Jesus once was a sunbeam, sunbeam, sunbeam, sunbeam, sunbeam. That's a pity. Still that's what the Liberal Party stands for, cutting back, cutting and pruning. There are a lot of people out there, are there? Angry people? Angry enough. Oh, well there's no worry. I was angry this week. Good. Did you see what I did to Paul Keating? I was a terrier. Good. Who else has come to be speaking? Catherine West, John Eliot, Hugh Morgan. Isn't it good to see the Protestant churches coming back to us? Barry Humphries, Sir, through Acton. She's new. Still, Robert Nenzi's had this effect on women. Where am I on? Who are you? John Laws, Aussie Austrians. Maybe you're part of Remsacrow. Oh, the little people, you mean. Oh, yes, they're the quintessence of our party, the people who will not be stifled and crushed. So what are you going to say? Well, I just told you. I'll give them a positive message. What do you think I should say about the government? Why don't you say they're fascist? Oh, that's a good idea. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, I'm John Howard. And let me say this. I don't have to explain who I am. And I make no apology for that, none whatsoever. Look, I've been quite consistent on this. I will resist all those cynical policies which the government has stolen from us. For no higher purpose than its own survival. The policies of the Liberal Party are sacred. They were set down many years ago now in a copy of the Reader's Digest. Righteousness exalteth a nation, but it won't move a consignment of singlets. I've been quite consistent on this, but there are some things that I just won't say. As the Speaker of the House learned to her undying cost only the other day. Things like sorry. No, I'm sorry, but I won't. Oh, Cathy, Cathy, I'm just setting the agenda like I said I should. My subject today and every other day is small business and the family. Hey, hang on, hang on. I'm running this party. Please don't interrupt, it upsets my cash flow. As I pointed out in my article in the Weekend Australian, quoting a speech I made to a CWA meeting in Warwick, Labille, which recycled a lecture I gave on Talkback Radio last month, small business is the backbone of the nation and the only true way forward from the past to which we're returning. That and of course the family. I know a great deal about the family having been through four or perhaps five of my own. So I should point out to you as I do indefatigably for moderately extortionate lecturing fees at every opportunity, two points. Now being an academic I should put the second first and the first second. As small family businessmen you're obviously committed to the flat rate or as we academics put it, the flat earth tax. But have you considered no tax at all? Easy to understand, simple to administer, especially if there are no wages. Thank you. Just profits which can be flowed back into the business to make it even smaller. Then you could convert your profits into losses and get huge concessions on the taxes you hadn't paid in the first place. And I must write it down for my next article. What are you talking about? Oh well, I'm going to say. Could you be silent for a moment? Now let us listen to the voice of the mining industry. As I have pointed out in the past, to recognize Aboriginal customs is not only contrary to the expressed will of God, but would lead to the reintroduction of cannibalism. Just as recognizing the Jews has led to the reintroduction of the sacrifice of first born children and recognizing the Roman Catholics has led to the reintroduction of the Spanish Inquisition. To me, mining is not so much an industry as a sacred calling. If God had not meant us to dig up the minerals, he wouldn't have put them underground in the first place. We ignore the mining commandment at our peril. When Burke and Wills returned to Cooper's Creek, they found the word dig mystically inscribed upon a tree. They didn't. And look what happened to them. Oh, he's quite a brilliant chap, you know. There are two vocations for which I have the highest respect, the businessman and the intellectual. In fact, if I hadn't been a businessman, I might have been an intellectual. Our position on the mining industry is as clear as our position on South Africa. Now look, my position on South Africa is perfectly clear. I'm totally opposed to apartheid and I'm totally opposed to sanctions against apartheid. Look, the South Africans are perfectly capable of explaining my position themselves. Let us glorify our Father who art in heaven. Let us raise up our voices in praise. Let us put on a good show for him. Let us pray. Our Father, with the big clear blue eyes looking down through the hole in the ceiling, we know that you can see right through this whole world, right through those sanctions which would bring a terrible pestilence to all of your little black limbs. And they'd be starving and wailing. So deliver us, Father. And if you can't deliver us from sanctions, deliver us to Western Australia. I can see Jesus. Give his Republic go ahead, caller. Oh, hello, Sir Joe. You've what? You've announced the date for the election. Oh, good. When is it? The 1st of September. Oh, well, how did it go? Oh, congratulations. One man, one vote. Yours. Well done, Sir Joe. I don't know how you do it. Ironbar Tacky! Oh, Ironbar, it's good to see you. Where have you been? I'm a carnaval with the family, John. Big deal at the weekend. Char grilled a couple of quarter horses that were no good. Then we tied a boom to the back of a Ford and dragged him round a paddock. Hey, Ironbar. No, no, haven't you on, John? Just my rough way of talking. Hey, John, congratulations on getting chucked out of the house the other day. Bloody brilliant. Oh, well, there's only so much I can take, you know. I'm no wimp. I'm a go-getter. That's the spirit, John. Get some bloody spine at this bloody party. So what do you do when you see a head? I kick it. No, John, you bash the living Christ out of it. Like that. Now, go for it. Pissed week. Come on, that's kidding, Sid. Now, can you really do it? Oh, all right. There, that's it. Now, hit me. Oh, I couldn't do that, Ironbar. You're a friend. Bullshit. No friends in politics, John. Come on, hit me. Oh, that's all right, John. If you want to be prime minister, you've got to like hurting people. Hey, come on. Hit me. Come on. You little puss. Come on, you cleaner. That's it. Kill me, John. Beautiful, John. Beautiful. Beautiful. Beautiful. Beautiful, John. Pick your target and go for it. Walk tall, Johnny, because remember, you're the boss now. The day after the war, we were all dressed in black And no one was particularly gratified to see him back He used to be the sheriff, and he left a lot of dead behind I shot that outlaw Whitlam and Billy the Kid, you know, McMall Big Mall, Big Mall, when trouble calls, he'll follow He'll sort things out as only Big Mall can Because he's a hog on a stone-talking letter writing eminent When Morky the town's folk drove him out He broke right down and cried He felt a strange new feeling called emotion deep inside He still dispenses justice in the good old-fashioned western way I'm the toughest troubled shooter from Cape Town to the U.S.A. Big Mall, Big Mall, when trouble calls, he'll follow He'll sort things out as only Big Mall can Because he's a hog on a stone-talking letter writing eminent Friends, we're all about keeping ahead of the opposition. We are the opposition. Yes, that's right. What the Liberal Party needs is a good pest exterminator. And as part of our franchise deal with the U.S. Republican Party we're proud to be the first to present their latest training film. Ah, terrific. President Reagan's one of my heroes. When the institution of the presidency had fallen into the hands of a cartoon character the world began to experience a deep uneasy feeling that it was the victim of the most bizarre hijacking in history a hijack into the twilight cone. General! General! Yeah, Clag! Clag! Have you been hit? What? Get up! Get up! I'll make a man of you yet, General. Yes, Mr. President, when I said I'd fought in Vietnam what I really meant was I was in Switzerland teaching cuckoos to tell the time. That's what I like about you, General. You got gumption. Hey! Don't set the light! It's the neighbors. They want you to try and keep the noise down. They know there's a war going on in here. They say they're trying to watch Miami Vice. Whatever happened to I Love Lucy? Turn the light off! Mr. President, I believe we've taken Iwo Jima. Good-bye. Forward to Moscow. Hey, have they given us the right ammunition? No! No, buddy. Buddy, buddy, I know how you feel. It kind of takes the fun out of everything, doesn't it? Where's my speech writer? She's gone to see what teller's up to. Oh. OK, Doc, is Star Wars ready yet? Give me five more minutes. Well, what's this? Don't touch that. Well, what is it? That's my lunch. Come on, Doc, the President's getting impatient. What have you been doing all of this time? I've got the model ready. Well, give us a look. You know, when we go into mass production I think we're going to have to glue these transparencies on. This water-based stuff is no good at all. Australia? Where the hell's that? What do you mean they want to renegotiate Pine Gap? We'll nuke them. June, don't you think that's going a bit too far? Damn right it is. Who put Hawking to power in the first place? We did. That's who. Oh, barbecue the bastard. But, June, you're just a speech writer. Speech writing be buggered. I'm writing history. Give us a beam on Canberra. What do you have to go and mention bloody Pine Gap for, Paul? It wasn't my fault. It was the others. You can't threaten the Yanks. Dead right. It's just lucky for us that Ronnie and me are like that. We'll laminate them. You can't laminate them, June. They're an ally. Okay. Mustard gas. If that doesn't work, biological warfare. I'll go and kick Weinberger's ass about it. Hey, is that the television? I wonder where the damn thing had got to it. This must be Dallas. We better send someone out here and get Bill. Yes, and Bill. Tell him to be really diplomatic and if he upsets him, not to bother coming back. It'd be Dallas. Look at that acting. How's anyone supposed to believe that? The boring show. What's on the other channel? Mr. President, no, not that button. Just one more drop. But we can get another ally, can't we? Not like that one. They actually thought they were getting something out of it. I hear it! I hear it! That's what you said when you invented the H-bomb. It's time. I mean it. You mean Star Wars. Victory in our time! Victory in our time. An exclamation of hope or a cry of despair. There may be very little difference in the corridors of the Twilight Cove. I have a blue-ringed octopus sealed up in a preserves jar at home. And sometimes late at night, when I'm alone with my thoughts, I take it out of the cupboard and I swirl it around a little bit in front of the lab. Hey, John, you know, Paul Keating's a great name-caller. And if he wants to call me a slimy slug and he's got the brains of a retarded pig, that doesn't bother me, because I've got the dirt on that mongrel. Watch this videotape, John, and see Paul with his heart on his sleeve. And you keep it there, Paul, where we can do some damage to it. Have you anything to confess, my son? Well, I don't, Father, but a lot of the scumbags around me do. What do they have to confess, my son? Oh, gluttony, envy, greed, over-weeding pride, the works. I mean, they're the Labour Party cabinet. I don't suffer from any of that myself. Well, do you have anything to confess? Oh, Christ, no. I keep my cards pretty close to my chest, don't you? When was your last confession, my son? September the 14th, 1957. I did all my lawn mowing money at two up, and that leaked out. Stupid to talk to anyone. Why, then, are you here? No-one else will talk to me. Why is that, my son? Oh, they think I'm out to ruin them. Unionists, pensioners, lunch-mad capitalists, camp waiters, golf club importers. You name it, they're all down on old Paul. Go and stand in the corner, Paul, they say. Nyah, nyah, nyah, skeeter-flat of the dollar, skeeter-flat of the dollar. Why did you flat the dollar, my son? It's always puzzled me. Well, I had an ordinary Labour Party upbringing, you know. I had Scroffula and Jacqueline lay their hands on me and cured me when I was a kid. And Rex Conner told me where to borrow money from, and I believed all that. The redistribution of wealth, pushing beached whales back into the sea. Then one day, my car broke down on the way to Bansdown, and I started to walk, and there was this great light in the sky, and I looked up, and there was this great shining Sir Roderick Carnegie up there in the sky, and he said, Paul, Paul, why persecute us down me? Get with the strength, Grub. And he was gone, and I thought, Jesus, I thought, that's the good oil. And so I led in the foreign banks, and I floated the dollar, I bought a lot of Regency Clocks, and I got myself a decent bag of fruit, and now no-one will talk to me except you. And I want you to tell me what to do with my life, Father, because I'm in a mess, Father. I want you to tell me what to do. Funny you should ask me that, Miss. Gillies Republic, go ahead, caller. Yes, we have a Mr. Howard. Yes, the same Mr. Howard who used to sell goldfish and bug triggers, knock and kerbys. Yes, he's still doing much the same, but now he's a trainee manager. Yes, bye-bye. When Prime Minister Hawke viciously sneered me last night by saying I was the Ronnie Corbett-style compere of the new Dark Age, he showed how desperate he's getting. I don't mind being compared with Ronnie Corbett. I'm a big fan of Ronnie Corbett. Well, at medium-sized fan, I'm 5'10.5", which is bigger than the Prime Minister, because Ronnie, like me, overcame the limitations of looking like a little turd and filing General Maths, and he made it in the big metropolis. Although, admittedly, I started out with a much more beautiful voice and a much more various and colourful set of teeth, because the Liberal Party is about overcoming and conquering and smashing and pulverising and stomping on the face of the whole nitpicking system. All those quangos and taxmen and arbitrators and petty bureaucrats who say you've got to have a licence if you want to fly a jumbo jet and crash it if need be into and out of the suburbs. Limitations like that. Decent, hard-working businessmen, for instance, no longer have the option of instituting slavery as a temporary economic measure. Now, no rational person would any longer deny that slavery is our only option in the present circumstances. If they introduce slavery in, say, Taiwan, and they more or less have, we introduce slavery here. That's what competition means. And nobody should be afraid of the term slavery either. It only means the employer's right to pay as little as he deems fit like any one of the moment's notice in order to serve the greater good, which is the maintenance of the employer's own standard of living, as an inspiration for those future generations of freed slaves on the lake like me who come after him, and as a return for the enormous sacrifices that every businessman makes, being constantly overseas in Sheraton's and Hilton's, enduring foreign food, and later-days, it will call girls and the obscure jokes of his Japanese partners, all for the sake of maintaining Australia's competitiveness overseas. Slavery is the only way to improve our image, and the Liberal Party's here to see that you vote for it. This time, anyway. Next time, under our new guidelines, vote may not even be necessary. What Australians lack as entrepreneurial skills. Entrepreneurial instincts. We're like the sort of blokes who look at something that belongs to somebody else and say, I'll have that and just bloody well take it. Bloody schools that are letting us down. You don't spend 30 years rising steadily through the ranks to the highest office the public has to offer, and getting as a result one's signature appended to the dollar without learning just how incompetent the whole place is. You've got to dream. Every great entrepreneur has a dream. And let me tell you, it goes beyond getting rich. It does. It bloody does. It's about culture. It's about what sort of society we want. It goes deep, I tell you. Deep into the inner depths of a man's soul, I suppose. I'm your eye of pain and with my clasp of stone I'll be standing upright, you'll be keeping prove I've got trap-eye dundies and the cast iron head Got to do it to you, England must be led Iron maiden knows our sin, tells us we've been bad And do I rub it in? Listen to your mistress, listen to your master England likes it better with her legs in plaster Night in Convaludan, it's kind and deep cruel England lights it ours up, look at Liverpool Iron maiden, she's a cox, sticks it up the cox And Penny whacks the jocks Here's the platter, can we be your slave? Now what happens if you miss me? Now what happens if you miss me? Look, you know, she tried that sort of thing on me at the Losarca conference. But, well, you know, it was she who ended up crying. Oh, Fru, how are you? Isn't it exciting to be part of the latest trend, to be the special people? Can't you feel it? I can. I'm a success story. A terrifically vital and enterprising person who believes in excellence and peace rates. And you know, the most exciting thing about fashion today is that people are using clothes to say what they think. Some people are even using clothes instead of thinking. Isn't that great? So I've come up with a whole new range that's right for the people who are right. And here it is. The new young people. It's airy, bluey, blondy, bold, assertive, tough, ferocious. Rambine. Rainbow warrior. The Beagle Boys. Spartacus and Richard the Third. Speaking as an eminent person, I would say that was pathetic. Oh, look, I'm sick and tired of him trupping around here like some superannuated hat stand. Well, look, you know, it's good to see my old door stop making vase cracks. You know, we used to use them as a cork most of the time. Oh, well, it may suit one of yesterday's men to make jokes about my size, but look at the size of his achievements. Shut up. He never would do what he said he'd do. Nor did you. I did so. No, you didn't. Hawke did. Well, I would have if he hadn't, and I still will, hip squeak. Fact is, you know, I've never been so happy as I've been since you passed into international obscurity. The sun on the meadow is summery warm. The stag in the forest runs free. The water's a shelter, the thaw is the storm. Tomorrow they bounce to me. The branch of the linden is leafy and green. The wage has deserted the sea. But somewhere above the lights and sea, tomorrow belongs to me. The babe in his cradle is closing his eyes. The blossom embraces the mead. But soon as a whisper arrives for life, tomorrow belongs to me. Oh, fatherland, fatherland, show us a sign. Your children have returned to sin. The morning will come when the world is mine. Tomorrow belongs to me. Oh, fatherland, fatherland, show us a sign. Your children have returned to sin. The morning will come when the world is mine. Tomorrow belongs, tomorrow belongs, tomorrow belongs to me. Oh, fatherland, fatherland, show us a sign. Your children have returned to sin. The morning will come when the world is mine. Tomorrow belongs to me. Oh, fatherland, fatherland, show us a sign. Tomorrow belongs to me. Tomorrow belongs to me. Oh, fatherland, fatherland, show us a sign. Your children have returned to sin. The morning will come when the world is mine. Tomorrow belongs, tomorrow belongs, tomorrow belongs to me. Applause Now then, we've just written off the loss against an anticipated sale of the Bluebirds to Abu Dhabi. Thank you.