At Parliament house today, in a joint coalition party room meeting, Tony Abbott, Australia’s Prime Minister-elect, said now that the coalition has won the election, they have only a brief moment to savour the win, before they get to work.
Mr. Abbott said their challenge is to earn the trust placed in them, and to keep it. “… we have won the trust of the Australian people. Our challenge now is to earn it and to keep it.”
The changeover from the Labor Party back to the Liberal National Party coalition comes six years after Liberal Prime Minister John Howard was defeated by Kevin Rudd and the Labor Party in 2007. The Labor party was swept out of power last weekend, as quickly as they breezed in, victims of their own internal corruption, treachery, backstabbing, flip-flops, lies and policy-on-the-run.
The liberals had their own problems, with a number of gaffes and candidates spouting overall policies they were unable to enumerate. Even so, the biggest difference between the two major parties, other than their basic ideology, was the cohesion and discipline of the coalition compared to the complete lack of both in the Labor camp, because it was “All about Kevin.”
Tony Abbott and family
Tony Abbott Articulated Four Goals
The four main goals Tony Abbott laid out for the new coalition government in the short election cycle were very clear.
Those goals are:
- To stop people illegally coming to Australia in leaky boats, mainly through Indonesia , in an attempt to bypass Australian immigration law and force Australia to house and protect them.
- To scrap the carbon tax, that had little effect other than to raise prices on everything and put massive pressure on the economy and Australians
- To improve Australia’s road infrastructure
- To reverse the deficit spending favoured by the Labor Party and The Greens
Mr. Abbot’s short speech:
My friends, it is my honour to welcome you back to Canberra as the Prime Minister-elect of Australia.
Governments change but rarely in this country.
Inevitably, all changes of government are historic and all of you can be proud of the part that you have played in this historic change.
Our task is but briefly to savour this moment. Our task is to give a great country and a great people the better government that the people of Australia deserve – that is our task.
We will now move purposefully, calmly and methodically to deliver on our election commitments to build a stronger economy for a stronger Australia.
That is what we must now do. That is what I am confident we have the team to do.
This is probably as well-prepared an opposition as has ever gone in to government, but the task is now ahead of us.
The challenges are considerable: we must stop the boats, we must scrap the carbon tax, we must build the roads and we must get the budget back into the black.
We will do these things because that is what the Australian people have elected us to do. That is what the Australian people have a right to expect.
My friends, we have won the trust of the Australian people. Our challenge now is to earn it and to keep it.
Thank you so much.
Success or Failure
It remains to be seen how successful the new Tony Abbott government will be in achieving those four goals. That is because, although the Liberal Party has a majority, it isn’t enough to pass their legislation without the votes of other parties and independents. The Labor Party and Greens, while appearing to be in great disarray, are already foreshadowing attempts to prevent things on the coalition’s legislative wish-list.