E&OE 

Thank you, Rob, for that very kind introduction. And thank you for hosting us here at this beautiful venue today. It’s really a great pleasure to be back up here. And Paul, thank you, again, for your energetic support and the role you’re playing – and will continue to play – in this great city, in this great state, in this great country.

To my deputy leader, Jane Hume – it is wonderful to have her here. We are out talking to small businesses all across the country at the moment – big audiences of people who are interested in politics in a way that we haven’t seen for a long, long time. And Jane and I are going to continue to be taking that fight up every single day. And it’s a real pleasure to have her working with me on that.

To Kellie Sloane – wonderful to have you here. She is fighting the good fight every day. And it’s such a pleasure to have Kellie as a leader to work with in this state. And Kellie is going to keep taking up that fight for small businesses and businesses across this state for a long time to come and leading up to the state election next year. So, great to have Kellie here. Susan Carter and Tim James are here from the New South Wales team as well.

Great to have my former colleague, Andrew Robb, in the room. And Jason Falinski is over here as well. It’s great to have those former colleagues who continue to play important roles in the business community across Australia.

Can I also thank Gemma in advance for the lovely questions she’s going to ask me. It’s great to have Gemma here. Ahead of that, please indulge me for a few minutes as I make some opening remarks.

As the Leader of the Opposition, I’m often asked what my vision is for this country. And it’s a very fair question, of course. I want Australia to be a country where anyone – no matter their background – can dream big and know that if they work hard they can get ahead. And across the generations, I firmly believe that this has been the compact that has made this country great – that it is possible to do that. To aspire, to strive, and to succeed – that is the great Australian compact.

Sadly, for too many Australians right now that compact feels broken. Too many Australians have lost hope. I want to repair that compact for hard work and for success.

And there are other things I want for our nation too, but that is the single most important one.

I also want Australia to be a country where young Australians know that they can buy a home. Where more couples can enjoy the joy of having kids. And for me having four kids now in their twenties – now adults – is the greatest joy of my life. And yet, so many young Australians feel that’s now out of reach.

I want Australia to be a country where life is easy. Where government gets out of the way and off Australians’ backs. Where we have government that re-empowers Australians, instead of a government that’s interested only in expanding its own power.

I want Australia to be a country where businesses boom and industries thrive. And that was my career before politics: working with industries to grow, to thrive, to succeed. A country where we innovate, where we make and build things of ambition and aspiration. Where we farm, mine, and drill with determination and make use of our natural resources to enrich our country, our families, our communities.

I want Australia to be debt free again. It has been under Liberal governments in the past and it can be again. So we have more money to support and improve our cities, our towns, and our regions. So we can invest in things that matter: roads and rail, dams and data centres, homes and healthcare, schools and satellites, factories and freight hubs, medicines and our military.

I want Australia to be a country where we are united under one flag. Where we celebrate our history and assert our values with conviction. Where we look forward with hope, with confidence, and with ambition.

We can know this Australia – we’ve known it before. But it isn’t the Australia we know today.

Make no mistake, what began as a cost-of-living crisis, and became a standard of living crisis, is now a full-blown economic crisis in this country. A crisis of the Albanese Government’s making.

Addicted to spending, Labor has fuelled inflation, driven-up higher interest rates, and has led to a cost-of-living disaster. We have experienced the worst collapse in living standards in the developed world. You can’t keep blaming others for that. We’re at the bottom of the league table.

This government has turned its back on what makes us prosperous: free enterprise and enterprising free people. That’s what’s made this country prosperous over a long period of time. Australians who make things, build things, fix things, and create things.

Instead, Labor sees government as the solution to every problem. But bigger, fatter government under Labor hasn’t made our country or Australians better off. In fact, it’s done the opposite.

Labor is saddling future generations with what’s about to become $1 trillion of debt. That’s almost $100,000 per household in this country. And it’s got to be paid back – either with more taxes or higher inflation. They are the only options under this Labor Government.

Fewer homes are being built – and the dream of home ownership out of reach for so many. Energy prices are up 40 per cent. When I was Energy Minister, prices came down 10 per cent and emissions came down 10 per cent. Under Labor, prices are up 40 per cent and emissions have barely moved. Good energy policy is pragmatic energy policy. Record numbers of businesses are collapsing – more than 30 every single day. Industries are closing or moving offshore. Childcare costs have soared. Immigration numbers are too high, and immigration standards too low. Our defence force is ill-equipped for modern warfare. And our warfighters are not in the position they need to be. Our country has been atomised by divisive identity politics.

Worst of all, Australians are poorer because of a government that can’t manage the economy. And you know it: when Labor runs out of money, it comes after yours. And that’s exactly what it’s doing right now. This is the highest taxing government in Australian history. And it’s wanting to tax more. It has broken the mother of all promises fifty times with its changes to negative gearing and capital gains tax. It’s taxes on housing, every asset class, trusts, savings, start-ups, family and small businesses, aspirational young Australians, farmers, and charities.

And now, there’s no mistaking Labor’s socialist vision for our country. If tax keeps going up and spending keeps going up as a share of the economy endlessly – which is Labor’s plan – that is socialism. Make no mistake about it. Labor is for wealth redistribution – not wealth creation. It attacks aspiration – instead of nurturing aspiration. It wants dependent citizens – not empowered citizens. It resents success – instead of celebrating success.

This much is clear: more Labor government means more of the same. So we need change. But this isn’t the time to put faith in a one-person show in One Nation.

Only the Coalition has the strong plan to restore aspiration and free enterprise. And building on what I announced in my Budget Reply, today I’m pleased to launch the Coalition’s plan to fix the economy, restore our standard of living, and protect our way of life.

Now, there’s going to be a lot more we will announce between now and the next election. But I want to go through some of the key aspects of this plan today, so you’ve got a sense of we’re we are at, and where we’re going. Our Budget Reply was unashamedly a strong statement of differentiation versus our political competitors and a strong statement of where this country needs to go.

We will axe Labor’s toxic taxes which are an assault on aspiration. But we will go further. On top of getting rid of their tax on small businesses, on families, on savings, on investment, on homes, we will get rid of Labor’s dishonest inflation tax. Every year Australians are paying more and more income tax because of Labor’s homegrown inflation. And because of Labor’s homegrown inflation, Australians have to see wage increases just to keep up – not getting ahead – just to be able to buy what they were buying a year ago. And yet, when that happens, their incomes are pushed up into higher tax brackets and they pay more tax. This is Jim Chalmers’ sneaky income tax increase that he gets every year. And the higher he can push inflation, the more he gets. No wonder he is happy to have inflation raging. By indexing tax brackets, which we will do, we will ensure that Australians get a tax cut – versus Labor’s policies – every single year. For a typical worker – at 2.5 per cent inflation, well below where we are today – that’s $250 year one, $500 year two, $750 year three, $1,000 year four, and so on. This will restrain the growth of government that we have seen under Labor. You will get a tax cut every year under a Coalition Government. And never again will a government be able to steal from Australians year-on-year.

We’re committed to paying down debt too by establishing a Future Generations Fund. It will bank commodity revenue windfalls which Labor hasn’t been doing. They’ve been spending the vast majority of it. They’re happy to have it invisible in the Budget and then spend it when it comes in. And that’s exactly what they have done.

We will restore aspiration and free enterprise by backing small businesses. Central to that is the $50,000 permanent instant asset write-off. We need to encourage investment in this country. The way back from this economic crisis is free enterprises investing in the future of their businesses, their communities, their states, and their country. And every time a small business makes an investment, it’s not just investing in itself, it’s investing in everybody around them. We need to see more of that investment. And that’s why we will expand the instant asset write-off to provide that incentive.

We will focus on getting that abundant, affordable energy back that we had as a country that we have absolutely lost. This becomes crucial as we move into a global competition for technology and low-cost energy. That means we will scrap net zero. But more importantly, we will scrap Labor’s crippling, sneaky carbon taxes that are built across our economy which has led to that 40 per cent increase in electricity prices, but also led to increases in goods and services costs across the country. We will put in place cheap and abundant energy to lower energy prices. And the key to that is making use of our bountiful, natural resources in this country, including our uranium, and we will lift the moratorium on nuclear power in this country.

Now, Australia has been trying to address the crisis we’ve had where not only have we had our standard of living dropping, but businesses have been short of Labor. And yet, coming out of Covid, we saw immigration levels get to record numbers – more than double what they had ever been before. And yet we still had skilled migration and skills shortages in this country. So we will end Labor’s mass migration and we will shift to skilled migration again. This country has known and seen incredible skilled migration in our history. I saw it growing up in Cooma – one of the great immigrant towns of this country with the immigrants that came from war-torn Europe after the Second World War. These were people who aspired, who strived, and who succeeded in so many cases. We need that skilled migration program back at the centre of our economic policies in this country.

We will also build more homes, including by investing $5 billion in supporting infrastructure to unlock 400,000 new homes in this country. We need young Australians to know that they can get into a home. So by capping migration based on housing supply but also increasing the number of houses being built in this country, we can get that balance right. That also means slashing the National Construction Code which tells builders how to build a home – 2,000 pages. How can a small builder comply with 2,000 pages of regulations? It’s insane. We will slash the National Construction Code.

And finally, unlike Labor, we will put Australia and Australians first every day of the week. That includes stopping Labor’s handouts for people who are not citizens – who have just arrived in the country – including the 5 per cent home deposit scheme. This should be for Australian citizens. We will also ensure that if you commit to Australia, we will commit to you. And once people become citizens, they will have access to all of those programs. We will spend at least 3 per cent of GDP on defence to ensure that our warfighters have the support and capability they need in this country.

Ladies and gentlemen, we can fix our economy. We can get back to the Australia that I grew up in, and I believe in. We can restore our standard of living. We can protect our way of life. We can be a nation where the Australian compact is restored: where Australians know that if they aspire and strive, they can succeed. It’s a great pleasure to launch our plan today, which you’re going to see a lot more of in the coming weeks and months. This is a plan – a strong plan, a credible plan – along with our team that can fix the economic crisis that Labor has led us into. Thank you very much.

‍