October 2006

Gerard thank you and Anne thank you for the opportunity. It’s a great opportunity from my point of view, as Gerard said, it’s a little under six months to the election.

It’s great to have an opportunity to have a chat to such a distinguished crowd of people. Deborah’s joined me tonight, as has Stephen Galilee, who is my Chief of Staff - up the back - and I think Barry is about to make an entrance, which he, Barry O’Farrell, will do undoubtedly in about two minutes.

What I wanted to do tonight was really have a chat to you about what my job is and what is my vision for New South Wales because it’s a question that’s often put to me. It’s one that a lot of people want me to answer publicly and I want to talk through that issue with you.

First I think, let me just explain to you what I see is my job as the Opposition leader and indeed the job of the Opposition.

I think its threefold. Obviously it’s to highlight the failings of the Government, the State Government and the difficulty we’ve got with that is that the Government is falling apart at the seams, literally, in every single portfolio. One of the challenges is that there is finite media space so we actually get down to rationing the issues and trying to make sure that in each media cycle, each day, that we are out getting one of those issues up that is making a real difference to the people of NSW. I’ll come to those issues in a minute. That highlighting of the failings is clearly one of the major roles of any Opposition and that’s what’s expected of us throughout the cycle.

The other way is to propose alternatives and in the Westminster system, of course, what you will get is Opposition’s putting up ideas, and they’re continually doing that, but if they’re good policy and good politics, the Government would have to be completely stupid not to actually take them. What they typically do is wait two or three weeks, and if it is good policy and it is good politics, then whack, they adopt it themselves.

That doesn’t fuss us, because one the challenges for us is to make sure commentators, are actually in the lead up to the election, commentators are actually saying “these people are credible, in fact they’re actually leading the policy debate from Opposition, they’re actually implementing things from Opposition”.

If you look at the tax debate over recent years we’ve pushed the tax debate. Whether its Land Tax, going back to 97, whether it’s Payroll Tax, whether it’s vendor tax, whether it’s the business taxes, the nuisance taxes, that should’ve gone under the GST, whether it’s the Clubs Tax we reached an agreement with the Clubs a year ago, in October last year, and it took the Government about 5 months and then they also reached agreement.

So on all those tax issues we’ve led the debate, and we’ve pushed hard for change. We’ve pushed hard for change on Worker’s Comp and we’ve actually achieved significant reductions on Worker’s Comp Premiums and there’s more to come.

Desalination Plant, if you remember a little over a year and a quarter ago the Government came out and decided that desalination was a good idea. They decided that because at that time they were doing the same calculation we were - which is that if it didn’t rain between early last year and the election in March next year the water in the dam would run out three weeks before the election.

So they decided that they better to do something about it, and their first response was to go out and buy an off-the-shelf water machine.

It was going to cost a little over $2 billion dollars. It was a bad idea.

The reaction of the community at the time was, ‘well at least they’re doing something’, but after a few months - after about three or four months, the community actually started to realise it was, environmentally, a bad thing to do, it was a very expensive option to deliver water and the people of the Kurnell peninsula certainly didn’t want it. So they changed their mind.

We’ve led the debate on Police numbers and Police strategies. The Government has cut, over the last three years, 650 Police out of NSW and we’ve forced them, not forced them to reinstate, we’ve forced them to promise to reinstate, and they’re going to do it within six weeks of the election, so when we get to the election those numbers will be reinstated.

We’ve forced them to change Policing strategies over the years and I think that’s a good thing.

We’ve led the debate on alternative fuels in NSW, and especially on ethanol, I’ve held a couple of industry roundtables about ethanol, and they’ve been done over the last three months, and we have actually achieved a significant shift in the attitude of not only the State Government but also the Federal Government, who’ve actually made more subsidies available to promote ethanol in the last few months.

Mental Health, we were the first ones who actually put a front-bencher in Australia, in Government or Opposition, put a front-bencher on Mental Health issues. That was February last year and a lot’s changed in a year and a half, and I think there’s been a significant improvement in that situation, not necessarily in NSW in terms of funding, but certainly across Australia in acknowledging that’s a real issue for everybody in the community.

And today Gladys Berejiklian and I launched our Mental Health Policy for the election this morning at Rozelle.  Hopefully that will get some media in the next 24 hours in addition to what it got in the Herald this morning. 

The third job of the Opposition is clearly to win the election and our view is the people of NSW will judge us at that election on how well we did the first two things.  On how well we hold the Government to account but also how well we set out an alternative, or set out a credible alternative agenda.

In terms of the election itself we tend to say there’s three things we’ve got to do in the election.

One’s the candidates, one’s fundraising and one’s campaigning.

In terms of candidates, in my twenty years in the Party, I have never seen a better crop of candidates in New South Wales in the State Election.  And we’re very proud of that.  We’ve expended a lot of blood, sweat and tears in getting a lot of people through a lot of pre-selections this year, in what is a democratic process in the Liberal Party compared to the Labor Party.

And it’s taken a lot of energy on the part of quite a few of us.  But we’ve ended up with great candidates who are now out in the field and doing a great job. 

In terms of fundraising we’ve just got to be relentless because we are competing with the Labor Party who literally vacuums millions of dollars from the Union Movement.  It is a Union Movement that is in great difficulties and they’re very happy to pay protection money to State Labor and to Federal Labor if they can protect the Union hierarchies.  So there are millions of dollars flowing that way. 

In terms of campaigning we’ve got to get our planning right.  And we’ve done that.  I think we’re in a position now, a better position than we’ve been in previous elections. And I think the Queensland election shows that you absolutely have to have campaign preparations in place.  And you have to be prepared to answer the most obvious questions on day one of the election.  Like, which one of you two in Queensland is actually going to be the Premier if you win the election.  If you can’t do the basics in an election campaign, the Community just says that’s wrong and they just say if they can’t answer that sort of question, what else can’t they do.  And they just back right away.

And I think that’s a shame because in Queensland it was clear that Peter Beattie was going to get quite a hammering.  He may not have lost the election but he was certainly going to be held to account.

That’s the job of the Opposition Leader.  A lot of people say to me why do you do it, why do you put yourself through this - which some people consider one of the hardest jobs in Australia?

I said, look I actually enjoy it.

I will never convince people that it is actually a very positive experience because the serious side of politics is very negative.  But it is, it’s actually a very positive experience and I enjoy what I do.

I also can actually, as Opposition Leader, change New South Wales.  Not just in Government but from Opposition as I say.  So I think the sense of satisfaction is enormous so long as you stay relentless and focused and often ruthless pursuing issues. 

In terms of the stereotyping of politics, look that is the case and you’ll never change it because conflict is newsworthy.  And so what you’ll see on TV, in the newspapers and radio quite often is just the conflict side of politics and that’s unfortunate but it’s reality.

Local MP’s and Shadow Ministers - they really do see the best and worst of the State.  I mean we’re confronted regularly and frequently with tragedies, which we should be able to do something for people but quite often we can’t.  It’s those sorts of tragedies, which actually create the mood for change in State politics.

In terms of the citizens we are working for, the first thing you learn is that you’ll never meet the six and a half million plus people in New South Wales.  You’ll obviously will never even meet all the forty four thousand voters in each electorate but you do meet some of them.  And to the others they simply hope that they’ve elected a person who when a question is to be decided, which is important to them, they hope you’ll do the right thing.  It’s as simple as that.

Most of the voters would never even think of ringing you or writing to you or stopping you in the street.  They just hope you’re going to do the right thing.  And I’m certainly conscious of that responsibility and I know most of my colleagues are.

In terms of what’s happening in New South Wales and how I go about my job, well what’s becoming very evident is that for 12 years you’ve been paying more and more in New South Wales and getting less and less.  And that’s a message that’s coming through, not just from me but it’s coming through from the community. Everybody knows that.

They’re saying that after 12 years of the Labor administration in this State, this system is paralysed. The bureaucracy is paralysed, decisions aren’t being made and it’s very costly. And they are also taking exception to the fact that some decisions are made in pursuit of political expediency not in the community interest. So that comes through very strongly.

The issue that we discussed with Gerard was my vision.

Well I went in search of the vision for the NSW Government and tried to find it on the website, on the home page of the Government and then I thought Premier’s Department would have it. I couldn’t find one for Premier’s Department or for the Government. So I went to the next best, and that’s Treasury. And in Treasury they actually have a vision statement which is one sentence and it says; ‘Promoting State resource management to achieve a stronger New South Wales economy and better public services. ‘

Well they’ve failed. After 12 years they’ve simply failed.

We don’t have better resource management. We don’t have a strong New South Wales economy and we certainly don’t have better public services after 12 years. And that’s the highest level vision statement I can find from the New South Wales Government.

In terms of what my vision is?  When you go back and say ok, what are the visions that other people use?

If we remember some of the guiding statements for a number of famous politicians. Bill Clinton ’it’s the economy stupid’. Well in New South Wales it is the economy but with State Government it’s also about delivery, delivery of services and infrastructure.

If you’ve had the opportunity in the last couple of months to travel to Queensland, you would have seen billboards for Peter Beattie around the State in every electorate. Up on the billboard there’s a photo of Peter Beattie on the left and a photo of the candidate on the right. And there’s three bullet points.

The first bullet point is Strong Leadership, the second bullet point is Strong Economy and the third bullet point is Strong Queensland.

Now, that’s probably not a bad summary of what it should be in Queensland. There’s no doubt Peter Beattie has given strong leadership. In terms of a strong economy, the economy up there is doing fairly well – because they’re bludging off us. They’re taking some of our money, our GST money. And were trying to get it back. We’ve been trying to get it back for years. They’re benefiting from that.

In terms of a strong Queensland, well no I don’t think so. They have had some appalling services, most notably in the hospitals with the Dr Death scandal. They’ve certainly failed the people over that one. But as an aspirational vision statement I don’t think that’s bad at all.

You can even go back 20 years and say well in NSW the Labor Party used the same strategy 20 years ago of replacing the Premier to actually pretend they have changed Government.

Barry Unsworth came out and said his vision was ‘back to basics’. Now, I actually think that’s probably right. He in the end didn’t do it. He used media manipulation and spin again. But he came out with words that I think mean something, ‘back to basics’, because that’s what State Government is all about.

If you look at Morris Iemma’s rhetoric at the moment, he’s using ‘open for business’. Well, nothing could be further from the truth in New South Wales at the moment. ‘Open for business’ - it’s certainly not.

My vision? I don’t see it’s about process, I don’t see it’s about rhetoric. It’s got to be about people, it’s got to be about outcomes in New South Wales.

I often say to people, State Government is not about finding a formula for world peace. It’s actually about managing some of Australia’s largest businesses to deliver services and infrastructure. It is an accident of history that if you have a look at the public sector in New South Wales, we actually have the largest businesses in Australia. And if you take your eyes off them, they go off the rails. So whatever we do in this State it’s got to be very focussed on that management approach.

That’s why, when I look at what my vision is, I want to set out a couple of things. If I come back here in four years, I’d like you to judge me against a few things.

I’d like to say that in four years we’ve turned New South Wales around to lead Australia again. And we’re leading Australia in that time in four years, as the nation’s economic engine room, which we were 10 years ago. We’re not today.

We’d like to lead Australia again as the most competitive investment market. We’re not today.

As the leader in infrastructure delivery. Well the Government has just failed project after project.

We’d like to see ourselves as the most effective in service delivery. Well any comparison across States will tell you that that’s not happening today.

We’d also like to see ourselves as a dynamic innovator in public sector reform. And that’s something that has not happened in New South Wales since Nick Greiner left the job.  He started it in ’88, indeed he didn’t only lead New South Wales, he actually led Australia in public sector reform.  And that’s evaporated since he left Parliament.

We’d also like to see ourselves as a transparent and accountable public administration. And I think that’s critical and you’ll hear a lot more about that in the next few months.  I think it’s very important.  So they’re the sorts of things that I think we’ve got to deliver in our vision in New South Wales and we’ve got to remain focused on them.

In terms of how we actually deliver those, we go back and say, well what have you got to do in the function Government, to change Government.

It’s very important we answer the question that everybody else in NSW is asking over the last few years especially, where’s the money gone?

It’s very important we find what this Labor administration did with $400 Billion over the last 12 years. $400 Billion that was paid out in expenses and on infrastructure projects and yet the back log in infrastructure projects now goes on for miles itself and in terms of delivery of services we’re below par. So I think the first thing we need to do is find out where the money went. Where’s the money gone?

To do that, we’ll establish a Commission of Audit, on day one, which will report next year on exactly what happened to all that $400 billion of revenue that came into the State and also report independently of Treasury on the structure of the Budget and the weaknesses of the Budget and the forecasts. I think that’s very important.

We’ll also drive economic renewal and we’ll do it from the top and I’ll do it with the assistance of an Economic Development Advisory Board who we will draw in the expertise from the business community, from the universities, from the finance sector to make sure that we have got this State headed in the right direction economically. We want to make sure that we don’t end up with the 12 years of economic vandalism that we’ve just seen. Make sure we steer away from anything that’s going to do that.

We will rationalise the structure of Government, that’s long overdue and as I said Nick Greiner reformed the public sector in NSW, very little has happened since then. Jeff Kennet made great strides in Victoria and we haven’t seen the same progress in NSW.

We will swap bureaucrats for nurses, teachers and police. It’s an argument I’ve been having with the Labor party for a year now. We announced it a year ago. I’ll talk about recruitment freeze, that we would put that in place. The aim is very simple, to take the funding out of the bloated bureaucracy and move it to the front line, move it to front line services or tax cuts.

We will institute performance bench marking. Something we’ve spoken about in NSW since before I came into Parliament 13 years ago. We’ve just never done it and this Government’s resisted comparisons with other States in most portfolios.

We will introduce Ministerial accountability. I announced a few weeks ago that we will be unique in Government by actually saying to our Ministers, they will get the Ministerial salary based on outcomes at the end of the year. They’ll be judged against the performance benchmarks and how they’ve performed during the year. If they perform badly, they’ll get sacked. Well that’ll be a first in NSW in recent times. If they perform poorly, then they probably won’t get all of the 50% of the Ministerial salary that we’ll withhold for the year.

In terms of that, my colleagues were actually enthusiastic about it. Most of us come from the private sector. Most of us have no difficulty with actually tying ourselves to performance. And just about every Government around the world now pays for senior bureaucrats on performance pay. Actually say to the senior bureaucrats “you actually have to perform against outcomes otherwise you won’t get paid”. Well we’re going to do the same with the Ministers.

We also have to use transparency in Parliamentary reform. And we’ll be going into that a little more in the next few months to highlight the fact that this secret society in NSW has to be broken down. This Government has fought tooth and nail against letting the most basic information flow into the public domain. We need to change that.

We also need to update the processes of Parliament in the community interest. Not in the interest of partisan politics. And there’s a 6 hour discussion here on the role of the speaker in Parliament which we won’t go into.

In summary - what we are trying to achieve?

We certainly want to get off your back in NSW and get out of your pocket.  I think that is very important to say to everybody in NSW we want you to get on with your job, and your life and your creativity and make sure government’s not frustrating you in that objective.

What if we try and sort of build a picture of our government - how would you describe us? I’d go with warm, strong and lean.

I think it’s very important that it is a lean Government. I think its very important that it be a strong Government with strong leadership, and I think its also very important that it be warm, because there are a hell of a lot of people who are actually not getting the services and support that they deserve and they need in NSW and I will deliver that to them.

But its also important that that Government be focussed on outcomes not inputs and time and time again you will hear the Labor Party tell you that they’re fantastic because there’s a record budget in health, there’s a record budget in police or there’s a record budget in something else. Money by itself does nothing in the public sector.

It’s important that we keep the funds available to deliver those services, but it’s also important that we have a management system in place that achieves against outcomes.

Anne Davies constantly says to me, ‘how are you going to pay for all this?’ And I was waiting there for you to arrive to get to this one.

A year ago I said, in fact John said it, and I continued it, we would put in place recruitment freeze on Sydney bureaucrats. It’s the easiest thing in the world and we’ve been saying to Morris Iemma – “Do it”. You’ve stolen every other policy of ours – steal that one. You have 10.2% of public servants retire or resign every year, the bureaucracy in NSW is bloated, two thirds of it is in Sydney, why don’t you just put a recruitment freeze in place?

If somebody retires or resigns don’t recruit from outside of the public sector to replace them. Replace them with one of the 366,000 people who actually work for the NSW public sector, or, review the job.

Now if you do that you will save millions of dollars a day.

We will also rationalise Government departments that is a long overdue rationalisation that I’ve spoken about.

We will reduce Government advertising. You’re seeing at the moment extraordinary advertising by this Government on a daily basis, on radio and TV and in newspapers and not just in main channels or newspapers it’s actually in the local papers right across the state. I mean they’ve perfected the art and I think they’re spending somewhere in the order of $100 million in this financial year before the election.

Even in an average year they spent $90 million over the last 12 years on Government advertising and we think we need to rein that back.

Consultants - despite the fact they’ve got 366,000 public servants, that’s full-time, part-time and casual, they spend $90 million a year on consultants every year. We think we need to rein that back as well.

There’s just no shortage of other waste and mismanagement that we can pull back in. These are big dollars, depending on which number, you can use a whole lot of numbers out of the budget, but in terms of round numbers the budget is about $45 billion - with revenue coming it at about $45 billion dollars.

The cost of the public servants in NSW is $21 billion. If you talk to the Treasury in New South Wales they reckon 20% of those public servants are backroom bureaucrats, I reckon it’s about a third.

If you use my number, because it makes the numbers easier, a third of 21 is $7 billion, so every year $7 billion is put in to the bureaucracy and not in to the front line. Not to police, not to nurses, not to teachers, not to frontline managers, not to support staff of the frontline, that’s all in the other 14, the 7 is the backroom bureaucracy.

So in terms of looking forward and saying, “where are we going to be in four years?”

Well I’d like to say to you that I want you to invite me back in October 2010 and I want to be able to say to you that we’ve achieved a number of things and that to me is the vision that I’m headed for and in terms of what have we achieved in those four years?

I’d say at that time, yes, we have reduced the tax burden.

We’ve attracted investment back in to New South Wales, because currently they’re turning their back on NSW.

Yes, we’ve achieved significant economic growth in this state because currently Morris Iemma is sending growth through the floor over the next six months.

We’ve achieved real jobs growth, where currently we’ve had negative growth over the last year.

We’ve achieved a 20% reduction in the cost of business regulation, because we’ve quantified it with the Director-Generals of departments and said your pay will be tied to a 5% per annum reduction in the cost of regulation.

We’ve recovered the housing sector from the worst slump they’ve seen in forty years, we’re actually building less houses today than South Australia is. The figures, if you look at the graphs, we’re building less houses than we were four years ago.

We have lifted secrecy around the budget and the around the infrastructure planning process. One of the policies I had in 1999, for the election, was to put on the website the list of infrastructure, the demand for infrastructure, whether it had been approved or not, what the grading for it was, how it was to be financed and we are going to do that, we are actually going to shift that information from the public sector into the public domain and we’ll have a dialogue with the community about it.

I’d like to say in 2010 we have recorded a fourth year of defence industry growth in NSW, something that this Government has turned their back on for a decade. We’ve left it to the other states to actually pursue the defence work and there is a lot of dollars out there for us to actually say we want our market share.

I’d like to say in 2010 we have seen a significant lift in the tourism which is also another sector in crisis at the moment and we’ve actually achieved major events every month in those years, something this government has decided not to fund - pursing major events.

We’ve announced that we will, and in 2010 I want to come back here and say yes we have, recycled one of the major ocean outfalls. We committed to it and we have done one in the first term of Parliament and not only that but we have actually tripled the number of rainwater tanks in New South Wales through our promotions of subsidies for that.

We also need to focus on renewable energy and yes we will ensure that we have lifted significantly the investment in renewable energy technology.

We’ve reduced commuter travel time, if you have a look at what the Government did in the last year, they actually slowed the train system down and people, you know, it’s obviously an attempt to make the trains run a little better on time, well it hasn’t worked if you have seen the stories of the last few days but it means that people are spending more time on the train than they are with their kids. If you live in the mountains you are spending an extra two hours a week on the train instead of at work or with your family, well we want to change that.

I’d like to say we have achieved a fourth record year in preventative health activities in NSW and achieved a drop in obesity and diabetes rates to actually start shifting the balance of funding towards preventative health instead of crisis management.

A fourth year of dental care, reducing the waiting lists in dental care, what you have seen in NSW is a debate for 10 years about whether it was a state or federal responsibility  - it was always a state responsibility. And it has now got to the point because the funding hasn’t been there, there are 215,000 people on the dental waiting list who just want to get their teeth fixed, and they are kids of all ages, the funding we can put in there we can achieve that result.

We want to lift the preschool participation rates to the national average, we are the only state who actually only has 50% of our four year olds attending preschool for two days a week. Almost all the other states are actually at 90%. Well we can achieve that in the four years so long as we focus on that outcome.

I want to ensure that every family who’s caring for a disabled person gets respite care once a month. I mean the money involved in it is chicken feed but it’s not being done. In NSW at the moment, it brings tears to the eyes of every local MP dealing with this issue, as families despair because all they are asking for is one weekend a month of respite care, whether they are dealing with a child or an adult suffering disabilities.

I want to make sure also in four years that I can report that we have actually lead state and federal reforms, especially in the reduction of duplicated bureaucracies and also in reducing business costs and regulations. Some of these absurd things across states, which are really still in place because they are taxation measures - the registration of cars and so forth, some of the really Mickey mouse stuff which are just a frustration for everybody, especially in business well we can resolve many of those just by getting agreements across the states.

And also I want to say that we have actually delivered a fourth State of the State report which records another year of reduced bureaucratic overheads, more effective services and substantial infrastructure investment. So a report card to the community, beyond the budget papers, which only have a 24-hour life, we go into a media frenzy on the budget papers for about 24/48 hours and people forget about it. We want actually a State of the State report that deals with outcomes, and actually allows people to analyse progress, analyse the benchmarking and look at whether we should change the benchmarks, change the targets and we’ll deliver that.

In terms of the issues in New South Wales, the community know the issues.

I mean if you go to election campaigns for 100years in state elections its health, education, law and order.

If you go out there today and say to people what are the issues, they will say infrastructure, health and the economy. They’ll then say education, and then they’ll say law and order. Unless you’re in southwest Sydney, in which case law and order will come up near the top.

The top three issues in NSW at the moment are infrastructure, which when I came into parliament 12-13 years ago, you could use the word and nobody really understood what you were talking about, now everybody talks to us about infrastructure, whether its water, rail, roads, school maintenance, hospitals, the planning system failing them. They’re catching all that in the word infrastructure.

Hospitals remain critical for families across NSW and it’s the emergency department that’s they’re particularly concerned about - that it’s not properly funded and the staff are run off their feet and that’s a major concern.

With the economy, they’re realising especially in Western Sydney, that New South Wales has a major problems. That under the high tax, high cost, high regulation burden in New South Wales, the economy is being suffocated and driven down.

So they’re the issues that the people of New South Wales talk to me about and I think it’s important to say also that they talk to me about saying, you know we want, we want a government to do what it’s elected to do. In that statement, they’re clearly saying that in the last 12 years, the government hasn’t done that.

Its interesting to go back a year when people met me in the street and talked about the election coming up and whatever. They were saying good luck, we’ve been through a traumatic period, a change of leadership and everything else. They were saying good luck with it.

Now people stop me in the streets and say “you have to win” and the people stoping me in the street are the mother who actually gate-crashed my mental health press conference this morning, who actually wanted to come in and say that she had fought for years to get mental health support for her son who is ill and he is now 23 and she just despaired.

The women, the mother who came up to Deborah and me at the football game in Campbelltown, the Wests -Tigers game and said again you’ve got to win and I said well, I’m working on it. And she tells us why we have to win - because the resources are not getting to the front-line. She talked to me about her daughter who was there, who was 13 and anorexic who was within months of dying before a friend of hers managed to find a way through the system to get her in touch with a specialist at Westmead. Until that point she couldn’t get specialist help.

A train driver who stops me at a press conference outside Miranda Police station and says keep going Peter you’ve got to win and then he sent me an email the following day, and he said I was the guy who actually yelled at you at the press conference, so you’ve got to win. He said I’m a train driver in the city rail system, we just want to be able to do our job without interference from the union hierarchy, without political interference.

They want to be able to do a good job for the people of New South Wales. That’s the train driver and as he says in his email, when we’re in the front on the cabin, when the system’s not working who do you think everybody gets angry with? They get angry with the train drivers and the train drivers actually want to do a professional job.

So it’s for those people I want to make sure we do win.

And I want to make sure we actually do what we are elected to do. I think you know in focusing on that win next year, on the 24th March, it comes back to me, that my job in opposition and my job in government is to stay absolutely focused on achieving results for the people of New South Wales and stay absolutely focused on the issues that matter to them because you know there are 6 million plus people in NSW who love this state as much as I do and they are getting a lousy deal at the moment.

The biggest issue out there, its not the sexiest issue but it’s the economy. It really is a point that we’ve got to turn this state around to lead Australia again, because it comes through to state governments, its only with a growing economy that you’ll actually have a healthy state budget, and its only with a healthy state budget, you can build funding for the nurses, the teachers, the police and also fix the roads and the other infrastructure.

So that’s what I’m going to stay focused on, they’re the things that drive me if you like, outcomes and issues for the people of New South Wales, and it will require as that billboard over the border says - it will require strong leadership and it will require a strong economy. But only with those two things can you actually get back to a strong NSW, which is delivering those services and infrastructure.  

Thank you.