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Conservatives And Liberals Combined: Tony Abbott Speech

Sep 10, 2001

This is the text of a speech delivered to a gathering of young Liberal Party members by the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations, Tony Abbott.

In the speech, Abbott discusses the nature of the Howard government and the balance between conservatives and liberals in the Liberal Party.

The future prime minister had been a member of parliament for seven years at the time of this speech, and a minister for three.

Text of speech by Tony Abbott to Young Liberal members.

Tony Abbott, Minister for Employment and Workplace RelationsTowards the end of the Coalition’s 13 years in the wilderness, Michael Kroger gave a thoughtful analysis of why we’d failed. He made the point that almost every Labor MP had been a political professional before entering parliament while most Coalition MPs came to politics after a career in the professions or in small business. After years of addressing union meetings, doing deals, and writing press releases, national politics “came naturally” to Labor MPs in ways it simply did not to people for whom it was a “second career”. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Howard, Liberal Party Tagged With: , , , , ,

Andrew Robb: The 1996 Federal Election

Mar 13, 1996

This is the text of the National Press Club address by the Federal Director of the Liberal Party, Andrew Robb, on the outcome of the 1996 Federal Election.

The official text is shown at the end of this page as a PDF.

Speech by Andrew Robb to the National Press Club.

The last time I had the pleasure of addressing the National Press Club it was April Fool’s Day 1993, two and a half weeks after the last election.

This sure beats that experience.

Eleven days ago, on the afternoon of election day, I flew home from our Melbourne based Campaign Headquarters and went to vote for Gary Nairn, who was up against Labor’s Jim Snow, in the marginal New South Wales seat of Eden-Monaro. I fronted to the polling booth in our local country hall at Wamboin and was met by two fellows, barely in their twenties, enthusiastically handing out Liberal haw-to-vote cards.

I thought it a good omen, and it was.

For despite movement to the Coalition across nearly all demographic groups the remarkable feature of the 2 March election result was the direct shift to the Coalition of a significant segment of Labor’s traditional male base, including blue collar workers. [Read more…]

Filed Under: 1996 Federal Election, Electoral Behaviour, Keating, Liberal Party Tagged With: , , , ,