It is a great pleasure to have this chance to stand before my friends and colleagues in the National Party.

To Warren - following Warren is impossible because he says everything and it was a typical expose of that erudite Lutheran type of analysis of exactly where our Nation is and where our Nation is going but he leaves no space for those who follow him. I felt like coming up here and saying I endorse what Warren says and sitting down, though I imagine that wouldn’t go over too well with those good gentlemen in front of me.

To John and Priscilla, who travel around and are part of this political caravan which is so important, thank you very much for your support. Also to Marty - another coup for WA, they’re slowly taking us over and it is great to see Marty at the helm and I know he will be a great asset to the development of policy and structure in this party of ours. You know Wacka and Bos were talking to me and they were talking to me about Sophocles and they were saying how a life unexamined is a life lost. Now I don’t know anything about Sophocles but Wacka was right up on it and it is a true expose and I am going to concentrate my speech on how the Senate works and how the Senate works for our Nation, and how the National Party works in the Senate on behalf of our Nation. See, you have to examine things through the prism of small business and through the prism of regions. Both these groups, small business and regions, and when I talk about small business I am talking about farmers because they are small business people and I know now that people feel like you are isolating farmers when you put them in a special group. They are small business people; they have all the detail that other small business people have to deal with. They need though, someone who specifically goes into bat for them, and specifically takes their cases on board. We have an incredible party; our party is a reflection of our Nation. When you look at the team that I have got in the Senate, I have got Bos, Wacka, Nigel, the fisherman, Fiona. That is hardly a choreographed or scripted group of people but what they do is incredibly important because I do think they are a reflection of the Australian dynamic and they do give to the Senate that sense of reality and with all our rough edges, and we have got a few of them, I think what people get out of us is a sense comfort and they look at it, and they look at Bossie coming out and they say, “Well he’s not pretty but he is pretty effective. But he is also someone that I think I can go up and say g’day to, someone who I wouldn’t feel isolated from.”

The National Party in the Senate gives a sense of connection between the Australian people and their issues. And I know that every time you walk through, whether it is a train station or an airport, people come up to you because they see you as a conduit, that you are a voice, that you will listen, that you will take them seriously and that you are not managed and scripted out of the scene so much so like a certain Prime Minister we have now who everything is choreographed and scripted and we start to wonder about the sincerity and honesty of exactly who this man is.

But that is the issue that I believe the National Party takes, sincerity and honesty in policy. We don’t pretend to be the great philosophers of the world, or we don’t pretend to be the ardent academics of the world, but what we do is support a great relationship between the Australian people and their Parliament and that is something that should be treasured and that is something that should be maintained.

There is so much talk, even of late, about this honesty and reality and I want to go through something that has happened just lately. The $10.4b package. As we noted when it first came out you know there was clapping and cheering and everybody thought that this was the most wonderful thing and to suggest anything, anything that it was to be the elixir of economic salvation for us was high treason. It was only from the National Party that we started to say, well look what is this all about? Where did this come from? It was only the National Party. And it was the National Party that went into the Senate Estimates and asked the crucial question, “Do you have the modelling for this package?” The answer that came back - “No”. “Can you prove the efficacy of this package, that it works?” because they have just spent half the Nation’s surplus, the answer is - “No”. “How long would it have taken, if you were pushed, to do the modelling?” “Three days”.

We’re not spending the money ladies and gentlemen until about 8 December, where it will disappear. But this was for a media grab. It was the National Party that had the capacity to say “We’re going to call bull dust on this one”. And now slowly the other economic commentators are coming out one after the other. And I hear other pundits in the political marketplace say it was actually their idea to ask the question, which is surprising. But it was that sense of home grown reality to ask the serious question “How on earth did you come up with $10.4b?” and they plucked it out of thin air. It was the most, I found, extremely disturbing answer that was given by the Minister, Conroy, when I asked the Treasury on behalf of the National Party, “So there was no modelling done, there is no efficacy test on this done, you still haven’t done any modelling?” I said, “So where did the number $10.4b come up from?” And the Treasury official said, “Well, it is not our number”, and the Minister said, “Well it is his, the Government’s”. So, half of your Nation’s savings have been spent on a design for a media grab. And this comes from the Prime Minister who said he was an economic conservative. Well I will tell you the first rule about economic conservatism - you do the homework before you spend the money. But it is all topsy turvy here. It wouldn’t be such a problem except that he also manages, within the same breath, to underwrite potentially 1.2 trillion dollars. So now we have the double whammy coming towards us. We have expenditure of half the surplus, we are on a parallel to a deficit budget, and when we arrive at that point the people will ask the question, “What debts have you got out there?” And we will table for them an unquantifiable debt, because this is the words of Treasury, an unquantifiable debt, an unquantifiable guarantee. It will affect interest rates and it will go home to every household, every household will start to pay for that. And this has happened within 11 months. 11 months this took. That is why you need the National Party in the Senate.

We asked the questions on the fiscal multiplier, we asked the question if you spend this money as we all know it arrives on 8 December, if you spend it as a form of grandiose retail therapy what is the effect on the Australian economy and the most I could get was that they could possibly employ people on overtime in the shops. The multiplier would be about .8 to one. It is an absolute extravagant waste of money and will have virtually nil effect. So, not only do you have the joy of heading towards a deficit, not only do you have the joy of knowing that your services have been spent, you have the joy of knowing it is probably going to do nothing. So this is another reason why we need that sort of sense of unscripted honesty that you get from the National Party in the Senate.

We look at other areas and the other area that is right in front of us now is the ETS. It is yet another area that has turned into a religion. You know, you are a heretic if you dare doubt the principles of the ETS. So who is the Nation looking to, who is starting to bell the cat. We hear Warren today, the National Party, saying bell the cat.