Speeches
Address, 2018 Project Sydney Bradfield Oration
19 November 2018
PRIME MINISTER: Thank you for inviting me to speak with you this evening. It is a great honour to be delivering the 2018 Bradfield Oration, marking the legacy of one of the great visionaries of our city of Sydney in John Bradfield.
From a young age I have always been fascinated by the energy and flow of cities. Each one unique – like living organisms, with their own rhythms, patterns and personalities.
Each a living history of the choices people, businesses and families have made and what they have been trying to create for their future and the generations to follow.
Choices about work, about proximity to family, and to opportunity. Choices shaped by access to housing and services like schools, health care and shopping precincts. And conditioned in turn by a search for belonging and a sense of place.
From Lachlan Macquarie to Sir Henry Parkes and now Gladys Berejiklian, they have worked to respond to and anticipate these demands as well as dream and plan out the future they hope to create.
We are continuing to tell our stories as a people through our cities. And along the way we have been informed, guided and blessed by the Greenways and Bradfields, whose great genius has been to lift our aspiration by redefining what we know to be possible.
It would also be a mistake to think of them as just engineers and architects. They were true planners.
You don’t build a bridge with that many lanes in 1932 because you enjoyed the engineering challenge. You did it because you were planning for the future and you got it. You had a vision for Sydney being a great city and you planned and built for it.
Today’s Greenways and Bradfields are not only developing Western Sydney Airport and the Aerotroplis, they are also the scientists from the CSIRO at the new Urban Living Lab in Darwin, Australia’s tropical capital, established as part of our new Darwin City Deal with $4.8 million in new funding to get it up and running.
For the first time we will be bringing together experts in the area of managing tropical cities. Everything from waste management to how urban vegetation can be better planned to more effectively cool these urban environments.
This is also a significant services export opportunity for Australia.
With more than billions of people living in urban environments in tropical regions of the world – including some of the world’s largest cities – I am excited about how we can link our expertise and learning to these significant commercial opportunities.
To this end, we have just launched an initiative to link up with ASEAN’s Smart Cities Agenda. It will draw on Australia’s world class expertise in green infrastructure, water governance, renewable energy, innovative technologies and data analytics.
For a while, I tossed up becoming a Town Planner. Eventually, I found myself studying Economic Geography at UNSW.
I was one of only about eight students – studying everything from crop rotation to Walter Christaller’s “central place theory”.
I can see now that I’ve really piqued your interest! For the one person who may be interested, we can talk later.
But my studies and later experiences reinforced some important lessons about cities.
In short, cities are a solution to a human problem. How do you support a growing population?
Cities are not about buildings, bridges, roads, railways, hospitals and airports. They are about the people who use them. They are about the people who live in the cities.
Cities are a response to population growth and are the product of a developing economy.
Bradfield understood this. His focus was not on building infrastructure as public monuments, but addressing positively and aspirationally the challenges of a growing population.
When you understand that Cities are actually about people rather than concrete it changes your perspective.
Firstly, this is why each and every city has its own unique character.
You don’t then try and transform Sydney’s built form into Singapore’s, any more than you try and make Brisbane Perth or Townsville Newcastle.
Just like us as people, we should let our cities be themselves, a product of the people who live in them, their geography and climate.
A city and the society it supports finds its own course, like a river finds its way to sea, negotiating the geological features along the way.
The city becomes the product of its experience and evolution, of how it responds to challenges and pressures – for better or worse.
As we acknowledge our our cities are about people, the decisions we make must be made with – not against – the grain of peoples’ choices – and in line with their aspirations. It means that our approach to decision-making or planning must have an eye and ear to community sentiment, cohesion and ambition. About what they want for their city.
So what has all of this got to do with my role as Prime Minister and that of Commonwealth Government?
First of all, my role you’ll be thankful is not to play town planner, be first architect, Lord Mayor or indeed Premier.
That’s not my job.
I will leave those tasks to the Bradfields and the Greenways of our current generation.
My levers are confined to the ensuring we step up to the big nation building projects and challenges, drive our economy forward to fuel the essential services and infrastructure Australians rely on and seek to manage population growth by adopting well targeted, responsible, and sustainable immigration policies.
Now on the big projects, like Bradfield, we are stepping up.
And like Bradfield we understand that infrastructure creates value far beyond the construction and land acquisition cost of the asset being built.
With a record $75 billion infrastructure pipeline, we are playing our part.
We are strengthening the road spine of the Eastern Seaboard with major investments in the Bruce Highway and the Pacific Highway.
As Treasurer, I announced a further $3.3 billion in this year’s Budget for additional upgrades along the Bruce Highway, increasing the Government’s commitment to $10 billion between Brisbane and Cairns.
This will improve safety, capacity and flood immunity – with major work targeting poor safety stretches along this vital 1,700 kilometre stretch of road.
Continuation of our $6.6 billion investment in the duplication of the Pacific Highway, from Hexham to Queensland including $971 million for the Coffs Harbour Bypass in this year’s Budget.
Our investment in the Pacific Highway has already halved road fatalities and cut two hours from travel times – a big benefit in cutting freight costs and for locals – and in summertime, holiday-makers as well.
This project has supported 14,400 direct and indirect jobs.
We are making further big road investments in South Australia, Tasmania and Victoria, including our standing offer of $3 billion for the East West Link.
I can help get this project moving next Monday morning, I just need a state Premier who wants to build this vital infrastructure, and only Matt Guy is offering.
We are making major investments in rail as well.
$9.3 billion in equity financing and grant funding for the Melbourne to Brisbane Inland Rail project – better connecting regional Australia to domestic and international markets
Preparatory work is underway and construction is due to commence soon. The project will support 16,000 jobs during construction.
In Western Australia, we are providing $2.3 billion to the METRONET – which is the largest Commonwealth commitment to the Perth rail network ever.
And in Victoria we are investing up to $5 billion on the Melbourne Airport Rail Link. A project people have talked about for fifty years – its Australia’s second busiest airport with 35 million passengers a year.
And that’s not the only project with a fifty year wait over.
You have heard every year at this lecture about the potential of a Western Sydney Airport.
Well this year, I have better news: the bulldozers are on the site – and earthworks to level the site are underway.
No longer are we saying we will build it – we are building it. Right now.
And we are backing in our $5.3 billion in equity financing for the airport with the Commonwealth’s contribution of $2.9 billion to the $3.6 billion Western Sydney Infrastructure Plan – because our Government said in 2014 we’d have the roads ready before the airport.
Through the Western Sydney City Deal we have also got the planning underway to have rail to the airport when it opens in 2026.
In the North of Australia we are investing in its potential with $5 billion Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility to kickstart a range of work – and $2.2 billion to upgrade roads in the north across Queensland, the NT and WA..
Earlier today, the Deputy Prime Minister Michael McCormack announced we will increase our funding of new water infrastructure projects across Australia by an additional $500 million.
This will lift spending on water infrastructure to more than $3 billion.
These investments will ensure we can fast track important water infrastructure projects that will deliver new, reliable and affordable sources of water to stimulate investment in irrigated agriculture, create jobs and underpin regional economic growth.
An infrastructure programme like this needs a strong economy to support it and that’s why growing our economy has been the core focus of our Government.
Without economic growth you cannot pay for the hospitals, schools, pensions, affordable medicines, defence forces, police forces, Medicare.
Poorer societies are never fairer societies. Getting an equal share of less is not my plan, nor do I think it represents fairness.
Fairness and prosperity go hand in hand. There are a billion people in the world today since 1990 who are no longer in poverty who can attest to that fact.
Our economic plan is getting results, with strong growth, lower unemployment record jobs growth, and a AAA rated budget coming back into surplus next year. We will keep on with our plan of:
Reduce taxes, so Australians households and small and medium sized businesses can keep more of what they earn
Reduce electricity prices by ensuring we increase the amount of reliable energy in the system and ensure the large electricity companies give their customers a better deal
Investing in the infrastructure that grows our economy and the services like health and education that enable our people to be successful in the economy they face today and in the future
Expanding our markets with record trade deals that have opened up new opportunities for our businesses large and small
A broad-based industry strategy that recognises traditional strengths such as resources and agriculture, but also looks to develop areas of growth in services, the defence industry, medical technology and manufacturing.
A bold new agenda for small business growth, including improved access to small business finance and cutting red tape.
A proven framework of fiscal responsibility – ensuring the Government lives within its means.
Population growth has played a key role in our economic success. But I also know Australians in our biggest cities are concerned about population.
They are saying: enough, enough, enough.
The roads are clogged, the buses and trains are full. The schools are taking no more enrolments. I hear what you are saying. I hear you loud and clear.
That’s why we need to improve how we manage population growth in this country.
We have become, especially in Sydney and Melbourne a victim of our success.
Our population growth has three sources, natural growth occurring from the life decisions of Australian families, permanent overseas migration, and temporary migration made up of students, temporary workers and so on.
Over the current decade, around 42 per cent of the growth has occurred naturally and migration has accounted for about 58 per cent.
Over the two decades to 2016, our national population grew by 6 million and migration made up 54 per cent of that increase.
Population growth has provided our country with benefits that we often take for granted.
It has added a dynamism to our economy and society that you don’t find in most other advanced economies.
It is a key reason why we have been able to sustain strong growth in our economy and national incomes that are the envy of the developed world, contributing almost a fifth of the growth in Australia’s GDP per person over the past 30 years.
Population growth, along with productivity, will become even more important for sustaining strong growth in national living standards over the next 30 years as the ageing of the population weighs on workforce participation.
The median age of a migrant to Australia is between 26 years of age.
This compares to our national average age of 37.
Mostly, new migrants are working and as such, contributing to the welfare of the nation, rather than drawing from government.
Without migration, Australia’s workforce would be shrinking by 2020. With migration, the Productivity Commission estimates that labour force participation will be around 10 per cent higher in 2060.
And contrary to what is sometimes claimed, the Productivity Commission has found that migration confers no negative outcome to employment for those who are Australian born. In fact, it increases opportunity for Australians.
It is worth remembering that because skilled migration supports the economy, Australia does compete with other countries in bringing those additional skills to our shores.
We must also recognise the economic benefits of temporary migration.
This year, we have almost 600,000 foreign students studying in Australia. From the cafes of Glebe and the bars of Parramatta, to the computer stores of Canberra and the laundromats of Coffs Harbour, these students are supporting jobs.
Far too often, planners have treated population as one amorphous blob.
But that doesn’t work for Australia. We’re too big and diverse.
Talking about average population growth is like talking about our average rainfall. It fails to recognise the different experiences and outlooks of different cities or regions.
Over the past decade, our population has had an annual growth rate of more than 1.6 per cent. I stress well below our economic growth rate of over three per cent, which means per person we have been doing better as well.
According to the World Bank, Australia’s population is growing faster than most OECD countries including the United States – and faster than the projections of past Inter-Generational Reports.
And within that growth there are variances with Sydney, Melbourne, Hobart and Canberra experiencing population growth during 2016-17 above their respective average growth rates for the previous 20 years.
While migration has accounted for 54 per cent of Australia’s population increase in the two decades to 2016, 75 per cent of migrants are going to Sydney, Melbourne and South East Queensland.
Here in Sydney migrants accounted for around 70% of population growth last year.
This has created its own pressure points – and pressure points in population always manifest themselves in housing and infrastructure.
Now I should add, this focus on migration in capital cities is not a new phenomenon, but there has been a tick-up. In 2016, 83 per cent of the overseas-born population were in capital cities, compared to 81 per cent in 1996. For, the Australian born population it was 61 per cent in 2016, having ticked up from 60 per cent in 1996.
It mirrors an age-old truth – and that is, since the dawn of time, people have moved to where they believe they can they see the best economic and social opportunities for them and their families.
In our big cities, interstate migration is also an important component of population change.
We saw that very clearly with the mining boom as Australians moved to areas that were thriving. That is a natural part of a national economy and government has no control, nor any desire for control, over that aspect of population.
Indeed, this movement of people is an important way of capitalising on the economic opportunities available to us.
I believe that we need a new discussion with the state and territories and local governments about how we manage and plan for our changing population.
Of course, the Commonwealth will always have national responsibilities in terms of determining migrant intakes, security, our international obligations and the economy, but that does mean we should not engage with the States and Territories in a discussion about local population growth.
It should be a discussion grounded in data, economics and community sentiment.
A responsible population discussion cannot be arbitrarily about one number, the cap on annual permanent migration. It is certainly relevant, but you have to look at what sits behinds those numbers
For a start more than half the people who become permanent migrants are already here on temporary visas.
To contemplate our permanent visa settings, would also require up stream changes to how many people are coming in on temporary visas as well. The implications of this need to be understood, in lauding by state and territory governments.
My approach will be to move away from top-down discussions about population to set our migration intake caps. I anticipate that this will lead to a reduction in our current migration settings.
This is to be expected since our current permanent intake is almost 30,000 a year below our current cap. So we will look to make an adjustment as we go forward in to next year and this should not be surprising.
But we must do our homework first and make sure this is implemented in a way that does not disadvantage those states that are looking for greater growth and that we have the mechanisms in place to direct new migrants to the areas where there are the jobs, services and opportunities. That’s why the planning partnership with the states is so important.
Managing population change is a shared responsibility, involving all levels of government.
It is the states who build hospitals, approve housing developments, plan roads and know how many kids will be going into their schools in the future. The states and territories know better than any what the population carrying capacity is for their existing and planned infrastructure and services. So I plan to ask them, before we set our annual caps.
The old model of a single, national number determined by Canberra is no longer fit for purpose.
While the benefits of population growth are widespread – in terms of economic growth and a more skilled and enriched society – the pressure points are inevitably local and varied.
It’s about getting the balance right and understanding there is variation between our cities and regions.
For example, Tasmania has a different history and approach to population than Sydney and Melbourne.
Under Will Hodgman the state has worked to turn its fortunes around – and the Federal Government has worked with them.
And do you know the best thing when you look at Tassie’s interstate migration figures – it’s that the turnaround is happening with young people.
Tasmania wants a bigger population. They want growth. They don’t want to lag, they want to lead.
Many of the smaller cities – and the regions – want more people. South Australia, the Northern Territory, Western Australia, communities in North Queensland like Rockhampton have all said the same.
In Sydney, we face a different issue.
A booming economy – with 4.4 per cent unemployment – and over 300 cranes up over this skyline – this city has become a magnet for Australians wanting a better life.
We know the story in Sydney: congestion – on roads and public transport, pressure on services like schools, and until recently, ever increasing house prices.
And this is in a state with a good government that is investing $87 billion in new transport, schools and hospitals in the next four years.
In 2016-17, Sydney’s population increased by 107,000. In other words, Sydney grew by almost 2,000 people a week, every week. A suburb a week.
Of that overseas migration claimed the lion’s share – with 90,100 people.
But the Sydney story on population is not just a migration story. It’s also a quality of life story.
In 2016-17, a net 18,500 people left Sydney for other parts of Australia.
While some of that is older Sydney-siders cashing in on their capital gains and retiring to other parts of the state, those figures also reflect concerns about densities, congestion and other questions that relate to quality of life.
So we need a more targeted and tailored approach to conversations about population.
To this end, I am writing to the Premiers and Chief Ministers inviting them to contribute to a national strategy and framework on population, and putting this on the table for COAG at our next meeting on 12 December in Adelaide.
I want the states to bring forward their population plans targeted to their states. This process can also involve local government. This will feed in to the setting of our migrations caps and policies for next year, ensuring that migrations is finally tied to infrastructure and services carrying capacity.
Further details of this process will be discussed directly with Premiers and Chief Ministers.
In conclusion I want to congratulate the Daily Telegraph for being a voice for Sydney.
In 2014, there was a lot of nervousness about our decision to build the Western Sydney Airport. There was fifty years of resistance.
But the government felt that the time had come – and to the credit of the Telegraph you did too.
This is a paper that is not just proudly Sydney – but persuasively puts the case for a Sydney with more roads, better services, and a stronger economy and safer communities.
We don’t agree every day – but you are a clear, persuasive voice in this city and country and I thank you for your support of this Oration and our Emerald city.
Signing Ceremony Remarks
18 November 2018
Thank you very much, it’s a great privilege to be here. Prime Minister O’Neill, I commend you strongly on leading this initiative and for inviting us to join and be part of what will be a great achievement for PNG. It’s time to power up PNG right across the country.
This underpins our commitment to be here, having always been here and we will always be here to support the people of PNG and to see their economic development. The hosting of this APEC conference here is further testament to the incredible journey and the progress that PNG has been on, particularly over the last generation. Access to electricity is a challenge given Papua New Guinea’s geography and Australian and Papua New Guinea engineers have worked hand-in-hand to establish much of the existing grid. Here we will be together again, working together again to establish together the new grid of the future. I have sat in remote villages in Papua New Guinea where there is no power in schools, in homes and have some understanding of what that has been like as a challenge for Papua New Guineans. This opportunity, to bring the light, to bring the electricity, to bring the connectedness, to connect them to the digital economy of the future will usher in a new era of prosperity for Papua New Guineans which I know will also be very important for Deputy Prime Minister Abel who is here with us today. I commend you on this wonderful partnership, the Australian infrastructure financing facility and other initiatives that we will be bringing to the table for this and I’m looking particularly forward to working with Japan, the United States and New Zealand in bringing this project to fruition.
Address, APEC CEO Summit 2018
17 November 2018
Well thank you very much for that very warm welcome. It’s great to be here in Port Moresby and I want to thank you all very much for the invitation to speak here today.
I also want to recognise the commitment of all of those who have given of their time and their efforts to be here and form part of the APEC Business Advisory Council. ABAC plays a very key role in ensuring that these APEC meetings get on with business, literally getting on with business as I am sure you are doing here today as you’re engaging with each other.
It is great to be here in Port Moresby. Papua New Guinea is not just Australia's closest neighbour geographically, we are family - wantok - and it’s right -
[Applause]
Thank you. But that’s true also if we were talking about Fiji or throughout Polynesia, we’re whanau. We see ourselves as part of a family in the Pacific. So it’s right that we gather together here in Port Moresby because we honour and recognised that he “P” in APEC; the Pacific and particularly the Pacific Island economies, as I said, that we refer to as our Pacific family.
I have already made it clear as Prime Minister that Australia is stepping up. We will step up as part of our ‘step-up’ initiative in Pacific. We are taking and will take our engagement in the Pacific to a new level. I was reminded recently of another new Australian Prime Minister addressing his first APEC ministerial meeting. It was 1996 and it was then Prime Minister John Howard. He said there were three preconditions for growth in our region. The first was responsible domestic economic management. The second was market access for exports and the third was tackling infrastructure constraints. As we gather today I believe those guiding principles for economic prosperity are as relevant today as when John first mentioned them all those years ago.
You know, no country gets rich selling things to itself. That’s why APEC encourages trade and by taking practical steps on the things that matter to business - faster customs procedures, facilitating supply chain connectivity, promoting sustainable development, facilitating the digital economy and digital connectedness. APEC must remain a very practical forum. It cannot be about talk, it has to be engaged in very practical measures with a focus on facilitating business and a business environments that set the right conditions for business. While most of you in this room understand full well the benefits of trade - if you didn’t you would not be here - we are living in an age though when leaders and business need to proactively prosecute the case for open markets and a market-led economy. We are witnessing a rising tide of trade protectionism around the world in our constituencies, along with financial market volatility in some emerging markets. Fortunately for all of us, the strong relationships between APEC economies and the strong relationship we share with the business community, gives us the right foundation to tackle global challenges together.
The test for us now, for all of us, is to stand up for the economic values we believe in. To show how they work, to demonstrate it. How they lift living standards and have lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty, as those key, core economic values have led to policies and achieved those goals. As they have done. To show people, all of our people in our APEC economies and nations around the world, what happens when you are open and when you work in partnership; that you create jobs, build prosperity and you create a more stable, secure and more peaceful region.
When it comes to trade, Australia's actions match our words. We have among the lowest tariffs in the world and we have a consistent record for negotiating free-trade agreements with partners. Stay still long enough and our Trade Minister will do a deal with you.
[Laughter]
We all need to look beyond our own market if we are to boost our prosperity and Australia has always looked outward to achieve our prosperity. In Australia, trade liberalisation has benefited our people, just as immigration has, just as foreign investment has. You know, one in five jobs in Australia exist because of our trade activities and recent research has shown that the average Australian family now earns $8,500 more a year than they would have, if we have not lowered barriers to our trade for the last three decades. That’s a generational shift. More than 50,000 Australian businesses are exporters, which contributes nearly $390 billion to our economy.
Australia is not alone in this success. More than 1 billion people have been lifted out of extreme poverty since 1991, in large part because of the jobs and access to more affordable consumer goods that free trade has enabled. It works and you should do what works and you should keep doing what works. That is what Australia is going to do. Nowhere have we have we seen that more, than in our own Asia-Pacific region. No single country would have been able to create this prosperity alone. Success has relied on all of us together, making a commitment to lower barriers, to support openness to play by the rules we set and ensure those rules remain in place.
In Australia, for every big business that benefits from free trade, there are dozens of small and medium-sized businesses who benefit as well. You don’t have to pick and choose. I believe APEC needs to find new ways of making it easier for SMEs to embrace export opportunities, because small and medium businesses are the engine room of so many of our national economies. They have the capacity to really drive job-creation and the prosperity gains throughout our region.
So my message to you today is that Australia's commitment to free trade remains strong and always will. Of course we recognise that there are many challenges. But the solution is not throwing up protectionist barriers. Tit-for-tat protectionism and threats of trade war are in no-one’s interests economically and undermine the authority of the global and regional trading rules that benefit us all and importantly, the people, the families who live in our economies and are supported by our economies.
So our efforts must be about persuading and convincing our peoples again, about the domestic benefits of what we are doing here. I know there are legitimate questions around trade arrangements. But the solution to perceived unfair trade practices is more likely to be found around the negotiating table, than it is in building a tariff wall. Australia will continue to advocate for trade disputes to be resolved by negotiation and within WTO rules. But we know the WTO is not perfect. We will work with like-minded countries around the world to ensure that it is improved and to understand the issues that they are raising, independently listening and seeking to understand. We want to strengthen and improve the WTO and we will continue to pursue liberalisation wherever we can.
That is what we must do and that is what I will be discussing with APEC leaders and colleagues here at every opportunity. We do so because Australia practices what we preach. We recently ratified the TPP-11 agreement which sets 21st Century rules, modern rules, for trade and investment between 11 of the 21 APEC economies and create free trade partnerships where previously there were none.
The door to the TPP remains open. More can join and we welcome and look forward to those opportunities in the future. It set the standard for what an agreement should look like into the future, by being modern. With six countries now on board - and more - the benefits will kick in from the 30th of December this year. The TPP-11 shows that Australia is a nation committed to economic integration and to opening up new opportunities for businesses across the region. It shows that Australia will act and we will deliver on free-trade and that we have partners who are willing to do the same. Still, more nations, APEC members and others in the region are working towards the conclusion of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership which we committed at the East Asia Summit and the RCEP summit, to ensure that this is concluded at the end of next year. As well, I believe the PACER Plus free trade agreement will open opportunities even further across the Pacific. PACER Plus has been negotiated between Australia and New Zealand and 12 other members of the Pacific Islands Forum, including six who are not members of the WTO. When in force, PACER Plus will foster trade and economic integration by aligning align regulatory regimes and allowing a smoother flow of goods, capital and people within regions. This is a region in the Pacific, full of opportunity where innovation and new business opportunities are being embraced. Whether it’s the already successful tourism industry, coffee from the PNG highlands or Bougainville’s award-winning chocolate, there is growing market for the output of the Pacific Islands. Australia, New Zealand and the UK are already buying Fiji-made sports uniforms and Fiji water has become ubiquitous across the world. Total two-way trade between Australia and Pacific Island countries is now worth more than $11.5 billion. The Pacific’s commitment to free trade and growth is another chapter in the extraordinary story of our region's economic transformation.
Across APEC, Australia wants to see more done to tackle non-tariff barriers to trade and structural reform, but no single economy can make this happen on its own. It does require reciprocity. As nations look for new trade opportunities they must also provide them. Trade is a two-way process by definition. There are plenty of opportunities before us, like developing digital infrastructure and creating the right regulatory environment that protects privacy, while enabling data to move across borders. Business tells us that we need rules that ensure the free flow of data and facilitate online trade, but at the same time protects consumers and recognises cyber risks. Australia is focused on creating that environment, which is why our Productivity Commission, working with New Zealand, is examining priority areas for removing barriers to growing the digital economy. But when we think about the reforms needed, particularly the potential for digital technology, we need to look out across our entire region and that includes the island states of the Pacific. Digital technology offers transformational opportunities for Pacific Island economies. It is why PNG's theme for APEC, “Harnessing Inclusive Opportunities, Embracing the Digital Future,” is so apt. The World Bank estimates digital transformation will grow GDP by more than $5 billion US and create 300,000 new jobs in the Pacific by 2040. That’s why Australia is supporting the construction of high-speed telecommunications cables from Australia to PNG and the Solomon Islands. Fiji has already shown us the commercial opportunities of high-speed telecommunication cables, leading the way in the Pacific with successful call centres and a business process outsourcing sector.
Together with partners we are looking at other projects in the very near future in this region. There is so much opportunity in the Pacific for citizens, businesses and governments and your attendance here is demonstration and affirmation of that.
This leads us to the third pillar of growth; infrastructure. The Asian Development Bank estimates the Pacific region needs $3.1 billion US in infrastructure investment, each year until 2030, a tall task. To contribute to that, last week Australia, the United States and Japan signed a memorandum of understanding to support trilateral cooperation in the Indo Pacific region and I had the opportunity to further the discuss those issues with Prime Minister Abe in Darwin yesterday. The MOU formalises the trilateral partnership for infrastructure investment in the Indo Pacific which was announced in July. Under the MOU, the three countries will work together to finance infrastructure projects and mobilise private sector investment to drive future economic growth, job-creation and poverty reduction. We will work closely with partners to identify projects for the trilateral partnership to support. So, together with the United States and Japan, we are working closely together, closely together, to drive this agenda.
As well, the Australian Government is setting up a $2 billion Australian Infrastructure Financing Facility for the Pacific, which will significantly boost our support for concessional infrastructure development. I am looking forward to giving EFIC, Australia’s export financing agency an extra billion dollars in callable capital and a new, more flexible infrastructure financing power to support at commercial rates, investments in the region which also have a broad national benefit for Australia. These new financing options have the potential to boost partnerships between the public and the private sectors, to create more projects like the Tina River hydropower project in the Solomon Islands, which when it opens, will be a great example of public-private infrastructure investment, bringing together the World Bank with public and private sector investors from Korea and Abu Dhabi. We are open to working with all partners in the region, all partners in the region. We want to see infrastructure investment though, that is transparent, that is non- discriminatory, that is open, that upholds robust standards to deliver long-term benefits that meets genuine needs and avoids unsustainable debt burdens. It must be in the interests of the country in which you are seeking to invest, to ensure we can deliver those projects that can benefit their economy which in turn benefits our entire regional economy.
We want a rules-based system that respect the sovereignty and the independence of every single country and a commitment then to regional security that is always the precondition for prosperity. But all of us in here in the room know there is more to do and always is. So the challenge is to strengthen our domestic economic foundations - which I can happily report is the case in Australia - to improve our market access for exports - because you never get rich selling things to yourself - and to finance and build vital infrastructure. That is as vital today as it has ever been.
Australia is committed to this proven path because we believe in it. Our external affairs policies are not just the sum of our deals. They are an expression of our values and our beliefs, whether they are economic or otherwise. And so we do this, motivated by our convictions, by our beliefs and our values, with a deep commitment to a strong, stable and secure Indo Pacific region.
That is why Australia is a trusted partner and a long-term partner; because our commitment is based on beliefs and values that have long been recognised in this region. It is the guiding principle for our foreign and trade policy.
No one country, no one economy can prosper without engaging with others. That is the lesson of the past half-century that has delivered so much to the people who live in our region. It is the lesson governments and the private sector must continue to use to guide us in the years ahead and to make the case, to make the case that this is the right way to go forward. To make that case in our communities, in our constituencies, in our boardrooms, whatever table we’re sitting around, the kitchen table or anything else, we need to make the case that trade is the right way forward to lift people out of poverty, to provide stability and peace in our region and to lift living standards.
Thank you very much for your attention.
Joint Press Statement with His Excellency Shinzo Abe, Prime Minister of Japan
16 November 2018
PRIME MINISTER: Well to Prime Minister Abe and your delegation, can I thank you very much for coming to Australia and in particular coming here to Darwin, for what has been a very deeply symbolic and significant meeting and also visit - the first by a Japanese Prime Minister to Darwin.
Can I thank you very much for the grace and the humility and the sincerity with which you have come to us today. I know it has been well received by the Australian people. We thank you both personally for the way you have done this, but equally we thank you on behalf of our country, to yours. We acknowledge our history and we commemorate our sacrifice and loss today, but importantly, we have further strengthened our great relationship as good friends and great partners; a special, strategic relationship based not only on our deep shared values and interests, but our deeply held beliefs.
As modern economies, Japan and Australia, we stand for openness and free trade. We stand for democracy and we stand firm against protectionism. Our continued success depends on being open to trade and investment. We understand that this is critical to the prosperity of our peoples and of the region in which we live. That's why Australia and Japan have been the driving forces behind the Trans Pacific Partnership, the TPP-11 trade agreement and I particular want to thank you Prime Minister Abe, for your strong leadership together with the former Prime Minister Mr Turnbull and the former Prime Minister of New Zealand Mr Key, who enabled us to initiate the TPP-11 proceeding and achieving it’s great result.
Can I also say that I appreciate the strong trade and investment relationship that is underpinned by the Australia-Japan Economic Partnership Agreement, the most liberalising trade agreement Japan has ever negotiated and implemented. Japanese investment in Australian resources and energy projects have helped create entire communities, have supported tens of thousands of employees, inspired new technology and generated billions of dollars per our two economies.
Japan is Australia's largest export market and the world's largest importer of liquefied natural gas and Australia supplies almost one third of Japan's total LNG imports. INPEX’s Icthys LNG project is Japan's largest ever investment in Australia and it is an outstanding example of the scale of our cooperation and of our ambition.
We are working together also throughout our region to support better infrastructure and greater connectivity between independent sovereign states throughout our region, throughout the Indo Pacific. On 12 November, Australia, the United States and Japan signed an MoU to support trilateral cooperation in the Indo Pacific region. This will greatly assist - as we discussed today - furthering our investment and infrastructure support within the south west Pacific, including the recent step-up programme that I announced just last week.
Australia and Japan remain committed to maintaining pressure also, I stress, to achieve the complete, verifiable and irreversible denuclearisation of North Korea. A stable and secure regional maritime order is central to both Australia and Japan's visions for the region and is underpinned by respect for international law. To that end, I particularly welcome the visit to Darwin by the Japanese coastguard patrol vessel Echigo. I look forward to increased cooperation with Japan to support regional maritime safety and security.
Australia and Japan also stand united on the importance of resolving disputes in the South China Sea peacefully and in accordance with international law. We are strongly opposed to any actions that could increase tensions within the region.
We also welcome expansion of collaboration to create new opportunities in areas such as healthcare, artificial intelligence and smart cities under a bilateral innovation framework. Australia and Japan are now collaborating on new energy sources to complement our already strong energy partnership, through our hydrogen energy supply chain pilot. I also note that Australia hopes to deliver that power to Japan's ambitions for the Tokyo 2020 Olympics and to develop a hydrogen export industry that could support as many as 16,000 jobs in Australia by 2040.
Finally, this year marks the 30th anniversary of Questacon, Japan's 1988 bicentennial gift to Australia and a great symbol of our friendship. I’m pleased to announce Australia has gifted three Questacon exhibitions to Japanese museums that participated in Questacon’s Science Circus of Japan this year. I hope this gift inspires future generations of scientists.
So I thank you Prime Minister and I warmly welcome you here and Mrs Abe.
I look forward to your comments.
HIS EXCELLENCY SHINZO ABE, PRIME MINISTER OF JAPAN – TRANSLATION: It is a great pleasure for me to be visiting Darwin for the first time as the Prime Minister of Japan. I am most happy that Prime Minister Morrison and I were able to have our first meeting here. Darwin was once a place where the former Japanese forces conducted their first air bombing against Australia, leading to much sacrifice. Prior to the meeting, Prime Minister Morrison and I laid a wreath at the War Memorial. I extended my condolences in honour of all the fallen soldiers and renewed my vow towards peace.
Thanks to the devoted efforts of many, Japan and Australia have achieved reconciliation and have become special strategic partners, driving regional peace and prosperity. Darwin is the next step and connects the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is a crucial place for the stability and prosperity of the whole of the Indo Pacific. It is at this very place where Prime Minister Morrison and I confirmed our commitment to further deepen this special strategic partnership between Japan and Australia in pursuit of our common vision of a free and open Indo Pacific.
In the area of security we agreed to deepen our security and defence cooperation. The Self-Defence Force and the Australian Defence Force are engaged in joint exercises and disaster relief operations in Darwin and other places in our two countries. During our meeting, we had discussions on the agreement to further facilitate such activities and welcomed the tremendous progress made to date in the negotiations and agree to aim for conclusion early next year.
Today, a patrol vessel of the Japan Coast Guard is calling on the port here for the first time. Maritime safety authorities exchanged statements of cooperation and likewise, Japan and Australia will promote cooperation to strengthen the rule of law at sea.
We discussed regional situations including North Korea, South East Asia and the Pacific Island nations. On South East Asia and the Pacific Island nations, we agree to promote concrete projects for cooperation in maritime security capacity-building related assistance and a strengthening of connectivity. On North Korea, we agreed on the importance of the realisation of complete, verifiable, irreversible dismantling of all weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missiles of all ranges as explicitly indicated in the UNSC resolutions and the complete implementation of the UN Security Council resolutions. I expressed my appreciation to the Prime Minister for sending Australian aircraft and vessels in response to ship to ship transfers. We confirmed that Japan and Australia will continue to cooperate in this area. Prime Minister Morrison also provided his support toward the early resolution of the abduction issue.
In the economic area, production has begun under one of the largest FDI projects in history by a Japanese company, the Icthys LNG project. We welcome the launch of operations in this project which can be described as a symbol of the deep interdependency between Japan and Australia and are ready to show more cooperation in the energy area. We agree to cooperate in such areas as brown coal to hydrogen, Quasi-Zenith Satellite, agriculture and fisheries as well as quality infrastructure in third countries to spur economic cooperation in even more diverse fields.
We welcome Australia's completion of its domestic procedures for TPP-11 and entry into force by the end of the year. We confirmed to collaborate to maintain and strengthen a free, open and rules-based multilateral trading system through the early conclusion of the RCEP and other initiatives.
Lastly I would like to thank the people of the Northern Territory for welcoming us with heart-warming hospitality.
Thank you.
Address, Northern Territory Chamber of Commerce
16 November 2018
PRIME MINISTER: I’d like to recognise that we are here on the lands of the First Australians from this district – the Larrakia people – and we acknowledge their elders past and present.
It’s terrific to be here with so many friends.
To Chamber President Greg Ireland, VP Stuart Kenny and CEO Greg Bicknell, thank for the invitation to address the NT Chamber of Commerce today.
It’s great to be in Darwin, a tropical city with its own unique rhythm and feel.
I’m especially pleased to be doing a number of things today.
This morning I signed the Darwin City Deal with the Chief Minister and the Lord Mayor.
I know many of you have been waiting keenly for this day, especially Senator Nigel Scullion and Gary Higgins who have been champions of the cause.
This City Deal will unlock investment in Darwin, grow the population, and support greater business activity.
And very soon I will have the pleasure of welcoming the Japanese Prime Minister His Excellency Mr Shinzo Abe to Darwin, along with Mrs Abe.
This will involve marking with Prime Minister Abe the fruition of the biggest ever investment by Japan in Australia – the Ichthys LNG project here in Darwin, the benefits of which will flow for many years to come.
Benefits that will further complement our economic plan for Australia where this week we again saw clear evidence that this economic plan is working.
We witnessed yet another strong employment number with 32,800 more jobs in the month of October, with full-time jobs in Australia increasing by 42,300.
Since our Government came to office just over 5 years ago, nearly 1.2 million jobs have been created.
At 5 per cent, the unemployment rate is the lowest since April 2012.
When we came to Government, the NT unemployment rate was 5.2 per cent – it’s now down to 4.6 per cent.
Nationally, we’re also seeing a recovery of business investment off the back of increased business confidence.
And pleasingly, we are seeing a pick-up in wages growth across the country.
But we are not complacent. We recognise that not everyone is feeling the benefits of a strong economy, including here in the Territory.
That’s why we have a plan for an even stronger economy that delivers for all parts of Australia.
So as a country and as a society, we grow together – not grow apart.
That’s my goal for Darwin. That’s my aspiration for the Territory.
That’s our Government’s plan for Australia.
Our economic plan has several inter-connected threads.
Let me highlight just some of them:
Lower tax for individuals and small and medium-sized business owners like many of you in this room
Lower electricity prices so energy customers get a better deal from the big electricity companies
The largest integrated infrastructure plan in Australia’s history - $75 billion of investment over 10 years
A broad-based industry strategy that recognises traditional strengths such as resources and agriculture, but also looks to develop areas of growth in services, the defence industry, medical industry and science and technology
A trade strategy that continues to break down barriers for Australian exports, especially here in the Asian region. That’s a big part of what I have been doing this week and what I will continue to be doing as I head to APEC in PNG tomorrow.
A bold new agenda for small business growth, including major announcements this week by the Treasurer on small business finance and cutting red tape.
All the while within a framework of fiscal responsibility – a Government swinging the Budget back to balance so we live within our means and reduce our debt over time and deliver the essential services Australians rely on.
Let me say a bit more about small and family businesses.
We’re bringing forward small business tax cuts by five years.
Small and medium-sized businesses with a turnover less than $50 million – thousands of them here in the Territory – will pay a tax rate of just 25 per cent in 2021-22 rather than from 2026-27 as planned.
Similar timing changes will apply to the roll-out of the 16 per cent tax discount for unincorporated businesses.
3.3 million small and medium sized businesses across the nation, employing around 7 million Australians, will reap the benefits.
This includes the more than 19,000 businesses in the Territory who employ over 58,000 Territorians.
At the same time, we’ve extended the Government’s $20,000 instant asset write-off through to 30 June 2019.
Some 350,000 small businesses claimed the instant asset write-off in 2016-17.
It’s a great opportunity to reinvest in your business by replacing or upgrading an asset.
But we have much bigger plans to turn small businesses into bigger businesses beginning with small business finance.
In my time as Treasurer, I became very concerned about the ability of small business to secure access to competitive finance – relative to large businesses.
If small business can’t access finance at reasonable terms they can’t grow.
Our Government has listened, recognised this problem and now we have acted.
This week the Treasurer announced a $2 billion Securitisation Fund to help businesses better access the loans they need to grow.
The fund will help to provide an additional source of funding for smaller banks and non-bank lenders who, in turn, will be able to lend to small businesses at more competitive terms.
It will be administered by the Australian Office of Financial Management – providing a long overdue boost to liquidity and competition in the small business lending market.
The Government is also working with financial institutions (including APRA and the major banks) on establishing an Australian Business Growth Fund that would provide longer term equity funding to small businesses.
This would be modelled on similar funds that have been operating in the UK and Canada where this issue of access to small business finance has been highlighted as well.
We’re reducing red tape and the regulatory burden on small business. All up, the Government has cut $6 billion in Commonwealth red tape, which is reducing the regulatory burden on small businesses.
We’ve streamlined GST reporting for small businesses by simplifying the BAS. When fully implemented, this is estimated to save each small business, on average, $590 per year.
Today we have announced we’re going to reduce the reporting burden for small and medium businesses by doubling ASIC financial reporting thresholds that have become outdated.
Around 2,200 companies will no longer be required to comply with financial reporting and audit requirements. This is estimated to reduce regulatory costs by $81.3 million annually.
Complementing plans for business, our City Deal will unlock investment in Darwin, grow the population, and support greater business activity.
Darwin will get a new Education and Civic Precinct in Cavenagh Street.
Its centrepiece will be a new city campus for Charles Darwin University, attracting more students here – 1,100 more.
Those students are going to flow into the centre of the city to study, live and work.
And there’ll be hundreds of university staff in that consumer mix too.
International students spend around $500 a week on living expenses, while hosting visits from their friends and family too. That’s going to be a new source of strength to the local economy.
Analysis by Deloitte Access Economics has found that the new city campus could increase economic output in the Darwin region by more than $250 million over the next fifteen years.
The City Deal will revitalise the look and feel of Darwin.
More green space. More landscaping.
It will attract new visitors, residents, students and businesses, improving the experience for all and help ensure more stay for the long-term.
It provides business the confidence it needs for the future.
With an agreed 10-year plan, between all levels of government, to grow and transform Darwin, we’re sending a strong signal to today’s business community and tomorrow’s investors.
There’s much more to the City Deal and I encourage you to examine the detail.
Now of course, the NT is bigger and broader than Darwin.
My Government is taking steps to adapt the successful City Deals model for regional development.
Just last weekend, I wrote to the Chief Minister to formally invite him to partner in a Regional Deal for the Barkly Region.
Discussions were well underway in the lead-up to that invitation – the Deputy Prime Minister Michael McCormack, and the Minister for Indigenous Affairs Nigel Scullion, had met with the Barkly Regional Council and leaders of the Barkly Aboriginal community.
We have begun a formal process. That’s an important step.
Ultimately, the community will determine the specifics of this deal.
Of course, our City Deals build on a larger pipeline of infrastructure investment in the Territory.
Since 2013-14, the Government has committed $1.5 billion to fund infrastructure projects in the Territory.
I mentioned briefly at the outset as part of the Government’s economic plan our defence industry strategy.
The NT is vitally important to the Australian Defence Force and the Government is continuing to invest strongly in capability, personnel and facilities in the Territory.
More than 5,000 serve in our defence forces in and around Darwin.
Under the umbrella of the Defence White Paper, we are investing $200 billion investment in defence capability and around $8 billion in Defence infrastructure projects over the next decade.
Under our Local Industry Capability Plan we’ll be working to ensure local Territory businesses and tradies get their share of work on important defence projects.
I know many of the Chamber’s members are in tourism.
Of course, Kakadu is one of the icons of Australian tourism.
I want Kakadu tourism to keep delivering for the Territory.
I want to see people from all around the world continuing to enjoy the beautiful gorge and waterfalls of our largest national park.
Our Government is working with the Territory Government on how best to manage and continue investing in Kakadu so we continue to tap into its amazing tourism potential.
We’re also working with the Territory Government and Traditional Owners to ensure the future of Jabiru is settled as soon as possible, to provide some certainty there.
Jabiru is already a major service centre for Kakadu and the surrounding region, and although the mine is closing, there’s certainly a lot of potential for a future built on tourism.
Our Government’s commitment to the Territory can be seen too in the changes we have made to GST distribution.
We know the mining boom created real volatility in the GST distribution.
So we’ve legislated a fairer and more sustainable GST deal for everyone. It’s now law.
I promised that back in July as Treasurer and it’s now delivered.
In addition to the already paid extra $260 million, under our new legislated changes, the NT is forecast to be $258 million better off over the next eight years.
That includes $69 million in top-up payments over the first three years.
We’re also changing the formula to address this issue in the longer term.
It’ll be the biggest change to the GST since it was introduced and this is why we took our time to get it right.
Our GST plan is about ensuring your fair share, so that the services you rely on – schools, hospitals and law enforcement, as well as infrastructure and other important projects – are delivered.
This is crucial to the ongoing strength of the Northern Territory and its economy.
In April 2018, the Commonwealth announced it would invest $550 million over five years in housing for NT remote communities.
The NT Government has agreed to match this funding as part of a new National Partnership Agreement.
Our negotiations are focussing on addressing overcrowding, providing transparency about how money is spent, a decision-making role for land councils and ensuring works are delivered by local Indigenous Territorians and businesses.
We expect to finalise the agreement before the end of the year.
And all of this is being done without increasing your taxes.
On what you earn, on your investment, on your business, your retirement savings, housing – 16,000 Territorians negatively gear rental property.
So Ladies and Gentlemen, I come back to where I started.
All of these investments in the future can only be made if you have a plan for a strong economy.
I strongly believe that the next election will be fought over those defining issues of who can manage the economy best and who can keep Australians safe and protect our sovereignty.
We do recognise that not everyone is feeling the benefits of a strong economy, including here in the Territory.
The nature of the Territories economy means you are often called on to buckle down through periods of uncertainty.
It can be a grind, especially if you are running a small business.
We get that. That’s why everything we do as a government is geared towards strengthening our economy and ensuring all Australians can share in the benefits of a strong economy.
I want to thank the NT Chamber of Commerce for the invitation today and for everything you do to advocate on behalf of a resilient and forward-looking business sector in the Territory.
Address, Remembrance Day National Ceremony
11 November 2018
Silence. At last, silence. A silence from that day to this that beckons a prayer for a dawn of peace, and a lasting peace.
On this day a century ago, as citizens across the Allied nations celebrated the end of war, Australia’s official war correspondent, Charles Bean, chose to mark the Armistice solemnly.
Returning to Fromelles in northern France where two years earlier Australian soldiers had fought their first major action on the Western Front, Bean walked in silence over the trampled battlefield.
“We found the old No-Man’s-Land simply full of our dead,” he wrote.
“The skulls and bones and torn uniforms were lying about everywhere.”
On that day, perhaps Bean reflected on the unfulfilled dreams of the almost 2,000 Australians who had fallen at Fromelles in a single day, or the suffering of the more than 3,000 who had been wounded.
Perhaps he thought of the tens of thousands of our war dead lying on the steep hills of Gallipoli, or on the blood-soaked fields of Flanders, and the searing deserts of the East.
Perhaps he dwelt on the grief of families who would never again embrace loved ones, or on the loss to communities across the nation of a generation that had made victory possible.
As we commemorate the centenary of the Armistice and cast our minds back over the years, we know too well the deep scars of war and long to prevent them from touching an Australian soul.
Our human predisposition, our Australian predisposition, is for peace.
It is to be in accord with family, friends, neighbours, community. To love, to live.
That’s why war is always a failure of our humanity.
Yet we know there are times when even the most peaceful of men and women are called upon to defend the beliefs they live by, and there have been too many such times over the course of the past century.
This is not to say that our reflections on those conflicts must be unquestioning.
But the sacrifice demands that we reflect, ponder, and learn from every conflict because that’s what free societies like Australia do — to learn from the past so that we can better navigate the changing currents of our own times, for our own children and for the next generations.
Over this past century, I believe the tenor of our conflicts has tended towards upholding the highest ideals of humankind – to preserve freedom, to safeguard democracy, to stand against tyranny.
And we have done so at a great cost.
It is easy from the vantage point of a century to lose sight of the sacrifices made in our name.
Much harder to cross the span of generations and put ourselves in the boots of someone landing at ANZAC Cove, or charging into Beersheba, or struggling against the rattle of death on Flanders Fields.
Those who fought in the Great War had the same and normal flaws and frailties of any other Australian of any other generation.
Yet their selflessness at the darkest of times has set them apart for eternity in our nation’s consciousness.
Andrew Gillison, a chaplain, heard cries coming from No Man’s Land while in a trench at Gallipoli.
Despite having been warned about the snipers, he tried to crawl out to rescue the wounded soldier, calling.
He did know what the risk was, but he did know what it was to do the right thing, and he lost his life for it.
Alice Chisholm, a mother of five, sailed to Egypt to be near her son who had been wounded.
She stayed to set up food canteens and shelters for Allied troops serving in the Middle East, and after the war she supported our diggers by establishing a Returned Soldiers’ Club in Goulburn.
William Rawlings, a horse trainer from near Warrnambool, risked his life to clear a path for his fellow infantrymen during an attack at Morlancourt on the Western Front.
He was one of a thousand Indigenous Australians who volunteered when their country did not properly recognise them or their people, and he would die just a few months before the Armistice. They saw our country not just for what was then but what they dreamed it would become.
We often say that men and women like this were fearless; but I actually don’t believe that.
Because bravery is not the absence of fear. It is the choice to commit to a purpose greater than your fear. That is the moment when fear is conquered.
They feared greatly but acted nonetheless, and it is this that embodies our highest aspirations as a nation and as people – to live for others even when to do so is unimaginably hard and the cost extreme.
Tragically, the hardships continued even for those who rode out the storms of war.
Many suffered the physical marks of battle; yet more, the deep emotional scars of memory.
Thousands of our servicemen and women would die from injury as well as despair within a decade of coming home.
Their struggles were as much an act of patriotism and love of our country as their enlisted service, and that is true to this day for those who wrestle daily with these memories.
Despite hopes that it would usher in a lasting peace, the Great War was sadly not the war to end all wars.
By the time this memorial here to the Great War as was originally proposed was opened, another war was upon us.
The Australian original ANZACs who left our shores for Gallipoli have been followed by those who fought in the jungles of Kokoda, and struggled in the mud of Long Tan, and battled in the dust of Uruzgan, and risked their lives in the skies over Germany and in the waters of the Mediterranean and the Pacific.
To all who have served our nation in wars, in conflicts and peacekeeping operations, to those of you who serve to this day here or all around the world, we owe you a debt of gratitude as a nation and as individual Australians.
Through it all, we can’t avert our gaze from citizen-soldiers of the First World War though, who defined so much of who we are as a people today.
They believed in country over self.
They believed in each other, when all seemed lost.
They respected the chain of command, but it was their character that drove their actions, as it is today.
They laughed, they smoked, they told stories, they wept, they were as earthy as the land in which they were born from.
And though it was hard to see during the fog of war and even harder to appreciate the scale of their sacrifice, they nevertheless changed the world, together.
As Charles Bean did one hundred years ago, today we solemnly commemorate the Armistice.
In silence, a silence that beckons and prays for peace, we honour the 102,000 Australians who have lost their lives in war for us.
For our tomorrows, they gave their today.
In silence, we commit ourselves to standing by those who have returned home.
In silence, we honour the great leadership of General Monash.
And in silence at the hour when war subsided, we resolve to sustain the peace today and beyond.
So that when the bugle calls, we will in the words of our great Australian poet:
“Stand four-square to the tempest,
whatever the battering hail,
No foe shall gather our harvest,
Or sit on our stockyard rail”.
Lest we forget.
Press Conference - Sydney, NSW
10 November 2018
PRIME MINISTER: Thanks you for coming today. Yesterday a lone, violent, extremist Islamic terrorist, Hassan Khalif Shire Ali, sought to instil fear in our nation.
Like those who came before him, this terrorist failed, as will all others who share his twisted hatred of our nation.
He was met with unflinching resolve.
The bravery of Police.
The willingness of bystanders to stand up – and to tend to each other.
The professionalism of our emergency services – who didn’t just tend the victim, but even the terrorist as well. Reminding everyone what a decent, fair and humane people we are.
And the quiet efforts of thousands of Melbournians to assist authorities as events unfolded over the course of yesterday afternoon, and through the evening and throughout today. And for Melbournians who got about their lives today.
To all of these Australians I say thank you on behalf of our nation.
As a nation, we grieve today for a life tragically and violently taken.
A fellow Australian who was felled in our streets by another Australian who violated the trust and opportunity gifted to him by a generous nation.
We send our love and prayers to the family who has suffered a great loss, and to those who are recovering from their injuries and to all those who have suffered today and are experiencing anxiety as a result of these events.
You are strong and you are loved by your Australian family.
As always, we overcome these events because we are resolute. Because of what we believe. Because we are stronger together.
And we don’t know any differently.
Instead of fear, we draw strength from each other and the deep quiet bonds between all of us.
That said, I know Australians are seeking assurances today.
While there can never be guarantees against acts of this nature, be encouraged that since when the national threat level was first raised, back on the 12 September 2014, 90 people have been charged as a result of 40 counter-terrorism related operations around Australia;
There have been 14 successful major counter-terrorism disruption operations in response to potential attack planning in Australia;
We have passed 12 tranches of counter-terrorism legislation on a bipartisan basis through the Parliament; and we have also invested to support Australia’s efforts through our various law enforcement and intelligence agencies combating terrorism and working with partners abroad and here at home.
Know this Australians, that all your agencies, at all levels of Government continue everywhere, working together, well resourced, with clear leadership, 24/7 to do everything they can to keep you safe so you can get confidently about your daily lives. State, local, federal. In this country there is tremendous cooperation between all of these agencies and that has been on display, in particular, in less than the past 24 hours, as they have responded to these events and sought to provide that assurance of protection.
I particularly want to thank the Victorian Police for providing the assurances to Melbournians today and for moving quickly to restore access to the city to allow Melbournians to get about their lives.
Since early yesterday evening I have been in continuous contact, along with the Minister for Home Affairs, Peter Dutton, with our police and intelligence agencies who have updated me on events as well as our preparedness for any other incidents.
The National Terrorism Threat Level remains at Probable.
All agencies of government are working closely together.
I have also spoken, on several occasions, with the Premier of Victoria and the Victorian Leader of the Opposition, given the election that is underway there.
I have also spoken with Mr Shorten, the Leader of the Opposition, last night, he has been offered, by me, briefings from our agencies later today, according to the arrangements that suit the opposition.
Later today, I will also be travelling to Canberra, where I will be taking further briefings from Commissioner Colvin in Canberra. And from this point further briefings and response will be handled by the Minister for Home Affairs, along with those other agency leaders.
In closing I’ve got to address the real issue here, I’ve got to call it out - radical, violent, extremist Islam that opposes our very way of life.
I am the first to protect religious freedom in this country, but it also means I must be the first to call out religious extremism. Religious extremism takes many forms around the world, and no religion is immune from it. That is the lesson of history, and sadly modern history as well.
But here in Australia we would be kidding ourselves if we did not call out the fact that the greatest threat of religious extremism, in this country, is the radical and dangerous ideology of extremist Islam.
I applaud, and I know many of them personally, working in my own city here, as some of you may know, the brave and passionate Australians in the Muslim community who know that their children and their communities are at risk from these evil thieves who will come in and pray on their community, on their vulnerable people, on their children. Like all Australians they want the best for their kids and their communities.
I commend these Australians for the leadership and courage that I know they have had to show to protect their community and their fellow Australians, often at great risk to themselves, and their families.
But there is a special responsibility on religious leaders to protect their religious communities and to ensure that these dangerous teachings and ideologies do not take root here. They must be proactive, they must be alert and they must call this out, in their communities and more broadly for what it is.
And we must all work respectfully together, Government, community and religious leaders to ensure that we continue to prevail in the face of this evil.
As Australians today we feel sadness, but we also feel pride and great resolve this day.
Sadness for the life taken, and for those who have been injured – but proud of the response of our community of Australians, police and emergency services and those who came to assist and to comfort and resolve to stand against those who seek to divide us, who seek to come and subvert all the things we hold dear in in this country to the threat of radical, extremist Islam.
JOURNALIST: Prime Minister, you have a strong message to those religious leaders. Will you be reaching out to them?
PRIME MINISTER: Of course.
JOURNALIST: In what way?
PRIME MINISTER: I’ll be meeting with them, I’ll be talking with them. I was talking with friends in the community today, in fact. I have a long established relationship, particularly with that community here in Sydney and this is something we have to work on together. And these are things that the Muslim community have raised with me over many years in different roles that I have had. You know, I have sat in the living room of a family whose four sons went and fought for ISIS, for Daesh. And they all died. I have seen the look of complete loss in the eyes of a mother and a father - the father has since passed away - who just were bewildered by what were these who came and corrupted their kids.
JOURNALIST: Prime Minister, last year the Government released a new strategy on protecting people in crowded places. Do you think that had any impact in this scenario and was there anything that could have been done to further mitigate the attack?
PRIME MINISTER: Well a lot has been done in this space as you know and that work was drawn together across agencies at a state and federal level. As you have already heard from the AFP and you’ve already heard from the agencies at a state level, all of these things are constantly reviewed in relation to these incidents and I think you can expect to see that happen. We have to be honest with ourselves here. We can take these precautions, and we do, and we do it here in Australia, I believe, better than anywhere else in the world. And one of the reasons we do do it so much better is the level of cooperation that exists between community, between state and federal government, local governments, and you’ve seen that on display over the last 24 hours and you will continue to see it on display. And so where there are things can be improved, of course they will. There were six attacks of this nature prior to this one. But there have been more that have been thwarted. And the ones that have been thwarted, it was the product of that resolve, the resourcing and the leadership and cooperation. And that’s what Australians can take some confidence out of today, despite the fact we have gone through this tragic and unforgivable incident.
JOURNALIST: You’ve only been in the job for a few months and you’re already talking about terror. Are you surprised by that or do you think, you know, as Australians terror is something that we need to become increasingly concerned about?
PRIME MINISTER: Well, the threat level is listed as "probable" and that has been the case for some time. The advice from agencies is that is where it remains. This is something that is in the mind, I think, of every leader in the country, whether you’re a Premier or a Prime Minister. These are the responsibilities that fall to the job. What I have been incredibly impressed with has been the very prompt, the very efficient and very professional way in which the agencies have been able to determine so many things so quickly, to learn about this radical Islamic terrorist and be further pursuing their inquiries and I'm sure those investigations will reveal more in the days ahead.
JOURNALIST: Have you been in touch with the families of those affected or do you intend to?
PRIME MINISTER: Out of respect for those families, as you know, the names particularly of the deceased have not been released yet. So once I think we have got past those issues then I will looking forward to having such a conversation to extend my deepest sympathies.
JOURNALIST: PM, we know he was on a federal ASIO watch list but what about the state list, was he on the state list?
PRIME MINISTER: Well as the Victorian Premier said last night, he was known to both state and federal authorities.
JOURNALIST: Authorities can prepare for, you know, big events and bolster security in that respect but how do you think we prevent these lone wolf attacks?
PRIME MINISTER: That's a very good question. This is why I commend the bravery and the cooperation of members of the Muslim community and the relationships that we must continue to foster and bridge and build. Now, I have no issue with calling out what I have done today in relation to radical Islamic terrorism. But that is a call, I think, to all the community, both within the Muslim community and without to ensure we work together. Because it's the cooperation, it's the integration, that is so important, I think, to reduce the risk of these types of things and to increase the awareness of the likelihood of them happening with any particular individuals. There are a large number of people on watch lists. There is a large number of people who have been prevented from leaving the country as this individual was. And so it does require a constant vigilance but a community of co-operation both within particular religious communities where people I don’t believe want to see this corruption happening. I've had the discussions and I’ve seen the distress and I’ve seen the concern and how that does motivate people to be very proactive in working with all the authorities to deal with this problem. But there can never be any absolute guarantees.
JOURNALIST: What was your reaction… can we ask questions about other things now?
PRIME MINISTER: I’m going to deal with this matter today. This is the matter I’m focusing on today and I don't intend to raise other issues today.
JOURNALIST: I’ve got another question about that. Should the law be changed to boot out non-citizens on a terror watch list? We do it with bikies with links to organised crime, should we also expand the legislation to those involved in terrorist activities? What do you think about that?
PRIME MINISTER: Well we have a range of pieces of legislation before the Parliament, dealing with these things and we will continue to review all of those activities in relation to this event and how we think that applies to those issues going forward.
JOURNALIST: And how many are on the ASIO terror watch list, do you know?
PRIME MINISTER: I said last night, there are around 400.
JOURNALIST: Just lastly, what do you have to say to Australians who are frightened by this attack?
PRIME MINISTER: Get about your lives. Be Australians. We will never be intimidated by those who seek to take away the very thing we value more than anything, and that is to live our lives in the way we choose to. That's what they’re attacking. That's what they've fallen victim to, a dangerous ideology that says this is not how you live your life in harmony with one another, in freedom, in liberty, with expression, where all faiths are respected and can live together happily. A prosperous, optimistic community that has always looked out to the rest of the world and embraced it. That's who we are. Just keep being yourselves. Keep being Australians and be proud of who you are, because I know you are and that is what will ensure we will always defeat this insidious evil that comes at us every single time. Thank you very much.
Speech, Lifeline Luncheon
9 November 2018
Well thank you very much John. Can I also acknowledge the traditional owners of the land and any Elders past and present. But can I particularly acknowledge Philip, and if you’ve got one pf those, fill it out, give Philip some hope and his family some hope.
It’s very important we’re all here today, we’re here as guests of others, we’re here in our own right, bringing tables. It’s a generous community that I grew up in here in Sydney. It’s great to see so many of you here being generous here today.
But when you hear these stories, there’s only one thing we can respond in doing and that is fill this out. And I’ll make sure we’re going to keep filling them out from the Commonwealth Government’s point of view as well and I want to talk a bit more about that today.
[Applause]
It’s good to be here with John and John I worked together some time ago. And he used to speak, and he’ll remember this, about being ‘strong and compassionate’ and I’ve thought a lot about that as the years have passed.
It does sort of reflect the tension in public life. The need for strength, but also the need to be compassionate. And in the opportunity to work together with Lifeline I think we can do both.
And that’s certainly what John has been able to do and I want to thank him for his great service. Not only in chairing Lifeline but I think in being an advocate and being someone who demystifies and destigmatizes the issues of mental health in Australia. And so congratulations John.
[Applause]
Thanks you for your service John. And Lucy is great, Lucy does a great job as we know…
[Applause]
She does a terrific job as Chair of Australia’s Mental Health Commission and we really thank you for the work you do there.
And I was thinking of Lifeline only recently. We were announcing some funding for some support down at a spot we’re all pretty familiar with, down there near the Watson’s Bay Hotel, over near the cliff. And we were making some announcements there about how we were doing improvements to lighting and those sort of things that has been part of the programme of that area to make that less of a hot spot.
And what it reminded me of was, it was a lonely place. And people are in lonely places and they can be in dark places.
But what we have an opportunity to do through organisations like Lifeline is that we can bring light to them and it’s not just light down at the gap.
These places can be offices, they can be classrooms, they can be kitchens, they can be bedrooms, they can be shop floors, and they can even be hotel ballrooms here today.
What might seem full of light to all the rest us can be dark, it can be lonely, it can feel windswept, it can feel isolated and disconnected. And what we’re trying to do is bring light to that. An acknowledgment to those situations people find themselves in.
And Julian Leeser who is here today and other colleagues who are here today and I welcome them as well as they’ve already been acknowledged today. Julian and I were talking about the issue of suicide.
Julian is one of the great champions of suicide prevention in our national Parliament. Just like Jason and Paul and others who are here. And it doesn’t matter which side of politics you are on. When Julian speaks about these issues, people stop and they listen, and so they should.
Because as you know Julian lost his father to suicide – and we were talking about trying to see the signs of depression, the sadness and distress in others and being alert to it.
Because often we’re not. And one of the stories Julian will tell you about it is how he wished he had been able to interpret more of what those signs are.
And it’s our responsiveness to this that gives us an opportunity to intervene, to step in, R U OK Day is another great initiative that was started by a mate of mine I went to school with and who we lost some years ago. Not to mental illness, actually to another illness.
But this stop and observe each other I think is important, and that’s what we’re all here doing today.
It can be very human to miss these signs. It can be very human to try and mask the signs that you’re in fact feeling. And so picking up on these things is very important.
For people in distress in Australia, Lifeline is one of these disruptors that can actually come in and intervene in these moments.
It can be that little voice to someone in distress that says “call Lifeline” and they see it, as John said, every other day at the end of an article somewhere. It disrupts, it makes a difference.
Or it could just be the number that you see elsewhere.
For tens of thousands of people, countless Australians, it has already been an important disruptor for their own battle with mental illness or of their family or friends.
I particularly want to acknowledge today, as I know John would also, all the counsellors who are making this difference every single day – if you have been or are a Lifeline counsellor I’d like you stand in your seats right now if you’re here because we all owe you a great debt of thanks and I want to acknowledge you in this room today. If there are any counsellors here, we want to say thanks.
[Applause]
We don’t know and we’ll never know who these counsellors have helped. It could have been one of our siblings, or one of your children, it could have been your football or netball coach or that that of your kids’ coach, it could be your kid’s school teacher, it could be your neighbour, it could be your parent or it could even be your local member of Parliament, and it could have even been you at some point in the future.
And yes, Lifeline does so many other things that supplement their mighty phone counselling service – and I also acknowledge that good work too.
But there is one call we should all remember. It took place in fifty-five years ago in 1963.
It was a time when they had rotary dial telephones, timed STD calls and phone boxes on street corners.
And Reverend Alan Walker, took a call at his Beacon Hill home. It was from a man named Roy. He got Reverend Walker’s number out of the phone book, we all remember what they were. Some of us do.
Roy was lonely, distressed and struggling under a weight of debt and they arranged to meet. But before the meeting took place, Roy took his own life.
Now Reverend Walker was a man of deep faith. He understood the admonition that faith without deeds is dead.
And he turned his faith into action. He turned his faith into real deeds.
And along with a small band of volunteers established Lifeline as an expression of his deep faith. Because he knew there were thousands of Roys in the country.
From its inception, Lifeline understood that, at times, we all need a helping hand. And there is nothing wrong in asking for help.
Now my dad was a police officer, so was my uncle – and you didn’t think or inquire about the emotional toll of a difficult job. The same is true for nurses, paramedics, firefighters, ambulance officers, and we thank them for the wonderful job they do.
They were just expected to deal with it. Just like returning veterans. Just like our Vietnam vets, who came back and were not recognised when they came home, one of the most shameful acts in Australia’s history. They were just expected to deal with it, and many just couldn’t.
It was not and will never be the right way to do things.
That’s why when Prince Harry was here, it was so great how he talked so freely in his recent visit about it and acknowledging the challenges and the need for greater awareness of that mental illness.
And when he and I met together privately, we spoke about this, and he was so interested in the work of whether it was Lifeline or whether it was Kookaburra Kids which we talked about passionately or the work of so many wonderful organisations. Whether they be with youth, with Headspace or any of these projects.
On the Sunday I was able to introduce the Prince to John and many others who were involved in all of these projects. And when he was out in Dubbo he said, “How easy is it for you guys to talk about your mental health?” He asked the students out there in Dubbo.
It’s a great question – and the kids all looked at the floor. Like many of us do when this topic still comes up today.
The honest answer for us adults is “it is not as easy as you think” – so we all have to keep working at this.
The good news is asking for help is no longer seen as weakness, but it is seen as a strength.
Offering help is no longer seen as “not my business” but my responsibility as a family member, a friend, an employer and a neighbour.
I said a few months ago, that if you love Australia, which I know we all do passionately, all around the country, it means you love your fellow Australians. That’s what it really means to love Australia.
You can love the beaches, you can love all the great history, you can love whether it’s generations or centuries, you can love all these wonderful things about Australia. But if you really love Australia, you love your fellow Australians.
Mateship, I believe, is the Australian word for love.
“Who is my neighbour?” It’s a question as old as time.
You have answered it at Lifeline with “we are”. We all are, you are, everyone is my neighbour.
And everyone here knows the statistics. One in seven of our children four to seventeen will experience a mental health challenge in any year. For adults, it’s one in five.
There is good work happening across our country, but there is more work to do.
As a Government, yes it’s true, as John said, we have been very active in this space and I assure you with Lifeline will be more active in this space and John and I will be working through those issues now.
There was a $33 million funding boost to Lifeline – part of $72 million provided to suicide prevention initiatives that I announced in this year’s Budget. And for Lifeline, John said, that was the first significant increase to Lifeline since John Howard was in office.
Almost $200 million a year for 24/7 counselling support for veterans and their families. If you’re a veteran today, whether you’ve served one day or you’ve served decades, you get access to free mental health in this country as you should. As you should as an acknowledgement for your service and the fact that we owe a memorial not just to those who have fallen but we owe a service to the living.
110 headspace centres for our young people and extending the e-headspace service, over $50 million which we put into that and I have announced in recent weeks.
$11 million in mental health funding for drought affected areas across our drought stricken New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia and Victoria. I just got a report last night from the difficulties that people are facing up there in Scone at the moment in terms of the drought.
And Lifeline will be there with our farmers and doing what they can along with the mental health counsellors who are there and working with those communities.
$102 million for mental health in aged care as people in the residential aged care facilities deal with depression and loneliness and isolation was one of the key issues that was raised with me before the last Budget about the need to ensure people in aged care were being treated for the mental illnesses that they were suffering from.
And $125 million in the “Million Minds Mental Health Research Mission” to support one million people through better prevention, diagnosis and treatment.
There is still so much more to do in this area and you’re here doing it today. And our Government, and state governments right across the country, will keep doing what we need to do.
I think this issue has transcended politics and I hope it always will. That there will be a bipartisanship, a multi-partisanship, as we all work together to try and raise awareness and support those who are in the front line like they are here at Lifeline.
But it starts with us all listening to each other, and respecting each other and caring for each other.
To look for the signs. To stand by our mates.
To treat mental health in the same way we treat physical health – free of any stigma.
So I want to thank you all for the work you do. It is a pleasure to be here advancing the good work of Lifeline and a great privilege and I thank you very much for your attention.
Address, "Australia and the Pacific: A New Chapter"
8 November 2018
To our hosts, Commander 3rd Brigade, Brigadier Scott Winter AM, 3rd Brigade’s RSM, Warrant Office Brent Doyle OAM, and Commanding Officer 3rd Combat Engineer Regiment, Lieutenant Colonel Jennifer Harris CSC. To the men and women of 3rd Brigade, thank you for your service. Thank you for your welcome here today, thank you for what you do for our country.
It’s important for me to come here today and make this presentation which I could have done to a lecture theatre down in the southern states or do it in Parliament House or somewhere like that but I thought it was important to come and make this presentation here today to the men and women who I will be asking and our Government will be asking to be part of the fulfilment of the plans that I am setting out today for our government and our nation.
It is great to be here at Lavarack Barracks.
Many Australian Prime Ministers have visited these Barracks and rightly so.
The first though was Harold Holt, who came to open them in 1966.
At the opening he let everyone in on a secret, that was the Army didn’t want the Barracks in Townsville.
They wanted the new barracks to be on the Mornington Peninsula in Victoria.
They wanted it to be close to the existing Defence infrastructure.
Apparently that was a cheaper exercise as well.
But Harold Holt had a very different view. He convinced the Cabinet to actually override the Army’s recommendation.
He said at the opening of these Barracks: “if this continent is to be held secure, if we are to develop its potentialities he said, then we must press on vigorously with northern development”.
And that argument still holds as fresh today, which is why I’m delighted to be back in Townsville -- backing Townsville, backing Lavarack.
And supporting our defence forces and on coming to office a little over five years ago, our Government committed to increasing the Defence budget to 2 per cent of Australia’s GDP within ten years of coming to office.
We will achieve that in 2020-21, three years ahead of schedule.
That shows you the seriousness of our Government’s commitment to the capability of our defence forces and our serving men and women.
The long-term funding commitment is critical to executing the Government’s plans for Defence, and ensures that defence strategy, capability and resources are fully aligned.
Defence must have confidence in its funding so it can develop and implement long-term plans. Australian defence industry also needs funding certainty to confidently invest in the infrastructure, skills and capability so that it can play its part as a fundamental input to defence capability. They are part of the Defence team.
It's because of these long-term commitments that our Government can invest in programs like LAND 400 Phase 2, which I know is particularly popular up here, which will deliver 211 world-class Combat Reconnaissance Vehicles for the Australian Army.
These world-class vehicles will be manufactured and delivered by up to 1,450 Australian workers, using Australian steel, right here in Queensland.
But the beauty of our commitment to Defence capability is that these benefits actually flow right across the country. The supply chain for these new vehicles will reach right across the country – with up to 40 companies expected to be involved.
Indeed right here in North Queensland, there are small to medium sized companies who will have the opportunity to secure work on this $5.2 billion project.
Now of course, our Defence capability plans do not end there – from new frigates and patrol vessels, to the Joint Strike Fighter – all of these platforms draw on small and medium sized enterprises from right across the nation.
And ladies and gentlemen I am here to day to honour the service of the men and women of these Barracks, your pledge to service our nation in times of war and peace is no idle one. 3rd Brigade has acted on that pledge. In Iraq and Afghanistan and your role in the Philippines is vitally important. This year 3rd Brigade has deployed 800 members in some eight countries. From engineering support to amphibious landing training and command and leadership mentoring. And much of your efforts are in your own neighbourhood.
That’s our defence industry plan in action – creating the world’s best capability while investing in Australian industrial capability and know-how and securing highly-skilled and paid Australian jobs across the nation.
Ladies and Gentlemen, I am here today to honour the service of the men and women of these Barracks. Your pledge to serve our nation, in times of war and peace, is no idle one.
3 Brigade has acted on that pledge – in Iraq and Afghanistan. And your role in the Philippines is vitally important.
This year 3 Brigade has deployed 800 members in some eight countries.
From engineering support, to amphibious landing training and command and leadership mentoring - and much of your efforts are in our own neighbourhood, in your neighbourhood, the Pacific – a long way from the Mornington Peninsula! As lovely as the Mornington Peninsula is.
You have done tremendous work with two of our biggest military partners in our region, Papua New Guinea and Fiji.
Their forces can now take on bigger responsibilities, working hand in glove with the ADF towards regional stability and security. That would also build on the ADF’s tremendous humanitarian response work in the region.
Australia’s national security and that of the Pacific they are intertwined - as the 2017 Foreign Policy White Paper made clear, when it identified the Pacific as one of Australia’s highest foreign policy priorities.
My Government, the Government that I have the privilege to lead is returning the Pacific to where it should be – front and centre of Australia’s strategic outlook, our foreign policy, our personal connections, including at the highest levels of government.
This is our patch. This is our part of the world. This is where we have special responsibilities. We always have, we always will. We have their back, and they have ours. We are more than partners by choice. We are connected as members of a Pacific family.
It’s why the first leaders I hosted in Australia as Prime Minister have been from Solomon Islands, Fiji and Papua New Guinea.
It’s time to open, I believe a new chapter in relations with our Pacific family.
One based on respect, equality and openness. A relationship for its own sake, because it’s right. Because it’s who we are.
Last week in Sydney, I set out the foundational beliefs and values that guide our Government’s engagement with the world and to ensure we remain a prosperous, secure and united nation.
In Queensland - our gateway to the Pacific - I want to outline in more detail our ‘step-up’ now in the Pacific and why we are taking our engagement to a new level. And I wanted to do it here in Lavarack because it is with you who are charged, along with all our servicemen and women to put our plan into action.
Australia has an abiding interest in the Southwest Pacific that is secure strategically, stable economically and sovereign politically.
This is not just our region, or our neighbourhood. This is our home.
It’s where Australia can make the biggest difference in world affairs.
A strong, stable region keeps us more secure and enables our economies to grow and for our peoples to prosper.
While we have natural advantages in terms of history, proximity and shared values, Australia cannot take its influence in the Southwest Pacific for granted. And sadly I think too often we have.
Notwithstanding we build from strong foundations our Government has refocused more of our aid contribution to the region. We remain the largest aid donor to the Pacific. We maintain high standards of governance while aligning our assistance with the practical priorities of Pacific Island countries.
The Pacific Labour Scheme is a genuine win-win partnership.
It helps strengthen our economies.
It will give Australian farmers and businesses from aged care providers to tourism operators critical staff to run at full capacity, and gives Pacific workers the chance to earn higher incomes, gain skills and secure opportunities for their own families at home.
The Seasonal Worker Programme gives our fruit growers and crop farmers the workers they need at their busiest times of the year.
Since 2012, the Seasonal Worker Programme has provided an extra $144 million in income for families and villages in the Pacific and Timor-Leste. That’s life-changing for them, absolutely life changing and a massive help for our farmers as well.
Pacific labour mobility is one of the most important solutions for tackling workforce shortages, right now and into the future.
Australia is committed to building on those labour mobility opportunities for Pacific countries and ensuring that Pacific countries take priority.
Pacific labour to Australia is growing and we want to see this growth continue - so we are prioritising the expansion of Pacific labour mobility to help fill critical workforce shortages, where no Australian is available. And it is always our first priority to ensure that Australians are doing these jobs.
We will work closely with industry and Pacific governments to ensure the quality of both the Pacific Labour Scheme and its integrity and the Seasonal Worker Programme.
There are some 1,500 Pacific island students studying at Australian universities on scholarships, gaining the knowledge and skills needed to create opportunities in their home countries.
They’re matched by nearly two-and-a-half-thousand young Australians who have studied in the Pacific since 2014 as part of the New Colombo Plan that was pioneered and initiated by the former Foreign Minister, Julie Bishop and I commend her for that initiative.
As well, thousands of young Pacific islanders have received vocational education through the Australia Pacific Training Coalition, giving them Australian-standard qualifications.
We’re working with PNG and the Solomon Islands to install a high-speed undersea internet cable so their people can take advantage of the digital era and the digital economy.
We’re moving towards ratifying the PACER-Plus regional trade agreement to open up new markets and opportunities for ourselves and our Pacific neighbours and partners.
It’s a very solid base, but of course, economic development relies on security and stability.
Under the “Boe” Pacific Regional Security Declaration, we and our Pacific partners have committed to work more closely to keep our countries safe, secure and more prosperous.
The Pacific Fusion Centre, announced at the Pacific Islands Forum, will build on existing security architecture, including the Pacific Transnational Crime Coordination Centre in Apia, and Forum Fisheries Agency Regional Fisheries Surveillance Centre in Honiara.
We are also working to deliver national security and law enforcement training in the Pacific at the executive middle management level through an Australia Pacific Security College.
Under our Pacific Maritime Security Programme we are delivering bigger and more capable patrol boats and aerial surveillance, and sharing more information to tackle drug trafficking, people smuggling and illegal fishing in the Pacific which is robbing Pacific Islanders of their livelihoods.
With Fiji, it’s turning the Blackrock Peacekeeping Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief Camp into a regional hub for police and peacekeeping training and pre-deployment preparation.
With Solomon Islands, it’s a bilateral security agreement, building on the hard work of RAMSI.
With Vanuatu, it’s a boost to law enforcement assistance as we negotiate a new bilateral security agreement.
And last week, I signed an agreement with PNG Prime Minister Peter O’Neill to elevate our relationship with an annual leaders’ dialogue.
We’re cooperating to develop the PNG Defence Force’s Lombrum Naval Base which I’ve visited on many occasions on Manus Island to increase the inter-operability between our defence forces and our ability to tackle challenges like transnational crime.
It will mean more Australian ships can visit PNG. And after APEC in Port Moresby where I will be shortly, our police will continue the close relationship and cooperation they’ve built in the lead-up to that important meeting.
So the strategic architecture of our Pacific ‘step-up’ is taking shape, it’s in place. It is part of a larger vision of Australia as a force for good in the Pacific, working with others to ensure our region is secure, stable and sovereign.
We seek cooperation with others -- New Zealand, the United States, Japan, China, France and the UK all active in the region to ensure our engagement supports common goals.
Let me turn now to some of the other steps that I am announcing we are taking today, practical measures that we believe will make a difference.
The ADF already plays a pivotal role across a wide canvas, from traditional military engagement with counterparts, to humanitarian and disaster relief, to Operation Render Safe, where we assist in safely disposing of World War Two explosive remnants.
As part of our commitment to the Pacific, the ADF will play an even greater role, working with our partners on training, on capacity building, on exercises, on building interoperability to respond together to the security challenges we face.
To help achieve this, we will establish an enduring rotational ADF Pacific Mobile Training Team, which will be based in Australia, and will travel in the Pacific when invited to undertake training and engagement with other forces.
This will see ADF members like yourselves working more with regional partners in areas such as humanitarian and disaster response, peacekeeping, infantry skills, engineering and logistics and planning.
The Government will also put in place arrangements to ensure that Australia has a dedicated vessel to deliver our support to our partners in the Pacific. Its duties will include humanitarian assistance and response.
The Royal Australian Navy will also undertake more deployments to the Pacific so that they can conduct maritime training exercises with our neighbours. This will enable them to take advantage of the new Guardian Class Patrol Boats we are gifting to them, to support regional security.
We are also strengthening our links with Pacific police forces.
A new Pacific facility at the Australian Institute of Police Management will help train the next generation of police leadership in the Pacific.
Australian and Pacific police have a long history of working closely together and the new Institute will bring together police leaders from across the Pacific for professional, leadership and executive development opportunities.
We will deepen our already strong people-to-people links with Pacific security forces.
We will establish annual meetings of defence and police and border security chiefs and deepen our collaborative efforts.
We will establish a security alumni network to maintain connections and deepen relationships with the many emerging and senior police, and the civilian and military leaders who have participated in the Defence Cooperation Program over decades. Harvesting their experience learning from the experience, passing on the legacy of their experience.
We’re also expanding our diplomatic footprint. Our diplomatic network is already larger than any other country in the Pacific as it should be and we are going to expand it.
Today I announce that we intend to open diplomatic missions in Palau, the Marshall Islands, French Polynesia, Niue and the Cook Islands.
This will mean Australia is represented in every member country of the Pacific Islands Forum.
Of course, it’s not just about the number of diplomatic posts; it’s about the people we send there. And those working on the Pacific at home.
The Foreign Minister and I have made it clear that we want our best and brightest, our young and experienced diplomats alike, working in and on the Pacific.
We must also deepen our commitment to economic engagement in a way that addresses the specific challenges of the Pacific.
The Pacific region is estimated to need US$3.1 billion in investment per year to 2030. So today I’m pleased to announce two major new initiatives that will help address the infrastructure needs of the Pacific region.
The first is the creation of an Australian Infrastructure Financing Facility for the Pacific (AIFFP).
This $2 billion infrastructure initiative will significantly boost Australia’s support for infrastructure development in Pacific countries and Timor Leste.
It will use grant funding combined with long term loans to support high priority infrastructure development.
This will also enable these projects to leverage broader support. It will invest in essential infrastructure such as telecommunications, energy, transport, water and will stretch our aid dollars even further.
The second major announcement I’m making today is the Government will ask Parliament to give Efic, Australia’s export financing agency, an extra $1 billion in callable capital and a new more flexible infrastructure financing power to support investments in the region which have broad national benefit for Australia. It’s in our interest that’s why we need to do it.
These new measures will enhance Efic’s ability to support Australian SMEs to be active in their region. Working with the support and aid that we are putting into the region. Private capital, entrepreneurialism, open markets are crucial to our mutual prosperity. These are our beliefs, these are values, they are shared with the Pacific and we stand with those who share our beliefs and values.
It’s my genuine ambition for this work on infrastructure to be a bipartisan endeavour, as indeed should our wider engagement be in the Pacific.
This is something I hope we can achieve together, in our national interest and that of our neighbours.
Not long ago the former Foreign Minister, Julie Bishop, led her annual bipartisan delegation to the Pacific.
These visits built on the cross-party visits to the Pacific initiated by Alexander and I want to see more such delegations of politicians and journalists deepening ties with our neighbours.
Our personal ties extend deeply into rituals, pastimes and shared obsessions like sport. You all know that when you would have been up in the region, PNG in particular and other places.
Following the success of this year’s Prime Ministers Men’s and Women’s XIII games against their PNG counterparts which was a topic of discussion when I got in touch with Peter O’Neill recently when we played the Kumuls and the Orchids – a new sports programme will strengthen sporting pathways between the Pacific and Australia.
I’ve been speaking to Free-TV Australia and the commercial TV networks about how we get more of our Australian content into the region. Our pacific family switching on to the same stories, news, drama and sports we are watching at home. What better way of staying connected than through the people, the lifestyle and the every-day experiences we are lucky enough to enjoy.
That’s why I am pleased to announce that the Government will be working with our commercial media operators to ensure our friends in the Pacific have access to more quality Australian content on television and other platforms.
This will include things like lifestyle programs, news, current affairs, children’s content, drama and sports potentially.
This is an initial step towards providing more Australian content that is highly valued by the Pacific community.
Just the other day, Prime Minister O’Neill reminded me that they have a holiday for Melbourne Cup Day as well.
And that it’s very hard to find anyone at work in Moresby the day after a State of Origin game.
These are small reminders of just how much we have in common and the heritage we share, the lives we share, the values we share.
You might ask how we’re going to pay for all of this. The answer is simple. We are doing it from within budget.
We have undertaken a rigorous prioritisation of our foreign policy and aid and defence and police strategies and plans to make the Pacific a priority.
Government is all about making choices, it’s about setting priorities, it’s about focussing on the things that you believe are most important and that’s what we have done as a Government. Not by running up a big bill but by making choices to make a priority of the Pacific, whether it’s in our aid program or elsewhere.
Nothing proves the strength of our people partnership more than the massive welcome the Duke and Duchess of Sussex received in Tonga and Fiji the other week just like they did in Dubbo and Sydney and Fraser Island.
But our connections go so far beyond our shared Commonwealth membership.
We support a fantastic Australian volunteers program, one that translates into thousands of stories of people changing lives.
I recently heard about a young bloke called Michael Nunan. Michael was a volunteer to Solomon Islands and spent two years as a pharmacist there.
He discovered that poor communication meant local health clinics couldn’t do simple things like let him know what supplies and medicines were that they needed, or whether they needed training.
So, with some support from DFAT’s Innovation Exchange, he developed an online tool that’s now being used in six countries to provide timely and reliable data about health clinics and medicine stocks.
His tool, that he called it “Tupaia” now Tupaia was on Captain Cook’s legendary voyages as they particularly went around New Zealand and when they first came to Australia, in a little part I know pretty well in Kurnell in Sydney. He named it after Tupaia because it’s all about communication, Tupaia was a translator or intended to be as he had served with the Polynesian peoples. And this has made a huge difference this translation tool, this communications tool to healthcare in small villages
Over the next five years, another 5000 people like Michael will volunteer in 26 different countries, and the difference they make will be life changing and it will be immeasurable.
Let me tell you about the community in Mundubbera in Queensland. After Cyclone Gita hit Tonga earlier this year, the local community stepped up to send help.
It was a sign of the same community spirit that prompted Tongan seasonal workers to be among the first to help evacuate people and property when the Burnett River flooded in 2013 and a third of the town was underwater.
The local deputy mayor has recently visited Tonga to donate relief supplies. What goes around is coming around. We’ve got their back, they’ve got ours.
These stories are happening right across Australia and in the Pacific. It’s about who we are and what we do.
It’s what I meant when I talk about family. Whanau as they call it in Polynesian and Maori. They are the real ties that bind us. On sports fields and in churches, in schools and universities and between our defence and our police forces.
So in conclusion let me say this for all these great stories of human connection, our relationships with our Pacific friends need to be nurtured and valued.
And if our standing and influence in the Pacific is to grow, our commitment must be genuine, authentic and enduring.
The world is changing, it’s true and we need to ensure that our Pacific partnerships get stronger with time, that we never take them for granted, that we are a reliable and steady member of the family.
I want to see a new level of respect, familiarity and appreciation between us. Where our shared interests sit alongside shared values.
That’s not to say we will always agree. But that’s not the true test of friendship or family. Tell me a family that always agrees.
The real test is showing respect, love, commitment, and knowing that together we can make our region and all of our communities even stronger.
Let me say my final words to 3 Brigade.
I want to thank you for two things, well three you’ve been standing for a little while, thank you.
But on two things, you are known throughout the ADF and government for the way you look after each other when wounded.
Please keep doing what you are doing. “Mates helping mates”. That’s what it means to be Australian. And one of our core values of the Defence Forces and Australian Army.
Second, for most of Australia, summer-time is the time to kickback – cicadas, cricket, the beach – long days, relaxing nights, good times. Times to remember, times that matter.
But it’s wet season up here again, and you are always ready for the people of North Queensland in particular. You were the backbone of the clean-up after Cyclone Debbie. I want to thank you for the sacrifices you make and always being at the ready to help your fellow Australians and to go where ever your need is required, where your service is required.
It’s been an honour to be amongst you once again here today. It is one of the great privileges of being a Prime Minister to be able to thank Australian Service Men and Women whether it’s here at 3rd Brigade or anywhere else around this country or anywhere around the world for their tremendous service. We deeply respect it, we deeply thank you for it and we thank your families and friends for the sacrifices they make to enable you to serve and do the job that you love. It’s an honour to be with you here today you are part of a noble tradition -- here at the Barracks, in the Pacific and beyond.
Thank you for your service.
Keynote Address, Asia Briefing Live - "The Beliefs that Guide Us"
1 November 2018
Thank you Doug Ferguson, Chairman of the Asia Society Australia, and to the CEO Philipp Ivanov for the invitation to be here today.
I also want to acknowledge your event partner Bloomberg for this very timely Asia briefing in advance of Summit Season. And, of course, my friend and colleague, the Foreign Minister Marise Payne.
Since its foundation more than 20 years ago, the Asia Society Australia has provided a unique forum for bringing together those with a keen interest in Australia’s engagement with Asia.
Today, as I head into my first annual Summit season as Prime Minister, I would like to share with you some perspectives on my approach to Australia’s engagement with our region and more broadly.
Our foreign policy defines what we believe about the world and our place in it.
It must speak of our character, our values. What we stand for. What we believe in and, if need be, what we’ll defend. This is what guides our national interest.
I fear foreign policy these days is too often being assessed through a narrow transactional lens.
Taking an overly transactional approach to foreign policy and how we define our national interests sells us short.
If we allow such an approach to compromise our beliefs, we let ourselves down, and we stop speaking with an Australian voice.
We are more than the sum of our deals. We are better than that.
So what are the beliefs that guide our interests?
We believe that the path to peace and liberty demands the pursuit of prosperity through private capital, rights to own property, entrepreneurialism and free and open markets. That is what lifts people out of poverty.
We believe that acceptance should not be determined by race or religion. Rather, we accept people by their words and judge them by their actions.
We believe in freedom of speech, thought, association and religion.
We believe in peaceful liberal democracy; the rule of law; separation of powers; racial and gender equality where every citizen has choice and opportunity to follow their own paths and dreams.
A fair go for those who have a go - that is what fairness means in Australia.
We believe in the limits of government – because free peoples are the best foundation to show mutual respect to all.
We believe in standing by our mates, side by side with nations that believe the same things we do.
From the United Kingdom and the democracies of Europe to the United States and Canada. From the state of Israel to the city state of Singapore. From Japan and South Korea in North Asia to New Zealand, across the ditch.
We believe in being good neighbours – regardless of whether there are differences in how we see the world and run our respective societies.
We also believe this should be a two way street. We respect their sovereignty and their right to run their own show.
We simply ask for no more than the same in return. That our views and beliefs -- the decisions we make, the questions we ask and how we go about answering those questions and making those decisions -- is also respected.
When we do this, we can come together and engage on our common interests for the mutual benefit of our peoples, regardless of any other differences.
What we advocate for our region and the world are the same things that drive us at home.
I’ve been very clear about my domestic priorities— keeping our economy strong, keeping Australians safe, and keeping us together.
Prosperity, security and unity.
Our international agenda is built on these strong domestic foundations and were reflected in the key themes of the Foreign Policy White Paper released last year.
The tide of history is moving to our doorstep.
But we can’t pretend this tide of change happens seamlessly or smoothly.
As economic power shifts, it’s unsurprising that nations will seek to play a bigger strategic role in our region.
China, in particular, is exercising unprecedented influence in the Indo-Pacific.
At the same time, many of our partners globally -- from our most important partner and ally the United States, to others in Europe and elsewhere -- are debating the value of free trade and worry about the costs and risks of their global commitments.
We cannot wish away these debates and challenges.
Their political impacts are profound.
Australia is committed to ensuring the peaceful evolution of our own region in these times. It will take the right combination of both pragmatism and principle, always playing to our strengths.
Australia’s economy is growing, our country is confident, our budget position is getting stronger and stronger.
Our continued success depends on being open to trade and investment. We don’t get rich selling things to ourselves.
Just as we need capital and other inputs to build our economy, we need open markets and transparent rules.
Trade accounts for 1 in 5 Australian jobs, and employs over 2.2 million people.
We have skills and resources in abundance that the rest of the world wants. And we are a reliable partner.
Open markets for services give Australian consumers increased choice and provides businesses with access to a wider range of skills and expertise.
It’s estimated that annual incomes for the average Australian family are now $8,500 higher thanks to thirty years of trade liberalisation.
Also, Asia’s unprecedented growth over the past three decades has, as the Asia Society knows, transformed not just Asia, but the world at large.
There are now one billion fewer people living in extreme poverty than there were in 1990 and much of that is due to growth in our region.
That prosperity has been built on a web of institutions and rules that has supported economic openness and curbed beggar-thy-neighbour trade barriers.
The World Trade Organization has long been at the heart of this system. Its rules limit arbitrary trade restrictions and the use of unilateral trade measures so we can trade with confidence.
Now no system is perfect and we acknowledge that frustrations have been growing with the WTO’s rule-making, transparency and disputes functions.
Many members have legitimate concerns about the impact of policies such as industrial subsidies, which lead to overproduction.
Australia has been calling out similar practices for decades in relation to agriculture.
Equally, there are valid concerns about the protection of intellectual property and the rules governing the involvement of government entities in markets.
In responding our best tool is the negotiating table – not increased tariffs.
We will support efforts to improve and strengthen the WTO, recognising some of the legitimate frustrations of the United States and other countries.
We will also persist with a pragmatic trade agenda pursuing trade liberalisation wherever possible.
Nothing demonstrates that more clearly than the TPP 11 which Australia ratified just yesterday.
With six countries now on board, the Agreement will kick-in this year and Australia will get immediate tariff cuts from 30 December.
This agreement will give our businesses and farmers greater access to half a billion more customers.
Across the board, we are pursuing trade opportunities wherever we can.
Looking forward, we have a significant FTA agenda, including our Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement with Indonesia, and advancing negotiations on the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership with ASEAN and other key regional economies, with the EU and, post-Brexit, with the UK.
This agenda is built on a record of achievement, including the three free trade agreements our government signed with China, Japan and Korea that continue to deliver huge gains for our companies.
We are also looking to the long term. In particular, we want to enhance our partnership with India.
The foundations are already strong – we share values, a commitment to democratic institutions, enormous goodwill and strong relationships between our people. And we share a common strategic outlook.
The time is right to step up our efforts.
We welcome the India Economic Strategy to 2035 authored by the former High Commissioner to India and head of DFAT, Peter Varghese.
It’s the first step towards a long-term investment that cements India in the front rank of Australia’s partnerships. I will have more to say about this when the President of India visits Australia in a few weeks’ time.
Economic security alone is not enough. Prosperity requires security.
Security is a common endeavour with a common dividend.
At forthcoming meetings, I will be advancing our work with others to tackle terrorism and violent extremism, cyber-crime, people smuggling and nuclear proliferation.
I will discuss how, even as the prospect of peace on the Korean peninsula appears to be improving, we need to maintain maximum pressure on the DPRK to ensure the complete, verifiable and irreversible denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula.
I will reiterate Australia’s enduring interest in ensuring that freedom of navigation and overflight are respected by all states, large and small.
In all of these matters, the United States remains vital to the sort of region we want to see.
The alliance with the United States is a choice we make about how best to pursue our security interests.
And US economic engagement is as essential to regional stability and prosperity as its security capabilities and network of alliances.
Australia also has a vitally important relationship with China.
Trade, tourism and educational exchanges are at record highs.
Australia values and honours these tens of thousands of daily interactions between our peoples.
We are committed to deepening our Comprehensive Strategic Partnership with China, and I look forward to discussing how we do that with China’s leaders later this month.
Of course, China is not alone in being a force of change in our world.
But China is the country that is most changing the balance of power, sometimes in ways that challenge important US interests.
Inevitably, in the period ahead, we will be navigating a higher degree of US-China strategic competition.
A strong America — centrally engaged in the affairs of our region — is critical to Australia’s national interests.
Australia does not seek a free ride when it comes to regional security and prosperity.
We support the strongest possible US political, security and economic engagement in the Indo-Pacific in tangible ways, including by lifting our defence spending.
At the same time, it is important that US-China relations do not become defined by confrontation.
There must remain room for dialogue and cooperation.
The period ahead will, at times, be testing but I am confident of our ability to navigate it. And once again our values and beliefs will guide us.
Australia has always sought to be a citizen that plays its part in the world.
This has been particularly true in the Middle East.
From the Great War a century ago to Iraq and Afghanistan more recently. We have turned up, we have played our part, we have done our share and we have paid the price through great sacrifices.
We have done this because we believe it is right. Being true to our values and principles is always be in our interest.
Our support for Israel and our passionate desire for the success of a two state solution in the Middle East is based on these same beliefs and our desire for a lasting peace, and will continue to drive policy in this area.
Closer to home, Australia will continue to deepen cooperation with Japan, Indonesia, India and the Republic of Korea to help forge a balance in our region that supports openness and ensures the rights of all states are protected.
I look forward to warmly welcoming Japanese Prime Minister Abe to Australia soon.
The strength of our relationships with these democracies will advance our interests however the regional order evolves in the future.
It was no accident that my first international visit as Prime Minister was to Jakarta. It has become an Australian Prime Ministerial tradition.
Australia has a vital partnership with Indonesia. Indonesia is one of democracy’s greatest success stories in recent times, in my own lifetime.
It is a relationship compelled by geography, but nurtured by mutual respect, both in understanding of our differences and appreciating common goals, interests and values.
I look forward to meeting President Widodo again soon to extend our achievements in the relationship to date.
ASEAN has played a critical role in supporting regional stability and prosperity, and is at the centre of regional architecture.
Australia’s vision of the Indo-Pacific has ASEAN at its heart.
ASEAN’s success is fundamental to the interests of all the main players in the Indo-Pacific, including Australia.
Australia’s commitment to ASEAN was made clear at the Special Summit in March this year and through the Sydney Declaration which set out an ambitious agenda to deepen our cooperation.
I will be advancing that agenda at an informal summit with ASEAN leaders soon, in areas such as counter-terrorism, infrastructure and maritime cooperation.
And I will be discussing opportunities to work more closely together on transnational crime, to scale up oc-operation on cyber issues and to strengthen our defence engagement.
Just as important as the stability, prosperity and openness of Southeast Asia, is our engagement with our neighbours and family in the Pacific.
As family, we deal with each other openly and honestly, and above all with respect.
But like all families we sometimes take each other for granted.
The Government I lead is committed to the Pacific as one of my highest foreign policy priorities, because this is where we live.
This is a relationship that I want to see rise to a new level of respect, partnership, familiarity and appreciation.
I want us to do better. I want to set right how we engage with our Pacific family - our Vuvale, our Whanau. I will not be taking our Pacific family for granted.
My first meetings with foreign leaders in Australia were with the Prime Ministers of Solomon Islands and Fiji and this afternoon I’ll meet Papua New Guinea’s Prime Minister O’Neill.
I’m also looking forward to meeting my Pacific counterparts after APEC in Port Moresby. APEC will be a great opportunity for our closest neighbour to tell its story to the world.
We’ll work more closely than ever with the Pacific islands on those issues of greatest concern to them - including climate solutions and disaster resilience, and we will keep the international commitments we have made in these areas.
We are building labour mobility opportunities for Pacific countries to Australia, and ensuring Pacific countries will always take precedence.
We’re providing Australia Award scholarships to the Pacific - 1,474 last year alone.
We’re majority funding undersea cables to Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands, including a domestic network in the Solomons - which will deliver faster, cheaper and more reliable communications.
And we want to continue working with others - traditional partners like New Zealand and the United States, as well as newer ones such as China - to ensure our engagement strengthens the common goal of enhancing sustainable economic development and the wellbeing of our Pacific friends.
I want to strengthen our engagement with the Pacific for the Pacific’s sake. Because this is our home.
We will build on the ‘Boe” Pacific Regional Security Declaration to drive greater security co-operation, build greater economic linkages and strengthen the integration of our economies.
We are also working together to increase safety and security -- delivering bigger and more capable patrol boats and aerial surveillance, and sharing more information, to help the Pacific stop drug trafficking, people smuggling and illegal fishing.
And the new Australia Pacific Security College will train the next generation of security officials.
We have negotiated a Bilateral Security Agreement with Solomon Islands and we are working with Fiji to develop the Blackrock regional peacekeeping and disaster training hub.
As well, we will take take steps with Vanuatu to further strengthen our partnership, including on security.
And later this afternoon, my friend and partner, Prime Minister Peter O’Neill of Papua New Guinea and I will formally commit to a joint initiative to develop the Lombrum base on Manus.
We will also confirm a new long-term police partnership.
And commit to new annual leaders meetings, recognising the importance of each country to the other.
Like all families we are strongest when we listen to each other, stand with each other and show respect.
At a time of change, uncertainty and strategic competition, Australia will need to act with even greater purpose and conviction.
We also need to think about how our national power can be applied to protect and advance our interests.
This begins with our substantial investments in building a more capable, agile and potent Australian Defence Force.
Over the past five years, our government has been strengthening the Australian Defence Force.
Our Defence White Paper is fully funded and outlines how we will invest $200 billion in Australia’s Defence capability over the next 10 years.
Since our election in 2013 our Government committed to and has set about restoring our defence spending to 2% of GDP. We will achieve this three years ahead of time, in 2020-21.
It hasn’t been easy.
While reluctant to strike a partisan note in this presentation it must be observed that while the Labor Opposition now say they support these goals, when they had the responsibility, defence spending as a share of our economy fell to the lowest level since prior to the Second World War, with not one naval ship commissioned during their term of administration
We are now undertaking the largest regeneration of the Royal Australian Navy since the Second World War, including the doubling of our future submarine fleet, a new fleet of nine frigates and a new fleet of 12 offshore patrol vessels to ensure our borders remain secure.
The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program will give the Air Force unprecedented air capability to combat future threats.
And the Army is being backed in with new Armoured Reconnaissance Vehicles and new weapons as well as new body armour and night fighting equipment.
All of this is being done because the best way to keep Australians safe is to give the best capability to the men and women of our ADF.
Our influence internationally is built on our strength at home.
On our democracy and open society that binds us together.
On our belief in freedom and the fair go.
And it’s built on a strong economy that enables us to fulfil our promise to the Australian people.
I go to “summit season” - to the East Asia Summit in Singapore, to APEC in Papua New Guinea and to the G20 in Argentina - clear-eyed about what we believe, what we stand for and ready to advance Australia’s case.
While we live on an island — the best one on earth — we can’t afford to have an island mentality.
We embrace free trade, global engagement, and an international system where we agree to rules, stick to them and honour our commitments.
We embrace an open, stable and prosperous Indo-Pacific region.
Because shrinking into ourselves will never work.
If we want to keep our economy strong, if we want to keep Australians safe and if we want to stay united as a community we must engage with the world.
And seize the opportunities presented with both hands based on the beliefs and values that have always underpinned our success.
Address, Australian War Memorial Masterplan Redevelopment
1 November 2018
Thank you very much Mel. It’s great to have you here at this very moving event and I thank Tina for the welcome to country. Can I acknowledge the Ngunnawal people and the land on which we meet, elders past and present. There are many other distinguished guests here today but the most distinguished of all guests who are here today are our service men and women. They are our veterans and we remember those veterans and those service men and women who are not here with us today, who have left us. Who have left us on the field of battle or have left us since. The families and friends, the mates, with whom they lived their lives and shared their stories, that is who we remember today.
The Australian War Memorial, the soul of the nation. That is what is housed within its stone and brass walls. It is sacred to us all. It transcends politics, it transcends all of us. As you have heard, people are very passionate about the memorial. Its past and, importantly, its future. As in the future we look to ensure that the stories of an entire new generation of service are told and remembered for future generations. Because, sadly, there will be future generations of service as well. That means the War Memorial can never be a static institution. Even before the foundation stone was laid, the Memorial was already evolving because the Australian story of service and sacrifice has always been evolving. On Armistice Day 1941, the Memorial opened here in Canberra 23 years after the Armistice was signed and another unthinkable war raged. The Memorial had been a long time coming - collecting, designing, waiting. On Anzac Day twelve years earlier, an inauguration stone had been unveiled on a bare paddock, an attempt by the Memorial's then first director, John Treloar, to keep it at the front of people's minds.
But on that day in 1941, finally thousands of people gathered before the new stone-faced building. It stood out, as it does today, not for its size but its simplicity, its restraint, its humility. It was not a tribute to war or a nation's power or strength. It was a simple, humble memorial to the fallen and a home for their memory. A touch point for a nation still coming to terms with the scope and scale and horror of the Great War. But at the same time a nation already thrust into what they called ‘the new war’ at that time, whose greatest tests and horrors were still ahead. It honoured sacrifice and courage. It celebrated endurance and mateship. It recorded great dealings. The Memorial stood as intended directly opposite Australia's home of democracy, a constant reminder to us elected representatives of the cost of our freedoms.
The symbolism was not lost on the then Prime Minister John Curtin who had been in the job just 35 days. Speaking to those assembled he said, “The Parliament of a free people deliberating day by day cannot be inspired and strengthened by the ever present opportunity to contemplate the story that has gone before.” Four weeks later John Curtain would draw on that inspiration and strength as the Japanese launched attacks on Pearl Harbour, soon followed by assaults on Malaya, Singapore and the Philippines. And all those gathered there on the 11th of November 1941 would draw further strength and inspiration inside the Memorial's bronze gates. Inside they learnt the story of the Great War. Charles Bean, the official war historian, was a driving force behind the memorial and understood that many Australians struggle to fully grasp the war. They knew its cost, they were reminded daily by missing husbands, sons and brothers. Dads, mums, the more than 60,000 men who had served and died. But unlike many Europeans whose homeland had in ravaged, who had seen the pain and heard the suffering and could mourn at the graves of their beloved, Australians who had served were a world away. Parents would mourn sons, children would mourn lost fathers but where were they to mourn? They needed help to grief and they needed to know the nation would never forget and so that was what Memorial offered. A place to grief, a place of memory and a place of honour.
It became a pilgrimage to many Australian families. In the first year more than 52,000 people visited. In those days it took quite a bit of time, days, to travel to Canberra. They looked at paintings and drawings, about 1,600 in all. They were transported by the artworks like George Lambert’s Anzac, the landing 1915 and Will Longstaff’s Menin Gate at midnight. They were moved by the 12 dioramas depicting famous battles. They were confronted with two German fighter planes in the aeroplane hall. And in the library they went in search - 15,000 books, 100,000 photographs, 60 miles of war films and millions of other documents. The Memorial performed its role well. Its purpose and role would change with time. It could not, as had been planned for decades, be just a monument to the Great War. It would have to change and expand to accommodate our nation's evolving history in war and, as regrettable as that is, how people learn from our history. It began almost immediately after the Second World War. The Memorial’s collection almost doubled. Packing cases full of records and relics blocked the corridors and extension plans were drawn up.
By the 1960s many veterans were asking the Memorial to tell the complete story of Australia's war history. So new displays were created and major building extensions began. Extensions that were obsolete within seven years as visitors numbers grew even further. So more plans were made, more space was needed and so it went on. We’ve now reached another point where change is needed. There are more than 102,000 names on the Memorial's roll of honour. The names of Australians, men and women, who were called into action to defend their nation, who left their homes and jobs and families behind. Australians who were loved and remain loved, Australians we have lost. It almost goes without saying that in the years to come, my prayers and those of a nation are that there will be no additions to that roll. That the Memorial, if we could just freeze it, and it was in the past, but I fear those prayers will one day again turn to prayers for consolation and comfort as we seek to reconcile our service with future sacrifices. History may seem to be against us on this, but we will do our best because the first responsibility of governments is to keep our people safe.
Today, there are many stories that need telling, recent stories, like the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, the peacekeeping missions that we've heard the wonderful stories and terrible stories of today. And there's a need to tell them, the sacrifice of a new generation in ways to the almost 1.1 million people who visit the memorial each year, to share the complete story, the complete story, in a way that resonates for today's Australians. And that's why we're here. The Memorial has been exploring, with support from our Government, with options for redevelopment. And Brendan I know is going to talk a lot more about those in a few moments. But what I will say is that these plans are imaginative and they are creative and appropriate for the Memorial's purpose and place in Australia, housing the soul of our nation. That's why our Government is supportive of these plans. We want future generations to be able to honour those who have served across all generations of service. And those service men and women who serve today.
So today I am pleased to announce the Government is backing these plans, providing $498 million over the next nine years to see these plans fulfilled.
[Applause]
Thank you. The funding will allow the Memorial to implement these plans and not be limited in its ambition. There will be paintings and dioramas, there will be planes - more planes, in fact. But what has made the Memorial so compelling and so meaningful over the years will remain. But it will also, as it always has, adjust to new times so it can continue delivering as a place of commemoration and understanding as the soul of the nation.
Before I conclude, and I ask for your indulgence, I want to say plainly though, that more than memorials of stone, the best memorial is how we serve and support our veterans and their families who are with us each and every day. Before we could permit as a Government the significant financial commitment that we are making today, because Kerry and Brendan have been bringing this proposal to us now for several years, and we have supported them through the early stages. Before we could make this commitment today, our Government's priority has been increasing our investment in the support we provide to our veterans community. To honestly turn around and address areas of underperformance for our veterans, and live up to our part of the bargain to support our veterans. You'll be aware of the investment and the indexing of defence pensions, you'll be aware of the counselling support 24/7 for veterans and their families, almost $200 million invested every year. $100 million invested every year in covering mental health and conditions, meaning that any member or former member of the ADF who was served just one day is eligible for mental health treatment uncapped and needs driven. And a massive investment in the 100-year-old DVA, throwing out a paper based system, and punting 18 clunky old computer systems, the result being the average processing time for claims has now fallen from 120 days to just 33. This year, the government is providing, with bipartisan support of course, over $11 billion in benefits, services and support to our 288,000 veterans and their families.
But there will always be more to do. I want to assure all veterans, all veterans, that not one dollar, not one cent, of what we're investing in this important memorial today is coming at the expense of support for our veterans here and now and into the future. That remains our priority task. I commend the War Memorial, Brendan, Kerry, and the whole team, on what they have put forward here. It is part of honouring and maintaining the wonderful culture of respect we have in this country for our servicemen and women. Born over generations, over the century. We must continue that, we must continue to honour the fallen and we must continue to serve the living. Lest we forget.
Address, HMAS Brisbane Commissioning Ceremony
27 October 2018
Can I also acknowledge the Gadigal people, elders past and present, his Excellency the Governor General and Lady Cosgrove, Minister for Defence Christopher Pyne and other parliamentary colleagues, Chief of the Defence Force, Chief of Navy, but in particular can I acknowledge all those who stand behind me now, all those who stand before me now, all those who serve around the world today on Her Majesty’s Australian ships and simply say thank you. We honour your service, the service that you’ve given and the service of those standing behind me are about the provide and the service of those serving men and women all around the world today.
“We aim at higher things” is the motto. Brisbane. Aim at higher things. And that is what we as a nation have done.
In commissioning the HMAS Brisbane today, we realise that vision of looking higher. An even stronger Australia supported by a wonderful and proud navy. It is a proud day, it’s a high water mark for Australians as the HMAS Brisbane prepares to sail into service. Our hard won values and freedoms are contingent on a government that holds the safety and security of its people and the defence of its territory and its interests as its fundamental responsibility. Ringed as we are by the sea, girt indeed, the Royal Australian Navy in close partnership with the Royal Australian Air Force and our valued allies provide that guarantee. But it is an enormous task carried out in an increasingly challenging global security environment. Its effectiveness is also critical to the trade flows that sustain our region’s peace and economic prosperity. So while Australia will always seek to befriend and not to antagonise, we must do so from a position of strength, preparedness and capability.
The Minister for Defence and I, we like building ships. We like it. Because we believe in it. Because those who sail on these ships, they carry our voice, they stand up for our beliefs as a nation and they serve those beliefs all around the world and the very least we can do is support them by ensuring they have the capability – the world’s best capability that you see behind us – to enable them to fulfil that service.
So we look at the today, HMAS Brisbane as a combat management system second to none intricate and integrated to the extent that the simultaneous defence can be deployed against air, surface and sub-surface threats. At the same time we should recognise that the outstanding record of ships bearing the name Brisbane stems from the sailors who have served on board. And here with us today are former Commanding Officers and personnel of the earlier generation guided missile destroyer HMAS Brisbane too. While you may have not worn your RAN uniform for many years, I want you to know that the nation will always be grateful to your service.
In the First World War, the light cruiser HMAS Brisbane (I) participated in the hunt for the German raider SMS Wolf – launching, in 1917, the first aircraft from an Australian warship. In 1969, HMAS Brisbane (II) served with the United States Navy’s 7th Fleet in the South China Sea, providing valuable gunfire support off the coast of South Vietnam. Brisbane (II) would also receive the Meritorious Unit Citation for her courageous service during the first Gulf War in 1991.
And so through the proud pages of history we arrive here today, commissioning the third Royal Australian Navy ship Brisbane. She becomes the second of the Adelaide-built air warfare destroyers to reach this milestone under a project initiated by the Howard Government in 2007. I want to place on record our government’s thanks to John Howard for his commitment and vision for where we stand today.
So here we are, commissioning another great ship into service. Men and women will serve on her wherever their nation calls on them to send. And for that, I’m a grateful Prime Minister, we’re a grateful nation and we thank them for their service.
May God bless all of those who sail on her.
Press Conference - Drought Summit
26 October 2018
PRIME MINISTER: Can I start off by thanking all of those who have come from all around Australia today. State and territory leaders, farmers, charity workers, drought coordinators, people who just love rural and regional Australia like Macca. The whole community has come together to focus on our drought relief, our drought recovery and our drought resilience into the future. It has been, I think, a very important day for Australia and a very important session. The spirit of contribution of all those who attended today, I think, was very well received. It was a great opportunity to come together. I can’t recall the last time that when all state and territory leaders, Commonwealth, local government, all of those leaders in the ag sector have come together to focus on an issue like this. And I think that is a very meaningful thing to do, you know, it was all about one important thing and that was getting on the same page. About how we are dealing with the drought, how we are planning to ensure that we have resilience against drought well into the future.
The common operating picture, as Major General Day has talked about, which you can see being shown up here on the screen. This is what getting on the same page means. Whether it is on issues of climate, whether it’s on issues of forecasts, the economic circumstances in towns and regions where services are being delivered. Everybody from around the country, regardless of what state and territory, what shire you’re in, wherever you are. You will now be able to reference a single information point to work out where is the best place to apply your effort in what you are doing to ensure that we are dealing with our drought relief response and recovery and resilience into the future. The common operating picture will continue to be populated through the financial taskforce set up by the Treasurer and the Minister for Agriculture working together with major financial institutions to ensure that the information that they have is also coming online. That the charity information is populating this common operating picture. Because if you're all looking at the same map, if you’re all looking at the same information, if you’re all referencing the same data, then you can all make decisions that work together. That is what drought coordination response is all about. So I want to congratulate Major General Day for that excellent piece of work which is now an important tool for Australians all around the country as we deal with the drought as a national task.
Now as you know today we made a number of announcements and I set those out at the beginning of the presentation and the Summit today. That was the establishment of a Future Drought Fund, starting off with $3.9 billion, assigned from the Future Fund into this very task, protected forever with the returns of the Fund being reinvested to ensure it grows up to $5 billion. But $100 million draw down to enable that to be invested in important drought infrastructure projects and other important resilience projects on an ongoing basis. So we are investing in future drought resilience year on year on year forever, protected by legislation, that Drought Fund, that Drought Future Fund, to enable this country to always have that reserve to draw on in times of drought. Secondly, the extension of the Drought Communities Program. That program will now be $81.5 million extending out into another 21 other councils, 21 shires all across the country and particularly into South Australia. Because we know the drought is creeping. It’s creeping across state boundaries and that enables us to try and get ahead and get support into those communities before the drought fully hits and they are able to restore and provide some resilience against the economics of drought in their local communities.
The mental health support of $15.3 million, that’s on top of the additional investment that has already been put in place for mental health support, which also includes the additional funding we have provided to Headspace, a significant portion of which is being designed to be delivered remotely, online through the Headspace networks. But you know, almost half of Headspaces network is outside the major metropolitan areas. It’s an important resource, mental health resource for young people all around the country. Drought community support, investing through those incredible charitable organisations. Whether it’s the CWA or others which are out there in contact with those communities and know where the people are hurting most and they can provide that support to them which they’re already providing and we’re going to significantly expand their capability. Now that means things, support through voucher systems which means the money gets spent in the town. Because this drought isn’t just about farms, it’s about rural and regional communities and a lifestyle that we are seeking to protect forever which is such an important part of Australia.
The on-farm water infrastructure rebate is $50 million invested in that rebate scheme which is backing in the investment which is being made by farmers drought-proofing their own properties. Now that’s not only good for resilience into the future, but it’s fantastic for the local towns again which is where they get their supplies from to put that infrastructure in place on their properties. And of course, the Farm Hub, which is a suggestion of the National Farmers Federation and Fiona and that will be set up online and will be run by the National Farmers Federation.
One of the things that came out of today’s summit was that, you know, in many cases, information is almost as important as water and how we connect information on the services and support and the planning right around the country so we can invest, target and coordinate our effort to assist our communities get to the other side and then thrive on the other side. And so information sharing, information coordination, is a key outtake. But the other one is on implementation, and Major General Day as our Coordinator-General on our drought response has been pulling all this together and today, I have announced that I am appointing David Littleproud to be the Minister for Drought Preparation and Response. And Major General Day will work together with Minister Littleproud to ensure the actions that are required at the Ministerial level are coordinated and addressed right across all portfolios on a whole of government basis. So that will give Major General Day another great support and assistance in addition to myself as Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister, but an all-day Minister there who can support him in the work that he is doing to coordinate across portfolios.
So it has been a very important day today. It has focused on response, the relief, the recovery and the resilience into the future. We have been listening, we are planning, and we are acting right across a raft of issues. Right across the spectrum, and that was incredibly well received today by those who were in attendance. And we all go from this place better informed, better equipped, better connected to make sure that the communities that everybody is going back to today can be assured of even greater support into the future. I’m going to ask the Deputy Prime Minister to speak and then Fiona and then we’re happy to take questions.
DEPUTY PRIME MINISTER: Well thank you Prime Minister, and thank you again for making drought your number one priority and we see that. On that day you were elected Liberal leader, before you were sworn in as Prime Minister, we were both on the same page. The number one priority had to be our drought stricken communities, because our farmers, our rural and regional communities, they underpin Australia. They really do. When our agricultural sector is strong, so too is regional Australia. When regional Australia is strong, so too is our nation. So I was very, very pleased that you called, arranged and organised this Summit. It was such an important event.
The fact is, I think we’ve come away from today with a sense of purpose and determination and resolve. We stand shoulder to shoulder, side by side, with our farmers, with our rural and regional communities. We’ve done that in past months, we’re doing it now and we’ll continue to do it in the future. Not just for the weeks and the months ahead when it might rain again, but indeed in the years ahead. And the Future Drought Fund does just that. It does just that. It’s going to make sure that we’ve got the available resources, not just capital, but resources as well on the ground when the next drought occurs after this one. And unfortunately, part of Australia is always in drought, so it’s going to be an annual commitment, an annual commitment forever, protected by legislation to make sure that the Government has the back of rural and regional Australia. That the Government continues to have the back of our farmers.
Our farmers are the best in the world, make no mistake. Our farmers are the most resilient in the world but they need a bit of a hand up at the moment. Not a handout, but a hand up, and we’re providing that. The Future Drought Fund does just that. We’ve heard today, it was a very robust discussion at times. We have heard from stakeholders, we’ve heard from charities, we’ve heard from people such as Michael Jeffery, a former Governor-General, who remind us how just how important water and particularly soil is to the national conversation about drought and how we better prepare our nation for those dry times. But I was very, very pleased as well to hear from the Premiers, and not only did they turn up but the Premiers and Chief Ministers came and they stayed and they listened, and they also spoke. And they spoke and they also heard too about the importance of that inter-governmental agreement, which I know Fiona Simpson talked about a number of times at this morning’s summit.
Making sure that we are all, as the Prime Minister has just said, on the same page when it comes to this issue, this drought and future droughts. Making sure that at all levels of government, local, state and federal, that we are all on the same page when it comes to helping our farming communities, our rural and regional communities through these troubled times. And I’m pleased also that we‘re involving the charities and we are also making sure that councils, 21 additional councils, are going to receive the resources and the backing that they need to keep some of that money flowing through the communities, through the towns, and to keep workers in the towns, because that is all important. I would like to hand over to somebody who is not only a leading advocate for drought, not only a leading voice in drought and making sure that we are better prepared in the future, but somebody who is also a farmer herself. The Chairman of the Farmer's Federation and farmer from the Liverpool Plains of New South Wales, Fiona Simpson.
FIONA SIMPSON, PRESIDENT OF THE NATIONAL FARMERS FEDERATION: Thanks very much, Michael McCormack. Thank you Prime Minister, thank you for the invitation and thank you for holding the Drought Summit today. As President of Australia's largest farmer advocacy body I often say that we want the whole of government to be behind us. We want the whole of government support for a strategic focus on our industry, and today not only did we have the whole of government approach from the Federal Government, but we had all the Premiers in the room, the Ag Ministers, right down to local government and stakeholders as well. Never does that happen. Never in my memory can I remember that happening. And I think that is an extraordinary day for agriculture.
Australian agriculture is a very strong industry. We have been strong in the past, we often talk about Australia riding on the sheep's back in in some sort of, you know, nice way. But in actual fact it is not just about folklore. Australian agriculture is an industry of the future. We believe that we can reach $100 billion farm value production in 2030. But we do need government to stand beside us and support us and not just supporting the agricultural industry, but also supporting our rural and regional industries through periods of drought. In the farming community, we know that drought is an inevitable part of our business cycle. Just as we have very good times in agriculture, so do we sometimes have very challenging times and that’s through a lack of rainfall and increasing heat, decreasing soil moisture and a number of factors that make up the map, such as Stephen Day is showing.
So we know that drought policy is a tricky thing. It is not just about one thing. Drought policy is about cohesion, it is about collaboration, it is about all three tiers of government working together with industry to focus on resilience, to focus on preparation, to focus on support during those emergency times when things are critical for many people as they are right now, at the moment. And we very, very much welcome not just the opportunity to talk about some of those issues today and all stand together, but also to some of the announcements that the Government has made. The Drought Future Fund, the $5 million amount which will accrue is an amazing opportunity for us to plan for the future of agriculture through drought. For the future rural and regional communities through drought. To plan for resilience, and to plan on how we are going to keep our industry and our communities strong. Never before have we had this amount set aside, never before have we had the ability to focus into the future and plan for the sorts of spending that we would like in this space. So that is an amazing announcement, thank you Prime Minister.
The extra money to charities will be very welcome for those people doing it particularly tough. The extra money for mental health support in our regions. The extra money for councils. The extra 21 councils that are going to benefit from this. There is already an amazing array of projects that are happening in our rural and regional communities because of this extra funding. It is an amazing scheme, as is the extra money, the $50 million for emergency stock water infrastructure. As I travel around this week, I have been to Roma in the middle of Queensland, and again water infrastructure is something, and spending money on water infrastructure, is something that we know can really help landowners become more resilient in the drying cycle and in the inevitable drought cycle.
Lastly, the drought hub we believe will be an incredible resource for the community to be able to come to one-stop. It is a one-stop shop to be able to get information. Drought support is delivered through many tiers of government, many different agencies, many different stakeholders. It is an incredibly confusing space. At the moment people have to log on to a number of different websites, go to a number of different help desks to try to get assistance. We hope that the drought hub will be a great initiative to enable us to streamline the assistance that is being offered. We hope that the drought hub will be a great initiative to enable us to streamline the assistance that is being offered.
So again, the agricultural industry, it was great to see so many farmers in the room today. It was great to see so many stakeholders in the room today. As I said, three tiers of government.
We really thank the Prime Minister and thank the Government for the support. We know that the Government is really beside us as we go through what is at the moment a really challenging period for our industry and for rural and regional Australia. Thank you very much.
PRIME MINISTER: Okay, happy to take some questions on the Drought Summit and the Ministers and of course Major General Day is here to respond as well. So we’ll start with questions on the Summit. Yes?
JOURNALIST: Prime Minister how will you ensure that Australia remains competitive and that these finances are just used to prop up farmers who have been able to innovate and adapt?
PRIME MINISTER: That’s a very good question and it was a key issue that was discussed today at the Summit. In terms of ensuring that we are making farm businesses stronger businesses, this is about them being strong, profitable, competitive, productive businesses. This Fund, that is the Drought Future Fund, will particularly be investing in broader scale water infrastructure in particular, which goes beyond the farm. That can be dealing with every from large-scale water storage, dams, things of that nature. We’ll have more to say about that. But this is about the bigger set infrastructure and broader resilience projects that can be put in place and funded from those funds.
Now that ties in with the work that’s being done on the on farm water infrastructure rebates. That’s a 25 per cent rebate. So that means the farm is putting in themselves and the co-investment that these measures are designed to support is what, I think, goes to your question. The other issue we talked today about was cluster fencing. Now cluster fencing - as David knows, he introduced me to the concept when I was up at Quilpie - what this does is bring together a series of farmers together with a co-invest, not only with the Commonwealth and the State Government and on occasion local governments, but they also then take up the responsibility for maintaining the fences into the future. When I was heading out into Quilpie that day, I remember we were looking at, we were looking out the window and we saw all these old fences that were all broken down and they were all run down. Then we saw the new ones and those new fences, those dog fences and dealing with pests and weeds, this was a really big part of future-proofing the farms. But they need to be maintained, so our approach is one of co-investment with farms themselves, farming communities themselves.
Then you of course have the charitable sector support and the relief. Now, that is really there to provide some immediate-term relief. But the longer term and medium-term investments, we are making with farmers.
JOURNALIST: Just looking at that map, you’ve got water on one side and not a lot of water on the other side. Will this particular fund be investing in new dams and new pipelines to get the water where we need it? Or will that be separate?
PRIME MINISTER: Well that is one of the things it will be supporting. We will have more to say down the track about our water infrastructure plans. We are very committed to these as well as you know, we have had a Water Infrastructure Fund now - and Michael may wish to make a comment on that - where we have been investing in weirs and a whole range of other important projects, like near Rockhampton, where I was not that long ago.
So we are big believers in investing in the water storage in those catchment areas, to make sure that we just don't see it evaporate and run out to sea. We’ve to make better use of our water. We’ve got the CSIRO report which identifies a large number of those opportunities that need investment. But as the Victorian Premier said today, that needs to be done with co-investment between the states and Commonwealth. And we will be prepared to step up to that. In Queensland they need to be prepared to step up to that, we can’t have a moratorium on dams, we need to get dams done. I’m not suggesting there necessarily is, but there needs to be a commitment to work together to put that infrastructure in place.
JOURNALIST: Was everyone on the same page in the meeting on the two issues of the role of climate change driving climate variability, which you spoke about earlier and also the need for a national intergovernmental drought policy?
PRIME MINISTER: I think everyone was on the same page when it came to having a clear plan to deal with the drought response, that focused, as we have said, on relief, recovery and resilience. As the former Governor-General put it, Michael Jeffery; “We’ve got to know which hill to attack, you’ve got to attack the right hill”, which I thought Major General David particularly got the metaphor. Because he’s been making sure we do attack the right hill on these issues. So I think there was that commonality, people were on the same page and I think when we went through this material, but also the material from ABEAR and from the Bureau of Meteorology, one of the things about this drought season, this drought period compared to others, is the much stronger financial conditions in which this drought is taking place. So the prices people are getting for livestock, the strong arrangements we have in place for trade which is supporting those prices is to some extent mitigating what could be far worse impact in these communities.
So I thought there was a good common understanding. But again I thought Daniel Andrews put it well when he came in and said; “I’m not here really to have an ideological discussion about climate change.” The changing climate, of course, was a matter that was acknowledged and that was discussed in the communique which has gone out today acknowledges that as well, as does our Government.
JOURNALIST: Prime Minister would you put more money into the Bureau of Meteorology? One of the things farmers complain about is the unreliability of the forecasts.
PRIME MINISTER: Already have. Check out the last Budget, we’ve put some of the biggest investments into the Bureau of Meteorology to upgrade their IT and their ICT platforms that we’ve seen in a very long time. This was the key issue that was brought to us by the Bureau of Meteorology over the past two Budgets, we’ve funded over two Budgets. The important thing about that ICT platform is that it connects into what the farmers need on the ground. It’s addressing the digital needs, I mean it was a rickety old machine and it needed serious re-investment to upgraded. It was a big commitment in our most recent Budget and we’re following through on that.
JOURNALIST: Why is there a disconnect between what farmers will say today, despite that money? Why are they still not feeling the forecasts are preparing them for the climate?
PRIME MINISTER: Well forecasts are exactly that. The Bureau of Meteorology will always provide the normal qualifications, frankly that just as economic forecasters in my old job, you would always find would qualify on the variabilities. But the science that goes into that and the ICT platforms that we have heavily invested in - more than any previous government- is providing the tools that the BOM needs to ensure that not only do they pull his forecast together, but they can disseminate them digitally to put that information in the hands, on the laptops, on the iPads of the farmers who are out there, connecting that into what they are doing on their farms each and every day.
Now if you go and look at what is happening in agtech and fintech and how it connects all of that data, all of that information is from proving enormously helpful in how farmers are planning and how they’re working with their financial backers to ensure they can mitigate the risks and get the lowest-cost to finance. So, it’s a big investment and it’s a very worthy one.
JOURNALIST: Can I go off topic just very briefly? Because I’ve got to run.
[Laughter]
PRIME MINISTER: Well unless there are any other questions on drought, given it’s a Drought Summit.
JOURNALIST: You’ve brought together a lot of the states and territories, farmers in the past have found it difficult, if they farm either side of the border, with the responses that the different states have to drought. What can you offer them today, after having all these people come here, that there will be greater consistency irrespective of where you farm in this country?
PRIME MINISTER: Yeah well Fiona, you might want to comment on this. This actually was raised in today's meeting and that’s why I want to thank again the state premiers and chief ministers out of the ACT and Northern Territory for being here and being here all day and listening. Because these issues were raised.
One of the things, I must admit, that I found helpful as a Prime Minister is that I have lots of individual conversations with people on this topic, as Stephen does all the time and as my colleagues do. But to have all those conversations and inputs happening in the one place at the one time, so we could all be the same information at the same time – as policymakers, as decision makers, as those who are researching in the field, those who are running farms and coordinating responses - this was enormously helpful. The states and territories can go away with a much better understanding of some of those frustrations. But here was a cracker, which we dealt with a few weeks ago; the issue of the heavy vehicle regulations which was actually stopping hay getting from one side of a border to another. We got rid of it. We got rid of it. Scotty Buchholz got rid of it in a week, based on the feedback we got from Fiona. So yes, doing that is important. But I might ask Fiona to comment.
PRESIDENT, NATIONAL FARMERS FEDERATION: Certainly, Prime Minister and you’ll be pleased to know I am storing up a couple of other little things that only the Prime Minister can do that I am looking forward to discussing with you in coming weeks.
[Laughter]
No look, that was really one of the things we brought to the table, it’s a technical sort of discussion around the intergovernmental agreement. So the drought relief through the States, through the Federal Government, how they work together pretty much, is administered by the intergovernmental agreement. It’s NFF’s view that we do need an overhaul of that agreement. We do need to look very carefully at how we work together. There are people [inaudible] that work on either side of the state boundary who make it incredibly complicated, but also when we’re looking at mapping, when we’re looking at trigger maps, when we’re looking at determining when people are drought and the sorts of things that might be available to them at different stages of the business cycle, it’s incredibly difficult if we don't have national and consistent terms, if we don't have nationally consistent triggers and nationally consistent information.
So today I raised and we had a lot of really good discussion on a range of topics today, but some of the technical things, one of them was around the IGA. David has committed – I’m not sure of the timeline, David - David has committed that is something that we will have another look at, because we certainly need to strengthen that. We need to look at how we work together. We need to make sure that those differences across borders don’t matter to people when they’re in the throes of drought and that it’s much easier to operate businesses. Because as the Prime Minister says, farming is operating businesses. We want to make it as easy as possible. We want to make it as streamlined as possible.
The Productivity Commission and others keep talking about the red tape in agriculture. We don't want to be tied up in that when we are dealing with drought, when we are dealing with businesses and we’re dealing with stock and animals and water and all the important things. We want to get on with the job.
PRIME MINISTER: So the intergovernmental agreement was discussed between the Premiers, Chief Ministers and I this morning and it has been the subject of review by Ag Ministers. Recommendations for how that might be upgraded and updated will be considered by COAG later in the year. So it will be a good opportunity for Fiona and the NFF and other stakeholders to be feeding in there.
There is the text of the agreement, it’s not a particularly long document. It largely separates who is responsible for what. That’s quite helpful. A lot of issues, I think, raised today about what is the accountability then, for those things actually happening and what’s the process for that? Particularly resolving it across state boundaries. So that work is very much under way and acknowledged.
JOURNALIST: Bill Shorten today suggested banks should be stripped of their rights to manage superannuation.
PRIME MINISTER: Are we done with drought? It seems so, let’s move to other issues.
JOURNALIST: Bill Shorten today suggested banks should be stripped of their rights to manage superannuation. Do you agree?
PRIME MINISTER: Well I’m going to wait for the recommendations of the banking royal commission, which Bill Shorten seems to want to ignore and second-guess and override, that proper process, which is underway.
Bill Shorten will always argue the case for union based industry funds and try to provide a competitive advantage for them. He says he wants to run the country like a union, he must want to run the financial system like one too.
JOURNALIST: On a related note Labor published its Royal Commission submission to the interim report... but they’ve directly contravened the rules set out by Commissioner Hayne in bringing up past issues of behavior and talking about unrelated things to the policy questions that he raised. What’s your response to that?
PRIME MINISTER: Bill Shorten doesn't respect the Royal Commission. For Bill Shorten the Royal Commission was only ever a political exercise, for him. Our Government has initiated this Royal Commission. Commissioner Hayne, I think, is doing an extraordinary job of keeping it very focused and ensuring it’s being done in a very timely fashion. We respect the job that he is doing and we respect the work that all of those working for the royal commission are doing. I mean Bill Shorten has been quite offensive, I think, to that process and those who are doing very good work. I mean they are working very hard, they’ve reviewed all the submissions, all of them and there’s over 8,000 of them. They’ve been doing that work and for that to just be sort of dismissed like Bill Shorten has done, I think has shown quite a lot of disrespect. But at the end of the day, it’s just exposed that for him, this was always just about politics. It wasn’t actually about helping people.
We’re focused on that in terms of dealing respectfully with the royal commission. We commissioned it, we initiated it. We’ll work with it once the recommendations are provided and we’ll take further action. Because we’ve already taken a lot of action in this space, whether it’s been the Financial Complaints Authority or the banking executive accountability regime, the additional penalties at the disposal of ASIC, the employment of Dan Crennan as a deputy commissioner of ASIC which enables them to go and prosecute, because that was highlighted by Commissioner Hayne in his first interim report as being a real issue. So, we’ve given the resources and the people to go and do that.
JOURNALIST: Mr Shorten also said that bank executives who were in charge when the banks were ripping Australians off should consider handing back their bonuses. Is that something you’d support as well?
PRIME MINISTER: We’ve already legislated it. I introduced the banking executive accountability regime. Bill Shorten talked about it when Trio and all these things were happening on his watch and he did absolutely nothing about it, while Labor was there.
The banking and financial industry, in all these cases that you’re hearing about, they were happening when Bill Shorten was the Financial Services Minister.
Did he call a royal commission? No.
Did he introduce tougher rules to deal with banking executives? No.
You know, he’s a lion in Opposition and a mouse when he’s in Government. What we’ve done is we’ve taken the big stick, we’ve got the legislation in place, we’ve passed it. And they argued the toss over it. We had to actually twist their arm to get them to vote for it. I mean these guys, they’re all talk, no action.
JOURNALIST: Prime Minister on Saudi Arabia, will the Government put a moratorium on defence equipment sales and intelligence sharing with the Saudi regime?
PRIME MINISTER: The Foreign Minister and the Trade Minister and I are monitoring these issues incredibly closely. As you know, we’ve withdrawn our involvement in some important trade events that are occurring in Saudi Arabia. We’re working closely with our partners around the world on this topic. We’re appalled beyond description by what has happened and we expect Saudi officials and others to fully cooperate with what is the process of justice which is underway. We will be taking any and all necessary steps that we think are needed to pursue that path and pursue that outcome.
So thank you all very much, again, thank you to all those who attended from around Australia today. We’re backing in Australians, rural and regional communities and we’re going to ensure that they continue to have the relief and that they continue to have the recovery and that they have the resilience in the future that makes Australia even stronger.
Thank you.
https://pmtranscripts.pmc.gov.au/release/transcript-41898
Address to the Drought Summit
26 October 2018
Well thank you Pip and can I thank you too Auntie Ros and Mary for your wonderful welcome to country. Can I also acknowledge the traditional owners and elders past and present. Can I also thank my colleagues who have joined me here today from the Commonwealth Parliament, particularly the Deputy Prime Minister and all of my state and territory colleagues, the Premiers and Chief Ministers for joining us here today for this important national occasion here in our nation's capital. But can I particularly thank all of you who've come from all parts of the country to be with us here today, to get here and to ensure that we can all get on the same page in terms of how we continue to respond and in terms of how we continue to adjust, to deal with both the relief and the recovery, but also the resilience for the future. So thank you for being here today.
We’re in Canberra, Australia's national meeting place, the place where important decisions that affect the future of our country have been made for generations. In this very chamber, I think it's fitting that we are here today, because these challenges around drought and our response and our recovery and our resilience are exactly the same challenges that they were dealing with here many years ago and we will always deal with as an Australian nation. And we'll always deal with it in our state and territory jurisdictions and we'll always have those challenges. So these conversations about drought, these decisions, these actions, this cooperation, is no stranger to this chamber, any more than it's a stranger to the chamber up the road. The only difference is, I've noticed the seats here a little comfier than the other ones up there.
[Laughter]
I'll have a chat with the Speaker about that at another time, maybe they need a bit of extra padding here, Scotty, I don't know.
It's great to do it here in the nation's capital Andrew, and we’re very pleased I think, to be here on this occasion. Dealing with drought, our change in climate and preparing for drought is a top priority of our Government. I want to thank you for making arrangements with your families, with your businesses, with you workplaces and of course, with those on your farms that have enabled you to travel here today to be part of this Summit. Some of you have left behind incredibly difficult circumstances and you know they'll be there when you get back to them. The drought, which for some Australians I've visited, is easily the worst for them in living memory and it's a long way from breaking. But the true spirit of Australians is not for breaking.
As I welcome you here today, I want to say that we acknowledge that tremendous resilience. Because if the drought is has reminded us of one thing, it's the indomitable spirit of Australians and particularly rural and regional Australians. And the hope that they have in the future and their commitment to ensuring the maintenance of a lifestyle that has been lived in this country for generations and generations and indeed, as I acknowledge the Indigenous people of Australia, our care for our land, for our environment, it goes back 60,000 years and is a great heritage for us to pick up on.
We trust that our mates will be there to help us when times are tough, in our days and our weeks and months and years if necessary, of need. Whatever it takes, Australians have been sticking together in tough times, it's in our DNA and that's why, when I became Prime Minister, I announced that managing the drought would be one of my highest priorities. As we quickly went up to Quilpie, with Major General Stephen Day who I acknowledge today, and the Deputy Prime Minister and Bridget McKenzie and of course the Agriculture Minister David Littleproud, that's what we saw, a great response - and Scotty Buchholz too - to how the Government was moving quickly, to go and stand with people right across the country and in some of its worst affected areas.
So welcome again to the Summit. By bringing you together, we’re seeking to get an overarching picture about where and what needs to continue to be done. The town, the community, farm pressure points, especially in Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria, but increasingly in South Australia and other regions as the drought extends its reach. You are the stakeholders with the expertise and there are many others beyond this place who we couldn't fit all in here today. Your field of vision is what we are looking at today. So please don't be backwards in coming forwards.
We also need to ensure we have a good understanding of the support currently being delivered. So allow me to address those issues before us. Already, there is more than $1.8 billion in assistance measures and concessional loans to support drought-affected farmers and communities. A lot is being done at the Commonwealth level, just as it's being done at the state and territory level. In terms of the Commonwealth, extending the Farm Household Allowance from three to four years, a temporary increase in Farm Household Allowance asset threshold from $2.6 million to $5 million and a new temporary FHA supplement of up to $12,000 for eligible farming couples for household and up to $7,200 for eligible single farmers paid as two lump sum payments. Providing up to $72 million for a special drought round from the National Water Infrastructure Fund, for water infrastructure in drought affected areas, already out there. Increasing support for mental health with an additional 11. $4 million to assist rural communities and communities impacted by drought. Already out there, doing that job. Investing in local infrastructure projects and drought affected communities by boosting the drought communities program by $75 million and providing support of $1 million to 60 eligible councils and shires in this financial year right here, right now, to support the towns, to support the local regional economies. Additional support for producers and graziers to help manage pest, animals and weeds. Changing the rules so that primary producers can immediately deduct rather than depreciate over three years, the cost of fodder storage assets such as silos and hay sheds used to store grain and other animal feed, making it easier for farmers to I believe invest in and stockpile fodder.
And cutting red tape. A really simple thing for truckies carting hay. Longer and higher loads of hay and fodder should be allowed to travel on state and nationally controlled, and that was a partnership exercise in territories to deal with one of the frustrating inconveniences that was just getting in the way of getting the feed to the farm. Now, the one for councils in a drought affected area is there is to help stimulate rural and regional communities with local infrastructure and other product projects, road upgrades, water infrastructure, community events, dog fences, whatever the need happens to be. And on top of this, we have announced another $15 million worth of grants as we did yesterday, to be dispersed to not-for-profits in drought communities through the foundation for rural and regional renewal which I'm sure the former Governor-General has a keen interest in, being involved in that organisation. As all the applications come in, we need to ensure they are targeted and coordinated because a local economy that is kept ticking supports not only farmers, but it also helps the hairdresser, as Barnaby reminds us, the mechanic, the supermarket, to remain open in these towns and services can continue to be delivered. But there's a lot more work to do, as we know.
In bringing it together today, farmers, businesses, charities, banking and financial services - all levels of government, this Summit is an opportunity to go even further with additional measures for relief, for recovery and for resilience for the drought. That's why today I'm announcing a package of significant new initiatives, as part of our Government's ongoing drought response. First the Future Drought Fund. A comprehensive drought response needs to meet not only the immediate needs of those affected but to look to the future to ensure our agriculture sector is prepared and resilient. So we can do this, our Government is establishing a Future Drought Fund with an initial allocation of $3.9 billion in 2019. In time, this fund will grow to $5 billion. The Future Drought Fund will provide a sustainable source of funding for drought resilience works, preparedness and recovery. It's about helping farmers and their communities to prepare and adapt to the impact of drought. Through the fund, the Government will drawdown $100 million a year for projects, research and infrastructure to support long-term sustainability. It will operate very similar to the medical research fund which was established by the Government some years ago. So to establish a base of capital, to see that capital basic spend up to $5 billion, but at the same time drawing down on the earnings of that fund, to ensure we can invest in these ongoing projects, this is about putting money away for a non-rainy day in the future and continuing to do it for the non-rainy days that extend out. And there is no time to waste. We'll begin operating that fund as soon as we are able to pass the legislation through the Parliament.
We know the drought is not just felt on the farm, when spending dries up in regional up towns, it threatens the prosperity of local businesses and the families who run them. So we are bringing this support in to boost local economies and improve business confidence as well. I'm also announcing today an extension of the drought communities program. In addition to that, I've announced the future fund, and I'm announcing the program will be extended from 60 to 81 local governments and shires in drought-hit areas, giving each community $1 million to stimulate their local economy. So an extra the 21 shires will be supported by that program. This will bring the total commitment to $81.5 million. We have listened to farmers, their communities and their representatives in responding in this way and this has been a key issue that's been fed back through Bridget McKenzie and Major General Day. It's also imperative as we know to help as much as we possibly can with the mental health issues that accompany the devastation and loss that comes with drought.
So I'm announcing today a further $15.3 million in mental health initiatives, including $11 million to expand services at the six existing primary health networks subject to drought and adding two new primary health networks which are part drought-affected. This goes is on top of the additional funds we recently announced for Headspace which included more than $10 million focused on providing Headspace areas remotely in rural communities. I’m also announcing today that we are going to take pressure off farmers and families by helping them keep food on the table, meet bills and basic needs. We have the farm household assistance, we have been able cut the time down for filling in the forms by just over a third but we also need to be moving some of the support even more quickly than that. That is why the Government I announced today will provide $30 million to selected charities to continue their important work of supporting farmers, farm workers and farm suppliers, facing drought induced hardship. This initiative will provide support to at least 10,000 households in drought affected regions. That’s right 10,000 supported through programs which are already being one run by organisations like the CWA and others who are doing a tremendous job and we look forward to their participation in this program. They're in touch with their communities, we'll back them in to ensure they can get that support where it's needed as quickly as possible through the CWA and others. This will see cash payments but importantly vouchers, vouchers to meet basic needs such as food, personal products and utility bills, so this support gets spent in the town.
Now, in those areas, where vouchers are too difficult to run because of their remoteness and complexities and logistics, then cash support can be used in those communities. This is about getting that assistance into the town and making sure the money is spent in the town. Not only will this help out many of the great recipients who are doing it tough, but it will be boosting regional businesses. Another area that we are announcing today is $50 million for on-farm emergency water infrastructure through the rebate scheme to provide financial help to primary producers in drought-affected regions. This will assist them with up to 25 per cent of costs associated with the purchase and installation of new on-farm water infrastructure needed to keep up water to livestock. The sort of on-farm structure to benefit includes piping, tanks, boors, troughs, pumps, fittings and desilting. The scheme will also support drought manage activities such as reducing the impact of drought on animal welfare and lowering grazing pressures on pastures. This will not only better drought-proof farms but all of that money will get spent predominately in the towns. Ensuring we are continuing to help those local economies.
And then there is the online farm hub, something that the national farmers have raised with us and I think wisely. Farmers, communities and individuals also need fast and easy access to information and support. There is a lot of support out there but we’ve got to better connect with those who need it with the services that are there not just at a commonwealth level but at a state and territory level where significant support is being provided as well. So as part of this package I am announcing, the online farm hub hosted by the NFF to provide a single trusted point of access to information and services. Through the hub, famers, families and regional communities will have access to what will be a comprehensive listing of available support, data and resources. In total these additional drought assistance measures that I have announced today increase the Australian Government’s commitment to nearly $6 billion growing to $7 billion over time. And that is all being done while bringing the budget back into balance next financial year one year ahead of our plans. It’s yet another sign that our Government is working hard and resolutely committed to helping farmers and regional communities not only make it through the drought but to once again be in a position to prosper when it breaks. It’s the hope I think, that encourages us all as we come here today, the hope we’ve all seen in rural and regional communities about when the drought breaks.
Joining us today we have Fiona Simpson the National Farmers Federation and David Jochinke who is also here from the Victorian Farmers he’s a third generation grain and livestock farmer from North West Victoria. Stuart Armitage from the Queensland Farmers Federation, I welcome you. Stuart’s lived on a farm his entire life and now runs a family operation growing predominately coffee. James Jackson, President of the New South Wales farmers, good to see you. James is a sheep and cattle producer from Guyra New South Wales and the input from all the peak farmers’ reps, each from drought-affected areas I think is going to be invaluable.
As I conclude, I encourage us all to continue on the spirit we've come here together. I want to thank particularly my state and territory colleagues but also all of those from across the Federal Parliament, whatever side of politics we're on, it doesn't matter and it doesn't today and it doesn’t matter in the future. What matters is what we're doing to support our nation, our farmers, our local and regional communities to get through this and to thrive into the future as Australians always have. I want to thank those rural and regional communities who've been out there for some, like in Queensland, as Annastacia knows, for six years, for six years, that is why I went to Queensland first because I wanted to talk to people who have been thriving and surviving in some of the toughest conditions there are. When I met the Tullys up in Quilpie and when I met the other young people who were there with their kids and saw the resilience and hope in their eyes and they showed me pictures of their property where the grass used to come up to their knees and they said, "It's going to come again, we just have to get there.” And that’s what we’re going to do today, we’re going will help them get there and continue to stand with them. Thank you for your attendance today and we look forward to the outcome. Thanks Pip and Macca as well.
Opening Remarks, Drought Summit
26 October 2018
Colleagues, it’s a bit old school today in the Old Parliament House, and it gives us a good opportunity Andrew to use one of the great buildings of the nation’s capital, because drought was something that this building was used to dealing with as well, it’s not something new to any of our jurisdictions and of course at a Commonwealth level.
Australia and Australian leaders at a state and territory level and national level have been dealing with drought ever since the Commonwealth was formed and prior to that in each of those jurisdictions and I think today is a great opportunity for us to get together to swap notes and make sure we are all on the same page I think what is particularly encouraging about how we’ve all been working on this issue of drought recovery, drought relief, drought resilience into the future is I think all the politics has been left outside the room because we all just want to do the right thing by our rural communities, our farming communities whether they are on the farms or in the towns and I want to thank all of the leaders, all of the leaders and Gladys in her absence, her plane has been delayed this morning, for the way we have been able to work and engage together and particularly the way our departments and officials and agencies have been working together and in New South Wales and Queensland it’s been the most ferocious as we know Dan, its coming in vision, its coming into South Australia and even we were saying last night Will, on the east coast of Tassie things are drying up a bit there and so we need to be working right across the country while it may be that the states that are most severely affected right now aren’t in the west, it can be affecting west in the future, today is a good opportunity to get on the same page and get on with it. It’s great.
Press Conference - Canberra, ACT
23 October 2018
PRIME MINISTER: Good morning everyone. This morning Angus and I met Colin and Avril Greef here in Canberra and we want their electricity bills, we want their electricity prices to be more affordable. We want their electricity prices to go down, that’s what we want to achieve, that’s what Angus Taylor is the Minister for, to get electricity prices down.
We have a plan to achieve that and that plan is to get the big energy companies under control. Our plan is based on the expert reports that have been provided by the ACCC. I initiated one of those when I was the Treasurer and the AEMC and following through on their recommendations and putting the necessary focus on keeping the big energy companies under control to get prices down.
Now, there are four components to this that Angus will take you through in more detail.
The first one is to empower customers with a price safety net and to end the loyalty tax that is put on customers all around the country. Just simply because they've stayed with their electricity company, they pay more. That has to end.
Secondly, to give ourselves as a Government and the Parliament, through the Parliament, the big stick we need to keep these big energy companies in line. To stop the gouging, to ensure they pass on the savings that are being achieved in wholesale prices. And I don't bluff. People can make many criticisms of me and they do regularly, that's fine. But they never accuse me of bluffing and I don't bluff when it comes to these issues.
Thirdly, forcing energy companies to buy ahead, to buy ahead and contract reliable energy supply into the market. Fair dinkum power, as you've heard me call it, from the generators so we can keep the lights on and we don't see a repeat of the fiasco we that saw in South Australia. That matter is before the states and Angus will be meeting with them again this Friday.
And to back in investment for more, new, reliable power generation. That fair dinkum power generation that works when the sun doesn't shine and the wind doesn't blow, because if you want to keep the big producers and the big companies in check, well there needs to be more. There needs to be more power, more reliable power generation going into the system to ensure that can get prices down. I mean, as we've always said and Malcolm would say, the laws of supply and demand have not changed, they're just as true as they've always been. There needs to be more reliable power supply, reliable power generation in the electricity market. That's what also gets prices down, forces more competition into the system.
Now, we will meet all of these goals while at the same time, meeting the targets that we've set out for ourselves when it comes to emissions reduction. That is our clear advice, that we can continue to meet the targets that we’ve set out for ourselves. We don't have to choose between the two, we will achieve both. We have met our Kyoto targets. We have met Kyoto 1. We will meet Kyoto 2 and we will meet our targets in 2030, as I've said, in a canter. We can achieve both, Australians expect us to achieve both, but what they really want to see right now from Angus as the Minister for getting electricity prices down, and myself, is the clear action to keep the big energy companies under control, so we can give the power back to the customers and get their prices down.
Angus, do you want to take us through those in a bit more detail? Then I'm happy to take questions.
THE HON. ANGUS TAYLOR MP, MINISTER FOR ENERGY: Thanks, PM. Today is an important day for getting power prices down in Australia. For too long, consumers, customers, have been getting a raw deal. The ACCC has told us this, other regulators tell us this and Australians tell us this. We know the energy market has not worked in the interests of consumers, households and small businesses as well as larger businesses. We need to get the energy companies under control, to stop the rip-offs.
That's why we have been focused on a comprehensive package which has, as the Prime Minister says, four parts. First, stopping the price-gouging by the big energy companies. We're banning sneaky late payments. We're requiring retailers to pass on wholesale price reductions and we're cracking down on dodgy anti-competitive practices. Our plan will be implemented through a comprehensive legislative package that will come through to the Parliament this year, as well as a package that will go to the COAG Energy Council.
We're empowering customers with a fair price safety net. This means removing the loyalty tax, as the Prime Minister said, for people who don't have time to negotiate a price over an extended series of phone conversations. The loyalty tax must go.
We also want to see the confusion go, when people are made offers and contracts in the market, the confusion must go. Yesterday, the Treasurer and I wrote to the Australian Energy Regulator to introduce a benchmark price, which will be worked up for full implementation by July 1. Thirdly, we're backing investment in reliable generation to improve competition, lower prices and shore up reliability.
Today, we begin the consultation process ahead of an expression of interest. We're aiming to have our first pipeline of projects early next year. We will be providing mechanisms to ensure that these projects are financed as per the ACCC recommendations. They recommended a floor price, we won't anticipate the banking, there will be other options as well, a broader range of mechanisms that are being discussed in the consultation paper. We also aim to support reliable power through the reliability mechanism we'll be putting to the COAG Energy Council this week for implementation, by the 1st of July.
Finally, I'm writing to all energy companies, all the energy companies supplying electricity in Australia to convene a round-table. I will be asking each company to individually take action to lower prices, specifically their standing offers by January 1. This is a down payment for all Australians on a fairer electricity market. Our package for affordable, reliable power will ensure a better deal for all Australians, a better deal for small businesses and ensuring that big energy companies do the right thing by their customers.
JOURNALIST: Do you have any numbers, specific numbers, for targets to contain prices or get them down?
PRIME MINISTER: Well, on the residential customers - this is just on the default price - the savings for residential consumers range from $273 in the ACT, through to $832 in savings in South Australia. For small business customers, it can be as high as $3,500 a year in South Australia and just under $1,000 in the ACT. So that is just on those measures alone.
The other measures, as Angus has just indicated, we want to see the electricity price come down in January and we're making it very clear to the electricity companies that's what we expect you to do.
JOURNALIST: Aren’t prices however, set in July in most places?
PRIME MINISTER: Well it's not compulsory, they can take their prices down and I expect them to do it.
JOURNALIST: Minister Taylor, on the investment mechanism which you mentioned there. The ACCC was very clear in its recommendation [inaudible] have prices attached, of $45 to $50 a megawatt hour. Is that what the Government is proposing? And you seemed to suggest that the Government was proposing that and some other things that I'm not really sure what you're talking about?
MINISTER FOR ENERGY: So the ACCC made it clear that one good mechanism worthy of consideration is a floor price. We are certainly including that as a mechanism that can be used. I don't want to anticipate the banking. What we do want to do is make sure we get that reliable power into the system, that Australians get a fair deal, that we have that reliable power that can provide electricity to all Australian households and businesses under all circumstances.
JOURNALIST: So you say you don't want to anticipate the banking, is that you saying - ?
MINISTER FOR ENERGY: Well the ACCC made a recommendation about a mechanism and that's a good recommendation. We're absolutely very interested in using that mechanism. It may not be the only one.
PRIME MINISTER: In the consultation paper, it sets out a number of measures and that is, that providing a floor price, a contract for difference, cap and floor collar contracts, government loans, all of these things are set out in the consultation paper. That's a discussion which we're very happy to have.
JOURNALIST: Whichever method you go with, will it be- take a technology-neutral approach? And will it be left to the market to decide which is the most viable technology?
PRIME MINISTER: Yes.
JOURNALIST: What do you say to Nationals MPs who want this mechanism to be used to invest in coal-fired power stations? Can it be used to do that?
PRIME MINISTER: Where it stacks up, it can be. Where it meets all the requirements.
JOURNALIST: Are you expecting there to be people coming forward with ideas to build coal-fired power stations?
PRIME MINISTER: Whether it's that or whether it’s any other sort of energy, reliable supply to the market to get electricity prices down, that's what we're for. We're for lower electricity prices and for people generating more reliable power in Australia. We don't take positions on the source of the fuel. What we do is we ensure we meet our broader emissions reduction target, which we do. Everything we're talking about here is consistent with that position. But it also means ensuring that we can unlock the investment that needs to come into the sector to ensure more power is generated.
JOURNALIST: Everyone is worried about power prices but some of your MPs are also worried about carbon emissions. Are you open to the prospect of putting more money into the Emissions Reductions Fund?
PRIME MINISTER: I've never ruled that out. I've always said that would be dealt with through the normal budgetary process. There's a Budget next year and there’s an ERC process underway at the moment. The current funding takes us through to the current period. So I've always been open to that.
There's a suite of things we're doing. I mean there’s ARENA, there’s the CEFC, there’s Snowy 2.0 there’s the small and large scale RET, there’s the Emissions Reduction Fund. But you know what there also is? Common sense and technology. Common sense and technology - and Angus might want to comment on this because you're closer to it than me on the details of the technology developments – but renewable energy is attracting investment because it has reached the tipping point where it just makes economic sense and no longer needs the regulatory and other economic intervention to bring it about and that's continuing to be the process in the future, which is where you always wanted it to be. So common sense and technology is enabling us to achieve all of these things, which I think is great news. No longer does government have to sit around and hold the hand of the renewable technologies, like it used to. It's going to happen more and more and more in the future and the investment is going to roll because it's common sense and it's economic sense. It doesn't need the government to be sticking its fingers into it. Angus?
MINISTER FOR ENERGY: Businesses and households have been driving extraordinary energy efficiencies in Australia using new technologies and new techniques for many years now. The forecasters continually have underestimated the amount of energy efficiency we've been getting, the gains we've been getting through use of new technology and techniques and that will continue. The track record in this country is an extremely good one and that common sense the Prime Minister describes is absolutely crucial and will play a major role in achieving these outcomes.
PRIME MINISTER: So the intervention we need now, is actually to keep the big energy companies in line. That's where Australians want governments to actually be acting now. They want us to act to ensure that those big energy companies don't rip them off, which is where our focus is.
JOURNALIST: Prime Minister can I take you to another topic?
PRIME MINISTER: Yeah unless there's other questions on energy? As you know, I like to deal with the topics –
JOURNALIST: Prime Minister the energy companies actually say the price caps will reduce competition between companies and hurt consumers, who are already shopping around, they’re going to pay higher prices in the future. What do you say to that?
PRIME MINISTER: I'd say: “they would, wouldn't they”?
JOURNALIST: Is the Government considering asking for a recount of the Wentworth by-election tally?
PRIME MINISTER: Have we dealt with energy?
JOURNALIST: No. Thank you, with this underwriting mechanism, the ACCC was talking about new generation, generation that doesn't currently exist.
PRIME MINISTER: Correct.
JOURNALIST: Could this underwriting mechanism apply to retrofitting existing power stations? That’s the first one and second point, is the Government proposing as part of this not only to underwrite and finance but to guarantee new projects against future carbon risk?
MINISTER FOR ENERGY: So on your first point, there are a lot of ways of getting new generation. Brown fields, green fields, upgrades. There's lots of ways of getting new generation. We want the outcome. That's the focus here. We’ve got to get that dispatchable, that reliable power into the system to ensure that we can keep prices down, increase competition and ensure we've got the reliability and we should look at all of those outcomes. Your second question…
JOURNALIST: Well, there's underwriting finance and then there’s whether or not the Commonwealth guarantees these projects against future carbon risk.
MINISTER FOR ENERGY: What's crucial is that we ensure that new capacity can come into the market at a cost that will be affordable for Australians and Australian businesses. And that means making sure that Government carries as little risk as is necessary but as much as we need to make sure we get that reliable power into the system.
PRIME MINISTER: You make a good point, and that is our policies are based on our plans. Now, the Labor Party has different plans. They have a plan for a 45 per cent emissions reduction target, which would have a bigger impact on household electricity prices than the Carbon Tax that they introduced prior to the 2013 election and a bigger impact for businesses and a bigger impact for householders and a bigger impact for Colin and Avril, who we met this morning. So, no, we don't support those policies and we're not in the business of underwriting Labor's policies. That's the Labor Party's business and what we're saying here is our policies are about getting prices down. Labor's policies will drive prices up, and so under a Liberal and National Government, your electricity prices will be lower than under Labor.
JOURNALIST: Gas prices are going up, so are you saying that you can guarantee that people's retail prices will come down before the next election?
PRIME MINISTER: That is the pressure we will be placing and I'm saying that under the Liberal and National Government and our policies, electricity prices will be lower under us than they will be under Labor. Under Labor you will not only pay more on electricity prices, you will pay more in higher taxes, you will pay more in higher private health insurance premiums. Under Labor you will pay more and more and more.
JOURNALIST: You say "a big stick". Can you tell us what that is? What can you do to force these companies?
PRIME MINISTER: It's everything from enforceable undertaking through the courts through to divestment powers of their assets. That's a pretty big stick.
JOURNALIST: So you're going to tell them that at this roundtable, that if they don’t bring down their standing offer you’re willing to use those things?
PRIME MINISTER: Well that's what a big stick is for. Let's go here and then move around.
JOURNALIST: Over in other parties they're showing a slightly different attitude to your legislation with regards to asylum seekers and refugees.
PRIME MINISTER: Right.
JOURNALIST: What attitude are you bringing to this legislation, given that the support of the Labor Party, the Greens and others seems to be conditional on you amending it substantially?
PRIME MINISTER: Well, Labor have always been for weaker border protection policies. And you don't get children off Nauru by putting more children on Nauru through weaker border protection policies. I'm interested in getting children off Nauru. Over 200 children have already come off Nauru. More children have already come off in recent times under the quiet, effective management of these issues that the Government is pursuing. We're not here to grandstand on this. We're just here to get the job done. And Labor have always sought to weaken. This legislation has been around since 2016 and what they're showing is what they always do. They think this is something to trade over. You don't get to negotiate with people smugglers based on horse-trading in the Australian Senate. This is why Labor stuffed it up so much last time they were in. They thought that's how you manage this. That's just not how it works. You've got to have clear policies that protect our borders and you then have to manage the legacy of Labor's failure, as we have been doing. Closing the detention centres - thousands upon thousands upon thousands of children removed from detention under our Government and we're going to continue doing that job. So no-one understands this issue, I would say, more acutely and more sensitively than I do with my experience of this over a long period of time. I'm committed to ensuring that we can deal with this challenge in terms of the situation with the children and I'm open to every sensible proposal that would not also see more children go onto Nauru. Because don't forget it's not just our policy. It's the Labor Party's policy that if a boat turned up and there were children on that boat, a) that would be horrific enough, because they may have even died along the way, but secondly, those children would go to Nauru under the Labor Party policy. So you don't get children off Nauru by putting more on through horse-trading and this type of business we're seeing presented.
JOURNALIST: Is the Labor Party's offer sensible if it is a one-off for the kids and their children to take them off Nauru and send them to New Zealand?
PRIME MINISTER: Well, the Bill we put into the Parliament was the right answer. And, as I said, you don't horse trade on border protection. You don't do it. Because all you do is run the risk of creating this perverse incentive. Let's just think it through. The perverse incentive that if you put a child onto a boat, well, you're more likely at the other end to get the particular outcome you're looking for. I understand the grief. I understand the great level of community passion and anxiety on this. I do. But I also understand that I must take decisions that don't put more children at risk, which is the great folly of how the Labor Party have always engaged on this issue. They think it’s some sort of domestic negotiation. That's not how this works. So I will consider and take serious advice from people within Operation Sovereign Borders about the potential impacts of all of those things. When it comes to the New Zealand legislation, we've had that in place now for some time. It has never been my preferred outcome as to how we manage that issue. We've been dealing with that issue with our partners in the United States with great effect and one of the other problems with this issue being pursued in this way by the Opposition is it can work to actually say to people on Nauru at the moment, "Oh, I won't take the US offer because the Labor Party might be offering me a better offer." And so they're still on there. And so I would caution people to think carefully about the ramifications of this. I'll be listening carefully to those who are responsible for protecting our borders and stopping kids getting on boats. I'm not sure… to the best of my knowledge, the Labor Party did not seek advice from those agencies in the position they've put to us. I'm not here to horse trade on children. I'm here to help them.
JOURNALIST: So if this legislation passes, you'll take up the New Zealand offer and 150 refugees won’t necessarily go to New Zealand, even if the legislation passes?
PRIME MINISTER: Well let's look at the timeline, okay? The Senate doesn't meet now for several weeks and if the Labor Party wants to move their amendments and they have the support of Greens and crossbenchers, well that's a matter for them. They could have done that at any time for the last two years. They haven't chosen to do that. What we're seeing is the usual sort of panic you see from the Labor Party on these issues in response to domestic politics, rather than considering carefully the ramifications. Now, that matter wouldn't come back to the house until it meets later this year. So what I'm going to do is continue on the program that I have been working with some crossbenchers on very carefully, not in a big-noting way, just getting on with it, managing the issues case by case, talking to those who understand the mental health and physical health issues associated with those who are affected and just continue doing my job, as we’ve been doing for the last five years with great achievement.
JOURNALIST: [Inaudible] would it be your expectation that you can get all those people off Nauru by the end of the year doing what you’re doing now?
PRIME MINISTER: I’m going to continue just to work quietly and methodically with those who are looking to get an outcome here. Who aren’t interested in showboating and grandstanding, who just want to get an outcome. That’s what I’ve always been doing, that’s what our Government has always been doing, that’s why we’ve always been able to get the results and I want to thank those, both within my own Party and the National Party and those on the crossbench who have been taking that approach because we’ve been getting some good things done. We’ve been doing it without running the risk of seeing this whole horrible nightmare open up again. I’m not going to allow this nightmare to open up again. It was far too painful, far too painful, to actually fix this last time, and no one knows that, no one knows that, better than me.
Address to Victims and Survivors of Sexual Abuse
22 October 2018
Thank you. I understand the anger. And can I ask Cheryl Edwardes to come and join me up on stage, please? I'm asking Cheryl to come and join me here today, Cheryl Edwardes led the leadership of the advisory group that led to today's apology. Cheryl was joined by Hetty Johnston who is here. Thank you, Hetty. Richard Weston, CEO of the Healing Foundation and descendant of the Meriam people of the Torres Strait. Caroline Carroll OAM, founding chair of the Alliance for Forgotten Australians. Chrissie Foster, who along with her late husband Anthony, drew national attention to the issue of clergy abuse. Leonie Sheedy, CEO of Care Leavers Australasia Network. And Craig Hughes-Cashmore, CEO of the Survivors and Mates Support Network.
I would like you to join me in doing something. I'm going to take Cheryl's hand. This is the apology that I tabled in the Parliament. I have not read this anywhere. This will be the first place that I read the formal apology, which will be provided to you today. And it is being done for you here in this place. I would like you to take the hand of those next to you, because... stand with you, stand together, and I want to read the apology to all of you.
“Today the Australian Government and this Parliament, on behalf of all Australians, unreservedly apologises to the victims and survivors of institutional child sexual abuse. For too many years our eyes and hearts were closed to the truths we were told by children. For too many years governments and institutions refused to acknowledge the darkness that lay within our community. Today we reckon with our past and commit to protect children now and into the future. Today we apologise for the pain, the suffering, and trauma inflicted upon victims and survivors as children, and for its profound and ongoing impact.
As children, you deserve care and protection. Instead, the very people and institutions entrusted with your care failed you. You suffered appalling physical and mental abuse and endured horrific sexual crimes. As fellow Australians, we apologise for this gross betrayal of trust, and for the fact that organisations with power over children, schools, religious organisations, governments, orphanages, sports and social clubs, charities were left unchecked.
Today we say we are sorry. Sorry that you were not protected. Sorry that you were not listened to. We are sorry for refusing to trust the words of children, for not believing you. As we say sorry, we also say we believe you. We say what happened was not your fault. We are sorry that perpetrators of abuse were relocated and shielded, rather than held to account. That records have been withheld and destroyed and accountability avoided. We are sorry that the justice and child welfare systems that should have protected you were at times used to perpetrate yet more injustices against you. We apologise for the lifelong impact this abuse has had on your health, your relationships, and your ability to live life to its full potential.
We also extend this apology to your children, your parents, siblings, families, friends, and supporters. All those who have helped carry the burden of your experiences and help advocate for accountability. We regret that your children's lives have been changed and relationships have been broken by the enduring effects of abuse. We hear the rage, despair, and hurt of parents, whose trust was betrayed along with your own. We admit that we failed to protect the most vulnerable people in our society from those who abused their power. Our community believed people and institutions who did not deserve our trust, instead of believing the children who did. Because of our action, too many victims are no longer with us to hear this apology. They did not live to see the justice they deserved. But today we remember them and we extend this apology along with our sincere sympathies to their families, friends and supporters.
As we say sorry, we honour the courage of survivors and advocates who spoke out to expose sexual abuse in our institutions, often at great personal cost. Your voices save lives. Your bravery has allowed us to uncover this dark chapter of our national life and understand what we must now do to protect children. We also acknowledge the many victims and survivors who have not spoken of their abuse. Your suffering is no less anguished for your silence.
Together, as a Government, a Parliament, and a community, we must all play a role in the protection of children from abuse. We must accept our responsibility to keep our eyes and ears open and speak out to keep our children safe. We must listen to children and believe what they tell us. Child sexual abuse is a serious criminal act, and a violation of Australian law. Perpetrators must and will be held to account. Today we commit to taking action to build awareness in our community and strengthen our systems to promote children's safety across Australia. We commit to ensuring that all our institutions are child safe. We know that we must and will do better to protect all children in Australia from abuse and that our actions will give true and practical meaning to this apology. Our children deserve nothing less.”
We are sorry.
Can I conclude by thanking Julia Gillard for initiating the Royal Commission. And can I thank you all for your attendance here today.
Address, National Apology
22 October 2018
Mr Speaker, let me first welcome all those who have come here today.
Whether you sit here in this Chamber, the Great Hall, outside elsewhere in the nation’s capital. Your living room. In your bed, unable to rise today or speak to another soul. Your journey to where you are today has been a long and painful one, and we acknowledge that and we welcome you today wherever you are.
Mr Speaker, silenced voices. Muffled cries in the darkness.
Unacknowledged tears. The tyranny of invisible suffering.
The never heard pleas of tortured souls bewildered by an indifference to the unthinkable theft of their innocence.
Today, Australia confronts a trauma – an abomination – hiding in plain sight for far too long.
Today, we confront a question too horrible to ask, let alone answer.
Why weren’t the children of our nation loved, nurtured and protected?
Why was their trust betrayed?
Why did those who know cover it up?
Why were the cries of children and parents ignored?
Why was our system of justice blind to injustice?
Why has it taken so long to act?
Why were other things more important than this, the care of innocent children?
Why didn't we believe?
Today we dare to ask these questions, and finally acknowledge and confront the lost screams of our children.
While we can’t be so vain to pretend to answers, we must be so humble to fall before those who were forsaken and beg to them our apology.
A sorry that dare not ask for forgiveness.
A sorry that dare not try and make sense of the incomprehensible or think it could.
A sorry that does not insult with an incredible promise.
A sorry that speaks only of profound grief and loss.
A sorry from a nation that seeks to reach out in compassion into the darkness where you have lived for so long.
Nothing we can do now will right the wrongs inflicted on our nation’s children.
Even after a comprehensive Royal Commission, which finally enabled the voices to be heard and the silence to be broken, we will all continue to struggle.
So today we gather in this Chamber in humility. Not just as Representatives of the people of this country, but as fathers, as mothers, as siblings, friends, workmates, and in some cases, indeed as victims and survivors.
Ngunnawal means ‘meeting place’. And on this day of apology, we meet together.
We honour every survivor in this country, we love you, we hear you and we honour you.
No matter if you are here at this meeting place or elsewhere, this apology is to you and for you.
Your presence and participation makes tangible our work today – and it gives strength to others who are yet to share what has happened in their world.
Elsewhere in this building and around Australia, there are others who are silently watching and listening to these proceedings, men and women who have never told a soul what has happened to them. To these men and women I say this apology is for you too.
And later when the speeches are over, we will stand in silence and remember the victims who are not with us anymore, many too sadly by their own hand.
As a nation, we failed them, we forsook them. That will always be our shame.
This apology is for them and their families too.
As one survivor recently said to me, “It wasn’t a foreign enemy who did this to us – this was done by Australians.” To Australians. Enemies in our midst.
Enemies. In. Our. Midst.
The enemies of innocence.
Look up at the galleries, look at the Great Hall, look outside this place and you will see men and women from every walk of life, from every generation, and every part of our land.
Crushed, abused, discarded and forgotten.
The crimes of ritual sexual abuse happened in schools, churches, youth groups, scout troops, orphanages, foster homes, sporting clubs, group homes, charities, and in family homes as well.
It happened anywhere a predator thought they could get away with it, and the systems within these organisations allowed it to happen and turned a blind eye.
It happened day after day, week after week, month after month, and decade after decade. Unrelenting torment.
When a child spoke up, they weren’t believed and the crimes continued with impunity.
One survivor told me that when he told a teacher of his abuse, that teacher then became his next abuser.
Trust broken.
Innocence betrayed.
Power and position exploited for evil dark crimes.
A survivor named Faye told the Royal Commission, “Nothing takes the memories away. It happened 53 years ago and it’s still affecting me.”
One survivor named Ann said, “My mother believed them rather than me”.
I also met with a mother whose two daughters were abused by a priest the family trusted. Suicide would claim one of her two beautiful girls and the other lives under the crushing weight of what was done to her.
As a father of two daughters, I can’t comprehend the magnitude of what she has faced.
Not just as a father but as Prime Minister, I am angry too at the calculating destruction of lives and abuse of trust, including those who have abused the shield of faith and religion to hide their crimes, a shield that is supposed to protect the innocent, not the guilty. And they stand condemned.
One survivor says it was like “becoming a stranger to your parents.”
Mental health illnesses, self-harm, and addictions followed.
The pain didn’t stop with adulthood.
Relationships with partners and children became strained as survivors struggled with the conflicting currents within them.
Parents and siblings felt guilt and sadness for what they had missed, for what and whom they chose to believe, and for what they did not see.
While survivors contemplated what could have been.
A survivor named Rodney asks the question so common to so many survivors, he wonders about “the person I may have become, or the person I could have become if I didn’t have all of this in my life.”
Death can take many forms. In this case the loss of a life never lived, a life denied.
Another survivor, Aiden spoke of not getting justice because his abuser had died. He said, “I was bereft because I was robbed. I was robbed of my day in court. I wanted to tell the world what he did. That was stolen. That was him again, taking control.”
Mr Speaker, today, as a nation, we confront our failure to listen, to believe and to provide justice.
And again today, we say sorry.
To the children we failed, sorry.
To the parents whose trust was betrayed and who have struggled to pick up the pieces, sorry.
To the whistle-blowers who we did not listen to, sorry.
To the spouses, partners, wives, husbands and children who have dealt with the consequences of the abuse, cover-ups and obstruction, sorry.
To generations past and present, sorry.
Mr Speaker, as part of our work leading us to this day, I recently met with the National Apology Survivor’s Reference Group, as did the Leader of the Opposition, who are with us here today.
I want to thank this wonderful group of people and brave people.
Many are survivors; they have all worked so hard to make today a reality.
They said to me that an apology without action is just a piece of paper and it is. And today they also wanted to hear about our actions.
It is a fair call.
In outlining our actions, I want to recognise the work of my predecessors, former Prime Minister Gillard, who is with us here today, and I thank you for your attendance. Former Prime Minister Rudd, the Member for Warringah, who continues to serve us here in this place, and the former Prime Minister, Mr Turnbull. I want to thank them for their compassion and leadership as they also confronted these terrible failings.
The foundations of our actions are the findings and recommendations of the Royal Commission, initiated by Prime Minister Gillard.
The steady compassionate hand of the Commissioners and staff resulted in 17,000 survivors coming forward and nearly 8,000 of them recounting their abuse in private sessions of the Commission.
We are all grateful to the survivors who gave evidence to the Commission. It is because of your strength and your courage that we are gathered here today.
Many of the Commissioners and staff are also with us today and I thank them also.
Mr Speaker, acting on the recommendations of the Royal Commission with concrete action gives practical meaning to today’s Apology.
The Commonwealth, as our national Government, must lead and coordinate our response.
The National Redress Scheme has commenced.
I thank the State and Territory Governments for their backing of the scheme.
The Scheme is about recognising and alleviating the impact of past abuse, and providing justice for survivors.
The Scheme will provide survivors with access to counselling and psychological services, monetary payments, and, for those who want one – and I stress for those who want one – a direct personal response from an institution where the abuse occurred.
It will mean – that after many years, often decades, of denials and cover-ups — the institutions responsible for ruining lives admit their wrongdoing and the terrible damage they caused.
The National Office of Child Safety is another big step forward to ensuring the prevention and detection of child abuse, wherever it occurs.
It was announced as part of our Government’s response to the Royal Commission and was established from July 1 of this year within the Department of Social Services.
As Prime Minister, I will be changing these arrangements to ensure that the National Office of Child Safety will report to me. It will reside within the portfolio of Prime Minister and Cabinet, as it should. The Minister for Social Services will assist me in this role, including reporting to me on the progress of Royal Commission recommendations and the activities of the Office of Child Safety.
The Office has already begun it’s work to raise awareness of child safety and to drive cultural change in institutions in the community – to ensure that the systemic failures and abuses of power that brought us here today are not repeated.
Importantly, children themselves are being empowered to participate in these initiatives – because our children must be heard, and when it comes to the work of safety, it must be approachable and child friendly. They must know who they can tell, and they must be believed, and they must know where they can go.
All Australian Governments are now working together to establish a national database, to ensure higher standards for working with children and that data about people’s ability to work with children is shared nationally.
And our work does not stop at our borders.
We are ensuring children across the world are protected by stopping child sex offenders from travelling overseas without permission, which will disrupt, prevent and investigate the abuse of children globally.
And we recognise that as survivors age, those who were abused in or by an institution, have real fears about entering into aged care facilities.
It’s an understandable fear given what happened during childhood, and we will work with survivor groups about what we can to do alleviate those fears and indeed the work of the Royal Commission into aged care will be able to address this as well.
And to assist with lasting change we recognise that there are many more survivors who were abused in other settings such as their own homes and in their communities, who will not be covered by this redress scheme.
These survivors also need to be heard, and believed, and responded to with services to address their needs. So today, I commit to fund the establishment of a National Centre of Excellence, and I call on the states and territories to work as partners in this venture. This Centre will be the place to raise awareness and understanding of the impacts of child sexual abuse, to deal with the stigma, to support help seeking and guide best practice for training and other services.
All of this is just the start.
The Australian Government has not rejected a single recommendation of the Royal Commission.
We are now actively working on 104 of the 122 recommendations that were addressed to the Commonwealth. The 18 remaining are being closely examined, in consultation with states and territories.
Today we commit that from December this year, we will report back to the Australian people, through the Parliament, to be held accountable each year, each year, on the progress we are making on the recommendations over the next five years and then beyond.
We will shine a spotlight on all parts of government to ensure we are held accountable.
And the institutions which perpetrated this abuse, covered it up and refused to be held accountable, must be kept on the hook.
Already, many of those organisations have made their own apologies and have signed up to be a part of the National Redress Scheme, as they should.
But there are others yet to join, and today I simply say that justice, decency and the beliefs and values we share as Australians, insists that they sign on.
Today I also commit to establishing a National Museum, a place of truth and commemoration, to raise awareness and understanding of the impacts of child sexual abuse.
We will work with survivor groups, to ensure your stories are recorded, that your truth is told, that our nation does not turn from our shame, and that our Nation will never forget the untold horrors you experienced.
Through this we will endeavour to bring some healing to our nation and to learn from our past horrors.
We can never promise a world where there are no abusers. But we can promise a country where we commit to hear and believe our children.
To work together to keep children safe, to trust them and most of all respect their innocence.
Mr Speaker, I present the formal apology to be tabled in this Parliament today, which will be handed to those in the Great Hall shortly. It reflects all of the sentiments that I have expressed on behalf of the Australian people, this Parliament and our Government.
And as I table that and, as I do, I simply say: I believe you. We believe you. Your country believes you.
Motion, National Apology to Victims and Survivors of Institutional Child Sexual Abuse
22 October 2018
Mr Morrison:
I move:
That the House apologise to the victims and survivors of institutional child sexual abuse.
Let me first welcome all of those who have come here today. Whether you sit here alongside us here in this chamber, in the Great Hall, outside elsewhere in the nation's capital, in your living room, or in your bed, unable to rise today or speak to another soul, your journey to where you are today has been a long and painful one, and we acknowledge that and we welcome you today wherever you are.
Silenced voices; muffled cries in the darkness; unacknowledged tears; the tyranny of invisible suffering; the never heard pleas of tortured souls bewildered by an indifference to the unthinkable theft of their innocence—today Australia confronts a trauma, an abomination, hiding in plain sight for far too long. Today we confront a question too horrible to ask, let alone answer: why weren't the children of our nation loved, nurtured and protected? Why was their trust betrayed? Why did those who know cover it up? Why were the cries of children and parents ignored? Why was our system of justice blind to injustice? Why has it taken so long to act? Why were others things more important than this, the care of innocent children? Why didn't we believe?
Today we dare to ask these questions, and finally acknowledge and confront the lost screams of our children. While we can't be so vain to pretend to answers, we must be so humble to fall before those who were forsaken and beg to them our apology—a sorry that dare not ask for forgiveness; a sorry that dare not try and make sense of the incomprehensible or think it could; a sorry that does not insult with an incredible promise; a sorry that speaks only of profound grief and loss; a sorry from a nation that seeks to reach out in compassion into the darkness where you have lived for so long.
Nothing we can do now will right the wrongs inflicted on our nation's children. Even after a comprehensive royal commission, which finally enabled the voices to be heard and the silence to be broken, we will all continue to struggle.
So today we gather in this chamber in humility, not just as representatives of the people of this country but as fathers, as mothers, as siblings, friends, workmates and, in some cases, indeed, as victims and survivors. In Ngunawal, 'Canberra' means 'meeting place'. And on this day of apology, we meet together. We honour every survivor in this country. We love you, we hear you and we honour you. No matter if you are here at this meeting place or elsewhere, this apology is to you and for you. Your presence and participation makes tangible our work today and it gives strength to others who are yet to share what has happened in their world.
Elsewhere in this building and around Australia there are others who are silently watching and listening to these proceedings, men and women who have never told a soul what has happened to them. To these men and women, I say this apology is for you too. Later, when the speeches are over, we will stand in silence and we remember the victims who are not with us anymore—many, sadly, by their own hand. As a nation we failed them, we forsook them and that will always be our shame. This apology is for them and for their families too. As one survivor recently said to me: 'It wasn't a foreign enemy who did this to us. This was done by Australians to Australians.' Enemies in our midst, the enemies of innocence. Look at the galleries, look at the Great Hall, look outside this place and you will see men and women from every walk of life, from every generation and from every part of our land crushed, abused, discarded and forgotten.
The crimes of ritual sexual abuse happened in schools, churches, youth groups, Scout troupes, orphanages, foster homes, sporting clubs, group homes, charities and family homes as well. It happened anywhere a predator thought they could get away with it, and the systems within these organisations allowed it to happen and turned a blind eye. It happened day after day, week after week, month after month, decade after decade—unrelenting torment. When a child spoke up they weren't believed, and the crimes continued with impunity. One survivor told me that when he told a teacher of his abuse that teacher then became his next abuser. Trust broken, innocence betrayed, power and position exploited for evil, dark crimes.
A survivor named Faye told the royal commission:
… nothing takes the memories away. It happened 53 years ago and it's still affecting me.
A survivor named Ann said:
My mother believed them rather than me.
I also met with a mother whose two daughters were abused by a priest the family trusted. Suicide would claim one of her two beautiful girls, and the other lives under the crushing weight of what was done to her. As a father of two daughters, I can't comprehend the magnitude of what she has faced. Not just as a father but as a Prime Minister, I am angry too at the calculating destruction of lives and the abuse of trust, including those who have abused the shield of faith and religion to hide their crimes—a shield that is supposed to protect the innocent, not the guilty—and they stand condemned.
One survivor says it was like becoming a stranger to your parents. Mental health illnesses, self-harm and addictions followed. The pain didn't stop with adulthood. Relationships with partners and children became strained as survivors struggled with the conflicting currents within them. Parents and siblings felt guilt and sadness for what they had missed, for what and whom they chose to believe and for what they did not see, while survivors contemplated what could have been. A survivor named Rodney asked the question so common to so many survivors. He wonders about:
… the person I may have become, or the person I could have become if I didn't have all this in my life …
Death can take many forms. In this case, the loss of a life never lived and a life denied. Another survivor, Aidan, spoke of not getting justice because his abuser had died. He said:
I was bereft because I was robbed. I was robbed of my day in court. I wanted to tell the world what he did. That was stolen. That was him again, taking control.
Today, as a nation, we confront our failure to listen, to believe and to provide justice. And again today we say sorry—to the children we failed, sorry; to the parents whose trust was betrayed and who have struggled to pick up the pieces, sorry; to the whistleblowers who we did not listen to, sorry; to the spouses, partners, wives, husbands and children who have dealt with the consequences of the abuse, cover-ups and obstruction, sorry; to generations past and present, sorry.
As part of our work leading us to this day I recently met with, as did the Leader of the Opposition, the National Apology to Victims and Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse Reference Group, who are with us here today. I want to thank this wonderful group of brave people. Many are survivors. They have all worked so hard to make today a reality. They said to me that an apology without action is just a piece of paper—and it is. Today they also wanted to hear about our actions. It's a fair call.
In outlining our actions, I want to acknowledge the work of my predecessors: former Prime Minister Gillard, who is with us here today, and I thank her for her attendance; former Prime Minister Rudd; the member for Warringah, who continues to serve us here in this place; and former Prime Minister Turnbull. I want to thank them for their compassion and leadership as they also confronted these terrible failings.
The foundations of our actions are the findings and recommendations of the royal commission initiated by Prime Minister Gillard. The steady, compassionate hand of the commissioners and staff resulted in 17,000 survivors coming forward and nearly 8,000 of them recounting their abuse in private sessions of the commission. We are grateful to the survivors who gave evidence to the commission. It is because of your strength and your courage that we are gathered here today. Many of the commissioners and staff are also with us today, and I thank them also.
Acting on the recommendations of the royal commission with concrete action gives practical meaning to today's apology. The Commonwealth, as our national government, must lead and coordinate our response. The National Redress Scheme has commenced. I thank the state and territory governments for their backing of the scheme. The scheme is about recognising and alleviating the impact of past abuse and providing justice for survivors. The scheme will provide survivors with access to counselling and psychological services, monetary payments and, for those who want one—I stress 'for those who want one'—a direct personal response from the institution where the abuse occurred. It will mean that, after many years, often decades, of denials and cover-ups, the institutions responsible for ruining lives will admit their wrongdoing and the terrible damage they caused.
The National Office for Child Safety is another big step forward to ensuring the prevention and detection of child abuse wherever it occurs. It was announced as part of our government's response to the royal commission and it was established from 1 July of this year within the Department of Social Services. As Prime Minister, I'll be changing these arrangements to ensure that the National Office for Child Safety will report to me. It will reside within the portfolio of Prime Minister and Cabinet, as it should, and the Minister for Social Services will assist me in this role, including reporting to me on the progress of royal commission recommendations and the activities of the Office for Child Safety.
The office has already begun its work to raise awareness of child safety and to drive cultural change in institutions in the community to ensure the systemic failures and abuses of power that brought us here today are not repeated. Importantly, children themselves are being empowered to participate in these initiatives, because our children must be heard. When it comes to the work of safety, it must be approachable and child-friendly. They must know who they can tell, they must be believed and they must know where they can go.
All Australian governments are now working together to establish a national database to ensure higher standards for working with children and that data about people's ability to work with children is shared nationally. Our work does not stop at our borders. We are ensuring children across the world are protected by stopping child sex offenders from travelling overseas without permission, which will disrupt, prevent and investigate the abuse of children globally.
We recognise that, as survivors age, those who were abused in or by an institution have real fears about entering into aged-care facilities. It's an understandable fear, given what happened during childhood. We will work with survivor groups about what we can do to alleviate those fears, and, indeed, the work of the royal commission into aged care will be able to address this as well.
To assist with lasting change, we recognise that there are many survivors who were abused in other settings, such as in their own homes and in their communities, who will not be covered by this redress scheme. These survivors also need to be heard, believed and responded to with services to address their needs. So, today, I commit to fund the establishment of a national centre of excellence, and I call on the states and territories to work as partners in this venture. This centre will be the place to raise awareness and understanding of the impacts of child sexual abuse, to deal with the stigma, support help seeking and guide best practice for training and other services.
All of this is just the start. The Australian government has not rejected a single recommendation of the royal commission. We are now actively working on 104 of the 122 recommendations that were addressed to the Commonwealth, and the 18 remaining are being closely examined, in consultation with states and territories. Today we commit, from December this year, to report back to the Australian people through the parliament to be held accountable each year—each year—on the progress we are making on the recommendations over the next five years and then beyond. We will shine a spotlight on all parts of government to ensure we are held accountable.
The institutions which perpetrated this abuse, covered it up and refused to be held accountable must be kept on the hook. Already, many of those organisations have made their own apologies and have signed up to be part of the National Redress Scheme, as they should, but there are others yet to join. Today I simply say: justice, decency and the beliefs and values we share as Australians insist that they sign on.
Today I also commit to establishing a national museum, a place of truth and commemoration, to raise awareness and understanding of the impacts of child sexual abuse. We will work with survivor groups to ensure your stories are recorded, that your truth is told, that our nation does not turn from our shame and that our nation will never forget the untold horrors you experienced. Through this, we will endeavour to bring some healing to our nation and to learn from our past horrors.
We can never promise a world where there are no abusers. But we can promise a country where we commit to hear and believe our children, to work together to keep children safe, to trust them and, most of all, to respect their innocence.
Mr Speaker, I present the formal apology to be tabled in this parliament today, which will be handed to those in the Great Hall shortly. It reflects all of the sentiments that I have expressed on behalf of the Australian people, this parliament and our government. I table that. As I do, I simply say: I believe you. We believe you. Your country believes you.
Honourable members: Hear, hear!
Address, National Farmers Federation 2018 National Congress
18 October 2018
Thanks to you all for coming out here this morning and I particularly thank Fiona for arranging this breakfast this morning. As you know, we’re sitting this week and it’d be very… it’d be impossible, frankly, to be here at any other time. So I thank you for coming out this morning and joining me so I could share a few thoughts with you. Can I also thank the Vice President David Jochinke and CEO Tony Mahar as well.
It’s great to be here with you. Tony Pasin is here as a colleague, it’s great to see him here. I was just with him down in Murray Bridge and out through the river lands in South Australia just on the weekend and over the course of the last eight weeks, I’ve had a great opportunity to get from one end of the country to the other. And that has included quite a bit of time actually working through issues that is impacting on rural and regional Australia, in particular the agricultural sector.
Last night I was handing out the Prime Minister’s science awards and it was quite a tremendous evening, but I feel like it’s a continuation of the same conference this morning, the same event. Because the best scientists I know are working in the agricultural sector. They’re farmers, they’re working out there on the land. They’re understanding it, and they have been doing it for generations and generations. The best environmentalists in Australia are farmers. No one knows it better than they do and no one understands it better about how you’ve got to strike the balance between caring for the environment, ensuring the productive use of the resources that we have available. And importantly, the contribution to the social cohesion and community of rural and regional towns all around the country. Farmers get this. You’ve always got this and we get it that you get it. That’s why I’m very pleased to be here with you today.
One of the things that I’m sure you will be appreciative of is that we live in a country that has a strong economy. And that doesn’t happen by accident. It only happens where you don’t take your economy for granted and that you have policies that are designed to keep growing the economy. Because, you know, you can’t have greater fairness without greater prosperity. That’s always been Australia’s story. The two working together. It’s no good having policies that are trying to argue about how you carve up an ever-diminishing pie. You want to grow they pie so there’s more for everybody. You don’t lift some up by pulling others down. That’s what we believe as a Government.
You don’t help your environment by pulling your farmers down. You don’t help your communities by pulling your farmers down, you actually try and lift everybody up. And the agricultural sector in rural and regional parts in our country I think have always understood that you get much further together than you get apart. In our rural communities, our regional communities, that has always been understood and I think it’s something that this place, here in Canberra, needs to focus more on. Actually solving and working through problems together, rather than trying to drive people apart.
That strong economy is of course a function of many things. Lower taxes, which our Government has championed and just this week passing through the Parliament will be further reductions in taxes for business of less than $50 million in turnover to just over 25 per cent. From 30 per cent where we started down to 25 per cent for businesses, and that would be encompassing businesses, rural and regional businesses, agricultural businesses all across the country. It’s a tax cut for farmers and it’s a tax cut we have fought for every single day since we have been elected to ensure that is what invested on a farm which may have a turnover of less than $10 million – the instant asset write-off, the pool depreciation, the GST on the cash basis – it wasn’t there before. It was only reserved for the smallest of businesses. And we have recognised that small and family businesses, which are farming businesses, deserve to have a government that supports them by lowering your tax. We belief that you should keep more of what you’ve earned. Because we believe that you are better placed to invest what you’ve earned than the government is. You’ll invest it in your farm. You’ll invest it in your future. You’ll invest it in your family, in your children’s education. You’ll invest it in your community, and so that’s why I want you can have it so you can invest it rather than it coming down here to Canberra.
Now, no disrespect to the public officials and the government departments. You work closely with them too. But you know, if I’ve got to choose where the money is better off to stay – in communities, in the hands of rural and regional businesses, for farmers – that’s where it should remain. That’s why we believe taxes should be lower. But we also think your markets should be bigger and yesterday, the TPP-11 passed our Parliament. Your sector more than any other knows the opportunities of trade. We have always been an open, trading nation. That is one of the pillars of our national prosperity. We are in our 27th year of consecutive, economic growth. It’s a world record. The fact we are an open, trading nation is one of the most important reasons for that success. And our Government will never give up on expanding our limits for trade. Wherever we have to go, wherever that negotiation is taking place, wherever the opportunity is. Simon Birmingham, before that Steven Ciobo and before that Andrew Robb, out there crunching deals to ensure there are more markets for where you can sell what you grow and what you produce. That’s what… we believe it. Because without it, Australia’s prosperity is diminished. The economy does not grow.
The TPP-11 means improved access for our farmers when they need it most. This landmark agreement strips 98 per cent of tariffs for eleven countries with a combined GDP of more than $13.8 thousand billion dollars and close to half a billion customers. Now as a Government, we believed it was important to fight for it. I remember I was in Germany at a G20 meeting. After everyone said, “It’s all done, this Trans Pacific Partnership.” In fact that Labor Party mocked us, it was like the dead parrot sketch out of Monty Python. That was the joke they were saying about the TPP. We didn’t believe it, because we believe in trade and we said, “We’re going to fight for this.” And our Government did, and Malcolm did and Steven did, and we teamed up together with the Kiwis and the Japanese and Prime Minister Abe in particular. And Prime Minister Turnbull pursued that with a dogged determination that I will also pursue these arrangements and they got the deal. And it stuck. And now we’re the fourth country to ratify that agreement, and there are two more to go and then it comes into effect. The modelling also shows Australia is forecast to see some $15.6 thousand million, $15.6 billion in net annual benefits to national income within just over the next decade from this agreement. So I would call that a good deal. I would call that a deal that is worth pursuing, to ensure that we can realise the opportunities that are out there.
Now I want to have a fair dinkum conversation with you about labour on farms. There has been a lot of talk about this and I want us to have a really honest conversation about it today. Our Government does support moving towards an agricultural visa. There has never been any question about that. There have been plenty of people who want to kick up dust about it, commentating on it. We have never, ever said we don’t think that’s a good idea. But we have to go about it in the right way, and it’s not a silver bullet and it doesn’t solve all the problems in relation to the forthcoming harvest. I want to see fruit picked. I want to see the strawberries picked, I want to see the mangoes picked, I want to make sure that this gets off the vine and it gets to market. And we’ve got a three step plan to achieve that for the harvest. You can’t just introduce and agricultural visa overnight and then all of a sudden everyone turns up and they’re on the farm picking fruit. That’s not how it works.
I’m a former Immigration Minister. It is true that I barely know one end of the sheep from another, or one end of the paddock from another. But I tell you what, I know a lot about how to get things done here. That’s my record, whether it’s on the budget, whether it’s on social services. We now have the lowest level of welfare dependency of the working age population of this country in more than 25 years. On immigration, you know of our successes with Operation Sovereign Borders. So I get it. I don’t know how your farm works, but I do know how this place works and I do know how you can get things done here. So this is how I believe we can solve this problem coming into the harvest. Yes, we will work to establish an agricultural visa. That is the long-term solution that is even the medium-term solution. And we need to work to that and make sure it has integrity and we need to make sure that it can deliver against the requirements of the Australian people when it comes to our immigration programme. But this what we need to do to deal with the problem in the short term.
Now at no stage did I say the only thing that we were going to do to is get Australians into Australian jobs and I still believe that and I’ll never resolve from it. If someone is out there and they are fit and they are able and they are willing to work and they live in those communities, they should be taking those jobs. Because it wasn’t that long ago that they did. I was up in Glass House Mountain a few weeks ago and I was talking to the strawberry farmers and they told me that it wasn’t that long ago that it was the locals picking the strawberries. About ten or fifteen years ago, they said. But it’s not happening now.
And I know down in Tasmania when it comes to the apple orchards that they have had the problems of getting local young people who weren’t in work to come and do this work. And I get that, I’ve always known that. But it doesn’t mean you give up on it. It doesn’t mean you say, “Oh that’s all right, they can sit at home and not have to take work that they should be taking in their local communities, that supports their local communities and just pick up the dole.” That’s not ok, so I’m never going to say it is. And every opportunity I have to connect a young person to a job in their town, I will do it. But I’m not naive. I don’t think and never have I said that I think that’s going to solve the immediate problem.
And so what I ask you to do and I implore you to do this today – and I know that Fiona will as well – and that is, I need you to register the jobs that you need filled on the National Harvest Labour Information Service, 1800 062 332, or go to jobsearch.gov.au/harvest.
I need you to register those jobs because I need to know where are the jobs? When do they start? How long do they run for? What are you paying them? What’s the deal?
Now, where there’s a mismatch between the jobs that are needed and those that are available to do it, we will be moving quite quickly because we’re doing it even now as we speak, parallel with this other process to ensure that the Working Holiday Maker Visa Program and the Pacific Labour Scheme and the Seasonal Worker Program – those two Pacific Island Schemes are very important to us and I’ve spoken to many farmers around the country who use them and they’re successful.
Can they meet all the demand? Unlikely. But then my first port of call when it comes to our partners in the Pacific – and I don’t want to see that program undermined because it’s a very important part of Australia’s national policy and relationships and it’s also good for the agricultural sector. But the reason why I need to know where the shortages are is we just can’t work off a hunch: “We might need a few more here.” I need to know where the jobs are because we will ensure that any relaxation we have around the rules for Working Holiday Makers Visas or any of these other schemes will be targeted to the areas where those shortages are. One of the biggest frustrations I have had as a Minister in this Government, and continues now as Prime Minister, is getting an accurate read on labour shortages. I hear plenty of anecdotes but I don’t see enough hard data.
Now, if we’re going to make these changes – and we will – I’m going to make sure they’re targeted to the areas where the labour shortages are because if they’re not, you know what we end up doing? We relax the visas and we get more Uber drivers in Melbourne. Well, that’s not getting any fruit off any trees anywhere so it must be targeted and I need you and I implore you to work with me, with David Coleman, with Alan Tudge and David Littleproud – and in particular, Michael McCormack because it has been Michael McCormack and I who have been working on this plan from the day we signed up as a Coalition under our respective leaderships.
Michael and I have been working to this plan from that very day and it’s a sensible plan. It acknowledges that we need an agricultural visa but it acknowledges, more importantly, that we have a more immediate issue to address and we all know – if we’re being really honest with each other – what some of the concerns are when you start liberalising the visas for agricultural workers because do you know who tells me about it? Farmers do. Farmers tell me this. They say, “We’re doing the right thing. We pay our people right and we look after them and we follow the rules. But so-and-so down the road is not.” Or: “I know of this case somewhere else.” And having been a former Minister for Border Protection, I know too because I’ve ordered the raids and I know what goes on and I won’t put up with it and you won’t put up with it either, I know, as an industry because I know when you hear those stories about abuse of workers and cash work and illegal work, you’re very disappointed because that’s not your show, that’s not your industry, that’s not your sector, that’s not how you do things.
And as the Prime Minister, and as the Ministers responsible, they need to protect the integrity of this program because, you know, Australians will lose patience with visa programs that fail and allow themselves to be rorted and abused. And so, we have to work together to ensure that when we get to the point where we can have this new visa, that it’s one Australians can support because they know that we’ve done everything we can to get Australians into those jobs, that we’ve done everything we can and will do to ensure that we’re targeting the measures to those jobs in the areas where it’s needed and that we ensure that the integrity of the system where the people who are coming and working are being treated properly, being paid properly and I think we all agree with all of those objectives, I’m quite certain we do and I reckon we can get this done so I’m asking you, and I’m sure I’ll be overwhelmed at the positive response to work with us to get this done.
We can get it done, I’m looking forward to getting it done, we know what the need is, we totally get it, we’ve got a plan to do it and I want to congratulate Michael McCormack more than anyone else for being the champion of working through this issue in a constructive and practical way because everyone can stand up and say, “We’re going to do this, we’ll do that.”
But if you’re not focused on the outcome, actually getting the result, then what’s the point? And that’s what I’ve found in Michael and the team that I’ve been working with and my regional team of Liberals like Tony and Rowan Ramsey and the whole fleet of working together to ensure that we get the right outcome on these issues. Now, in the time that I have available – which is not much, I really want to say thank you to Fiona and the NFF and to all of those who have been working so hard to ensure that we deliver on the ground for farmers and regional and rural communities that have been affected by the drought. When I went to Quilpie, I frankly didn’t realise people get so excited about me wearing a cap, it’s not that uncommon, now I have like a hundred caps, everywhere I’ve been since, everyone’s given me a cap. Which is nice, I like them, they’re great but…
[INAUDIBLE INTERJECTION FROM AUDIENCE]
Sorry? [laughs] A little later. But when I went to Quilpie and really – it seems funny to say this but – really enjoyed the day, met some wonderful families and the reason why I wanted to go to Quilpie, and it was one of the first things Michael and I talked about, was the drought has been affecting parts of my home state in the New South Wales terribly but in Queensland and out in Quilpie they’ve been doing it for a lot longer – six years and more. And I wanted to talk to people who’d been able to get themselves through that last six years and understand how they were achieving it because I thought if I can understand how they got through six years then that’s going to help me work out, well, how can I help those who are in the earlier stages and how they’re going to get through?
And I went up there not really knowing what to expect as a suburban mortgage belt boy from Sydney and what I was so pleased to see and so enthused to see was the optimism, the hope, the belief, the community, the resilience and the success under the most trying of circumstances and it filled me with hope. And I think, you know, when it comes to how we’re dealing with the drought, one thing we’ve got to keep giving people is hope. And I stood there out at Quilpie on that property and they showed me a picture of the field adjacent to where we were at the moment which was pretty brown and they showed me a picture where the grass was up to your thigh. So they understand as you do, it comes back, it goes in seasons, this one’s particularly tough – tougher than most, maybe than any in anyone’s living memory for some parts – but the hope remains, the commitment to the lifestyle remains, the passion for what that means for rural and regional communities remains, and that’s what our Government is investing in. We’re investing in that hope and that resilience and that determination.
I particularly want to thanks the CWA who’s here today, there are many charities and I probably offended many now by only mentioning the CWA and I hope I haven’t because I think they deserve great acknowledgement for the work that they’ve been doing in these communities as the many, many charitable organisations are out there doing. And I want to thank them, we need to coordinate that better, we need to target it better, on Friday week we will be having the drought summit and that’s really the job to get “a common operating picture”, as Major General Day would say, about what’s the situation, what’s the next step, how do we rebuild, what’s the long-term plan, issues around water infrastructure, issues about immediate relief and having the vision towards the longer term plan around fodder storage and fodder reserves and resilience both financially, environmentally, structurally. They’re the questions for next week and I want to thank Fiona for the NFF’s engagement on all of those issues.
Now, there’s one issue that I think probably encapsulates our attitude about how to deal with things when it comes to responding to the drought. It’s the issue we talked about with the heavy vehicle regulation and Scotty Buchholz. The issue was raised, you know, it’s a pretty simple thing. The hay bales, they come down and they spread. Now, that was news to me but that’s what happens and we’ve got these rules which meant the trucks couldn’t cross the line and they were getting fined. Numpty stuff. Total numpty stuff and it had to be fixed and within a very short period of time, Scotty and the team at the Heavy Vehicle Regulation Authority, working together with Government, just got it done. Just got it done.
Now, Ronald Reagan used to say, you get a lot more done when you don’t care who gets the credit. He was right about that. Credits. It doesn’t matter. What matters is we work together to get through the drought, what matters is we work together to deal with the real challenges that we face – whether it’s in labour shortages, whether it’s in science and technology and how we support the sector, whether it’s the finance of how we work for our rural and regional communities, whether it’s opening up new markets and opportunities for our farmers all around the world. You know, we stick together, we work together, we bring Australians together then this country’s just going to get stronger and stronger and stronger and as always, it’s going to be significantly off the back of the people who are in this room. Thank you very much for your attention.