gate Tunnel project.

Recent media reporting about the CFMEU’s transgressions has reinforced what we all know.

And that is that the Prime Minister is prepared every day to turn a blind eye to their conduct, which is resulting in, literally, a multi-billion dollar fraud on the Australian taxpayer.

With its gang-like conduct, the CFMEU is hiking costs on the projects it controls by some 30 per cent.

Consider the egregious example of the North East Link here in Victoria.

It started in 2016 with a $10 billion price tag.

It now faces a blowout to $26 billion with completion now delayed to 2028, and perhaps beyond.

There is a direct correlation here between the CFMEU’s activities and the impact that people are feeling in the building sector.

People are paying more for builders, they’re playing more for plumbers, they’re paying more for electricians, they’re paying more for tradies – in their businesses and their homes – because the CFMEU conduct has a contagion effect across the economy.

Bob Hawke showed the strength of character when he deregistered the BLF in 1986.

Mr Albanese today says that he can’t deregister the CFMEU.

Well, in part, we know why that is.

The Labor Party, this very weekend, is tearing itself apart.

I want to come back to Andrew Giles in a minute – and I hope you don’t mind. He is a demonstration of one of the most incompetent Ministers since Federation, and yet is a factional ally of the Prime Minister – likely he will keep a job in the Ministry.

We learn today that over the first 12 months of the Labor Government’s administration, Anthony Albanese and his Ministers released over 500 criminals into the local community.

We now know, through the analysis of the High Court case, that it wasn’t necessary to release all those people.

And we now know, that some of those individuals who had committed serious offences in the first place – crimes against Australian citizens – have now gone out to commit further crimes against subsequent victims.

And, somehow, Andew Giles retains his job.

Clare O’Neil – I thought maybe not a crowd favourite – has presided over an unwinding of Operation Sovereign Borders – and James Paterson and Andrew Hastie have pointed this out and prosecuted it effectively.

When you look at the success that Jason Wood and other Ministers in Government had, we made tough decisions to keep our borders secure.

We made sure that we had a generous migration programme, and we presided over the deportation of 6,300 people during my time as Minister. People who had committed sexual offences against women and children, people who had been involved in serious crimes.

Clare O’Neil has un-stitched most of that hard work – and yet it seems that she could still be likely to stay on the frontbench of the Labor Party.

If we’re going through the report card, we should then move to Tony Burke. Again, a crowd favourite.

Tony Burke is the Industrial Relations Minister who is presiding over the lawlessness of the building sector with the CFMEU at the moment.

How could it be conceivable that a Minister who sanctions criminal conduct and allows and encourages the bikies and other organised crime figures to have a presence in the CFMEU, how can that Minister retain his position in the Albanese Government?

It’s a fair question that Australians are asking themselves.

And then, of course, we move on to one of my favourites, and I hope yours – that’s Chris Bowen.

Chris Bowen was part of the team with Anthony Albanese that promised on 97 occasions before the election to reduce power prices by $275.

Since then, power prices have gone up by $1,000.

So, the promise was $275 reduction per year. Now, I think this is fair to say a representative audience here for the Victorian public. Is anybody – if I could just take a quick straw poll – has anyone seen a $275 reduction in their power prices?

Do you think it’s likely to see a $275 reduction in your power prices over the next 12 months?

Do you think that Australians can trust Anthony Albanese to deal with our energy policy?

Do you think that Chris Bowen could preside over a renewables only policy that requires intermittent power to provide energy 24/7 to manufacturing to households right across the economy, given that it hasn’t worked anywhere else in the world?

My friends, there is a much better way.

There is a much better way, and if it wasn’t so serious, then we could just dismiss it.

I want to make sure that as we approach the next election, we have the ability to deliver the energy policy that’s required to bring prices down, to stabilise our energy market.

These aren’t easy decisions, and the easy course of action is always to do nothing.

But we’ve demonstrated to the Australian public that we have a plan which will underpin renewables – plenty of gas is required in the system in the interim as well – to provide the stability and the underpinning of our economy.

You see, the energy policy and what Chris Bowen has done – and one of the most tragic acts of this Government is that it’s not just your power price that continues to go up, it’s the power bill of the farmer, and of the coldroom operator, of the delivery driver, of the supermarket.

And that is why, as I said a moment ago, every Australian – pensioners, self-funded retirees, people who are working harder than they’ve ever before – when they go to the supermarket, when they get the bill for their energy, when they get the bill for their insurance, when they get the bill for their rego – all of that’s gone up and up and up.

Economists are now projecting that we’ll see an increase in interest rates again. They’ve already gone up on 12 occasions under this Government.

I don’t believe that the Prime Minister can say to any Australian that they’re better off today than they were two years ago.

The thing that causes me most concern as I move around the country and through this great state, is that families will be much, much worse off over the course of the second term of the Albanese Government.

The problems will compound.

I believe that we have an obligation to be united, to work harder than we’ve ever worked before.

Because, as we know, a federal election is on the horizon.

We have a real chance to send one of the weakest and most damaging first-term governments in Australian history back to the opposition benches.

Now, Australians are resilient people.

But I believe Australians know – in their hearts and their minds – that they just can’t afford three more years of this.

A Labor minority Government now, as some of the commentators say, would be the best prospect for the Labor Party after the election.

But a Labor minority Government, including Green-Teals like Monique Ryan, will make a bad Government even worse.

In contrast, the Coalition will go to the next election as a patriotic party, with a patriotic vision, for patriotic Australians.

There is so much in our policy platform which differentiates us from the Labor Party.

Pursuing nuclear power gives us cheaper, cleaner and consistent energy, and the energy security that our country needs.

Allowing Australians to access their super to buy their first home.

Lowering the permanent migration program by 25 per cent for two years.

Returning foreign student numbers to sustainable levels and stopping foreign ownership of properties that should be occupied by Australians.

In the process, freeing-up more than 100,000 homes for Australians – for young Australians who have lost the dream of home ownership under the Albanese Government.

Holding the big supermarkets to account and standing up for farmers, suppliers, and consumers, so Australians get a fair go at the checkout – not the lobbyists and big corporations.

Developing national uniform knife laws and toughening bail laws.

Restricting social media use for children under the age of 16.

Reinstating the Cashless Debit Card.

And so much more besides – with much more to be announced.

My friends, we offer vision.

We offer hope.

We offer change for the better.

If we can win nationally, I am confident, absolutely, that victory can follow here in Victoria.

Victoria can be a powerhouse state again – as it once was.

Australia can be a prosperous, secure and united country again – as it once was.

Our respective causes for victory unite us in a common endeavour.

As parliamentarians, as Party members, as proud Victorian Liberals, let us not spare any effort as we strive to get our country back on track.

Now, Moonee Valley is one of the great sporting venues in Australia – the home of the Cox Plate.

But as many of you know, the Moonee Valley home straight is the shortest in Australia.

It’s iconic in that respect.

And we’re currently at the top of the straight at this stage of the electoral cycle.

For the sake of our great state of Victoria and our great country, we must bring it home.

Can we win the next election?

Yes, we can.

And yes, we must.

Thank you very much.

This is an edited extract of an address given by Leader of the Opposition Peter Dutton to the Victorian Liberal Party State Council in Moonee Ponds.