E&OE.
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much for being here this morning.
Thank you for the warm welcome, and there are many reasons why we’re gathered here today, but we have an amazing candidate who I want to talk about in a second; we have a community with an opportunity to send a message to a bad government; and we have the ability to speak up for millions of Australians who are really doing it very tough under this government at the moment.
I want to say thank you very much to all of you in the room. The most important people here today are our volunteers, people who’ve been out door-knocking, many of you who have been involved in our great Party for decades, involved across elections that span federal and state and local levels. I want to say thank you very much for your loyalty to our cause, for sticking with us through thick and thin, through always standing up for our values and the work that you are doing here over the course of the next couple of weeks can really change the course of history in our country. So, feel the weight – I hope you feel the burden already – but it is an important task which starts on Monday with the pre-polling. So, thank you.
I want to say thank you very much to our President of the Party, Philip Davis, thank you very much for the work you’ve done. Jeffrey Kennett, a great Victorian and penned a great piece in the Herald Sun this week I think it was, so thank you very much for your consistency mate in supporting great causes.
To my federal colleagues, thank you very much to Keith Wolahan, to the amazing Jane Hume, Jason Wood in his absence, others: James Paterson, Sarah Henderson, who have been really involved in this campaign. Thank you so much for what you’ve been able to do.
To Manny and Theo and others – our candidates. They’re next – and we need to provide plenty of support to them.
A couple points that I want to make to you today. One is that as we move around this part of the world, as you knock on doors, as you go to the sporting clubs, as you speak to people in their everyday lives – they want a local champion, and in Nathan, they have that champion.
Nathan has an incredible back story, and every Australian should know it, and the people of Dunkley have really come to appreciate it – not just as their local Mayor, but as a father, as a husband, as somebody who has given everything to this country in his short time here. He speaks with a funny accent – it’s a great accent! He tells a good joke, but I’ll tell you what, if you want somebody who can work hard for the local community, if you want a champion to represent this local community in Canberra, if that’s what this by-election is about, we have the perfect candidate. He’s a person who, as Mayor, has the confidence of his colleagues. Over three years, in an unprecedented way, they voted him in because they know that he’s got the plan and he’s rolling it out for his local community. A 20-year vision that he’s been able to work up. He’s put money into sporting clubs and into infrastructure to provide for local families, for people as they age in the community, those with special needs, because he’s prioritised them above the bureaucracy and above where money could be spent otherwise.
In my experience, somebody who has demonstrated that leadership capability is exactly the candidate you want as your local member in the federal parliament. You don’t want somebody who’s coming there with their own interests in mind. You don’t want somebody coming there just because they’re popular in the local branch, or for any other reason than to be a representative, a proud representative, a strong champion for the local community. That is why I believe this man can be the next Member for Dunkley. That is the first reason.
Now, we do know that this by-election also is one that’s not going to change the government, we’re not going to wake up after the by-election and find that there’s a change of government in Canberra, but this is an opportunity for Australians to send a message to a bad government, a government that promised a reduction of $275 in your power bills, and yet, over the last 18 months, power prices have gone up by 20 per cent, gas has gone up by almost 30 per cent. This is a Prime Minister who promised that people would have lower mortgages, and yet now for average families, they’re paying $24,000 a year more in mortgage repayments after tax, and there are 12 interest rate rises that the Prime Minister never mentioned, and yet the Reserve Bank Governor has rightly pointed out that inflation is a home-grown problem – that is, it’s a problem of the government’s making. Interest rates have stayed higher for longer, and if you compare us to the G7 nations, we have the highest core inflation of any of those seven nations.
So, the Government has had two budgets where they’ve been able to make decisions to bring pressure down on families, to help support families, and the opposite has taken place. I think the broken promises of the Prime Minister extend well beyond that. We know in relation to tax cuts, the Prime Minister has talked a lot to the people of Dunkley about tax cuts, but we know that they don’t start until the 1st of July, something he never mentions, even though families need the help now. It’s $15 a week, when families at the moment are about $150 a week worse off under this Government, and people will take the money, for sure, but they know that the Prime Minister, without integrity, without the ability to keep his word, is somebody that they don’t want in The Lodge.
So, send Anthony Albanese and Labor a message in this by-election. Send it not just on behalf of your local community, but on behalf of millions of Australians around the country. If we do that, maybe the Government can course-correct, maybe they can de-shackle from the union influence, maybe they can find some economic management skills that have evaded them since Federation. Who knows? Who knows? But in this by-election, we have the ability as a Party to demonstrate to Victorians again that we have the ability to serve them well in the community.
I have some wonderful colleagues I’ve mentioned here already. Chris Crewther, the former Member for Dunkley is here as the local state member, continuing to do an excellent job. Tim Wilson and Katie Allen are here as well, and they’ve done amazing work for their local communities.
There are many messages that we can convey during the course of this by-election, but to see Nathan Conroy elected, to see him rewarded for the work that he’s done already, and to see him take up this fight, will be a great outcome for Dunkley, it will be a great outcome for our country, and it will be a great outcome for our party.
So, ladies and gentlemen, it’s a great honour to be here with you. It’s a great honour to lead this Party. I see it as – apart from being the Defence Minister of our country – the greatest honour, and to meet people as we go around, to talk about their stories, that is an incredible experience. But it’s also a painful one at the moment, because many families are doing much tougher than they ever imagined.
We have already demonstrated that we have the team, we have the unity, we have the policy work which is underway at the moment, which will mean at the next federal election, people won’t just have to vote a bad government out, but they’ll have every reason, every motivation, to vote a good government in – and we can do that if Nathan wins this seat. Win it we can. He’s a great candidate. He’s a great champion of this local community.
Would you please welcome to the lectern, Nathan Conroy.
[ends]