Ladies and Gentlemen, it is so good to be here. It is always worth the journey to Western Sydney and won’t the journey be so much better when the M4 East is built by a Coalition government.

 

My friends, this is the heartland of Australia and when I look here at you today, I don’t just see the people of Western Sydney, I see the people of aspirational Australia. I see people who want to build a better life for themselves, for their families, for their children and that is why I am in politics, that is why we want to win the election and that is why these great candidates who I will be introducing shortly to you want to go to Canberra.

 

I often talk about the forgotten families of Australia, but no families anywhere in this country have been more forgotten than the families of Western Sydney. You have been denied infrastructure, you have been denied attention by a political movement that for too long has taken you for granted. Well, I will never take you for granted. None of my candidates will ever take you for granted.

 

The great Western Sydney members that we already have will never take you for granted and I want Russell Matheson to stand up and take a bow. I want Craig Kelly to stand up and take a bow. I want Alex Hawke to stand up and take a bow. I want Bronwyn Bishop, the former Senator for Western Sydney to stand up and take a bow. I want Connie Fierravanti-Wells and Marise Payne, the current Senator for Western Sydney to stand up and take a bow. I want Bob Baldwin, the Member for Western Newcastle to stand up and take a bow.

 

Ladies and gentlemen, it is so good to have all of you here. It really is fantastic and I want to say to Arthur Sinodinos, our President, what a fantastic job you’ve done. What a great job you’ve done to prepare the Liberal Party to win seats in Western Sydney, because if we can’t win seats in Western Sydney, we can’t form the government that I think Australia so desperately wants us to form.

 

Can I say how proud I am of the new candidates that the Liberal Party has selected to run in the next election and can I say how representative of modern Australia our candidates are and I want to introduce them to you. First of all, Martin Zaiter please stand, our candidate for Parramatta. Martin is a partner in a local accounting firm. He understands small business and he can take the voice of small business to Canberra.

 

I want Craig Laundy to stand. Now, Craig Laundy, it’s often been said that under this Government, the only way to have a successful small business is to start off with a big business. Craig is one of those very few people who has taken it the other way. So well done mate, I congratulate you and I think you’re going to be a fabulous Member of Parliament for Reid.

 

Fiona Scott – Fiona Scott our candidate for Lindsay. She isn’t politics through and through, she is Penrith through and through, which is why she is going to be the next Member for Lindsay.

 

I’m very proud of our next candidate. Our next candidate knows what it is like to help people, because that is what he has been doing all his life. Would you please give a very warm welcome to Dr Michael Feneley AM, the Head of Heart and Lung Programmes at St Vincent Hospital and one of the lead researchers at the Victor Chang Institute. We are very lucky to have such a great Australian as part of our team.

 

I’d like Karen McNamara, our candidate for Dobell, public servant and mother. I’d like Lucy Wicks, candidate for Robertson, school teacher and mother and I would like Jaimie Abbott, my long lost cousin Jaimie Abbott, candidate for Newcastle. RAAF from Afghanistan to stand up and take a bow.

 

You know, these fine candidates are the face of the modern Liberal Party. Don’t anyone think that this Liberal Party of ours today is some kind of stuffy establishment party. That is not true of our party now and it will never be true of our party whilst so ever there is breath in my political body and these great candidates here join a range of candidates who represent the depth and the diversity of modern Australia. People like Sarah Henderson, a former ABC journalist running for us in Corangamite. Yes, it’s hard to find a conservative former ABC journalist, but we did, but we did! That’s how good we’ve been.

 

Angus Taylor – a former Rhodes Scholar. It’s nice to have a former Rhodes Scholar joining Malcolm Turnbull and I in the Parliament, but Angus Taylor, an advisor to government who now wants to help form a government.

 

And then I’m so please that we have John Nguyen, running for us in Chisholm. A refugee who came to this country the right way, not the wrong way and now wants to support policies to ensure that that happens more generally. But you know, John Nguyen is not the only Nguyen who is now running for us. He was joined yesterday by Andrew Nguyen, our candidate for Oxley in Queensland. Which means that should we have the kind of victory that I just think the Australian people might be preparing to give us, the most common surname in the federal parliamentary party will be on the one hand Bishop, we’ll have two Bishops and we’ll have two Nguyens in the Federal Parliament and what does that say about the modern Liberal Party that we are trying to put two Nguyens in to the Federal Parliament.

 

Now, I want to say to all of you in this room that you have seen our candidates and they are absolutely outstanding. But you will see an enormous amount of them over the next weeks, months or however long it is until the next election. You will see them at your bus stops, you will see them at your railway stations, you will see them in your shopping centres, you will see them knocking on your doors. Clive Palmer has nothing on the doorknocking that these candidates will do. They will be visible, because Labor is in hiding. Labor is in hiding from the people of Western Sydney. Labor is particularly in hiding from the businesses of Western Sydney, because what Labor has given the businesses and the job providers of Western Sydney is nothing but pain.

 

So ladies and gentlemen, we want to form a government, because we understand in the marrow of our bones that the only way to build a strong society, is to have a strong economy. We understand that in the marrow of our bones, in a way that the Labor Party just doesn’t; and the only way to have a stronger economy is to have strong and profitable businesses that have the freedom to invest and expand and employ and that is what we want to deliver that will give the Australian people the prosperity they deserve.

 

Before I talk for a few moments about the policies that we are taking to the next election, I just wan to say to all of you in this room. You are from Western Sydney, you are people who want to do the right thing by yourselves and your families and you are not rich. Julia Gillard thinks you are rich. Julia Gillard thinks that a policeman married to a shop assistant is rich. Julia Gillard think that two school teachers bringing up a family together are rich. Well I say, you aren’t rich. You are decent Australians wanting to get ahead and we will always stand by you.

 

I can encapsulate our policies for you in a few pithy phrases. What we want to deliver for the Australian people is lower taxes, better services, stronger borders and modern infrastructure. That is how we will deliver to the Australian people, the hope, reward and opportunity that they deserve. That is how we will give to the Australian people the brighter future that they crave and we will start our campaign for lower taxes on day one of a new government.

 

We will start our campaign for lower taxes the very first thing we do on moving into the executive wing of the Parliament should the people entrust us with this honour, is to say to the public servants, you start the carbon tax repeal legislation and the first thing that I will do once my team has taken the parliamentary oaths is introduce the carbon tax repeal legislation, because ladies and gentlemen, this is a bad tax based on a lie. This is the worst piece of economic policy we have ever seen in this country. This tax will damage every single family’s cost of living. This tax will make every single job in our economy less secure and for what? And for what? It won’t actually reduce emissions.

 

Under this tax, our emissions don’t go down by five per cent, they go up by eight per cent despite a carbon tax of $37 a tonne by 2020. This tax is a fraud and that is why it must go.

 

If this tax really was everything that the Prime Minister now tries to tell us it is, why didn’t she proudly say six days before the last election, yes there will be a carbon tax under the government I lead? But she didn’t say that did she? That is not what she said. She now says she’s always believed in putting a price on carbon. Well that’s not what you told Kevin Rudd before you politically assassinated him and if that’s what you always believed, was it the real Julia or was it someone else who was talking to us? What exactly were you channelling six days before the last election, when you said there would be no carbon tax under the government I lead? Well I say ladies and gentlemen, there will be no carbon tax under a government I lead and unlike this Prime Minister, I am telling the truth.

 

Ladies and gentlemen, we want lower taxes, because that will give us a stronger economy and over time a stronger economy will give us the better services that we need, but right from the beginning, we can do more to ensure that the great public schools and public hospitals are serving our community better and we will do that by taking the bureaucratic shackles off these institutions. We all know how hard school teachers work. We all know how hard the doctors and nurses in our hospitals work – they deserve to be supported by a local management that can actually make decisions in their favour, rather than oppressed by a distant bureaucracy who just know how to say no. So we will ensure working with the state governments that we do have community controlled public hospitals and we do have more independent public schools, because that’s what the Australian people want and deserve.

 

We will ensure that our borders once more are secure, because we will put in place the policies that worked. We know what works because we did it before. There is nothing theoretical about our position on border protection. There is no academic artifice about our policy on border protection. We’re not relying on models or anything like that or speculation or conjecture. We are relying on facts and the fact is, John Howard stopped the boats. And if the Prime Minister was not so proud, she would accept that John Howard got it right, she and Kevin Rudd got it wrong. She would eat a bit of humble pie and she would put in place the policies that we know can work. So we won’t hesitate. As soon as the public servants have got their instructions in respect of the carbon tax, the chiefs of our Defence Forces will have another discussion with the incoming government and new orders will be given to our naval forces in the north, to act to protect our borders and to act to secure safety at sea. And there will be temporary protection visas, because the people smugglers must be denied a product to sell. And there will be rigorous offshore processing at Nauru – a country which has been ready to help Australia for the last two and a half years and even now without legislation would be able to start reopening the processing centre there. The only thing that prevents that is because the current Prime Minister is too proud to pick up the phone.

 

Well the third thing I would do after I have given new instructions to our Defence chiefs is pick up the phone to the President of Nauru. It’s not hard Prime Minister. It is not hard. And it would stop the boats and in stopping the boats, it would end the tragedies at sea which so rightly dismay and shock every single Australian.

 

Finally ladies and gentlemen, this is a great country. This city of ours, this great metropolis is a marvellous city. In some respects it is the best city in the world to live and work, but it is strangling on its own traffic. That is the problem that we face. We can’t solve all the problems overnight. We can’t solve sixteen years of neglect by state Labor governments overnight. We can’t solve five years of neglect by federal Labor governments overnight, although we do remember that the last major piece of infrastructure opened in Sydney was the M7, opened by John Howard shortly before the 2007 election. But we will make a substantial start and that’s why last weekend at our federal council, I pledged $1.5 billion to assist the State Government to get the M4 East underway. I want to see cranes over our city. I want to see the bulldozers at work, so that when people are sitting in the traffic jams, at least they have the hope of a better future. They’ve got to have the hope of a better future and that is what we will give them.

 

Ladies and gentlemen, I’ve said it time and time again. Let me conclude these remarks with the reassurance that we are a great country and a great people, being let down by a bad government. There is a better way. It doesn’t have to be as bad as this and it won’t be like this if there is a change of government. I know what the Australian people are capable of. You know what the Australian people are capable of, because, and let’s give credit where it’s due, the former Labor government under Hawke and Keating did do some good things. They provided at least some foundation for John Howard and Peter Costello to build on and didn’t they build what was a golden era for our country. We can do it and we will do it and what all of my friends and colleagues down here in the front rows want to do is to win seats in Western Sydney – win seats in outer metropolitan areas so that once more, a great people, a great Australian people can have the much, much better government that we so badly need and so much deserve.

 

Thank you so much ladies and gentlemen.

 

[ends]