Sharman Stone (Murray, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. I heartily congratulate him on becoming this great nation's 29th Prime Minister. Will the Prime Minister update the House on the challenges the government faces in ensuring jobs and growth for the future? How is this government moving to overcome these challenges?

Malcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Minister for Communications) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the honourable member for her question and for her congratulations. We are living in the most exciting time to be an Australian. The opportunities and challenges of a rapidly globalising economy are remarkable. The rate of economic and technological change is utterly without precedent. An Australia which seeks to succeed in remaining a high-wage economy with a generous social welfare net, which should be our goal, must be agile, dynamic and looking to the future. We cannot look to the past; we always have to be on the front foot. We know that we have to be unless we want to live in the darkness of fear that the opposition seeks to throw us into by, for example, frightening people about the China-Australia Free Trade Agreement, trying to scare people and failing to recognise that that agreement alone is one of the most important foundations for our future prosperity.

We know that our future lies in technology. It lies in science. It lies in all of the new industries. It lies in the future. Let me give you some examples. China's rapid urbanisation has led to 80 Australian architectural studios opening up in China, with a further 220 Australian firms winning work. A good example is Cox Rayner Architects, which recently won a competition to design China's $290 million national maritime museum in Tianjin, beating a field of 80 of the world's leading design firms. These are the types of opportunities the Leader of the Opposition would deny us. This is the type of market, this gigantic market, the largest in the world, which the Leader of the Opposition in his efforts to frighten Australians would seek to have closed to us.

We know that the coming election next year will be won by the party that is able to embrace the future, able to envision and explain the future and able to set out the means and the road map to ensure that Australians do not need to talk about being future proofed and ensure that Australians will understand that the future for us is formidable. The future is one of great opportunities, and that requires confidence and leadership. Those opportunities will be lost if we embrace the politics of fear and scaremongering of which the Leader of the Opposition is so fond.