17 September 2016 E&OE………………………………………………………………………………………………………. These are fraught times for Europe. Our job is to make them better. As we meet, Britain gears up to exit the formal structures of the EU, on Europe’s borders, hundreds of thousands of people demand admission. In Europe’s cities, Islamist fanatics plot carnage. And in Europe’s east, Russia actively subverts…
I am delighted to inform the Federation Chamber that there are lots of good things happening in Warringah right now. Planning is underway for the Brookvale Oval upgrade, thanks in part to the $12½ million federal commitment to this important local project. Bear Cottage, the only hospice in New South Wales for children with life…
Published in The Australian, 9 September 2016 For the past two months, all working age welfare recipients in Kununurra have been given a Visa debit card rather than cash from Centrelink. That’s about 1200 mostly indigenous people in a remote town who have been buying their groceries and paying their rent on their debit card…
E&OE………………………………………………………………………………………………………. It’s good to be with the Master Builders of Victoria. Back in 2001, you and I worked well together to set up the Cole Royal Commission. That led to the establishment of the Australian Building and Construction Commission and a $7 billion a year boost to our economy. You have been rock solid supporters…
My first task tonight is to congratulate the Samuel Griffith Society for its unflinching commitment to upholding our constitution and to safeguarding our legal traditions. You are, if I may say so, a thoroughly conservative body – not in any partisan sense but in your respect for what has shaped us and in your determination…
Published in the Sydney Morning Herald, 28 July 2016 Australians didn’t need reminding about the Gallipoli campaign but we do need to learn from all the other theatres of the Great War in which we fought. Although Gallipoli was our “baptism of fire” as a nation, it was a sideshow compared to our involvement on…
Review of Bill Shorten’s For the Common Good, recently published in The Spectator. Having done something similar myself, I wondered how Bill Shorten would handle the challenge of a campaign biography. My book, Battlelines, published in 2009, not long before I became opposition leader, was part biography, part political philosophy and part policy manifesto. For…
E&OE……………………….……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… A memorial lecture is one of the ways we honour our debt to the past and discharge our responsibilities to the future. Father Greg Jordan thoroughly deserves a lecture series: a former rector of St Ignatius’ College in Sydney, and of Jesuit-run university colleges in Hobart and here in Brisbane; a one-time parish priest…
This is the third and final essay that the former prime minister agreed in January to provide to Quadrant in defence of the Abbott government’s record. The Economic Case for the Abbott Government was published in March and the National Security Case in April No change of leadership happens overnight as political parties don’t lightly…
Published in the Daily Telegraph, 21 April 2016 It’s reasonably well known that the Rudd-Gillard government burdened taxpayers for decades to come by locking-up-in-legislation massive unfunded spending. What’s less well recognised is how Labor-in-government also sabotaged the broader economy to benefit the unions. The common element is Labor’s determination to make itself the natural party…