SPEECH NOTES FOR MAKING AUSTRALIA RIGHT

This is an important book because of what it says about our collective state of
mind. Many of the people who normally support Coalition governments arent
happy.

They are publishing their own ways to make Australia right because, they
think, the government is not up to it.

Its a cri de coeur from people who think that Labor is moving to the green left
and that the Coalition has become Labor lite.

A sense of disappointment and disillusionment pervades these essays:

disappointment with the Abbott government despite the boats being stopped,
the carbon tax being scrapped, the FTAs being finalised, business welfare being
stopped, and budget repair getting well underway; and perhaps even despair
about the Turnbull government; but what saves it from being a curmudgeons
lament is the palpable sense, in every contribution, that our party and our
country can be better.

To editor Jim Allan and to many of the other authors, the government has done
much wrong; and what its done right hasnt been right enough.

These criticisms arent always fair. Still, unless we heed the message from people
who think that we have let them down, a book like this can become the thinking
persons justification for voting One Nation.

After all, the Making Australia Right authors are not the only ones who are
disappointed and disillusioned.

At last years election, 24 per cent voted for minor parties and independents, 5
per cent spoiled their ballot papers and 9 per cent didnt even turn up to vote.
Thats nearly 40 per cent of the electorate that couldnt bring themselves to vote
for either of the two parties that have governed us for 100 years.

And its worse now. In Queensland, polls have the Coalition vote 8 percentage
points down since the election and One Nation 12 percentage points up.

Its easy enough to see why.

We have the worlds biggest reserves of energy yet we have some of worlds
highest power prices. We have land in abundance yet Sydneys house prices
are close to Hong Kongs.

We have among the-worlds highest labour costs and heaviest regulatory

burdens.

Of course, were agile and were innovative and were the worlds most
successful immigrant society but Kazakhstan, apparently, now outranks us in
education achievement and were no longer the place where everyone wants to
invest.

Its true that to be an Australian almost any Australian is to have won the
lottery of life but it wont stay that way unless we lift our game.
And yes, theres an opposition in denial about the problems it created when in
office; theres a populist senate; theres a media that often mistakes insider
gossip for serious journalism; and theres a public that demands to enjoy things
today but to put off paying for them.

Still, the governments job is to face up to these challenges and to overcome

them. Its harder than ever but it still has to be done.

So heres the big question: what should a sensible centre-right government be

doing now?

All the contributors to Making Australia Right have useful things to say but
perhaps the best description of the centre-rights dilemma comes from Gary
Johns who says:

The Right believes in less taxation and less government interference in peoples
lives: in short, liberty. But in a world where more Australians vote for their money
than work for it, and the constituency beholden to government for benefits and
jobs is expanding, the constituency for winning votes with tax cuts and de-
regulation is diminishing.

Selling stringency and insecurity says Johns, is not going to win elections.

Rather, he says, the Right have to advance a cultural debate in conjunction with
the economic one. The Right have to promote a discussion that has, at worst, no
cost to the budget and builds a constituency. It is not a case of bread and
circuses, of creating diversions, but of the necessity to build a constituency that
trusts government to be less intrusive. It is a necessity (in order) to overcome
the shameless bribery that that all politicians indulge in, but especially the left.

Johns says and as a former Labor minister he should know what the left is up to
that the pathway to a liberal society will beto win constituencies without
bribing them. Yet, he says, to achieve asocietythat is more liberal and
governed by contract rather than by ideology will take a cultural revolution.

In the long run, we do indeed need a conservative version of the lefts long
march through the institutions. We do need to make it respectable again to be
liberal on economic questions and conservative on social ones.

In the short run, though, we have to win the next election. That means finding
policy thats philosophically acceptable, economically responsible and politically
saleable.

One of the most timely and important essays is Alan Morans on energy policy.
He methodically exposes the disastrous muddle successive governments have
created.

We are sleepwalking towards what the head of Bluescope said this week was an
energy policy catastrophe.

My government reduced the renewable energy target from 28 per cent to 23 per
cent. It wasnt enough but it was a step in the right direction and it was the best
we could get through the senate at the time.
Now, almost two years on, people are starting to wake up to our danger: due to
the 24 hour state-wide blackout in South Australia where traffic lights went out,
cash registers didnt work, people were trapped in lifts and patients were sent
home from hospital; and the power failures in other states, like the one that
badly damaged the Alcoa smelter and jeopardised 10,000 jobs.

Im all in favour of renewables, provided theyre economic and provided they

dont jeopardise security of supply; but, at the moment, we have a policy-driven
disaster because you just cant rely on renewable power.

In the absence of better storage, the renewable energy target should be called
the intermittent energy target or the unreliable energy target because when the
sun doesnt shine and the wind doesnt blow, the power wont flow.

But its not Labors even more disastrous 50 per cent renewable target thats
caused the problem its the existing renewable target which the government
has no plans to change. Indeed, under the governments plans, wind generation
is supposed to double in the next three years at a capital cost to you the
consumer of $10 billion.

The government is now talking about using the Clean Energy Finance
Corporation to subsidise a new coal-fired power station; creating, if you like, a
base-load target to supplement the renewable target.

We subsidise wind to make coal uneconomic so now we are proposing to

subsidise coal to keep the lights on. Go figure. Wouldnt it be better to abolish
subsidies for new renewable generation and let ordinary market forces do the
rest?

Of course, that would trigger the mother-of-all-brawls in the senate, but what
better way to let voters know that the Coalition wants your power bill down,
while Labor wants it up?

The likelihood of defeat in the senate never stopped the Howard government
trying to change the unfair dismissal laws. Over forty times we tried and failed
and each attempt meant that we burnished our small business credentials and
Labor damaged theirs.

Weve got to face up to the damage being done by green schemes that seemed
like a good idea at the time and weve also got to face up to the damage that
the senate is doing; how its making good government in this country almost
impossible.

The senate sabotage of the 2014 budget was blamed on poor salesmanship but
my successors difficulties with far less sweeping measures show that the
problem is less the salesman than the system.

Its almost impossible for the government of the day to have a senate majority in
its own right because its almost impossible to get the 57 per cent of the vote
needed to win four senators out of six in any state.

This doesnt matter much for governments that want higher spending, more
regulation and heavier taxes (at least on the so-called rich); the senate will
always vote for those. But it matters a great deal for governments that want the
reverse.

The cross bench is good at grievance but its never going to take responsibility
for cutting spending, upsetting lobby groups, and reducing taxes on businesses
and high income earners.

Thats why the senate has changed from a house of review to a house of
rejection. The result is gridlock, not government, and for our countrys sake it
cant go on.

John Howard recognised this back in 2003. A government policy paper

recommended changing section 57 of the constitution to allow legislation thats
been rejected twice in the senate three months apart to go to a joint sitting
without the need for a double dissolution election.

The government didnt proceed with this reform because it fluked four out of six
senators in Queensland in 2004 and, for one term, more-or-less controlled the
senate.

But its now high time to reconsider the Howard proposal.

The government should consider taking this reform to the people simultaneously
with the next election. Lets make the next election about government versus
gridlock

That way, if its carried, the government will be able to reduce spending, as well
as to raise it; to cut taxes, as well as to increase them; and to limit the size of
government, as well as to boost it.

That way, the next election will be about the kind of country that we want: one
where the government tells you what its going to do and does it; or tells you
what its going to do but doesnt because the senate wont let it.

The next election is winnable.

If we stop pandering to climate change theology and freeze the RET, we can take
the pressure off power prices.

If we end the big is best thinking of the federal Treasury, and scaled back
immigration (at least until housing starts and infrastructure have caught up), we
can take the pressure off home prices.

If we take our own rhetoric about budget repair seriously and avoid all new
spending and cut out all frivolous spending, we will start to get the deficit down.

If we refuse to be the ATM for the states, there might be finally be some micro-
economic reform of our public education and public health systems.

If we stop funding the Human Rights Commission and leave protecting our
liberties to the parliament, the courts and a free press where they belong, we
might start to look like the defenders of western civilisation that we aspire to be.
And of course, we have to keep committed to secure borders, not give up on free
trade agreements that give our exporters a fair go, and ensure that our armed
forces are about protecting the country not just creating jobs in Adelaide.

In short, why not say to the people of Australia: well cut the RET, to help with
your power bills; well cut immigration, to make housing more affordable; well
scrap the Human Rights Commission, to stop official bullying; well stop all new
spending, to end ripping off our grandkids; and well reform the senate to have
government, not gridlock?

Our challenge is to be worth voting for. Its to win back the people who are giving
up on us like the Making Australia Right authors.

It wont be easy but it must be possible or our country is doomed to a Shorten

government that will make a bad situation immeasurably worse.

In or out of government, political parties need a purpose. Our politics cant be

just a contest of toxic egos or someones vanity project.

What is worth striving for; how can we make a difference; and what must change
if Australians individually and collectively are to come closer to our best selves?

Thats the challenge that our side of politics needs to ponder. Theres much work
to be done but the authors of this book, quite rightly, are demanding that we
come to grips with it fast.