00:00Today is a historic day. The Nationals have decided to take a split from the Liberal Party.
00:07This has not been a decision that we have taken lightly. It's not been an easy decision.
00:13But we've taken it on the back of what has been a shattering election loss.
00:19We have retained every one of our seats as Nationals in the House of Representatives.
00:24And we've done that now for six elections in a row, under four leaders, under Warren Trust, under Barnaby Joyce, under myself, and now under David Littleproud.
00:35We have retained each and every one of our lower House seats.
00:39And that is a record that I'm very proud of.
00:42I know Kay, as the Federal National Party President, is also very proud of the fact that we do turn up for regional Australians.
00:50We do support them in all of their endeavours.
00:52We went to the Liberal Party as part of the normal process after an election with a coalition agreement to sign a piece of paper to move forward as a coalition, albeit again in opposition.
01:05We took to the Liberal Party, to the new leader, Susan Lay, who I've got every respect for.
01:10We took to, Susan, nuclear energy, which we fought hard for.
01:15And many people right across Australia were very supportive of universal service obligations for our mobile phone towers, for those 1,400 towers that we funded as a coalition government.
01:28We haven't seen too much from Labor, apart from Labor electorates.
01:32And Kay hold beside me across the floor on the USO, on the Telstra sale all those years ago, because she took a principled position, which is what Nationals always do.
01:41We're also concerned that divestiture powers may well be not continuing as part of that coalition agreement, and the Regional Australia Future Fund.
01:51Now, in the last budget, the last Federal budget brought down by Jim Chalmers of Labor, there was no funding whatsoever for regional roads, for regional infrastructure.
02:01I know the efforts that I went to as Deputy Prime Minister, to ensure that our local councils were looked after.
02:07And we took a policy to this election, whereby Riverina councils, all 12 of them, would have benefited to the tune of $27 million for the Local Roads Community Infrastructure Fund.
02:19We would have put it back in place.
02:20But more than that, we would have made sure that we put in place those infrastructure funds that are so sorely needed by our regions,
02:28but it's by the regional people whom we always stand up for.
02:32And unfortunately, we haven't been able to get a guarantee from the Liberal Party for those four areas,
02:38for the USO, for the Regional Australia Future Fund, for the nuclear and for the divestiture powers.
02:43And so, given that, our party room has taken a decision, not taken lightly, but a decision today,
02:51to let both parties go their separate ways for a period and have some time for reflection.
02:57The Liberal Party have a lot of rebuilding to do, and I wish Susan Lee all the very best,
03:01as she leads that party into the future, and as she tries to lead that party to regroup,
03:08to do the soul-searching, to have their review, and we will do the same.
03:12We will do the same, because there are many, many things that we got right.
03:16I mentioned the fact that we retained all our seats, but there are some things, too,
03:19that we need to learn from and listen to, obviously, as part of the wash-up from the recent federal election.
03:26We will be back in shock.
03:29And then, this strange changes.
03:30Three, four days of theķ“ķøļæ½ synthesis of the energy.
03:35At this point, we have this special position.
03:38What can we natured?
03:40That's right.
03:40I think it's time beginning to first.
03:41It depends on the reason why we're saying follow-up from Africa has been made for a organization,
03:44so to say we say it is definitely a group of reasons
03:46that we offer some mieli and the security issues.
03:48Actually, I will give you some collab to our country,
03:50because we just wanna give you some responsibility for ××cia than our events.
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