Quite apt:
Today the Governor-General has accepted my advice for an election to be held on Saturday 24 November.
This election is about Australia’s future. It’s about the leadership Australia needs right now to stay strong, prosperous and secure.
Australia has come a long way in the last decade based on the hard work of all Australians and the tough decisions of the Coalition. Now we must make Australia even stronger.
This will not happen automatically. It will not happen through new leadership or old leadership. It requires the right leadership.
The right leadership is the team that knows how to do the job. The right leadership has the experience to further expand Australia’s prosperity and to ensure that everyone gets a fair share of it.
The right leadership is prepared to take unpopular decisions in the short term that will benefit the Australian community in the long term.
The right leadership is a group of men and women who will govern for all Australians and who will not be beholden to a narrow section of the Australian community.
The right leadership will tell the Australian people where it stands on issues and what it believes in. Love me or loathe me, the Australian people know where I stand and what I believe in.
At this election, the Australian people must decide who is better able to build Australia’s prosperity for the benefit of everyone. They must also decide who is better able to promote our national security and stand up for Australia’s interests abroad.
Is it a government with a proven track record on the economy and national security or is it a group of men and women 70 per cent of whom are former trade union officials?
In the weeks ahead, I will be unveiling detailed plans for Australia’s future. They will be both practical and achievable, underpinned by the Coalition’s record of putting the national interest ahead of sectional interests.
As part of our plan for growth and opportunity I commit today to a goal of full employment. Australia’s unemployment rate today is at a 33-year low. It can go even lower with the right policies.
There is no reason why Australia’s unemployment cannot have a three in front of it. If Labor is elected, its anti-small business policies mean unemployment will rise.
We will unveil policies to lift family living standards and to help sections of the community under pressure. Our plan for stronger communities will deliver better services, more choice and genuine help for Australians in need. It will put more power in the hands of local communities, including by giving communities a greater say in the running of their public hospitals.
In the weeks ahead, I will outline a plan to further reinforce Australia’s national security into the next decade. Our environment policies will tackle in a balanced way the great challenges of climate change and water security.
Our plan for Australia will also give voice to my passionate belief that we are One Australia based on a common citizenship, common loyalty and where all are entitled to equal justice.
The Coalition’s plan for Australia’s future has been carefully put together and builds on the strong decision-making of the last decade. Our plans are fully costed and affordable.
Labor is not ready to govern because it hasn’t done the hard work. Mr Rudd has plans for process; not for action. And his core convictions remain a mystery, both to him and, more importantly, to the Australian people.
If Labor is elected, Mr Rudd’s inexperience and lack of judgment would leave a vacuum at the heart of Australia’s government. That vacuum would be filled by a trade union movement determined to take back the running of the country.
And wall-to-wall Labor would mean no checks and balances in our Federation.
Our $1 trillion economy simply can’t afford it.
Prophetic.
C.L.
6 Sep 12 at 12:47 am
Gab
6 Sep 12 at 1:02 am
Howard was right about Rudd – the problem was no one was listening or cared. All they wanted to do was get rid of Howard because he placed his interests ahead of the party and refused to allow a renewal under Costello ahead of the election.
This should not be forgotten and he stands condemned because of it.
H B Bear
6 Sep 12 at 1:17 am
Another important annex to the Fisk Doctrine is blocking the Left’s “fresh”, “youth” deception that they periodically put on to make non-Leftists look old and stale, even though the policies of the latter are objectively better. All Leftist candidates for office will be forced to apply pro-ageing cream that makes them look 20 years older than they actually are, and it will be against the law for the media to use positive adjectives for the social democratic team.
Fisky
6 Sep 12 at 1:40 am
It will also be a criminal offence for the Left to use their Wave of Hate tactics against non-Leftists. They will be forced to offer one item of praise for every criticism of a non-Leftist, and even then, the criticism must remain within certain boundaries.
Fisky
6 Sep 12 at 1:52 am
I am not concerned. If union members have a problem with this, they have a number of options at their disposal, the most obvious of which is to vote with their feet. If they are happy to be stolen from, why should I care?
Boris
6 Sep 12 at 1:58 am
This should not be forgotten and he stands condemned because of it.
Or at least he would, had Costello not refused to grasp the nettle when it was finally his for the grasping (albeit as Leader of the Opposition).
Costello was an excellent treasurer – one of the very best this country has ever had or ever will have – but this behaviour shows IMO that Howard was right not to hand him the Prime Ministry.
perturbed
6 Sep 12 at 2:39 am
Howard also said, rather too late for it to have any salving impact, that he would hand over to Costello at some point well into the next term. He was wrong not to have done so at least a year previously, when Rudd took over as opposition leader.
The experience we have had since 2007 might at least imbue those with too rosy a view of the Labor/Green factions with the life skills to avoid a repetition of the ” time for a change” mentality. It’s never a good time to throw out a functioning government who have a track record of good management and replace it with misguided ideologues who stuff up pretty much everything.
I will, however, continue to blame the Liberals themselves for allowing things to get to that point. I suspect that having too many aspiring leaders in the wings may have been a factor.
The failure to call the unions anti- work choices ads for the fraud they were was another failure of the commentariat generally. You will get poor results at elections if you have poor media until such a time as the voters have a gutful and at that stage the media will just have to cop it too, and be shown to be barking up the wrong tree.
Blogstrop
6 Sep 12 at 6:29 am
Howard was a ghastly, nasty, little, big spending, gun grabbing statist who was the best Labor Prime Minister Australia ever had.
Eyrie
6 Sep 12 at 6:54 am
Now that state governments are trying to outlaw bikie gangs on the basis that they are criminal enterprises could the same legislation be used against trade unions?
Tiny Dancerf
6 Sep 12 at 8:01 am
An ad hominem attack. You sound like a leftist.
Twodogs
6 Sep 12 at 8:54 am
Oh, how nostalgic! How much did he lose that election by again? Oh that’s right, he lost his own seat. Heads up folks, it’s called democracy.
SteveC
6 Sep 12 at 9:48 am
He stopped the boats but. Not much of an off spinner though.
Poor Old Rafe
6 Sep 12 at 9:49 am
Jesus H Christ this is going to bite you on the arse at the next election. You’re gonna have a surgeon pulling teeth outta your arse.
As to the unions – there should be racketeering laws in this country.
.
6 Sep 12 at 10:22 am
I wonder if Peter Costello would have won an election anyway, the winds of change had set in. Labor comes in and sets up giant bureaucracies and sends the nation broke, and then the Conservatives get voted in to fix it, a sort of cycle going on.
candy
6 Sep 12 at 10:28 am
How’s that hopey-changey working our for you, Australia?
Oh for the days when the country was being run by adults, not the economically illiterate bastards of the trade union movement, headed by Emmo’s old home-wrecker.
Feral Abacus
6 Sep 12 at 12:11 pm
Oh for some good old fashioned competence again. All I am looking for is good managers.
Captain Queeg
6 Sep 12 at 1:31 pm
Thems was the days. But he stuffed it up in the end, leaving bigger government, more rules and laws, more welfare, middle class and otherwise. I suppose it could be said that it would have been worse under a Crean/Beasley/Latham government.
The problem is that the best a centre right govt can be expected to do is to reduce the speed that propels us headlong into some form of socialist Corporatism/Statism. Why cant we ever have a government that actually takes us in the opposite direction?
Jannie
6 Sep 12 at 4:27 pm
Twodogs, I’m not a lefty. Howard was the little shit who was aghast at the thought that somebody in Australia might ever have to defend themselves with a gun while having armed men defending his own person. That makes him a hypocrite in my book.
Instead of slashing taxes he spent the extra money on middle class welfare churn thus setting the stage for the present looters and he didn’t know when to quit because his own ego was too large again leading to the present mob of barbarian looters attaining power.
You’re as good as your last mistake.
Eyrie
6 Sep 12 at 5:34 pm
And the future?
China threatens to burst Australia’s iron ore bubble
“China’s economic slowdown has left commodity-rich Australia and its over-valued currency exposed.
Where does that leave Australia? Horribly exposed, quite obviously. It has an over-valued currency, an over-valued property market, and its major customer is now desperately pulling every available policy lever in the hope of avoiding a hard landing. “
Ellen of Tasmania
6 Sep 12 at 5:58 pm
Boris, you said:
You, and we all, should care because such behaviour allows such union hacks to get away with it, and to hone their skillls before moving to the big money in Federal politics.
Then they apply their well-learned habits to the national coffers.
John A
6 Sep 12 at 6:15 pm
That almost makes me cry I haven’t read anything more bloody prophetic for yonks!
The rest of us are so good at hindsight wisdom–we(I didn’t vote Labor though) got rid of a man of that calibre and his proven competent team for the alleged crooks and spivs and union minded rabble on the government benches right now
God forgive them for now they know what they did and are casting about for a way to change it!
Jazza
6 Sep 12 at 10:44 pm