With a Federal election to be held on 3 May 2025, the Opposition Leader’s outline of policies provided in his Budget Reply speech of Thursday 27 March 2025 is of interest.
Key Takeaways From The Budget Reply Speech:
- Economic Critique: Dutton argues that Australians are worse off under the Albanese government, citing increases in rent, housing costs, groceries, electricity, and insurance. He accuses Labor of relying on the previous Coalition government’s economic management and commodity price windfalls for surpluses and projecting future deficits.
- Cost of Living Relief: The Coalition proposes immediate cost of living relief by halving the fuel excise for 12 months and providing $50 million to food charities.
- Economic Plan: The Coalition’s economic plan focuses on reigning in inflation, reducing energy costs, and strengthening the economy. They plan to cut government spending, end certain funds (Rewiring the Nation, Housing Australia Future Fund), and reverse the increase in public servants.
- Energy Policy: A key element is a national gas plan to prioritize domestic gas supply and reduce energy prices. The Coalition also supports adopting nuclear power for long-term energy security.
- Migration and Housing: The Coalition aims to cut the migration intake by 25%, ban foreign investors from purchasing existing homes, and invest in infrastructure to boost housing supply.
- Healthcare: Promises include investing in health, incentivizing junior doctors to become GPs, boosting Medicare bulk billing, and investing in hospitals and mental health services.
- Safer Communities: Plans involve establishing an anti-Semitism task force, developing national uniform knife laws, toughening bail laws, stopping illegal boats, and deporting dangerous non-citizen criminals.
- Small Business Support: Increase the instant asset write-off from $1,000 to $30,000, and make that arrangement ongoing. We’ll provide a deduction of up to $20,000 per year for small businesses for business-related meal expenses
- Skills and Training: Focus on apprenticeships, backed by targeted incentives for employers. target of 400,000 apprentices and trainees in training across Australia. Small and medium businesses to be provided with up to $112,000 to support them to put on a new apprentice or trainee in critical skills areas for the first 2 years of their training; it will have a particular focus in the building and construction sector.
Speech in Full: Video
Introduction and State of the Nation
Well to Australians listening tonight, thank you very much for your time. Soon you’ll have a say in determining the future of our great country. We live literally in the best country in the world and we’re the beneficiaries of what our forbears have built and defended.
We love this country because it has forged us into a remarkable people; we’re compassionate, we’re stoic, we’re fair, and we’re quietly patriotic. We cherish this country because it affords opportunities like no other but only, I stress this point, if we’re governed well.
When Australia is governed badly, dreams and ambitions become beyond reach, and that’s what’s happened during the last three years of the Albanese government.
Experiences of Australians under the Albanese Government
In my travels across the country, Australians tell me that they’re working hard but they’re not getting ahead. In Perth, a mum in a grocery store in tears told me how her husband and children couldn’t keep their heads above water with the bills stacking up. In Adelaide, I spoke with a food manufacturer whose electricity prices had gone up by about 300%.
In Victoria, I spoke with a supermarket employee, a woman in her 60s, who had a machete held against her throat during a robbery. In Brisbane, I listened to a young couple in their 30s who have moved back in with their parents because they simply can’t buy a home even though both of them are working overtime.
Now such stories have now become commonplace across our country: stories of rent and mortgage stress, stories of power, shopping, and insurance bills going through the roof, stories of home ownership being out of reach for so many, and stories of it being increasingly difficult to see and to afford a GP, and stories of crime on our streets.
For so many Australians, aspiration has turned to anxiety, optimism to pessimism, a national confidence to national uncertainty.
The Upcoming Election and the Coalition’s Plan
The truth is Australians can’t afford three more years of the Albanese government. Now every election is important, but this election does matter more than others in recent history; it is a sliding doors moment for our nation.
A returned Albanese government in any form won’t just be another three bleak years; more economic mistakes will take a lot longer to recover from, setbacks will be set in stone, and our prosperity will be damaged for decades to come.
But you have the power to change the path our country is on. You have the ability to reverse decline, and you have the opportunity to get our country back on track. You can do that by voting for your Liberal or Nationalist candidates so that a new Dutton coalition government can be elected.
And at this election, the choice could not be clearer. Tonight, I’ll outline the choice of Australians face at this election and our plan to fix Labor’s mess. We have a positive plan to deliver a stronger economy with lower inflation, cheaper energy, affordable homes, quality health care, and safer communities.
A plan to help you and your families, a plan to bring about a stronger, safer, and better Australia, a plan to usher in more confident, resilient, and self-reliant people right across the country. And we need to accept that we live in a more dangerous and disruptive world. To these ends tonight, I will announce new policies that a coalition government would implement.
Coalition’s First Day Priorities and Assessment of Labor’s Economic Record
Tonight, I commit a coalition government to the following: we will introduce four critical pieces of legislation on the first sitting day in the next Parliament: one, the energy price reduction bill; two, the lower immigration and more homes for Australians bill; the keep Australian safe bill; and the guaranteed funding for health, education, and essential services bill. This is my signal to the Australian people of what my priorities will be in government.
In his fourth budget, like the previous three, the Treasurer again painted a rosy picture of the economy, but Australians aren’t silly; your bills tell the true story of Labor’s cost of living crisis. Here’s the facts of the Albanese government’s economic record: rents are up by 18%, housing is up by 14%, groceries up by a staggering 30%, electricity is up by 32%, and insurance is up for many households and businesses by 35%.
Australians have experienced the longest household recession and the worst collapse in living standards in our country’s history under Labor. Interest rates have gone up 12 times but only been cut once, and they’ve stayed higher for longer compared to other comparable nations.
This budget makes clear that Labor was only able to deliver two surpluses piggybacking off the former Coalition government’s strong economic management as well as record commodity price windfalls, and now the outlook is one of deficits as far as the eye can see for three years.
Labor peddled the lie that they inherited a trillion dollars of debt, yet in the budget papers that we saw on Tuesday night, they confirm that the Labor Party will burden Australia with a trillion dollars of debt as of next year.
Tuesday’s budget was one for the next five weeks, not one for the next five years; it was a shameless election voting exercise, not a plan for our country’s future. It was about saving Prime Minister Albanese, not about you, and certainly not about safeguarding our nation.
Opposition to Labor’s Tax Cuts and the Coalition’s Alternative Cost of Living Relief
Jim Chalmers’ so-called tax cut top-up is simply a tax cut copout; it’s a cruel hoax. Now Labor will spend $17 billion of taxpayers’ money to give you back 70 cents a day in 15 months’ time, and yet a family with a typical mortgage under this government is $50,000 worse off. I think it’s insulting, to be honest.
Now we oppose these tax cuts and we’ll repeal them because we think there’s a better way to provide assistance to Australians. We will provide immediate cost of living relief for Australians; a coalition government will halve the fuel excise for 12 months and then we’ll review it, and we’ll make sure that that comes in on the first day that our Parliament sits.
For a household with one car filling up once a week, that’s a savings of about $14 a week or around $700 over the year. For a household with two cars filling up once a week, that is a savings of $28 a week or around $1,500 over 12 months. Compare that to 70 cents a day in 15 months’ time.
Now working with industry, we’ll ensure that heavy vehicle road users also benefit from this measure, and we’ll make sure the ACCC will ensure that the fuel excise cut will be passed on in full to consumers. The policy will cost $6 billion amidst Labor’s cost of living pressures.
Charities are experiencing increased demand, including from Australians who never previously relied on that support. To scale up assistance and provide immediate relief, we will commit $50 million for food charities like Foodbank, SecondBite, and OzHarvest to expand their services and to include school breakfast programs. They approached the government with this plan, and it was rejected in this budget.
Coalition’s Three-Point Economic Plan: Inflation, Energy, and Strengthening the Economy
Of course, to get out of Labor’s economic mess and to tackle Labor’s cost of living crisis, we need hard decisions and a proper plan. The coalition government will do three things: first, we will reign in inflation; second, we will reduce the cost of energy; and third, we will strengthen the economy so that it works for you. I just want to address each of those aspects in turn.
Mr. Speaker, over three years, the Albanese government has increased spending as a share of the economy more than any government since the recession of the 1990s. Now it’s lifted spending by an extraordinary $425 billion—that’s about $40,000 per Australian household.
Now much of this spending hasn’t gone to essential services or generated economic activity; rather, it’s been inflationary, it’s been ineffectual, and it’s been wasteful. Such rapid and unrestrained spending is not only adding to the debt that our children will have to repay, but it’s also keeping the pressure on inflation, and during a cost of living crisis, that’s the last thing that you want.
And the Reserve Bank Governor has independently pointed out this great failing in this bad government; core inflation under this government has averaged more than double what it was under the Coalition. Personal income taxes paid have also increased by about 24% under Labor. The average taxpayer is now paying $3,500 more tax this year alone, or for a dual income household, $7,000, and that’s a big hit.
I want Australian families to be making choices about what they will eat, not choices about whether they can eat or heat, which is the prospect facing many people, particularly pensioners and those on low incomes in our country right now. I want to make sure that we can fight the cost of living pressures because we need to get interest rates down, and to get interest rates down, we need, of course, to get inflation down.
To get inflation down, we need to address its underlying causes, and that’s just something the government hasn’t done. We want to stop wasteful government spending, and tonight I announced that a coalition government will reign in key inflationary, ineffectual, and imprudent spending, which has been a hallmark of this government.
We will end the reckless $20 billion Rewiring the Nation fund. We will stop the $10 billion Housing Australia Future Fund, which has not built a single additional home. We will scrap Labor’s nearly $14 billion of production tax credits for green hydrogen because it is not going to work.
We’ll reverse Labor’s increase of 41,000 CRA public servants because it will save about $7 billion a year; that’s money that we can provide back to the Australian people in frontline services. And the growth of public servants under this government in CRA is about three times the rate it was under the Rudd-Gillard government.
But I make this guarantee to the Australian people tonight: in line with our national interest, we will continue to invest in essential services and critical areas of the economy like health and age care, veterans’ support, the NDIS, indigenous affairs, childcare, and defense. We won’t cut frontline service delivery roles; we will ensure that the services Australians rely on are sustainable.
Under Labor, you will be guaranteed of a number of things, but one thing I’m sure of is more reckless and wasteful spending, which will cause interest rates and inflation to stay higher for longer, and that means you’ll pay more for everything: more for food, more for rents, more for your mortgage, more for power, and more for insurance. You’ll continue to pay more tax too. But under the Coalition, we will fight cost of living pressures at their source.
Addressing the Energy Crisis with a National Gas Plan and Nuclear Power
At the very center of Labor’s cost of living crisis is, of course, the skyrocketing cost of energy, and that’s due, of course, to Anthony Albanese and Chris Bowen’s reckless renewables-only policy train wreck. Now, as every Australian knows, energy is the economy. Australians are paying some of the highest power prices in the world—indeed, up to three times more than comparable economies.
And the Albanese government has its core election promise when it comes to energy: your electricity bill hasn’t gone down by $275, as Labor promised on 97 occasions. The Prime Minister and the Treasurer refuse even to mention that word, even though they looked you in the eye and said that they would bring your power prices down by $275 each year. As Australians can attest, they’re now paying more than $1,300 more than what Labor promised in their energy bills.
And I think the point to make is it’s not just homeowners and renters who are paying higher power bills; it’s farmers, it’s business owners, it’s cafe owners, it’s manufacturers too. Across the economy, it’s costing more to grow food, more to produce goods, more to store the food and the goods, and certainly to deliver services, and those costs are just passed on to Australian consumers, which is why Australians are feeling the crunch at the moment.
I want Australians to be putting items in their shopping trolley, not putting them back on the supermarket shelves. I want businesses to be able to hire more staff, not to be putting more money aside to pay ever-increasing power bills.
Now, Mr. Speaker, gas is the key in our country, as it is around the developed world, to manufacturing, to making electricity, and to keeping the lights on. But the Albanese government has stalled projects from getting off the ground and created a national gas emergency due to insufficient supply. We now know that in our country, Victoria is about to spend money building an import terminal to bring gas into Victoria—to import gas into Victoria.
Under Labor, gas prices have gone up for households and businesses by 34% and 43% respectively. The Coalition understands what Labor won’t: you can’t run a full-time and functioning economy using part-time and unreliable power. Under Labor, the energy crisis and therefore your pain will continue; bills will keep going up because the cost of putting out 28,000 kilometers of new transmission lines will just be passed on to Australians.
Our energy grid will become more unstable with a greater reliance on sometimes-on power, which equals blackouts and brownouts, and you can expect a lot of energy rationing in Australia under an Albanese government reelected.
Under the Coalition, energy will become affordable and reliable again. We will use a mix of technologies, which include always-on power to firm up the renewable sometimes-on power. And the only way to drive down power prices quickly is to ramp up domestic gas production, and tonight I announce our national gas plan.
This plan will prioritize domestic gas supply, address shortfalls, and reduce energy prices for Australians. This is all about ensuring Australian gas is for Australians. We will immediately introduce an East Coast Gas reservation; this will require a proportion between 50 to 100 PJs of spot cargo exports to be delivered to the domestic market.
This will secure an additional 10 to 20% of the East Coast demand gas, which would otherwise be exported for use in other markets by consumers in those countries, but our gas needs to be first and foremost for our people.
Gas sold on the domestic market will be decoupled from overseas markets to protect Australia from international price shocks, and this will drive down new wholesale domestic gas prices from around $14 per gigajoule to under $10 per gigajoule, and this is just the start.
We will immediately audit development-ready projects with a focus on the Southern States. We will fast-track a decision on Western Australia’s Northwest Shelf project; the government has delayed a decision on that project conveniently until the 31st of May, which happens to be after the election, so good luck in WA. We will have approval timeframes; we will defund the activist Environmental Defenders Office, which has been disgraced and which has obstructed projects.
We will accelerate new investment into gas projects by reinstating a $300 million strategic basin plan and include gas in the capacity investment scheme. We will invest $1 billion into a critical gas infrastructure fund, an increased gas pipeline and storage capacity.
We will put in place use-it-or-lose-it stipulations for gas drilling companies so offshore gas fields are not locked up for years, and we will ensure that we have a fit-for-purpose gas trigger to safeguard supply. This plan, Mr. Speaker, will lower wholesale gas prices, which will flow across the economy. Our national gas plan is expected to push prices down for new gas sales to below $10 per gigajoule compared to the $14 in the market today. Energy prices will always be lower under a coalition government.
A coalition government will also secure our nation’s energy security for decades to come, and over the longer term, we will join the other 19 top economies in the world in adopting proven zero-emissions nuclear power. This is one of the most visionary and necessary policies put forward in our country’s history; it was supported by Bob Hawke, and it’s supported by John Howard and other leaders of our nation, and it will underpin our energy security for the next century.
Our plan has been independently costed at 44% cheaper than Labor’s plan; Labor has never been able to dispute that outcome. And what it means is that there’s a savings of $263 billion for Australians. Exactly, if a plan is cheaper, electricity prices will be cheaper as fewer costs, of course, are passed on to consumers.
Nuclear power’s high yield of energy and small footprint means that there’s no need to carpet our national parks, prime agricultural land, and coastlines with industrial-scale renewables. The Coalition has the only energy policy which protects our environment and safeguards the livelihoods of regional Australia.
Reviving the Economy by Reducing Regulation and Supporting Key Sectors
Mr. Speaker, the exorbitant cost of energy is one reason why a record 29,000 small businesses have gone insolvent under Labor. It’s one reason why there’s been a three-fold increase in the number of manufacturers who have closed under Mr. Albanese’s watch. But another reason is Labor’s excessive regulation and interference in the economy.
Sectors critical for our economy like mining, manufacturing, forestry, fishing, and agriculture have been crippled by Labor’s weaponization of environment, industry, IR, and cultural heritage laws. And we’re seeing industries simply pack up and go offshore, and international partners withdraw investment from our country.
For all of Anthony Albanese’s talk of a future made in Australia, the opposite is actually the fact; less is being made in Australia under this government’s watch, and more is being made abroad. The last three years are a lesson: no government can subsidize the economy to success.
Under Labor, we’ll continue to see a hollowing out of our economy; industries and businesses will continue to collapse in record numbers or simply move operations offshore, which means that we lose those jobs.
Under the Coalition, we will build a stronger economy not only by getting power prices down but also by ripping up as much red and green tape as possible. Tonight, I commit to removing regulatory burdens where we can, where there’s duplication across local, state, and federal government.
During a first-term coalition government, my intention is to make Australia a mining, agricultural, construction, and manufacturing powerhouse once again. The revenue generated from these revived sectors will create more money to build new infrastructure, to fund health and education, and importantly to equip our defense forces.
In addition to backing our natural strengths, we will encourage new areas of the economy like artificial intelligence, like automation, like cybersecurity and space, bio and nanotechnologies. AUKUS too has the potential to foster a new arm of our economy and transform our civil industrial base.
We will spend taxpayers’ money wisely in a manner which has an economic multiplying effect, a way in which it generates productivity and can attract new investment, and that’s better for you, for your family, and it’ll create jobs for your children and grandchildren. And we will curtail union militancy in workplaces.
We will revert to a simple definition of a casual worker. The corrupt and disgraced CFMEU, which has donated $1 million to the Labor Party that in turn has seen the Labor Party turn a blind eye to them and their illegal conduct, it will be deregistered, and the construction industry watchdog will be restored so that we can have safety again on big building sites.
New anti-racketeering laws will be legislated, and a dedicated Australian Federal Police Le task force will tackle the criminal elements in our building sector that are ripping off Australians and undermining productivity.
Prime Minister, I would never tolerate seeing a member of a union or any person for that matter kicking a woman on camera and not even commenting in relation to it; it was a disgrace, and it was a disgrace that this government allowed it to happen, and it’s a common practice from the CFMEU.
Reviving growth, Mr. Speaker, also means having the back of small business, including tax relief. We’ve got tax relief coming for small business; we will increase the instant asset write-off from $1,000 under this government to $30,000, and we’re going to make that arrangement ongoing.
We’ll provide a deduction of up to $20,000 per year for small businesses for business-related meal expenses, which is also a much-needed shot in the arm for struggling cafes, restaurants, and pubs. If your kids or grandkids work in a local cafe or in a local pub or club, this will see them get more hours and have more secure employment.
It will allow a local real estate agency or a builder to take staff to a local cafe to celebrate a big sales event or simply to say thank you to their hardworking employees; it creates jobs and it supports the struggling hospitality sector. I want small businesses to be taking risks, calculated risks, not shutting up shop.
Reviving growth and preparing our economy for the future also means supporting skills development. Tonight, I announce that a coalition government will set a target of 400,000 apprentices and trainees in training across Australia.
Our plan is to restore targeted and proven incentive payments for employers to hire and train an apprentice. We will provide small and medium businesses with $112,000 to support them to put on a new apprentice or trainee in critical skills areas for the first two years of their training; it will have a particular focus in the building and construction sector.
Addressing Migration and Housing
Mr. Speaker, addressing Labor’s cost of living crisis and energy crisis is just the start. In its first two years, the government brought in a million people through the migration program—that’s 70% more migrants than in any two-year period in Australia’s history, and of course, there’ll be consequences. And yet after three years in power, the Albanese government hasn’t delivered a single additional new home built under its failed housing policies.
Australians are generous and welcoming people, but they want migration to be sustainable and the government to be in control of it; Labor is neither in control of migration nor has it kept migration at sustainable levels, and Australians know it.
I don’t want young Australians locked out of the property market or having to rely on the bank of Mum and Dad; I want to see fewer Australians homeless and more Australians in homes. Mr. Speaker, under Labor, migration will continue to put pressure on housing, on infrastructure, and on services.
But under the Coalition, we will cut the migration intake to free up housing and restore The Great Australian Dream of home ownership. We will cut the permanent migration program by 25%. We will ban foreign investors and temporary residents from purchasing existing Australian homes for a period of two years.
We will set stricter caps on foreign students to relieve stress on rental markets. And we will invest $5 billion in essential infrastructure to get stalled housing projects up and going, and it’s going to create 50,000 new homes. We’ll allow for first home buyers to access up to $50,000 of their super for a home deposit because it’s better to get into a home sooner.
Healthcare and Mental Health
When a government doesn’t have any achievements to speak about, which is the reality for this government, it resorts to smears and and scare campaigns. There’s no greater sign of the Albanese government’s desperation than its many scare campaigns—Labor’s third attempt in less than a decade. But while Labor pedals falsehoods, we’ll remind Australians of the facts: on this government’s watch, bulk billing nationally has fallen by 11%.
There’s 41 million fewer bulk billing episodes with GP services under this government, and more than 270 GP practices have closed under this government’s watch. Australians should never have to choose between seeing a doctor or paying their bills.
Under Labor, Australians will have ongoing pressures on the health system, but under the Coalition, we will deliver quality health care. We will invest $9.4 billion into health that includes incentivizing junior doctors, as I announced last year, to work as GPs to address the current shortages at your local clinic.
We will boost Medicare bulk billing. We will invest in hospitals, especially in high population growth areas where there’s the biggest strain on services. We will guarantee cheaper medicines and lower the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme co-payment to $25.
And we’ll invest $500 million into women’s health and we’ll double the subsidized mental health sessions from 10 to 20 and make this arrangement permanent. Many young Australians require access to mental health services in any given year, and tonight I announced that a coalition government will invest an additional $400 million into youth mental health services.
We will expand the remit of the National Centre for Excellence in Youth Mental Health, which I created in 2014, into a National Institute. We will boost regional services and expand treatment to put Australia at the forefront of youth mental health treatment in the world.
We will continue to support the world-leading Medical Research Future Fund, which I established as the then Health Minister. There is now more than $20 billion in that fund, and it’s providing support to our specialists all around the country, to scientists, to researchers, to labs, all of them working on incredible projects, and that funding will continue to provide them with support and Australians with hope.
Safer Communities and National Security
Mr. Speaker, in my travels across the country, Australians tell me they’ve never been more worried about crime and division in our community. It started with the Prime Minister’s voice referendum, which sought to divide our country by ancestry and race. He then left a vacuum of leadership following the crime wave in Alice Springs and the anti-Semitism on the steps of the Sydney Opera House. All too often, the Prime Minister is too weak, too late, and too equivocal.
This government has released 300 hardcore criminals from immigration detention into the community, with more than a third having reoffended against Australian citizens. It granted tourist visas to 3,000 people from a terrorist-controlled war zone conducted without security checks that should have been put in place. It’s failed to deter people smugglers trying to reach our shores by illegal boats.
It’s turned a blind eye when our military personnel have been endangered, and it didn’t stand up for our country when Chinese Communist warships entered our waters without notice and it relied on Virgin Australia pilots to alert us to the Chinese Navy’s live-fire exercise off our coast. Australia should be a country where people live without fear and without worrying about the future.
Under Labor, you’ll get the same weakness of leadership that has compounded crime and emboldened anti-Semitism on our streets; you’ll get a nation that is less safe and less secure. But under the Coalition, we will provide the moral and political leadership needed to restore law, order, and justice.
We will establish a dedicated anti-Semitism task force to turn the tide of this scourge of hatred; every Australian should be equally treated. We will work with states and territories to develop national uniform knife laws. We will toughen bail laws to stop domestic violence offenders.
We will again stop the boats just as we did in 2013, and we will again deport dangerous non-citizen criminals just as I did as Home Affairs Minister in canceling 6,300 visas of murderers, of sex offenders, and drug traffickers, something this government hasn’t continued.
We will again invest in defense to play our part as a credible partner to deter aggression and to maintain peace. We’ve already committed to $3 billion of additional funding to reinstate the fourth squadron of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighters canceled by Labor. Our plan is to energize our domestic defense industry and to retool the ADF with asymmetric capabilities to deter a larger adversary.
Mr. Speaker, during the election campaign, we will announce our significant funding commitment to defense, a commitment which, unlike Labor’s, will be commensurate with the challenges of our times. The Prime Minister of our country and the Deputy Prime Minister, the Minister for Defence, tells Australians regularly that we live in the most precarious period, the most dangerous period since the end of the Second World War. What leader of a country says that and then doesn’t do anything about it?.
We will nurture pride and unity in our country. We will provide support to the Australian Defence Force to keep us safe today and into generations ahead at a time when we most need it. That starts, of course, by making sure that we don’t fail young Australians, and I think this is an incredibly important point: a coalition government will restore a curriculum that teaches the core fundamentals in our classrooms, a curriculum that cultivates critical thinking, responsible citizenship, and common sense.
Leadership and Conclusion
Mr. Speaker, this election is as much about leadership as it is about policy, and the choice is clear. At the next election, I will be a strong leader with a steady hand. I will make the tough decisions, not shirk them. I will put the national interest first. I will lead with conviction, not walk both sides of the street. And I have real-life experience to demonstrate it: as a veteran of the police force who dedicated nine years to protecting Australians, especially women and children; a small business owner who started and successfully ran businesses; someone who came from a working-class background and knows the value of hard work and the aspiration that drives Australians.
Her parent, along with my wife Kirilly, who understands the family is the most important unit in our society—I want to give a shout-out to Kirilly tonight who’s just had surgery on her wrist and is at home watching with Rebecca, Harry, and Tom unless Maps clashes with this broadcast.
I’ve been an Assistant Treasurer in our country. I’ve been a former Minister for Health. I’ve been a Minister for Immigration, Minister of Home Affairs, and Minister for Defence, which was an enormous honour.
I lead a united and incredibly capable team; we’re ready to govern. We’re ready to deliver a stronger economy with lower inflation, cheaper energy, affordable homes, quality health care, and safer communities, and we will govern with respect for the views, values, and vision of everyday Australians.
Australians are worse off under the Albanese government, and Australians cannot afford three more years of this bad Labor government. I say to Australians tonight, at this election, you can make the right choice, a better choice for you, a better choice for your family, and a better choice for your country. Together, let’s build a stronger, safer, and better Australia, and let’s together get our country back on track.