20-June-2005
Speeches, Personal
Welcome, Prime Minister, Colleagues, Brian Loughnane, Federal Director of the Liberal Party, Jason Briant, Director of the Menzies’ Research Centre, members of the media, ladies and gentleman.
On behalf of my fellow editor, Mitch Fifield, myself, and the other members of our Editorial Board and production team, Kathryn Hodges and Chris Swan– welcome to the launch of The PartyRoom and thank you for making the effort to be here.
After 25 years in and around politics, I have a strong view that the bedrock of politics is ideas, and the policies that grow out of those ideas – if you haven’t got a work program, you are going nowhere.
Of course, you then need “political acumen” and money, and good execution and all the rest of it, but without a solid work program, without a comprehensive set of policies, the rest won’t carry you over the line. And I’m certain that the failure to do any decent policy work is the major contributing factor to the state our opponents find themselves in at the moment.
As well, I suspect that after nine and half years of government there is probably an even greater onus on a Government to continue to generate ideas and policies, to show that we haven’t run out of puff, run out of ideas, so that we overcome the instinctive and understandable community scrutiny that comes with long term Government.
The PartyRoom is intended to provide one new forum to tease out ideas, along with the IPA, Menzies’ Research Centre and other such bodies, to act as a catalyst for debate. The PartyRoom will showcase the thinking of those who have been elected as part of the Coalition Government, to keep us relevant and effective.
The only contributors to The PartyRoom, almost by definition, will be Coalition Members and Senators. We are delighted by the quality of the contributions to this first edition and I’d like to thank all of you sincerely.
We are particularly grateful to the leader of our team, the Prime Minister, for the quality of his contribution to the first edition, he has set the scene very well, and I would like to thank him for his agreement to launch the publication this evening.
John Howard has built his career, and the success of his Government, on the power of ideas, driven by a strong set of principles, and it gives me great pleasure to invite the Prime Minister to officially launch The PartyRoom.