Well, good morning, colleagues and friends.
Can I thank you once again for putting the faith that you have in me and in Jane as Deputy Leader. And can I say it is wonderful to be here in the first joint party room of the new team with our friends from the National Party.
The strength of the Coalition is absolutely central to making sure we take a strong offering for the next election and that we have a strong Australia.
I am a huge believer in a strong Coalition, and can I say it's wonderful to have us back together, working together as we have been even in the last couple of weeks.
Right now, Australians feel strongly that this country is moving in the wrong direction.
And that we have a government that cannot be trusted. That cannot be trusted.
We were promised by Labor, by this Treasurer that they had beaten inflation.
That they had beaten high interest rates.
And the fact of the matter is that inflation and high interest rates have beaten this Treasurer and this government.
They had told us that taxes were going to come down, but we know with raging inflation taxes will keep going up, and we hear, even in recent weeks, that there are going to be more taxes on aspirational Australians. Another assault on aspiration from this Labor government.
We've been told - over 90 times by the Prime Minister - that energy bills were going to come down, $275. Well, they came down by 10% when I was Minister, they've gone up by 40% under this hapless Energy Minister.
We were told by this government that we were going to see significant reductions in immigration and increases in standards, and yet we haven't seen them reach any of their immigration targets.
We were told by this government that they were going to make life easier for families and yet families have had less flexibility, less choice. And life has been harder for hard-working Australians to pay the mortgage, to pay the bills, to pay the energy bill and to make ends meet.
And we were told by this government, we were told by this government, that they were going to build 1.2 million houses. They're not even close.
They've put the CFMEU in charge and they're not going to even get close to their targets and now we learn they're going to put extra taxes on housing. Well, if you want more houses, you don't put extra taxes. It's very simple.
Now, we are laying out our priorities and we're going to be laying out policies all the way through to the next election that address two core issues for Australians: restoring their standard of living, that has been trashed by this government, has gone backwards compared to all of our peer countries around the world. And we're going to protect Australians' way of life. We cherish our way of life in this country. We cherish our core beliefs and values and we're going to fight to protect them every single day.
To do those two things - restoring our standard of living and protecting our way of life - it is absolutely essential that we fight and beat inflation. We fight and beat high interest rates. We fight and beat high taxes. And we do that by fighting and beating Labor's obsession with big government, with spending more, with regulating more, and with thinking that you can grow an economy by growing government. You grow an economy by growing a private sector that has the confidence to invest, to employ and to take risks.
We know that's right as Liberals and Nationals and that's what we're going to make sure that we fight for in the coming months.
We're going to be fighting to make home ownership central to Australian aspiration again. We know that owning a part of Australia is central to being part of the great Australian journey. And we're going to be fighting for that every single day. We're going to be fighting to make sure that we get numbers down on immigration and standards up, and most importantly, most importantly, we shut the door on those who do not adopt our values and beliefs.
And we know we have to make it easier for families to bring up their kids, to raise their kids with more flexibility and more choice. That's what we believe in as Liberals and Nationals and as a Coalition.
We also need to ensure that we are defending this country. Labor has told us that they're spending enough on defence to be able to both do AUKUS and support the rest of the Defence Force. We know that that's wrong and we've been told by experts time and time again that that is absolutely wrong. We will be ensuring that we properly fund our Defence Force, properly fund our personnel, our capability. And that is absolutely central to protecting our way of life.
Meanwhile, we will be celebrating our nation every single day. We are the most magnificent nation on earth. It doesn't feel like that for a lot of Australians right now, but there's nothing in that that can't be fixed without a change of government.
It can be fixed if we focus on those priorities every single day. And that is exactly what we're going to do.
We have an enormous amount of work to do.
All of us in this room.
We have a new ministerial team with a mix of talent and experience.
We've got committee leadership coming together and we're going to be working every day from now until the next election to focus on those priorities - restoring our standard of living, protecting our way of life.
And we're going to do it because this country is worth fighting for.
Australia is worth fighting for.
So colleagues, let's get to work.
