Clive Palmer candid and lucid speech to Australias National Press club .... alas a third major party brewing palmerunited The full transcript of Mr Palmer’s address is below. [MC introduction] “Thanks very much. Defenders of freedom I’d call journalists because that’s what they really are. “We meet today at a time which is a critical time for the nation to set the national agenda. Never before have the rights of our citizens been more important. Never before has our press had a more important role to play. “To report the critical issues of our time and to stimulate our nation following an election which was devoid of ideas from national leaders who should have known better and should offer an agenda for the country’s future. “It’s never been more important for our press to stimulate the enterprise of the nation. Governments may rise and fall, but ideas go on forever. Newspapers, internet, radio and all the media form a link that turns ideas into policy; policy into legislation and legislation into laws that can provide benefits for all our citizens. “Media men and women have through history have been at the forefront of change; the forefront of those ideas. They’ve been at the forefront of keeping government, business and other people accountable, having scrutiny over what they do and protecting the diversity of the nation. “But they’ve also been at the forefront of change. Nothing is more certain than the onset of change. Success reflects that change in our economy and indeed on our political agenda. “In 1851, a long time ago, the New York Daily Tribune retained its London correspondent, a little known journalist named by his mother as Karl Marx. Apparently he was without means, his family were sick and hungry. And not having any money he repeatedly appealed to his publisher, Horace Greeley, and his editor, Charles Dana, to boost his salary of five dollars a story. “As his close friend Engels said, ‘it was the lousiest, pettiest bourgeoisie cheating that he’d ever seen’. Nevertheless, all of Marx’s pleas for an increased salary to his editor fell on deaf ears; do you know the feeling? “So what did Marx do? He sought another means to support his family; to find the recognition that journalists deserve. So he was forced to give up his job at the New York Tribune so he could spend all his time working on an idea; an idea he thought he could leave to the world; the idea which became the foundation of Stalinism, revolution and the Cold War. If only this bourgeoisie capitalist publisher and editor had treated him more fairly and listened to his pleas for an increase in wages. If only Marx had remained a foreign correspondent then the world might be a different place. “I just want to say today that I hope Rupert Murdoch and all publishers will think more about talented, dedicated journalists when they make their appeals for a proper working wage to support their families and that all publishers be more appreciative of the contribution they make. In that regard I would recommend to Rupert Murdoch that he increases the wages of Hedley Thomas, lest he seeks an alternative career and wants to write a book! Though some would say he’s not a foreign correspondent, the things he’s been writing about me lately are certainly foreign to me! “In 2013, about eight weeks before the federal election, the Palmer United Party was registered by the Australian Electoral Commission. Its aim at that time was to stand 150 candidates, to contest all seats in the House of Representatives and to stand Senate teams in all states and territories of the Commonwealth. All members of the press in all states of the Commonwealth said it couldn’t be done. What’s more, [they said] the Palmer United Party wouldn’t win any seats in the federal parliament. They were wrong, and that’s the reality of it. “Unfortunately, in 2013 some people find it difficult to be wrong and more difficult to admit they were once wrong. As a wise man once said, ‘an error doesn’t become a mistake until you refuse to correct it’. So rather than examine the facts and the reasons for what’s happening to the nation, many focus on individuals or personalities, making demeaning comments about those who have merely offered themselves for public service and have been elected by the people of Australia. “Australians have the right to be right and they have the right to be wrong. That’s what we call democracy in this country. At the last election the Palmer United Party won 5.5% of the voting population of Australia. It became Australia’s fourth largest political party in votes. In membership it’s much higher than that. “Tony Abbott only [won his seat and] became Prime Minister of this country because the Coalition received the preferences of the Palmer United Party. And, we found the first decision of the [new] cabinet was to implement one of our policies when Tony Abbott banned lobbyists from holding official positions in political parties. If we achieve nothing else, we achieved one of our main goals and that was a great contribution to the honesty and integrity of this country. “The Palmer United Party out-polled the National Party, who only received 4% of the vote and yet has the Deputy Prime Minister. The Palmer United Party has one elected member to the House of Representatives, me, and three other senators, only to have the AEC lose the ballot boxes in Western Australia and deny Dio Wang his election. “Palmer United Party, together with the Motoring Enthusiasts Party, holds the balance of power in the Senate after next year. And after the next Western Australia election, our polling is showing we’ll win two senators in Western Australia. And I know, if you recall what you thought when I was here with Bob Katter two months ago, you might start to consider that as a real possibility, such is the disgust of the people of Western Australia at the performance of the AEC and having to go back to the polls again. “In the seat of Fairfax in Queensland, Palmer United received the largest swing of any party in the nation’s history – 50.3%. That had never been done before and people said we couldn’t do it as a party. Today the party has thousands of members throughout the Commonwealth and has experienced seven million hits on our website since it was established just eight weeks before the last federal election. “Our polling today which we have just completed in all states of the Commonwealth, shows we have over 10% support. In a recent Murdoch Newspoll showed ‘others’ at 12.4% - they still won’t list our name for some reason. We found out in that polling why that was - because this is nearly twice what we received at the election – and many people said that they didn’t think we would be elected, that they didn’t think we would have members of parliament and they didn’t want to waste their vote, so they didn’t vote for us. They know that’s different now because I’m in the House of Representatives and there were five seats in the House of Representatives that we would have won had we got a thousand more votes or so. “The Green vote declined and the Katter Party disappeared. Many Australians who didn’t want to vote for us at the election believed the press and the propaganda that a vote for Palmer United was a wasted vote as Palmer United wouldn’t win a seat. Now they know that’s not true and our vote has solidified. “The entrenchment of the two-party system in this country not only threatens democracy, it destroys the creativity of the nation. It robs from all of us the benefit of each other’s ideas, wisdom and innovation. “We need to separate the role of journalism from the internet. We have to meet the challenge of a new age and a new challenge for journalism in this country to ensure mainstream journalism is different from information, the internet and all the other things. Verification; reliability; sources; should be the catchcry of a healthy press and a healthy democracy, for journalists in this country hold a sacred obligation to protect the people’s right to know, to verify and ask questions. That is something I fully support. “But today in this country the main issue facing the nation is our economy and what’s going to happen to it. You will see the Liberal Party and the Labor Party hide and run away from answering real questions. You’ve seen Tony Abbott say before the last election say we have to bring the debt down, now you’ve seen Joe Hockey increase the debt ceiling. When you increase the debt ceiling it’s like putting more on your credit card; you don’t want to face the truth; you don’t want to face what we should be doing. We’ve got to face the issues and come to terms with them. You know the community agrees with each other on 95% of all issues, but our politicians in Canberra waste their time, waste taxpayer’s money by highlighting the 5% of things we don’t agree on, rather than implementing the things we do. “Labor wants to spend, Liberals want to cut, but Palmer United wants to expand and grow our economy just like other countries have around the world, like President Obama in the United States and what’s happened to the Japanese economy. All those economic policies can help us here in Australia because they’re policies of growth, creation of more value and supporting revenue by real achievement of growth in the nation. We must increase our domestic demand. Domestic demand in this country is at its lowest ebb. For a long time it’s been fashionable for the press and others to talk about foreign demand and the mining boom, things like that. But we have a demand and a purchasing power in this country. “How do we do that? We can do that by increasing the amount of money available in the Australian economy. How can we best do that without blowing out the debt? The forward estimates from treasury for the year 2013 projected provisional tax receipts for 2014 would exceed $70 billion. Instead of companies paying tax quarterly, in advance based on an estimate of what they may or may not earn, we need to let them pay yearly based on what they do earn. “If we keep that $70 billion which the government is getting in advance in the hands of enterprises, because they know how to spend it better than the government does, we’ll create a lot of domestic demand, we’ll create a lot of jobs and we’ll save a lot of government revenue. “We can end unemployment as a problem and turbo-charge our economy. In doing so we can wipe off some of the deficits we face. If $70 billion is spent by individual taxpayers even once during that 12-month period the government gets another 10% GST; that’s another $7 billion in revenue. If it’s spent twice or three times in that year that’s an extra $14 billion or $21 billion. I estimate the cost to government of doing that is around $700 million to $800 million, but it dwarves the amount of benefit available to the government and it dwarves the amount of money available to grow the economy. You were all here when Kevin Rudd gave away money to stimulate the economy, well that was about a $10 billion hit. We are talking about something that is seven times greater than that. All of you have met business people who are crying out for help and support because they have to pay money in advance. Our companies and our businesses are zapped of the funds they need to grow. Of course because that happens and as we get more domestic demand, we can get more hospitals, schools and a rise in living standards. “Basically, we can use our money better than the government can, but at the end of the year the government still gets the $70 billion. We haven’t had to borrow anything, we still balance our budget and the numbers still add up. So this is what we can do in Australia. “You try starting a small business and look at the number of bankruptcies in this country. The Australian government is the number one petitioner of bankruptcies and liquidations in Australia. That makes sense doesn’t it? In the United States they have a structure where they have Chapter Eleven, meaning business keeps on going, people retain their jobs and the business can be bought by others. In Australia we just wind up our companies. What happens to our people? They all end up going on Centrelink or they all end up having no hope for the future. That doesn’t make sense to me. “I believe we need to have a lot of economic activity to stimulate our domestic economy. Today I stood in Parliament House and took the oath. I can truly say that I will do all I can to serve the Australian people and endeavour to make their lives better. “Thank you very much.”
Posted on: Tue, 12 Nov 2013 10:39:49 +0000
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