Address to the National Press Club, Canberra, 24 April 2025
Transcript:
Well, thank you, Jane.
To the National Press Club, and to my National Party colleagues and family and one and all, it’s a great honour to address the National Press Club and the nation.
My involvement with The National Party started 40-plus years ago. In the 1983 Queensland state election, when I stood outside the Chinchilla Courthouse handing out for my father to be the state member for Condamine.
To be the Leader of The Nationals is one of the greatest professional honours, one I don’t take lightly, one that I take in wanting to leave a legacy, one for the people that our great party have represented and supported for over 100 years, a party that has progressed and evolved, having our roots in farming but progressing to be a dynamic party that represents now just as many nurses, teachers and police as farmers.
Our roots will always be in the country and in terms of agriculture, as our electorates changed, so, too, have we. I’ve always believed as a Queensland Nat in the primacy of our membership and of our party-room. I’m proud to lead a party-room that has led the national debate for the last three years I don’t think in living memory there’s been a party of a Coalition that has set the agenda like The National Party.
We have had the courage to draw on the collective wisdom of our party-room, to get to a position that many of which we wanted for so long, but have been prepared to have the courage of our conviction to stand up, when issues faced us.
One of the proudest moments of my leadership is when our party-room got to a position, where only 30 per cent of the country agreed with us in opposing, which we respected, it wasn’t a decision we made quickly, despite what commentators may say.
The Prime Minister made it clear. The mechanics, machinery of the Voice would be predicated off the Langton report, page 14-17. We took that away within our party-room, in a respectful way. We undertook a committee within our party room to listen to the Yes and No case, to understand what the machinery would look like, what it would mean for us who represent some of the most disadvantaged Indigenous Australians in remote areas.
We got to a position predicated on that lived experience, after embracing both the Yes and the No. We believed that we were repeating the mistakes of the past, those mistakes that people we represent live with to this day, ATSIC Mark 2 was not the answer to closing the gap. That was not the way to empower local communities to actually endeavour the fix their challenges and tap into their opportunities.
That was not the way of more bureaucracy. We needed a better bureaucracy. It also came back to a guiding principle of our great Party that I believe of our great nation, that all 27 million of us are equal. No matter our race, our religion. And proudly all 27 million of us have a voice in this Parliament, just down the road. 271 politicians, and proudly, our nation has elected 11 Indigenous Australians, not to represent just Indigenous Australians but represent us all. That’s the great country we have become. That’s the great country we should build on to make sure that where there is disadvantage – we know to the post code, we attack that disadvantage with local solutions.
I’m proud to say, that after The Voice result, there was no victory lap by The Nationals or the Liberals. We came back to this place up the road, walked in that Parliament and Peter Dutton and I moved a motion to undertake a Royal Commission into child sexual abuse in central Australia and have a forensic audit of the billions of dollars that is being spent, that isn’t hitting where it should. We came back with practical solutions and have subsequently said that true to the values of why we oppose the Voice, we need to have more localised land councils, to empower local Elders to face the challenges but embrace the challenges there for them.
We have a Prime Minister that divided our country with $450 million of wasted taxpayer money and will not utter the word ‘Indigenous Australian’. He’s not even game to go back to Alice Springs. That’s a Prime Minister that doesn’t have the values and principles to lead our nation together as one and face the problems and empower local people to solve the problems. Instead it has been cast aside.
We give you that commitment, we will part of a Dutton-Littleproud government, to tackle the problems and embrace the future their way. That is what common sense should be about.
We’re also proud of the fact that in this election, we’re putting forward solutions for the nation’s biggest problem, cost-of-living. At the moment, we have a Prime Minister that is talking about everything else other than cost-of-living because he created it. He’s creating the cost-of-living crisis where there are Australians tonight that will not be able to afford to put dinner on the table.
He’s a Prime Minister that is looking for diversions, rather than solutions, that the ideology that he’s brought to government over the last three years has meant it hasn’t met the practical reality of what’s bled out of every Australian’s wallet.
That is not someone who should lead our country and divert with scare campaigns on Medicare, running around with a little green card, when every Australian knows that little green card, you can’t use without your credit card.
You have to solve the nation’s problems by having the courage to fix them, to say you got it wrong, to say that what you put to the Australian people, you promised the people, you have not delivered. You’re not going to solve the nation’s problems without facing up to fundamentally changing the policies that will shift the dial and in this country we are blessed with the resources that many countries would envy to take advantage of those challenges.
One of those challenges is the cost of food here in this country.
Today, we, as a Dutton-Littleproud government, within six months, will have a National Food Security Plan, because it’s not just about the long-term food security of our country, but the here and now, about Australians being able to put dinner on the table.
That’s the real problem we face. So, we’ve said as part of this and the elements that make this plan up, is that we are saying and have said, well long ago, as Nationals, that the market power of our supermarkets over our farmers and over you, the consumer has been abused.
The evidence is clear. The evidence is vastly clear. In June/July last year, sheep and beef prices went down by 70-80 per cent at the farm gate. At the check-out, they went down by 8 per cent. They’re having a red-hot crack at you. The abuse in how they treat Australian farmers, you only have to cast your mind back to what they did to the dairy industry. I was a rural banker that had to have the hard conversations, emotional conversations, with dairy farmers who had their commodity devalued overnight because the big supermarkets decided to put a ceiling on the price of what their commodity was worth.
That’s not the Australian way or how corporates should operate. So, what we have said, is we will make sure there is fairness and transparency from the farm gate to your plate. We don’t want to fix prices. We want to make sure there is fairness. Fairness for farmers and for you. You can’t expect the Australian people to understand variations in farm gate and how that flows on to them. They have enough going on.
Why wouldn’t we lean in and make sure that there is fairness and there is a deterrent and consequence for someone doing the wrong thing?
The supermarkets shouldn’t fear me or the Coalition. We have divestiture powers. We put them in place in 2019, one Anthony Albanese supported them, when we put in divestiture powers, the big stick legislation, for the big energy companies.
Anthony Albanese in January last year made the statement when initiating the Code of Conduct Review that any power of the ACCC wanted, they would get. Within a month, the big CEOs of Coles and Woolworths got to them and they could have anything bar divestiture powers. Who do they have to fear – if Coles and Woolworths have done nothing wrong, that will never be imposed. We want to make sure there is structural and cultural change.
Their solution in infringement notices of $198,000. They slipped down to Civic, pulled it out of the till and paid it as a cost of doing business. You need to change culture by having a consequence. This government is not game to take on big supermarkets when there are Australians tonight that won’t be able to eat dinner.
We’ve been given a privileged position to come to this place. Why wouldn’t we do something about that and make sure there is that fairness and transparency for every Australian, including farmers. When you have 30 per cent of those in the horticulture sector saying they are out of this business in 12 months because of the way the supermarkets have abused them and used them, because they control the market.
They are the market. You have to make sure that there is fairness, they’re not asking for fixed prices. They are asking for fair prices. That is what we’re saying.
We will introduce a Supermarket Commissioner, whereby a farmer can confidentially come forward and put forward their case where they believe there’s been a breach of the Code. If the Commissioner sees that there is evidence to such, they have a choice. They can either conciliate that back through the supermarket or if they fear retribution, which is what we have heard in so many inquiries, from farmers, then they can accelerate that through to the ACCC, who can then impose a $2 million infringement notice on the spot.
That’s going to change culture. If they don’t, and in the most egregious cases, it will go forward to a court, where they will determine if it is more significant in terms of financial penalty, or whether it’s divestiture powers. A court should determine that, not politicians.
So, this is used around the world, but when you have a Prime Minister too gutless to stand up when Australians can’t eat, where is the values of our Prime Minister and this government?
They have lost touch with what is happening out there. That takes courage and conviction to get it right. I’m proud of my party-room that wanted this for decades, but we delivered it as part of a Dutton/David Littleproud Government who will say to every consular and farmer you will be treated fairly.
That’s the Australian way and that’s what The National Party have always stood for. We’ve also made it clear, energy is the economy. Unless you fix the energy grid, then we are kicking the nation’s problems down the road.
This government has already kicked the energy problem so far down the road they spent $7 billion on rebates and subsidies, because an all-renewables approach will not work. We have ageing coal fired power fleets. We have to be honest, at some point, we will have to transition them. Why would you not look at reliable baseload zero emissions power, and the scare campaign that the Prime Minister has undertaken, predicated from the Smart Energy Council, an organisation that donates to the Labor Party, runs around with a scare campaign of a $600 billion tag, is disingenuous at best.
But the Prime Minister has trouble with telling the truth. The reality is we’ve used Frontier Economics, an organisation that both the Labor Party and the Coalition use in economic modelling. Everyone has recognised that they are the pre-eminent organisation to undertake that.
So, our grid, our total grid, will be just over $330 billion. They put their grid, an all-renewables approach just under $600 billion.
$263 billion less Australians will have to pay to have an energy grid with a mix, that doesn’t put its eggs in one basket, doesn’t have concentration, and I learned that in Grade 8 business economics at State High. I would have thought our learned Treasurer might have known. I’ve given up on Chris Bowen. The reality is there is no country of the industrial scale size of Australia that is going down an all-renewables path. Tomago smelter, takes 950 megawatts to keep it going 24/7. To do that with renewables is over 3 gigawatts, plus batteries that need to last more than 20 minutes.
Understand what you would put on the people of Hunter – transmission lines, solar panels and wind turbines littered across the landscape. We’re all for reducing emissions, and this righteous view by Chris Bowen and Anthony Albanese and the Teals is one we’re not against, the principle of having a healthier environment, but just understand what you are asking us, the burden to bear, when you have Zali Steggall opposing just six wind turbines at North Head, because of the amenity of life that will imposed on her constituents.
She doesn’t understand what you are asking of rural and regional Australians. We want a say, we want a say in our future, one that isn’t predicated on renewable energy, that has jobs, we don’t want to have just a few jobs polishing a few solar panels.
We want the high paying jobs that a nuclear power plant bring. Nearly 80 per cent of those that work in a coal-fired power station in my electorate will have a job. You know what?
Those people in Kingaroy, and other places, they want that future. For this puerile stunt to turn up in Collie and for everyone to be vulnerable. The Prime Minister didn’t go near the coal fired power station in Collie, outside the staged event, of listening to those coal fired power workers about their future, their kids’ features and grandkids, of being able to stay and live there, he went to a renewables project hidden from the reality.
Let me make it clear. There’s no need to go in an election campaign where you have already won the votes. We have already won the social licence in those seven communities. Our polling clearly shows that. If you want a point, have a look at the last West Australian election, where the Labor Party got a 15 per cent swing against them in Collie. It was visceral in terms of the hate and for nuclear power plants in those parts of the world then I would have thought the Liberal Party might not have done so well.
Let’s have a mature conversation, a Prime Minister that will look you in the eye and tell you the truth, not make numbers up, but be honest with the Australian people, because you are going to bear this bill, you are going to bear this bill and we’re not going to have an economy that can be run properly.
We’ve also got to have the courage to fix Anthony Albanese’s mistakes, because renewables are not going to do the job, and nuclear is ten years away. We get that. In the short-term, we have a solution. It’s gas. It’s your gas. It’s the gas that Anthony Albanese and the Labor Party gave away last time they were in government.
I have a personal interest in this, because that gas comes from my electorate. I can tell you, having an Australian gas reservation where Australians gets to use their own gas, that will have a direct impact on you, every Australian, your food bill, food processors will have a 15 per cent reduction in energy costs, 8 per cent residential retail.
This is simply saying to those gas companies, we will respect the foundation contracts but on that spot cargo, the 300 petajoules going out on a boat, we will get first crack at that. That’s Australians’ use first.
When you have an energy crisis by a government going down all renewables, that’s no way to put pressure down. We’re not being draconian on the gas companies. I need them in my electorate. They employ a lot of people. That’s why the contract also be respected.
We’ve said we will help you, we will build the pipelines to increase the capacity to get much of that gas. If you look at the Gippsland, there’s about 140 petajoules of the 50-100 we need ready to be drilled, to be plugged in.
So, we’ve said what we want to see us get first crack, and we will get the drop of gas reserves to the make sure we don’t have this folly again, where ideology gets in the road of practical reality. That’s common sense. That is how you fix an energy grid in the short-term and in the long-term, it gives a future that regional Australians deserve, not ones the Teals and the Labor Party think we should have.
That’s not the Australian way. So, we’ve been honest about that. One of the other things I’m very proud of as Nationals Leader, what we announced around the Regional Australia Future Fund, a $20 billion fund to give a $1 billion dividend a year. We are feeding it with $5 billion from Rewiring the Nation. We’re saying that we are not going to need the 28,000 kilometres of transmission lines this mob will put in place and we will put that $5 billion in to seed fund this and then from the windfalls of the $350 billion worth of exports that come from us in regional Australia, we will take a small slice of the windfall every year.
We will build that up to $20 billion. Invest it, and it will give us a return of $1 billion a year, above and beyond the existing funding model that we already get, because there are funding gaps. Anyone that lives outside a capital will tell you that. We need to build the amenity of service and life for those that live in regional Australia who are contributing this $350 billion to keep them there.
One of the founding reasons why I got into Parliament was that I’m jack of seeing young people leave regional Australia, sick of seeing generations go over the Great Divide and never come back.
It’s time to bring them home and keep them home. Unless they have the amenity of life and service, they won’t be here. This is a legacy item, that I think goes beyond politics. This is something that both sides of politics should take out of regional Australia’s spending model on infrastructure, because we get kicked when Labor comes in, we lost $30 billion worth of infrastructure, just filling in potholes.
So, what we are saying, take the politics out of it. This is a smart way to make sure regional Australians get that extra, that builds the gaps and we’ve already made that very clear. $500 million going to councils to fix roads and build roads. $250 million in programs that allow local communities and councils to apply for money that will help them in the amenity of their towns to make it more attractive.
The two biggest kickers are health and childcare. We will make sure $100 million goes towards 200 Commonwealth Supported Places, in training doctors, in regional Australia, because we know if we train them there, they will stay there.
This government extended what we call the designated priority area, which meant that foreign doctors who came to this country were formally constrained to working in regional and rural areas. They took it away and extended it into peri-urban areas. If you are foreign doctor and you google a place in Western Queensland, or Samford in Brisbane, 6-4 they will go to Samford.
We have had our health services decimated by Anthony Albanese. We are the forgotten Australians. So, we have to make sure there is a fund every year to make sure that young people know there is a pathway to look after each other, to have the career worthwhile, a career in medicine, in regional Australia.
That is a legacy, that is the legacy that The Nationals want to leave. It’s also about attracting people and keeping people here. We’ve got a childcare desert right across regional Australia.
Now, when I became the Leader of the Nats, I didn’t want to be harpy in Opposition. I went to the Jobs and Skills Summit. At that point Anthony Albanese espoused $4.7 billion in childcare subsidies for families that earned from $300-500,000, they would get an extra $22,000 in rebates.
I get Anthony Albanese’s cost-of-living crisis has stretched into Melbourne and Sydney. I get that. When we have families in regional Australia who want to go back to work but can’t, just to make $80,000, because they can’t find a childcare place?
When I ask them to cut a little bit of that $4.7 billion, just to create at least one new childcare place in regional Australia, they patted me on the back and turned their back on regional Australia.
This is about making sure that regional Australia has a legacy, that young families can stay, can come back, can contribute, can have a career, can be part of regional Australia and when I became Leader, one of the things I did was run around this country and listen to young families.
This was what they were screaming at us about. Do something about childcare. This $100 million a year will be legislated, locked in, making sure those young families can get a start in life in regional Australia.
So, part of our National Food Security plan is about biosecurity. So it doesn’t become a political football. With a review in 2016/17 that recommended a sustainable funding model. We won’t charge farmers for the biosecurity products for their foreign competitors, like Anthony Albanese would do. He would charge farmers $153 million to process foreign competitors’ products through the ports, to compete with them on Australian shelves.
What government in their right mind would do that to Australian farmers? We’re not – those who pose the risk will pay the price, the ones potentially bringing in disease in this country and there will be a cost recovery model, as the review said. We will make sure that there’s a workforce. The Ag Visa will be back it was a legacy item The National Party secured in the last government and it will be back.
We need to make sure that our people, particularly in horticulture, who plant a crop, know there is someone there to pick it at the end of it. Otherwise you don’t plant. If supply goes down, price goes up.
Even Dr Jim can’t change that in a 6,000 word essay. The reality is we need the tools to continue to be able to produce the food and fibre you want and you deserve. We will get back to basics, filling in the potholes but we will say, live sheep ex-sports come back.
That is the first Bill I bring back. There is no scientific or economic reason to phase out live sheep. I was the Minister when Awasi hit. We made some tough reforms. The reforms mean we lead the world. I say to those that don’t agree with live sheep exports or live exports fullstop, which is where I fear this government will end up, if we’re not there, this market will be taken up by countries that don’t have our animal welfare in best interests.
You will see the horrific death of millions of sheep from other markets across the world, like Sudan, Ethiopia, South Africa. We measure to the millimetre the length of wool on each sheep that goes on a boat to the kilogram, and also we independently score each boat for the flow of air through those boats. In those countries, they don’t do any of that.
They put as many sheep as they can on a boat and get paid for what’s at the other end. These animal activists are morally bankrupt, morally bankrupt. They are valuing the welfare and life of a sheep from Australia above that from a sheep from South Africa, Ethiopia or Sudan. Australians don’t cut and run.
We get the job done and do it better than anyone in the world. For east coast politicians to cuts a deal with the Animal Justice Party, just to get them elected at the last election, all at the expense of 3,000 West Australian jobs, that’s not the Australian way.
That’s not how Peter Dutton and I will run this country. We will predicate on science and on fact.
That is what the Australian people expect in their government. So, the choice is clear. We have a plan to tackle your cost of living here and now. We will get gas in the grid, help you every time you fill your tank. Drop 25 cents a litre off every tank, around $14 every time you fill up. Give you a tax cut, particularly the low- and middle-income earners.
You know what? They are the ones struggling to put food on the table tonight. They are the ones that need support. They are the ones that we need to acknowledge, we need to get them through this. Unless you have the courage to stand up and to fix the nation’s problems we will kick this down the road for another three years. Think of that, if you have Anthony Albanese, Adam Bandt in Coalition government with a sprinkle of Teals and Independents putting fairy dust across Canberra? God help this country.
This is time for courage in leadership and that, that is what Peter Dutton and I are prepared to do. Prepared to look you in the eye, tell you how it is, and get on with the job. That is what you want from a government, to get on with the job and get out of your life. I’m proud to lead a National Party, a National Party that has had the courage over the last three years to lead this nation with the values and principles dear to us. I think dear to most Australians. That is what you want in leaving a legacy. That’s why I am in Parliament, to unlock the potential of those men and women and kids that live in regional and rural Australia, to give them the hope that many of you take for granted. When the National Party is strong, regional Australia is strong and Australia is strong. Thanks for having me.
ENDS
