Fellow Liberals
It’s wonderful to be back here at State Council, the governing assembly here in NSW of Australia’s greatest political movement. Australian Liberalism is what we are all about.
What we’re about
And I know we have internal controversies, we’ve got competitive internal elections at the moment and there’s a bit of biff this morning, if I can put it that way, but let’s all remember that whatever differences we have from time to time, our common values - of aspiration, of enterprise, of family, of hard work, of reward for effort - are what unites us all.
And those values are the values that are driving your NSW team. We are a volunteer party, and our electoral health is deeply linked with the health of our party and how deep our connections are to the community.
So, the Party must always be a reflection of the community. We need, as your Parliamentary team, you to tell us what’s wrong with our schools, what’s wrong with our hospitals, where we’re tripping up and where we can do better.
State Executive
Just about everyone in this room has worked tirelessly on multiple election campaigns and throughout the period between elections. I thank you all for all you do tirelessly for the Liberal cause.
Can I thank the outgoing State Executive for all the work they’ve done, and I also thank in particular the outgoing State President Jason Falinski.
You often hear that the worst job in politics is being Opposition Leader; well I tend to think that probably the worst job in politics is being the State Director or the State President.
And can I thank the new candidates for the presidency and for the State Executive positions. It is just so important that whatever the result of the ballot, we all get behind those who are elected, because what unites us is more important than what divides us, and we will only succeed as a united team.
Scott Morrison
In my ’hood, Cronulla, my state electorate is mostly within the Cook federal electorate, I’ve got a little bit of Hughes with Jenny Ware sitting here in the front row.
And, of course, ScoMo retires this coming Tuesday. We’ve been so blessed to have Scott Morrison as our Prime Minister - a man who secured the AUKUS treaty and a man who stewarded us so well through COVID. I’ve known Scott since his State Director days, so that’s about a quarter of century, and got to know him very well as my federal colleague.
And can I say despite the outrageous character assassinations we have seen from the Left, he is a man of integrity, collegiality and dedication to the Australian people. I think he’ll be sorely missed.
We’ll have a by-election coming up in Cook and I’m hoping we can all work hard to ensure that Cook remains a jewel in the Liberal federal crown.
A lazy, unfit and arrogant government
So, delegates, we’re now almost a year into the Minns Labor government.
And your Parliamentary team still has that goal that I said we had at the first State Council meeting I addressed - we’re there to win government back in four years.
I have to say, even though I had low expectations of the Minns Labor government, I’m just surprised at how lazy, unfit and arrogant this government is.
It’s lazy. You normally see first term governments coming in with huge agendas and big Parliamentary commitments. This is a government that has basically gone into hibernation when it comes to Parliament. This is a government that has Parliament sitting about half the number of days that we had when Barry O’Farrell came to government.
So, it’s cut the Parliamentary agenda; it’s a government that in its first 11 months has made very few substantive decisions but instead subjected us all to endless inquiries.
It’s unfit. It’s clear that Chris Minns has the weakest ministerial team in this State’s history.
Chris Minns must stay up late at night, but I don’t think he’s staying up making big decisions. He’s staying up worrying about the quality of his team.
We’ve got a minister whose gone because he appears to have ignored the code of conduct for ICAC.
There’s a Police Minister who greenlighted an anti-Semitic riot on the steps of the Opera House - and repeatedly misled Parliament on that and on the tasering of an elderly woman down in the Southern Tablelands.
We have a Transport Minister who fills the public service with Labor appointees, including one on $588,000 a year.
But this is not just about Jo Haylen, Yasmin Catley and other incompetent ministers in the government; this is also about Chris Minns because the standard you walk by is the standard you accept.
What we have to drive home to the people of NSW is that Chris Minns is not some kind of hero who has to drag his recalcitrant ministers and backbenchers mouthing off on their own. His toleration of these people reflects his own standards.
And it’s an arrogant government, when, from time to time when occasionally they do make decisions. Whether it’s ripping up cost of living support they promised they’d keep, like Active Kids. Whether it’s cuts to palliative care; can you imagine a crueler cut to care for people for dying who are dying, who are terminally ill? But that’s what Chris Minns has done; he’s ripped $249 million out of our budget for palliative care. And there are other cuts as well, to Education, and Fire & Rescue, and Police and Health that Chris Minns has made, in his arrogant way, because he has to pay for the wage deals he’s done with his union mates.
Housing
But perhaps the classic example of all this arrogance is housing and his proposals for basically vandalising many suburbs in Sydney and indeed localities right across NSW.
We know there’s a housing crisis; we can’t escape that fact. There is a housing crisis. Sydney’s housing prices are probably the most expensive in the English-speaking world when you compare median incomes with median home prices. If you’re trying to get a deposit for an apartment and you’re on a typical wage it will take you 9.5 years to get that 20% deposit. And if you want to buy a house it’s going to take you 15.5 years for the deposit.
Renters have experienced the worst increases in rents in 15 years.
When Sir Robert Menzies founded our great party, he spoke of what would become his values of his forgotten people addresses. He spoke of “homes material, homes human and homes spiritual”.
His point was that the home, whether it’s an apartment or a house, is more than a roof and four walls. It provides security - emotional, financial, physical. And home ownership contributes to our communal life.
So, we have almost a generation of young Australians in Sydney who feel disconnected form our communities and from our economy because they simply can’t afford to buy a home, whether it’s an apartment or a house.
If we don’t deal with this key issue, we’ll price a generation of firefighters, of police, of teachers out of this city and we won’t have those essential workers.
Now Chris Minns like to point the finger at us as responsible for all this, but this is a problem that affects the whole English-speaking world.
When we were in government, we inherited from Labor average housing completions of just 28,000 a year. We got that up to over 70,000 before COVID hit. This is a government, now, where the confidence of builders and investors is falling - in the last 12 months, we’ve seen building commencements in NSW fall 28%.
Yes, there are supply side issues and rising interest rates but compare that 28% with Victoria at 6%, Queensland at 10% and WA at 10%, so we’re the worst performing of the major states.
So, as I said about arrogance, Chris Minns’ approach to this crisis is an arrogant, haphazard, ‘one size fits all’ approach. Now in April we’re going to have 31 high rise precincts around train stations. There is no consultation, there is no exhibition of any plan. Instead, you’ve got a Housing Minister who just says to local communities “if you don’t like it, get out of the way”.
This is a government that lacks nuance, that lacks finesse, that will not talk to local communities to bring them along.
We say, of course, we have to increase housing supply dramatically, but you’ve got to do it in consultation with local communities. You’ve got to give local communities the chance to identify where they think the best places are to increase housing.
And of course, housing rents and prices aren’t just a function of supply; they’re also a function of demand. And you have a Premier who won’t stand up to his Labor mate in Canberra, Anthony Albanese, and demand a reduction in immigration. Instead, you have a Premier who’s missing in action.
One of the very few pieces of legislation the government has passed in the last 12 months is to rip up our stamp duty reforms.
We gave first home buyers (up to $1.5 million) the choice of paying large up front stamp duty or a small annual property tax, a bit like council rates.
Buyers were voting with their feet. In the short period in which it was enacted, the overwhelming majority of buyers were choosing the small property tax. But Labor has ripped that up and made housing even more unaffordable.
Of course, you can’t have increased density or increased housing supply unless you’ve got the infrastructure.
So, we’ve got Chris Minns out there sprouting his plans for Sydney and NSW, but not a single plan for extra infrastructure, not a single plan for a new school, a new hospital, upgraded sewage, public transport or roads. Not a single plan.
And we know what Labor governments are like when it comes to infrastructure. We saw what Bob Carr was like when he declared “Sydney was full”, and that was basically the excuse for doing nothing. And we had to double or triple the amount of infrastructure spending when we came to government.
So, Chris Minns breaks his word on palliative care, he breaks his word on Active Kids, he breaks his word on Budget cuts.
He says, only about 5 months ago, that are going to be able to build or have a target of 375,000 new homes in the next 5 years.
Within 5 months he rips up that promise, that pledge to his interstate colleagues and the Prime Minister.
Now he’s walking away from Rosehill, a big announcement with lots of fanfare at the end of last year - 25,000 more homes at Rosehill.
And now it looks like its going to fall through. Another thought bubble.
And you had the extraordinary spectacle this week (Natalie Ward is here sitting in the front row) in Budget Estimates, where the Transport Minister admitted she hadn’t even seen the Memorandum of Understanding about building a new Metro station.
So, let’s be crystal clear. Sydney needs new homes, but this is a government that doesn’t have the wherewithal or the skill to do it properly or to put in place the infrastructure we need.
We need more housing, but we have to work with communities to do it.
So my commitment to you is that we will develop a comprehensive policy agenda that will deal with these issues because we have to do so, otherwise we are going to lose essential workers in Sydney.
It’s not just a policy agenda that is going to be ‘drive up high rise around train stations’, but one that addresses the infrastructure we need, the stamp duty reform we need, and the red tape and overregulation that have to be tackled.
And it will be an agenda that partners with local communities.
I don’t think any community in Sydney or any local government area in Sydney can legitimately expect to completely lock the door for more housing. That said, what we expect of local communities will vary, but we have to bring them onside because they are the ones who are best placed to work out where extra housing should go.
Our team
I’m confident that our team has the ability and insight to do that.
Unlike the Labor Party, where just about every member is a member of a union or has some kind of Labor Party, staffer or Unions NSW background, we have a party with very broad and diverse life experiences.
We’re also blessed with a large team of under 40 year olds. We have around 10 under 40 year old elected members. They include Chris Rath, Tina Ayyad, Steph Di Pasqua, Jordan Lane, Rory Amon, Jacqui Munro, Matt Cross, Eleni Petinos and James Griffin, who live and breathe this issue in their own lives.
Compare that with Labor. Labor has no under 35 elected MPs at all. We elected six at the last election. So, we’ve got that insight, we’ve got those young people at the table.
The Greiner Review
Finally, can I speak about the Greiner Review. As I said before, the vast majority of us here have been involved in multiple State and Federal election campaigns.
That’s what most of us have done, but I think few of us would have been shocked or surprised by the findings and recommendations of the Greiner Review.
And if you’re like me, you’ll find yourself reading that review quietly, shaking your head, and nodding your head at the obvious propositions in that report.
That sends a wakeup call, but it is a roadmap to policy, campaigning, and organisational superiority.
We have to be fit for purpose, our purpose is to win and bring those liberal values I spoke about so we can govern this country with clarity and purpose.
Can I make this crystal clear - I support the recommendations of the Greiner Review and I will be fighting very hard to make sure that they are implemented by my Parliamentary team, the broader organisation and the party room.
That includes the first recommendation which is taking the fight to Labor; prosecuting our Liberal values every day of the week, every day of the year; holding Labor to account, particularly on cost of living and housing affordability which is just making so many people in our society feel insecure.
I want our membership to be broader, more community focused and adding strength to the party. We have to be a welcoming place for new members, all members; there has to be a value proposition for members.
We have to be better than Labor - better online, better in the field and better fundraisers.
Summing up
We have the roadmap, we know what we have to do, we have to embrace it. And if we all do, we will all be building the platform for victory in 2027.
Thank you.