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I begin by acknowledging the traditional owners of the land on which we meet and I pay my respect to elders past, present and emerging.
 
On the Wednesday before the last election, I stood at this podium and said it was my ambition to lead:
 
A government that honours the values of the Australian people: that repays hard work, nourishes aspiration, and creates opportunity.
 
A government driven by strong and clear principles – no-one held back, no-one left behind.
 
Through everything the world has thrown at Australia over the last three years, for all the challenges our nation has faced, our Government has held true to those enduring Australian values of fairness, aspiration and opportunity.
 
We have worked, each and every day, to repay the trust that the Australian people placed in us. 
 
To turn promises into progress.
 
To secure Australia’s place in our region, restore our standing in the world – and strengthen our economy and society here at home.
 
To deliver on our commitments – and build beyond them.
 
Strengthening Medicare, backing fair wages and good jobs and investing in education and skills so that in a changing global economy no Australian is held back.
 
And delivering real, practical and ongoing help with the cost of living so that in times of global uncertainty no Australian is left behind.
 
Taking action to help people here and now – while building for the long term.
 
It has been less than three years since Australians voted out the Morrison Government. 
 
My colleagues and I know there is more work to do.
 
That is what drives us.
 
We know the power and the value of a stable, reforming, majority Labor Government: the opportunities it creates, the difference it makes to people’s lives.
 
And we know the risk and the cost of a reckless and wasteful Liberal and National Government – we are still cleaning up 10 years of their mess.
 
As I said at the time, it was always going to take us more than three years to clear away the chaos and dysfunction that the Liberals left behind.
 
But since May 2022, throughout these challenging times, we have laid strong foundations.
 
On the 3rd of May I am asking Australians to vote Labor so we can keep building for the future.
 
So we can manage the global uncertainty facing us, in the interests of our nation.
 
So we can put the Liberals’ wasted decade behind us, once and for all.
 
And so we can seize the opportunities ahead of us - and share them with all Australians.
 
That is the optimism, ambition and determination at the heart of our plan for building Australia’s future.
 
A plan for every Australian, in every part of our country.
 
That’s why I’ve been campaigning to strengthen Medicare, everywhere.
 
The biggest-ever investment in bulk-billing, so more GPs bulk-bill every patient, every time.
 
Bringing the cost of PBS medicines down to just $25 a script, the lowest it has been since 2004.
 
And freezing it at just $7.70 for concession card holders for the rest of the decade.
 
Opening another 50 new Medicare Urgent Care Clinics.
 
Adding to the network of 87 we’ve already opened in regions and suburbs right around Australia.
 
This will mean, by the middle of next year, four out of five Australians will live within 20 minutes of a clinic.
 
And in every clinic, every Australian will only need their Medicare card.
 
And a new 24-7 telehealth service – 1800 MEDICARE.
 
Free, trusted health advice just a phone call away.
 
Helping more Australians see a doctor for free takes pressure off our hospitals and our health system.
 
And of course, investing in Medicare delivers on what has been our Government’s number one priority for three years: helping people with the cost of living.
 
Under Labor, every household and small business will receive another round of energy bill relief, another $150 off your power bill.
 
And all 14 million taxpayers will get two more tax cuts, next year and the year after.
 
Not as a one and done.
 
Not something that disappears next July to be replaced by a permanent hike in income tax.
 
We will lower tax rates for every taxpayer, permanently.
 
With our top-up tax cuts delivering an average benefit of $2,500.
 
We’re cutting taxes – and we’re boosting wages.
 
Helping people earn more – and keep more of what they earn.
 
Because we know that managing the cost of living, making the family budget work is about the money that comes in as well.
 
Our plan is for every part of our country – and for every generation.
 
That’s why we will cut 20 per cent off student debt, saving 3 million Australians an average of $5,500 each.
 
And we have made the system better and fairer for the future, because we don’t want to see student debt grow faster than wages ever again.
 
Our Government is building more homes – including 100,000 new homes reserved for first home buyers.
 
And we will make it possible for people to buy their first home with just a 5 per cent deposit.
 
Cutting years off the time it takes to save for a deposit.
 
So that instead of watching house prices rise while your rent is paying off someone else’s mortgage, you’ll be paying off your own home.
 
This reform to empower a new generation of home ownership was at the centre of our campaign launch in Perth.
 
Along with our new $1,000 Instant Tax Deduction.
 
Something that will mean nearly 6 million Australians: young people, people working from home, people who can’t afford an accountant, get more of their own money back at tax time.
 
But so much else in our plan to make people better off over the next three years was presented to Australians before this campaign began.
 
Our top-up tax cuts were part of the new cost-of-living relief the Treasurer, Jim Chalmers, delivered in the Budget in March.
 
And they build on the tax cuts for every taxpayer that I announced right here in January last year.
 
We announced our historic new investment in Medicare and bulk-billing in Launceston in February.
 
When I spoke here at the beginning of the year, my 10th time as Labor Leader, I announced our new $10,000 incentive for construction apprenticeships.
 
Helping train more tradies, so we can build more homes.
 
And I confirmed that Victoria and South Australia had signed on to our Better and Fairer Schools Funding Agreement.
 
Before the campaign began we secured agreements with New South Wales and Queensland as well.
 
That means that under Labor for the first time ever, every student, in every school, in every state and territory will get the funding and support they need to be their best.
 
It was in Brisbane, last December, that I outlined our plan to build more child care centres in regions and suburbs where they are needed most and to abolish the Liberals’ unfair activity test and replace it with our 3 Day Guarantee.
 
The next steps to universal, affordable child care.
 
We made our commitment to cut student debt by 20 per cent and make Free TAFE permanent nationwide, in Adelaide in November last year.
 
And our vision for a Future Made in Australia, using our global advantage in clean energy to power a new generation of jobs and industries in our regions and suburbs was at the centre of the Budget last year.
 
And of course we are building on it with our Critical Minerals Strategic Reserve.
 
Our plans for Australia’s future, for your future, have been public and published and available for all to see, for months, in some cases for years.
 
Our agenda is concrete, comprehensive – and costed.
 
Because in times of global economic uncertainty that is the stable and responsible approach that our people deserve and our nation needs.
 
At a time of global uncertainty, when so much in the world is unpredictable, Australians can be sure of where Labor stands and what Labor stands for.
 
And you can be confident that we will always stand up for Australia.
 
Trusting our values and backing our people, to build our future. 
 
Compare that with the alternative.
 
There is a real choice this Saturday.
 
The Liberals and Nationals have spent three years raging about problems that their decade in office created.
 
With not a word to say about solutions.
 
No proposals of their own, just militant opposition to our cost of living measures and mindless negativity.
 
The Coalition have spent three years trying to make life harder for Australians, because they thought it would make politics easier for them.
 
Talking Australia down, to try and build themselves up.
 
The Liberals have not learned, they have not changed.
 
It is clear to all that they simply have not done the work - but I can tell them this:
 
The Australian people have worked hard, in the face of unprecedented challenges.
 
The worst global inflation since the 1980s.
 
The biggest international energy crisis since the 1970s.
 
Conflict overseas, natural disasters here at home.
 
Australians have worked hard – and today underlines the real progress we have made together:
 
When we came to Government, less than three years ago, inflation was over 6 per cent and rising.
 
Today, it is down to 2.4 per cent. 
 
Real wages have grown, five quarters in a row.
 
Interest rates have started to come down.
 
And more jobs have been created in the last three years than during any term of Government since Federation.
 
Because of the resilience of the Australian people, our economy is turning the corner.
 
And our Government is investing in the jobs and Medicare, housing and education that will take us forward together.
 
With no-one held back and no-one left behind.
 
But the Liberals want to drag us back down their dead end road.
 
Because all their contradictions and chaos and reversals, all their scrambling to pretend that they didn’t hear the question, or really meant the opposite of the words they said, that cuts printed in black and white don’t exist.
 
None of that can disguise the fact that their plans are fundamentally wrong for Australia.
 
Just look at their proposal to ban Working from Home.
 
Last month, Peter Dutton said that women who couldn’t be in the office 5 days a week should just ‘job share’.
 
A statement that is so out of touch with the lives of modern families and the flexibility that working from home gives parents in particular.
 
It also fundamentally misunderstands the national productivity benefit of supporting greater opportunity for women and the essential right of women to make their own choices about their own careers.
 
Then he turns around and blames Labor for that policy being unpopular.
 
His own Shadow Minister maintains that making everyone go to the office five days a week is the right idea, this is just the wrong time to talk about it.
 
And that’s the sentiment that drives their approach across the board.
 
On defence, on climate change, on their cuts to health and education.
 
The Liberals cannot agree with themselves.
 
And they are not ready or willing to level with the Australian people.
 
Their answer to every question boils down to: “We’ll tell you after the election”.
 
I can only assume that’s why my opponent is not coming here this week.
 
Because he doesn’t have faith in his plan or his team.
 
Because he doesn’t want to share the facts about his agenda or what it will cost.
 
Either that, or the man who spends so much time telling everyone how tough he is, the person putting himself forward to lead the nation for the next three years, is unwilling to face-up to the scrutiny of the National Press Club.
 
Instead, he prefers to accuse journalists of being ‘activists’ and labels the national broadcaster, ‘hate media’.
 
Outbursts that, frankly, say more about his temperament than anything else. 
 
For a leader, being here in the last week of the election campaign is more than a matter of respect for tradition.
 
Standing here is about taking responsibility for your plans.
 
Being here is about being accountable, to the people, to the democratic process.
 
And given that Peter Dutton is going to this election with a $600 billion nuclear reactor scheme that no state or territory government – from either side of politics – supports.
 
That no commercial investor is willing to back.
 
And that the private sector doesn’t want to touch with a bargepole.
 
He should have the guts to front up and explain where the money will come from to pay for it – before Australians cast their vote.
 
He should come clean on what he will cut to pay for his nuclear reactors.
 
What it will mean for the communities he refuses to visit, let alone consult.
 
How he can justify the sunniest continent on earth moving away from solar power and the driest continent on earth, investing in the form of energy which uses the most water.
 
And what the consequences will be for jobs and industries and agriculture and manufacturing right around Australia.
 
If we turn our backs on the opportunities of renewable energy, technology that over 4 million Australian households have embraced through rooftop solar, energy that is tailor-made for Australia’s sunlight and space, and instead push pause for two decades, to risk it all on building the most expensive form of new energy, from scratch.
 
That their own figures say will result in an economy that is 40 per cent smaller.
 
Australians deserve an answer to those questions before they vote.
 
And what’s more, if your other big idea is to sack 41,000 people.
 
Then you owe it to Australians to explain what the consequences of those cuts will be:
 
For the services and support and pensions that people rely on.
 
For the disaster recovery payments communities need to rebuild.
 
For the entitlements that our veterans earn, in their service to our nation.
 
For the National Disability Insurance Scheme, and everything it means to people.
 
It beggars belief that someone seeking to be Prime Minister of Australia could propose such a risky and extreme set of policies and yet after three years, an unprecedented four debates and five weeks of campaigning, still refuse to explain what those policies will mean to you.
 
My message to Australians is this:
 
If Peter Dutton wants you to take a risk on him, then he should look you in the eye.
 
He should tell you what he will cut – and what you will pay.
 
In Australia, we sometimes think of ourselves as a young nation.
 
But not only do we have the privilege of being home to the world’s oldest continuous culture, Australia is also one of the world’s oldest and strongest democracies.
 
Every election affirms the right and the responsibility of every citizen to choose the future they want for our nation.
 
And at this election, the choice for Australians is more important and more clear than ever before.
 
Because the choice you make on the 3rd of May is not between two competing plans that strive for the same goal.
 
It is not two sides of the same coin.
 
This election is a choice between two fundamentally different visions for the direction Australia should go.
 
In the total absence of anything constructive to help in the present, or anything positive to say about the future, the Liberals are urging Australians to go back to the past.
 
Back to a darker and nastier and more extreme version of the cuts and conflict and culture wars that people rejected less than three years ago.
 
The Government I lead is determined to take Australia forward.
 
I have always been optimistic about Australia’s future – and never more so than now.
 
Because of the challenges we have worked together to overcome.
 
Because of the opportunities we can work together to seize.
 
And because the very best reason to be optimistic about Australia’s future remains our people.
 
And the best investment we can make in Australia’s future is in our people.
 
In you.
 
Your courage. Your resilience. Your capacity. Your talents and aspiration.
 
That’s a truth Labor Governments have always understood.
 
It is at the heart of every great and enduring Labor reform.
 
And it is why, in uncertain times, every Australian can be certain of this.
 
A vote for Labor means the certainty of Medicare.
 
The security of being able to see a GP when and where you need it, without worrying about whether you can afford it.
 
A vote for Labor means you can be certain that child care and early education will be more affordable for your family.
 
You can be certain that your child and their school will get the full and fair funding they need to be their very best.
 
You can be certain that the opportunity of free TAFE is here to stay.
 
You can be certain that your student debt will be cut by 20 per cent.
 
A vote for Labor means you can be certain of a Government that has your back at work. 
 
That stands for good jobs, real wage rises, the flexibility to work from home – and your right to disconnect at the end of the day.
 
A vote for Labor means you can be certain of a Government building more homes and providing more help for you to buy your first home.
 
And in an uncertain world, a vote for Labor means you can be certain of a Government that will stand up for Australia, not copy from overseas.
 
A Government that will build our national security and our economic sovereignty by investing in our capabilities and our relationships, in our national interest.
 
By strengthening our Defence Force.
 
Taking action on climate change.
 
Engaging with the transformative opportunities of our region.
 
And making more things here in Australia.
 
My fellow Australians
 
Serving as your Prime Minister is the greatest honour of my life.
 
Because every day is a chance to make a positive difference to your lives.
 
It offers the extraordinary opportunity to make this, the best nation on earth, even better.
 
And if my colleagues and I earn your support on the 3rd of May, we will dedicate every single day of the next three years to proving ourselves worthy of it.
 
Securing the progress we have made together.
 
Delivering the rewards your hard work has won.
 
Creating the opportunities you and your children deserve.
 
Building an economy that is as resilient and innovative as our people.
 
Building a society that is as generous and fair as Australians themselves.
 
Building a future where we draw on the talents and invest in the aspirations of all our citizens.
 
Building a nation where no-one is held back and no-one is left behind.
 
Building Australia’s future, together.
 
ENDS