James Stevens (Sturt, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I appreciate and welcome the opportunity to have a debate about Australia's future, and that debate is framed around two vitally important topics: the future of the Australian economy and the future of our national security. I welcome the fact that this will be the way we will frame the election campaign, and I look forward to the opportunity to go to the people of my electorate, like I know all of my colleagues on this side of the chamber equally look forward to going to their constituents, and saying, 'These are the important issues that you have to adjudicate over when you go into the ballot box and choose where to put No. 1 on your ballot paper.' I'm very confident that the Morrison government will be handsomely re-elected when we frame the election on this basis. It surprises me but I welcome the decision of the opposition to craft a matter of public importance on a topic that we have all been desperate to talk about ourselves all week in the parliament. Again, I thank them for this opportunity.

Before I talk about our plans for the future, let me say that our record on both of those topics, on the economy and on national security, is one we take a great deal of pride in. We know, of course, that the unemployment figures came out today. Again, unemployment is stable at 4.2 per cent, an unbelievable achievement of the economic policies and settings of this government and one that has surprised many, particularly those opposite, particularly the shadow Treasurer, who was hoping and praying that unemployment would increase dramatically because of the impacts of the coronavirus pandemic. That has not happened and it's because of the strong economic decisions that we have made as a government. I won't catalogue them all, because I've had the opportunity to do that in the past, and I think they're well ingrained in people's minds. But the results couldn't be better encapsulated than today's unemployment figure of 4.2 per cent. When I was at university, five per cent was considered full employment. The fact that it's 4.2 per cent and that the Governor of the Reserve Bank and other senior eminent economists expect that the unemployment rate will go below four per cent is certainly a cause for congratulations on the strong decisions that the government have taken to secure our economy and to ensure that we're in a strong position to go into this campaign, to go to the people of this country and say: 'This is what we've done. But, more importantly, this is what we'll do into the future.' Again, in national security, particularly in defence but also in law enforcement and also in the intelligence agencies, we have made very significant investments and strong decisions that have put all of those elements of our national security services in this country in the strongest possible position to meet some of the threats and challenges that, unfortunately, could well befall us in the years ahead. I think the 2020s will be a period of uncertainty and probably the most significant time since the end of the Second World War, particularly in our region. We need to be in a strong position to meet those challenges, to meet those potential threats. We want peace and we want stability and we want freedom in our region, and you secure that through strength. You secure that through a strong Defence Force, through investing in that capability.

As someone from South Australia, when it comes to sovereign capability and the defence industry, I know just what an impact that makes not only when it comes to our national security but also when it comes to the economic dividend of that. We have a naval shipbuilding program underway in SA, with nine frigates and eight nuclear submarines to be built in Adelaide, and supply chains spread throughout the nation. There is technology that we can access through important alliance partners—in particular, the AUKUS agreement that has recently been signed by our government, which gives us the opportunity to have a nuclear-propelled submarine fleet for the first time in our history.

We have the Quad, the quadrilateral dialogue, and other alliances in our region. These sorts of decisions and achievements under this government are underpinning our national security—much like the free-trade agreements are underpinning our future economic prosperity. We know that our economic growth, in the greatest amount, will come from growing our export sectors and producing more and selling more to the rest of the world. As a nation of only 25 million people, we've got much higher ambitions than merely providing for the needs of this country. By signing those free trade agreements, we're putting ourselves in a position to maximise our market access.

This is a government that understands how to drive forward with a future of prosperity for this nation—economic prosperity and national security. We're making those tough decisions. We've made those tough decisions. We'll have the policies to take to the next election and secure the future of this country for the years and decades ahead.

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