A government focussed just on short term political and media management. The only time they look up and look ahead it was when the Prime Minister said they were looking for the horizon. And we know horizons are never met.

 

Are never met. In contrast, a Labor Party committed to overcoming the Covid pandemic and creating a better future. Now, when it comes to the pandemic, it's easy to put out claims that would fail the pub test when your failure to act on vaccines and quarantine mean that half the nation's pubs are closed because as a direct result of this government's failure to secure enough vaccines and to roll them out effectively. And also to fail on quarantine, where we've seen breaches on 27 occasions. And added to that, the congratulations to Premier Berejiklian for not locking down in June.

 

That has led since then in New South Wales alone, 23,000 people being infected. One hundred and seven people losing their lives. One thousand people being in hospital. One hundred and sixty people being in intensive care and spreading to the ACT, Victoria, southeast Queensland for a while, and indeed even to New Zealand. The fact is that we need to do more. Labor's Covid approach would be a speedy vaccination rollout, at a safe end to lockdowns, protect our children, and preparing for the future.

 

A speedy vaccination rollout through a three hundred dollar incentive. Through securing booster shots now. By supporting vaccine leave. A safe end to lockdowns through fair access to vaccines before reopening. To deliver an effective world class national CovidSafe app.

 

Support for the National Plan. Support for businesses who want to protect their customers as well as their workers. Protect our children to include 12 to 15 year olds in the target, or if not, specify targets for them. Vaccinate them quickly through a school based program.

 

Prepare for under 12 vaccinations, securing pediatric vaccine supply in the future. Preparing school based programs now. Preparing for the future post vaccination. Manufacturing mRNA here. Purpose-built quarantine. Creating an Australian Centre for Disease Control. We have a plan.

This means producing sophisticated goods and services, plans for new industries through our National Reconstruction Fund, making Australia a renewable energy superpower to drive down energy prices, to support advanced manufacturing, including in cyber, energy storage mRNA vaccines, transport and logistics, and more. A stronger middle class. Secure work.

 

People are struggling out there to pay a mortgage. People are struggling to pay their everyday bills. We need to have secure work that values permanency, that values that security in the workplace. And yet those opposite won't even guarantee people be paid the minimum wage.

 

We will have Jobs and Skills Australia to ensure that Australians can fill the permanent, well-paid jobs that we'll create in the future. We have simple principles. No one held back and no one left behind. And we'll make sure they're implemented as well.

 

Improving workforce participation by making child care affordable. Genuinely advancing women's equality by adopting all recommendations of the Respect@Work report. Not just some of them. We need a stronger Federation. This government has proven itself incapable of leadership. There has never been a Prime Minister who has so weakened the Federation.

 

He established the so-called National Cabinet and today had to introduce legislation, essentially to hide what happens in that National Cabinet as a result of the AAT decision. But we've seen him go to court, go to court, backing up Clive Palmer to tear down WA's border, a decision that cost a million dollars for Australian taxpayers, including over $40,000 given directly to Clive Palmer in order to further promote some of those wacky theories that are undermining the health of our health during a pandemic. The fact is that there is no state premier this Prime Minister won't undermine.

 

And even the premier of New South Wales has been the subject of backgrounding and undermining. The fact is, we will introduce proper, proper federal reform, including microeconomic reform, working with the states and territories not against them. Not seeking to divide Australia, seeking to unite Australia so we can move forward, stronger into the future.

 

This Prime Minister thinks it's acceptable to call West Australians and Queenslanders cave dwellers. Well, when Queenslanders are watching the rugby league grand final at Suncorp and when West Australians are watching the AFL grand final at Optus, they won't think they're in a cave.

 

They will be thanking their premiers for keeping them safe. We need to return to respect for the public service as well, something that's consistently undermined by those opposite. We need to have appropriate regional development, as well as a genuine plan for cities policy.

 

They used to talk about cities policy. Now they just rort programs like the Commuter Car Parks program. They think that infrastructure development in our regions and our cities should be determined not by what it does for the national economy, not by what it does for jobs, not by what it does by improving the standard and quality of life for people in our regions, in cities. They think it's all about an electoral map and a color coded map based upon, the political marginal seats. We need a sustainable Australia, one that takes climate action seriously.

 

Now, in Glasgow, in Glasgow, the whole of the industrialised world will go. They're already supporting net zero by 2050. The whole of the industrialised world knows knows that you need real action. And if there's anything that that exemplifies this government being scared of the present but terrified of the future, it's the rhetoric that we saw during the last campaign about electric vehicles, about EVs going forward. And yet what we have is a government that said it would destroy the weekend completely, being unable to embrace and shape the future in Australia's national interest.

 

And we will once again be pariahs at that conference if we can't even get through net zero emissions. Australia is a great nation, but we can be even greater. We're located in the fastest growing region of the world in human history.

 

With that comes enormous opportunity, not just to export our resources, but to value-add here, to manufacture things here. To imagine the opportunities that are there from lithium, from copper, from nickel, from these great resources that will be so valued in the future. The opportunity that we have to be a renewable energy superpower and position ourselves.

 

But that requires leadership, collaboration and foresight. This government ignores problems until they become a crisis, and then the response is too little, too late, and then they never take responsibility and rewrite history. The Gaslight on the Hill, that's what they have opposite.

 

Well, Labor has the Light on the Hill. A light on the hill with imagination, courage, energy to bring Australians together, to create high value jobs, to lift living standards, to lift people up, to make sure people aren't left behind on the basis of where they were born, their gender, their sexuality, their religion, to make sure that we unite as a country. We need a government that's as big and bold as the Australian people are themselves. A government with ambition, ambition for the future, not ambition for the next news day, not ambition for the next headline.

 

And that's what Labor will bring. Labor will bring that ambition for the future, a better future that we will deliver in government.