Alexei Gorinov: 'Destruction has been wreaked on a European country', final speech to the court - 2023

19 September 2019, Moscow, Russia

Seven years in prison — is that a lot, or a little? It takes eight minutes for solar radiation to reach the Earth. The light waves from a searchlight turned towards the sky will reach the star nearest to the Sun in just over four years — two-thirds of my prison term. And it will take about 2,000,000 years for that light to reach the stellar system nearest to us, the Andromeda Galaxy.

It’s unimaginably long. But think how many people have been affected by the war in Ukraine. Each of them lost years of normal, peaceful life. Some lost their lives. Do the multiplication, and try to grasp the cosmic scale of the events we’re talking about. This is the scale of responsibility resting upon each and every one of us — including myself. And the very least that I can do is to call things their proper names.

Will seven years be enough for me to reform myself from a pacifist into a hawk? Enough to concede that the “special military operation” is not a war, a military conflict, but a peacemaking effort? Will it be enough time to learn to deny the civilian deaths, including child deaths, in the course of this “operation”? To start urging others not to stop these military exploits, but to carry on? We shall see.

We’re also going to see whether these seven years will be enough for Russia’s political leadership to grasp the foreign-policy, economic and moral catastrophe it has brought upon our country.

Destruction, such as has not been seen since the Second World War, has been wreaked on a European country. Tens of thousands dead and wounded on either side. Millions of refugees. All the same, we hear daily and hourly that this war is for peace. We’re trained to accept that killing one another is a right and natural thing to do.

One TV news block shows us, ecstatically, a deadly storm of shells and rockets where every shot costs a million rubles! Next, we see humanitarian aid being delivered to the survivors, on territories just “liberated” from those very same people. And then, we’re invited to chip in for yet another expensive surgery to save a sick child.

No! This is not normal. This can only appear to be normal in an inverted picture of the world that exists in the head of one person — or perhaps several people — holding absolute power, with all of its levers, but in isolation from civil society and the people.

I want to acknowledge my guilt. My guilt before the long-suffering people of Ukraine, and before the entire global community. I’m culpable because, as a citizen of my country, I was unable to prevent this ongoing madness. I ask forgiveness, too, for the fact that I, it seems, will not be able to do anything to stop it. I say this also in the name of my compatriots, who are crushed by the fear of repressions, and from whom I receive numerous letters of support.

At this moment, the leading developed countries and their governments have a responsibility for life on Earth, and for technological progress without wars. Russia, with its innumerable human losses — in the Civil War, in the madness of collectivization and the Great Terror, in two world wars and in many lesser ones — still hasn’t passed the test of shouldering its fair share of responsibility.

Realizing the lawlessness of what they do, those in power shift some of their own burden of responsibility onto the courts, frenziedly shoving their citizens into prisons and penal colonies — for a word, for expressing an opinion, for having convictions. The very possibility of a process like my own in the twenty-first century, of this kind of judicial investigation, is a disgrace for our country. This has all happened before, in its history.

In light of the lessons of our shared past, and in view of Russia’s imminent future, I consider myself acquitted.

Donald Trump: 'I am your warrior, I am your justice, I am your retribution'. CPAC closing address - 2023

4 March 2023, Gaylord National Resort, Maryland, USA

Well, thank you very much and I’m thrilled to be back at CPAC with thousands of great and true American patriots, and that’s what you are. I want to start by thanking Matt and Mercedes Schlapp and everyone at the American Conservative Union. Thank you, Matt, for hosting this wonderful event. It really has been something over the years. I also want to, we have so many people here, I’m going to leave out some, but they’ll understand. We have a lot of Congress, a lot of Senate, a lot of everything, but we’ll do a few words and a few names. Diana Harshbarger, thank you, Diana, Congresswoman. Mike Collins, Elise Stefanik, I call her the rocket ship. Where is Elise? She’s a rocket. Thank you, Elise. Jason Smith, a friend of mine, great guy. Thank you, Jason. Wesley Hunt, Cory Mills, Dr. Ronny Jackson. He’s a doctor, he’s an admiral. Where’s Ronny Jackson? He said I’m the healthiest man ever to be president by far. Said, if I wouldn’t eat junk food, I’d live 200 years. Where is he? He’s the greatest. We love you, Ronny.

(01:25)
He had a lot of things under his belt. Another one who’s a serious character, but a great guy. You got to know him. He’s a great guy. Matt Gates. Where’s Matt? Thank you, Matt. Great guy. He’s a brave guy. And another brave person, she started off very slow, very, very slow. She’s a low-key person, Marjorie Taylor Greene. Where is Marjorie? Thank you. Thank you, Marjorie. A good location, Marge. A friend of mine, a man who’s terrific, almost won for governor of New York. Could have done it, but so many people have moved out of New York, it gets tougher. But he’s a terrific guy, a great lawyer too, and he is a strong guy. He stopped somebody coming at him with a knife. I don’t know. He grabbed that guy’s hand, he looked pretty tough, and he drove him to the ground. Lee Zeldin, where’s Lee? Where’s Lee? Hi, Lee. Thank you. Good job, Lee. West Virginia attorney general Patrick Morrissey. Patrick, thank you, Patrick. Thank you. Thank you, Patrick.

(02:39)
Ohio attorney general Dave Yost. Thank you, Dave. Former acting attorney general of the United States, Matt Whitaker, Matt. A friend of mine who knows the border, knows more about illegal immigration than the next 10 people combined, Stephen Miller. Steven, hi, Steve. Great, good to have you here. One of my favorite generals, a guy who’s just great. He’s got a lot of common sense and a lot of smarts. And he’s been doing a lot of television lately and he does a fantastic job, General Keith Kellogg. Thank you, Keith. A very popular man in South America, very, very popular in Brazil, the former president of Brazil. President Bolsonaro, a great honor.

(03:41)
I don’t know, you beat all these US politicians. That’s pretty good. And his son, who’s a friend of mine, Brazilian chamber of deputies, Eduardo Bolsonaro. Hi, Eduardo. Great job you’re doing. Just got reelected. And somebody that we really like in this room, I think. I certainly like a lot. He had a lot of courage, very smart guy, James O’Keefe. Where’s James? Where is James? Thank you, James. Good guy. As we gather today, our country and our movement, the greatest political movement in the history of our country, as nobody going to even question it, even the fake news media. That’s a lot of fake news back there. And by the way, I want to thank the fire department. Look at these people. They’re up the rafters. Thank you, fire department. But the greatest in our history, most important battle in our lives is taking place right now as we speak. For seven years, you and I have been engaged in an epic struggle to rescue our country from the people who hate it and want to absolutely destroy it.

(05:25)
The sinister forces trying to kill America have done everything they can to stop me, to silence you, and to turn this nation into a socialist dumping ground for criminals, junkies, Marxists, thugs, radicals, and dangerous refugees that no other country wants. No other country wants them. If those opposing us succeed, our once beautiful USA will be a failed country that no one will even recognize. A lawless, open borders, crime-ridden, filthy, communist nightmare. That’s what it’s going and that’s where it’s going. I used to say that we will never be a socialist country. I said it oftentimes. I said it once at the State of the Union address and people didn’t understand what I was saying. But I’d shout it out loud and I was right because that train has passed the station long ago of socialism. It never even came close to stopping, frankly.

(06:26)
We’re now in a Marxism state of mind, a communism state of mind, which is far worse. We’re a nation in decline. Our enemies are desperate to stop us because they know that we are the only ones who can stop them. They know that this room is so important, the people in this room. They know that we can defeat them. They know that we will defeat them. But they’re not coming after me, they’re coming after you and I’m just standing in their way. That’s all I’m doing. I’m standing in their way. And that’s why I’m here today. That’s why I’m standing before you, because we are going to finish what we started. We started something that was America. We’re going to complete the mission. We’re going to see this battle through to ultimate victory. We’re going to make America great again. With you at my side, we will demolish the deep state. We will expel the warmongers. They are people that don’t get it, although, in some cases, they get it. They get it for their wallets, but we can’t do that. We can’t let that happen. We will drive out the globalists, we will cast out the communists. We will throw off the political class that hates our country. They actually hate our country. No walls, no borders, bad elections, no voter ID. We will beat the Democrats. We will route the fake news media. We will expose and appropriately deal with the rhinos. We will evict Joe Biden from the White House. And we will liberate America from these villains and scoundrels once and for all. When we started this journey, a journey like there has never been before, there’s never been anything like this. We had a Republican Party that was ruled by freaks, neocons, globalists, open border zealots, and fools. But we are never going back to the party of Paul Ryan, Karl Rove, and Jeb Bush.

(09:14)
We’re not going back to people that want to destroy our great social security system, even some in our own party, I wonder who that might be, that want to raise the minimum age of social security to 70, 75, or even 80 in some cases. And that are out to cut Medicare to a level that it will no longer be recognizable. And when that was their original thought, that’s what they always come back to. Remember that. You have to remember that. You heard it here first. We are never going back to a party that wants to give unlimited money to fight foreign wars that are endless wars, that are stupid wars. But at the same time, demands that we cut veterans benefits and retirement benefits at home.

(10:21)
Our soldiers will no longer live in the streets of our city. We have cities where our soldiers, our great soldiers, are living on concrete, they’re living on asphalt. We will take care of our soldiers. There has never been a time like this. Illegal immigrants come in and we house them in the Waldorf Astoria and many other of the greatest hotels anywhere in the world. But our soldiers, we do nothing for them. They sleep out at night and they freeze. They freeze in the cold and they die in the heat, while people that came into our country illegally are in beautiful hotel suites, perhaps watching us on television right now. We were taking care of our soldiers just a short while ago, but we don’t do that anymore. But we’ll start doing it again. Our soldiers are very special to us. When a wonderful town in Ohio has difficulty, we are going to take care of that town, that city, that village prior to worrying about the rest of the world.

(11:39)
We’re taking care of the problems of the rest of the world that they’re not taking care of themselves. They have us put up the money. You know what I’m talking about. If you look at Ukraine, and we all feel so badly about it, but why isn’t NATO putting up dollar for dollar with us? We put up $140 billion and they put up just a tiny fraction of that. And we all want to see success, but it’s far more important to them than it is to us because of that location. We are never going to be a country ruled by entrenched political dynasties in both parties. Rotten special interests, China-loving politicians, of which there are many. You listening to this, Mitch McConnell? You listening? And a militant left wing news media that’s either frightened of telling the truth or is truly evil and bad. I don’t know. I think in many ways they’re frightened, but you never really know which. We are not going back to this mindset, not now, not ever, not ever.

(13:06)
And thank you, Mark Levin, for being here tonight. Thank you very much. And Julie. Thank you. Thank you, Mark. Very important voice. Stay healthy, Mark. We can’t lose you. Just stay healthy. Stay healthy, Mark. We’re not going to lose you. In 2016, we took away the power of this corrupt political class. And we did more in four years than any administration in the history of our country, if you look at what we did. We shut down the illegal foreign invasion on our borders and achieved the most secure border in US history. We deported illegal criminal aliens by the tens of thousands. MS-13, taking them out by the thousands. We set records every single week, we were cleaning up our country. I smashed the false idols of the free trade fanatics. These are fools or they’re getting very rich, probably the second. And left the China lobby reeling from our historic tariffs and taxes that we charge them, bringing in hundreds of billions of dollars pouring into our treasury from China.

(14:22)
Thank you very much, China. When no other president had gotten even 25 cents, not one president got anything from them. Our trade deficits were five, six, $700 billion a year. A billion, think of it, dollars a year. Not sustainable by any country. They built their military and they have a very powerful military with the money that we gave them. How stupid are we? I was the only president in modern history who did not have any new wars, no new wars. I finished some old ones. I finished some old ones. Remember when the Democrats and my Republican opponents would often look at me during the debates or whatever and they’d say, “No, no. He’s going to bring us into World War III because it’s a personality type.” They said I had the personality. No, I had the personality type that kept us out of wars because people knew that they weren’t going to mess around with us.

(15:40)
That’s why I rebuilt our military. We were strong, we were safe. And I told delinquent foreign nations, they were delinquent, they weren’t paying their bills, that if they wanted our protection, they had to pay up and they had to pay up now. And they did. They paid $ 450 billion as soon as I said, “No, I won’t be protecting you if you don’t pay.” We truly had a policy of peace through strength. This was a serious, powerful policy. And we didn’t have to lose our loved ones fighting wars in countries that nobody’s ever heard of. I stood firm against the forces of anarchy and decay. I arrested the Marxists to topple statues of our great heroes in Washington, DC. We arrested them. They were knocking down the most beautiful artwork, the most beautiful statues of great heroes. They didn’t even know who they were doing. They just wanted anarchy. And I passed and signed an executive order. Anybody that that gets 10 years in jail with no negotiation. It’s not 10, but it turns into three months.

(16:59)
And it’s an incredible thing that stopped right away. They were heading to the Jefferson Memorial. They wanted to take out Thomas Jefferson. I don’t think so. I don’t think so. I don’t think we’re going to let that happen. But we passed it. It was a very old law that we founded. One of my very good legal people, along with Steven Miller, they found it. They said, “sir, I don’t know if you want to try and bring this back.” I said, “I do.” And as soon as we passed it, that was the end that just stopped. It’s amazing. It’s a miracle. We banned transgender insanity from our military and signed the world’s first ban on critical race theory long before anybody had even heard of the term. It was all banned, everything was good.

(17:51)
When Biden came back in, this guy came in and he put everything right back in place where it was. We were paying these people hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in salary among our highest paid people to teach all of this nonsense to our military yet. But it was all out, it was all done. There’s only one president in history who has ever taken on the entire corrupt establishment in Washington. And when we win in 2024, we will do it again even stronger, faster, and better, because… now I am experienced and I know the people of Washington. I didn’t know them. I was from New York. I only came here 17 times, they said. I read that in the fake news, so probably it’s not true, but it’s the best I could do. And I never stayed over. I was from New York. But I now know the good ones, the bad ones, the weak ones, the strong ones. I know them all. I know the people that have to do the job and can do the job. A lot of them are in this room right now.

(19:13)
And as I did for four incredible years, I will put America first every single time, every single day. From the beginning, we have been attacked by a sick and sinister opposition, the radical left communists, the bureaucrats, the fake news media, the big money special interests, the corrupt Democrat prosecutors. Oh, they’re after me for so many things. Oh, those prosecutors. Some are racists. Some hate our country. They all hate me. They’ll get me for anything, anything. You put a comma in this paragraph. Why did you do that? I don’t really know. The partisan and often corrupt intelligence agencies, the George Soros money machine that spends a lot of money on the prosecutors, by the way. The Antifa thugs who are allowed to roam the streets while we have people that in many cases are great patriots, great, great patriots, sing prayers every night, playing our national anthem every day. And they’re sitting in a jail nearby, rotting away, and being treated so unfairly like nobody’s probably ever been treated in this country before, except maybe me.

(20:48)
And Marjorie, you’ve been so fantastic on that issue. Where’s Marjorie? You’ve been so fantastic on that issue. And Elise and Matt, people that love our country, people that love our country have been so great on that issue. And the perverts who use the names of Washington and Lincoln to buy millions of dollars in ads to say bad, lifeless, and incorrect things about us. I didn’t know this was a rally, Matt. It really is a rally. And by the way, thank you for that beautiful straw poll. That was a big win, thank you. Our enemies are lunatics and maniacs. They cannot stand that they do not own me. I don’t need them. I don’t need anything about them. I don’t need their money. They cannot steer me, they cannot shake me, and they will never, ever control me. And they will never, ever, therefore, control you.

(22:13)
At the end of the day, anyone else will be intimidated, bought off, blackmailed, or ripped to shreds. I alone will never retreat. And that is why we must stand together and charge. We have to charge full speed ahead. I had a beautiful life before I did this. I lived in luxury. I had everything. People said to me, “Are you sure you want to do it, sir?” I said, “Oh, this will be so amazing.” What the hell did you get me into? I didn’t know the word subpoena. I didn’t know the word grand jury, those words, grand jury. I didn’t know that they want to lynch you for doing nothing wrong. I didn’t know they want to lynch you for doing a great job. I didn’t know they want to put you away because your poll numbers are better than anybody they’ve seen in years.

(23:20)
And then they go with the disinformation campaign. First of all, we’re leading every Republican by massive numbers. And very importantly, perhaps more importantly, we’re leading Biden by a lot, and we’re leading Kamala by a lot. And every time the polls go up higher and higher, the prosecutors get crazier and crazier. We got to stop these guys. Says, “We have to stop Trump now. We got to stop him now because we can’t stop him at the ballot box.” They tried that in 2016. How did that work out? Not too good. And we actually, and I have to say this, I hope Fox doesn’t turn up, but we did much better in 2020 than we did in 2016, much better.

(24:06)
But We have no choice. If we don’t do this, our country will be lost forever. People are tired of rhinos and globalists. They want to see America first. That’s what they want. It’s not too complicated. This is the final battle. They know it, I know it, you know it, everybody knows it. This is it. Either they win or we win. And if they win, we no longer have a country. And I promise you this, if you put me back in the White House, that beautiful building, but I live in very beautiful buildings, it’s not that reason. The beautiful. That building wasn’t the easiest building to live in with what I was put through. And I get a lot of credit. A lot of people say, “How do you do it, sir?” I had a man come up to me the other day, one of the toughest, strongest people that you can imagine. You all know his name, big businessman, a lot of money, a lot of success, tough as hell.

(25:06)
And he said, “Could I ask you a question, president?” A friend of mine, used to call me Donald, now he calls me president. “Could I ask you a question, president?” “What?” “How do you do it? How do you do it every day? They sent you subpoenas every day. There’re after you. They’re looking to take you down at levels that nobody’s ever put up with before.” Seven years I’ve gone through this. We beat them all, but it continues. And he said to me, “Seriously, how do you do it? I could never do it.” This is one of the toughest guys. I said, “Maybe you could.” He said, “Nope, I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t get out of bed in the morning. But I do it for you, and that’s what I’m doing it for. I do it for you.” Thank you, [inaudible 00:26:09]. Thank you very much. And if you put me back in the White House, their reign is over. Their reign will be over, and they know it. And America will be a free nation once again. We’re not a free nation right now. We don’t have free press. We don’t have free anything. In 2016, I declared I am your voice. Today, I add I am your warrior, I am your justice. And for those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution. I am your retribution. Not going to let this happen. Not going to let it happen. I will totally obliterate the deep state. I will fire…

Speaker 1 (27:00):

USA, USA, USA, USA, USA, USA, USA.

Donald Trump (27:00):

I will fire the unelected bureaucrats and shadow forces who have weaponized our justice system like it has never been weaponized before, these are sick people, and I will put the people back in charge of this country again, the people will be back in charge of our country. The Biden administration is the most corrupt administration in American history. Hunter Biden is a criminal, and nothing happened to him, nothing happened. Joe Biden is a criminal and nothing ever seems to happen to him, because you know, say what you want, but the Democrats stick together. They don’t have Mitt Romney, they don’t have guys like that, they stick together. How’s Mitt Romney doing? Not too good. I could name plenty of others too, but they do stick together whether you like them or not, and many of us don’t, but maybe someday we get together..

(28:15)
A question was asked of me just before Covid came in. They said, “The country is coming together, do you think this is real?” And I said to myself, “It is real, it’s amazing.” I was getting calls from radical left people, the nicest calls, it’s amazing, because we had the best employment numbers in history, we had the best economy in history. We were lapping China, China was supposed to have taken over as the world’s largest economy, and we were actually increasing at a level that nobody thought possible, we were doing great. And then you had Covid come in and a lot of things had to happen, and we did a great job. We never got the credit for that job, but we did a great job with Covid and then gave back something very strong, but we were really bringing this country together. Had Covid not come in, I think you would’ve had a much different… Because a lot of people want to know, can we all get along together? And if I didn’t have that experience, I would say no, because the thought process is so different, but we were starting to really get along, and then we had the disaster, as I call it, the China virus, because I want to be open and I want to be accurate.

(29:33)
But Biden openly held back a billion dollar taxpayer, old taxpayer money, for the government of Ukraine. Remember he said, “Until they fire the prosecutor, when they fire that prosecutor.” And this prosecutor was after Hunter and the company that was paying him a fortune of money. Remember Joe Biden stood up and said, “And I looked at them and I said, you’re not getting that billion dollars until you get rid of that.” I can’t believe he did that. Can you imagine if I did that. I wouldn’t be here right now, I suspect. And nobody picks it up, nobody wants to pick it up, it doesn’t get any worse, doesn’t get any worse than that. Although maybe it does, it’s called The Laptop from Hell. And yet they go after me over and over again about something that’s not even a crime. They make up Russia, Russia, Russia, which was a plan made up by crooked Hillary Clinton, Adam Shifty Schiff, and the Democrats, the DNC.

(30:40)
They then made up a fake phone call. They took a phone call that was perfect, and they pretended that I said things that weren’t even there. They actually imitated, remember Schiff, he stood up in Congress and he repeated the call like I was a gangster over and over again, quid pro quo. Remember the term, quid pro quo? But there wasn’t. I called downstairs at the White House, I said, “Listen, do we have that call taped? Because there’s no way I said those things.” And they called back and tell me, “Yes, sir, we do.” Essentially, we had transcripts of the call. Thank goodness we had transcripts because these guys they’re sick, they’re sick people, and they were looking to do a number. I’ll tell you how bad they are, and I tell this story seldom, but it’s a strong story. Monica, thank you very much for the great job you did, by the way, what a defender she is.

(31:38)
But they’re so bad, so they come up with this Russia, Russia, Russia hoax, and they know it’s a hoax. They know it’s hoax, I know it’s a hoax too, but they know it’s a hoax. And Adam Shifty Schiff comes out from a very secretive room, intelligence committee or whatever, and he meets the press right in front. The press is going crazy, they’re going crazy because they’ll do anything to hurt Trump, anything, they’re evil people in many cases. In some cases they’re great people, but a lot of evil people. And he stands up before a microphone. Now, this is a man who knows it’s a fake story, Russia. Russia, Russia. They checked six years of phone calls, millions of calls were made from my office, not one call to Russia, not one call. They weren’t surprised, but some people were surprised.

(32:28)
But he stood up before the microphones and he said, “Donald Trump Jr. will go to prison for what he has done with Russia.” My son’s going to go to prison. He said my son’s going to go to prison for what he’s done with Russia. And my son didn’t have anything to do with it, and he knew it was a fake story, and when it was finally revealed, now the Times, the Washington Post, they all admit it was fake story. We’re trying to get the Pulitzer Prize taken away, they got Pulitzer Prize. We’re suing. You know what the prize says? “For its concise and accurate reporting on the Russia, Russia, Russia event.” And they have it actually totally wrong. Actually, Mark Levin should get a prize, and Greg Jared, Greg Jared should get a prize. And even it’s not his deal, Sean Hannity should get a prize. And frankly, Jesse should get a prize, Jesse should. And a lot of people, and I’ll tell you, you know who should get a prize? Tucker should get a prize, they’re very strong,

(33:45)
And we have numerous writers that should get it, but the ones that got it were the New York Times, certain reporters from the New York Times, and certain reporters from the Washington Post, they got the Pulitzer Price, and they were exactly wrong. And now they’ve even admitted that it was a hoax, it was a total hoax, and they got the prize. But how bad is a person that stands before a big gaggle of press and they just can’t get enough, and says that my son is going to prison for something that he knows was a hoax? Only a really bad person would do that. But they then came in with Ukraine, Ukraine, Ukraine, the Mueller hoax. How did Mueller present himself at the hearings? It wasn’t too pretty. But you know what? I’ll say this, at least they came to the right conclusion, because I was concerned they’d come to the conclusion, I think we have prosecutors now, they don’t give a if you’re guilty. They’re looking at me in Atlanta on a perfect phone call, I said, “Even more perfect than my perfect call to Ukraine.” That was a perfect call, this is even more perfect.

(35:05)
By the way, where’s Hunter? Where is Hunter? Remember, where’s Hunter? Will there ever be a time when Joe Biden says, “This thing with Hunter just isn’t working out well, I’m starting to get a little angry at Hunter.”? Or when Hunter comes to him and says, “Dad, dad, we have a problem.” “What is it, son? Another one, oh, son, you’re a disaster son. Son, you’re a disaster.” “Dad, we have a problem, I left my laptop at the repair shop.” And Joe looks at him and says, “What’s on it, son, what’s on it?” And Hunter looks back and he says, “Every single crime that you’ve ever committed dad.” And hence is called The Laptop from Hell. And Miranda Devine did a great book on that, and she actually thanked me. She said, “I got the name from Trump.” She told me, she said, “I want to thank you for the name.” I said, “No charge.” But she did a great job, great book, The Laptop from Hell. If I so much is fly over a blue state, they do so many bad things, it’s just crazy.

(36:29)
The racist Manhattan District Attorney, Alvin Bragg, who is presiding over one of the most dangerous and violent cities in the United States, you have to see this, the United States where killings are taking place at a number like nobody’s ever seen, right in Manhattan. And he’s doing nothing about it, nothing whatsoever. No cash bail for people that just kill people, knife them in the back, hit them over the head with a baseball bat, push them into subways when this train is right there. But this racist DA is being pushed by radical left Democrats, the fake news media, and the Department of Injustice to bring charges against me for now ancient, no affair story of Stormy Horseface Daniels. No attraction, No affair, I call it no affair, where there’s no crime anyway. And charges have never been brought in such a case before, and this case has been looked by every prosecutor, they’re all looking, they’ve looked at it for years now. She was represented by Michael Avenatti, how’s he doing? He’s now in jail and the whole thing is a complete con job, and she was ordered to pay me in federal court order this, hundreds of thousands of dollars. But they’re still looking at it, they’re still looking, and all they do is they cause anger and problems for our country, because our people aren’t going to take this stuff.

(38:14)
It never ends, in the meantime, Hunter and Joe Biden skate, they skate. They go away free, what’s going on with that? That laptop is a disaster. Has anyone read this thing? How can it be possible? They’re looking in Delaware. How’s he doing? He’s not the same guy that I have for the document oaks. I have a man, he’s a total animal. Known to be, and he’s looking, looking, looking, in the meantime, Biden’s guy that’s looking, looking, looking. And don’t forget, I had a very strong privilege as president. I was able to do things that he wasn’t able to do as vice president and wasn’t able to do as a senator. Even the Senate, they can’t believe it. The Senate cannot believe it, but when you look at what happened, they’re not even looking at him, they haven’t even started. Congress and various radical left Democrat prosecutors, in an effort to stop me, go to the Supreme Court twice. They went twice, and the Supreme Court, in a moment of total weakness, gives them everything they want in order to try and prosecute Trump everything.

(39:21)
Thank you very much, Supreme Court, I appreciate it. But they found nothing. They looked at 11 million pages of documents, it’s a big company, it’s a great company. Remember my taxes? “We’re after his taxes.” Five years I heard about my taxes. They came out about two months ago, everyone said, “Wow, it’s a great company he built, that’s great.” That’s the end of it. No, right? And I had the biggest and most prestigious one of them, at least law firms, accounting firms, doing all this stuff. I don’t do it, they do it, you rely on these people, they do it. But I didn’t hear one word, and how stupid am I telling you this story right now? Because now they’ll go, “We got to find something in there.” He made a typographical error. There’s a revolution going on within the FBI because they don’t want to be doing what they’re being told to do because they know right from wrong, I’m talking about the people that work in the FBI, and they like me and they like you a lot, so many of them. A recent article in the Washington Post, of all papers, stated very succinctly that many did not want to raid Mar-a-Lago, they didn’t want the agents. They said, “That’s terrible.” But they were forced to do so by their Marxist radical left leadership, and it drove my popularity numbers through the roof. Who would think this?

(40:46)
I got impeached and I went up 11 points. It’s not supposed to work like that. Mark, when Nixon got impeached, it went down right away, it was as spiral down, he couldn’t stop it. I got impeached, we went up, but the FBI people, they didn’t want to do this. To those in the FBI that are with us, I want to thank you very much, I really do, I want to thank you. Stay strong, stay strong, help is coming. Then there’s the racist DA from Atlanta, whose city is among the most violent and dangerous places per capita in the country. More murders than even Chicago per capita. It’s totally out of control and yet she has her kangaroo court focused on a perfect phone call that I made, while her jury foreman, a rather bizarre young woman, is going around doing media interviews and saying exactly what’s going on in this one of many grand juries. Our opponents do anything they can to hurt me politically because they’re afraid of me and they’re afraid of you, that’s what it is, but it’s not supposed to work that way.

(41:59)
The disinformation, people say they are great at disinformation. The one we want to run against is Trump. Do you ever hear that? “Oh, we want to run against Trump.” Even though I’m leading every one of these guys, and even though I won the second election, I won it by a lot. When they say Biden won, the smart people know they didn’t. But right now, we’re way up. But they say, “Oh, we want to run against Trump.” They always say that, they say that about everybody. When they have somebody that they don’t want to run against, a governor, or senator, they say, “We want to run against.” Because it’s like demeaning, in other words, like you’re supposed to be schlemiel. I got 75 million votes, I got more votes than any city president in history the second time. And we really did, we did a much better job than we did in 2016. 2020, we did better than 2016, but they say, “We want to run against Trump.” In the meantime, they’re spending hundreds of millions of dollars trying to find just a single word, a sentence, anything to prosecute Trump because they don’t want to run against me. That’s what they say, “We want to run against Trump, we’ll do anything to run against Trump.”

(43:13)
They have the greatest line of bullshit of any group of people I’ve ever seen. Want to run against Trump. But at the same time, they send people from the Justice Department to the local DA’s office of Manhattan. Do you know the Justice Department sent their top people to the Manhattan DA’s office to help in the prosecution of Trump? This way, we have it a little bit away from Washington. It’s local. Oh, we had nothing to do, but their top guy was put in that office to help prosecute Trump. How would you like to have my life? Would anybody like my life? But I still like it. But they want to try and find anything they can when they’ve already been exonerated, I’ve been exonerated many times. You take a look at what this meant, time after time, but all of this is happening for one single reason. They know that when we return to power, we will bring their lies, and their corruption, and their disinformation tumbling down. Our getting back in the White House is their worst nightmare, but it is our country’s only hope, it’s our only hope. If we don’t get back now, this country can’t take it, even the two years, and now, fortunately it’s less than that, it’s hard to believe it’s less. We used to say four years, a lot of people said, “Well, sir, the election was so bad, you’ll be in in one year.” A lot of people in this room, “You’ll be back in six weeks, sir.” But it’s a bad system in many ways, very bad, very dangerous system, but nobody else can do it but us. In recent weeks, I’ve been laying out a bold detailed agenda for how we’re going to complete this mission in our next term. I do weekly statements and people are liking them. Today, I want to go through some of our big plans that I will do as the 47th President of the United States. Thank you.

(45:45)
At the top of my list, we’ll be stopping the slide into costly and never-ending wars, we got to stop it. Can’t keep spending hundreds of billions of dollars protecting people that don’t even like us. Now in business, if you did that, what you do is you put up the money and then you say, “But listen, we own half your country in case you win.” You take a piece of the upside, right? I don’t get nothing. In fact, the opposite, we put up the money, and then after it’s finished, assuming it’s successful, let’s say it’s successful, they don’t want to even talk to us. “Nope, you have nothing to do with us, get out of here.” You have nothing. No, no, in business, you put up money, seed money, call it whatever you want, you end up owning the country by the time it’s over, and the only reason they’re doing well is we’re giving them the greatest equipment, that I bought, the greatest equipment ever made. And the only reason they’re doing well with NATO is I raised $440 billion from countries that weren’t paying anything.

(46:47)
And the Secretary General, Stoltenberg, a good man, he said, “It’s one of the greatest jobs I’ve ever seen.” I hope he still says that, but one of the greatest jobs. He said, “Obama would come and make a speech, Bush would come make a speech, and then they’d leave.” I came, I looked, I said, “Man, these people aren’t paying, we’re paying for the whole thing practically.” Of the 28 countries at the time, only eight were paid up, 20 weren’t, including Germany, they paid a fraction of what they were supposed to be paying. And I said to him, “Either you pay or we’re not going to protect you.” And a man stood up, a president of a country stood up, and he said, “Sir, could I ask you a question?” This was a round table with nobody in the room, but the presidents, prime ministers, and dictators, okay? Some of them are all the same, but they stood up and he stood up and said, “Sir, can I ask you a question? If we don’t pay up and if we get attacked by Russia, will you protect us, sir?” I said, “Now you’re not paid up, right?” “That’s right.” “You’re delinquent, right?” “Yes.” I will not protect you from Russia.” “Sir, we’ll send you a check tomorrow, sir. We’ll send you a check tomorrow. It’ll be sent by overnight mail, sir, I promise you’ll have it tomorrow.”

(48:10)
Now, if I said like the stupid politicians say, “Absolutely. Article 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, where you’re supposed to do it? But those articles all suppose that you’re supposed to be paid up. But let’s say I said the opposite, “Yes, we will always protect you.” And I took a lot of heat because they said, “I’m not a good member.” Actually, NATO wouldn’t even exist if I didn’t get them to pay up, but they paid up $449 billion or something, and that’s the money they use. They’re rich as hell right now, they spent on an office building that cost $3 billion. It’s like a skyscraper in Manhattan later in its side, it’s one of the longest buildings I’ve ever seen, and I said, “You should have, instead of spending $3 billion, you should have spent $500 million building the greatest bunker you’ve ever seen.” Because Russia wouldn’t even need an airplane attack. One tank, one shot through that beautiful glass building and it’s gone. Same architect I used in Chicago, great architects, but they didn’t have war in mind, but when things happen, that building would be gone at about 15 minutes.

(49:20)
They should have spent a $500 million bunker, nice thick ceiling, six inches, six feet of concrete. And by the way, we have a great gentleman, speaking of China, will you please stand up? Gordon, stand up, please. Gordon. I’m talking a lot about China, and I’m looking over, I’m studying him, and I’m studying his face as I’m speaking, because people do like me to go off script a little bit, right? It’s a little bit more risky, but it’s more exciting. And I’m looking at Gordon, and I’m saying, “I hope he agrees with what I’m saying.” But basically I’m saying exactly what you say. They’re not out for our good, are they? They’re not out for our good, and nobody ever taxed them like I did, and nobody ever took any money in like I did. $440 billion, we took in so much money from China, it’s so incredible. So I just, it’s an honor to have you here, really it is. I agree with almost everything you said, almost everything. Great. Thank you very much, thank you, madam, thank you very much, great job, both of you.

(50:33)
I was the only president in decades that didn’t have a war, but I completed wars that were already started, including defeating 100% of the ISIS Caliphate. I was also the only president where Russia didn’t take over a country during my term. Russia took over, not because I got along with Vladimir Putin very well. I said, “Vladimir, don’t do it. You know, you and I have friends, don’t take over any countries because Moscow will be hit very hard.” Well, I told him things. He probably didn’t believe it, but you know what, he believed it 10%, and President Xi believed it when I talked about Beijing. He probably said, “I don’t believe him, but there’s a 10% chance we’re not going to do anything.” It’s true, it’s true, you have no idea these conversations. I wish they could have been recorded, actually, people would think a lot of me. But with Bush, they invaded Georgia, right? With Obama, they took Crimea, with Biden, they’re trying to take everything. And he won’t even know they took it. Thank you. And with me, they took nothing, nothing. And I didn’t really even have to threaten them very much, they understood me very well, I wanted them to understand me very well. They knew that they couldn’t do it. Putin knew that, President Xi knew it too. Likewise, China now has its eyes strongly focused on Taiwan, and we could soon have a nuclear armed Iran. That’s the saddest thing of all though, when we talk about Iran, that’s the saddest thing when you see. I had them in a box. I said to China, “You can’t buy any oil from Iran.” They said, “No, no, we have to buy. We buy millions of barrels here.” And I said, “You can’t buy, you have to buy from somebody else.” “No, no, we’ll buy.” I said, good, we’re not going to do any more trading with China, we’re going cold Turkey.” “We will promise you not to buy from Iran.”

(52:57)
That was the end of that, that was a conversation I had. I said, “If you buy from Iran, any oil, we’re not going to do any business, or if for some reason we do, we’re going to put a hundred percent tariff on every single thing that you sell into the United States.” And they didn’t buy any oil, and nobody was buying oil, and they were in a position, had the election not turned out the way it did, they were in a position where they were going to give us everything. We were going to make a great deal. But now they’re rich Again, China’s buying unlimited amounts of oil from Iran, unlimited amounts in other places, and we’ve done something else that’s terrible. From the time I’m a young man, I learned, never allow Russia and China to get together to, wed never ever allow it. And we’ve not only allowed it, we’ve made them bosom buddies, we’ve forced them together. And you can add

Donald Trump (54:00):

Had another group in there, a nuclear armed Iran. So the three of them are now together. That should have never been allowed to happen, would’ve never happened with me. And it was all over oil, our stupid oil policy. We’re not going to drill. We have more oil in the United States than any country in the world, including Saudi Arabia, people don’t realize it. In Alaska, I approved a site, we all know what the site is, probably the biggest in the world. And the Democrats said, “No, it’s over.” They turned it down. Ronald Reagan tried to do it. Every president, Republican and some Democrats tried to do it, they couldn’t get it done, I got it done. And the first day in office, the Secretary of the Interior for Biden signed off on it where they’re going to not allow it to happen bigger probably than Saudi Arabia. If we had that without even my talking to Putin, oil would’ve been at $40, $35, maybe $30 a barrel.

(55:09)
So he wouldn’t have even had the money to prosecute a war against Ukraine. He wouldn’t have done it anyway, but… And that’s not even what I’m saying from previous. But he wouldn’t have had the money, even if he wanted to. Ukraine would’ve been thriving. There would’ve been no dead people, and there would’ve been no obliterated cities that can never be rebuilt, can never rebuild those cities. Russia never would’ve pulled the trigger. This is the most dangerous time in the history of our country, and Joe Biden is leading us into oblivion. He’s leading us into oblivion. We all smile when he falls downstairs and things, it’s cute. When he falls off his bicycle, isn’t this cute? You know what amazed me that the reporters didn’t catch him when the bike was going down. They’re standing right next to him. They let him fall. It’s amazing. I’m surprised.

(56:09)
But when he makes statements that are so bad when he gets out of Afghanistan and takes the soldiers, takes [inaudible 00:56:16] takes the soldiers out first. And in Afghanistan for 18 months, I had a talk with Abdul who was the leader of Afghanistan. I said, “Abdul…” Oh, I got a lot of criticism. Remember when I was talking to him, everyone said, “Oh, he is talking to the leader of the Taliban.” That’s right. Because our soldiers were being killed, a lot of them by snipers, and I didn’t want that. I don’t want to deal with the problems, and I don’t want to talk to the mothers and fathers who I would speak to a lot. I don’t want to talk to them and tell them their son was shot through the head from 2000 yards away by a sharp shooter. They have very good sharp shooters. So I spoke to this man, his name was Abdul, and I said, “Abdul, don’t kill any more of our soldiers because if you kill our soldiers, we are going to hit you harder than any country has ever been hit in the history of the world.”

(57:33)
And he called me Your Excellency. See, he and I got along. He’s still there. He’s still the leader of the Taliban, but now he’s got $85 billion worth of our equipment that I bought, $85 billion. I said to General Millie, I want every piece of equipment, “Sir, I think it would be cheaper to leave it behind, sir.” That’s when I lost faith, that, and when he didn’t like me holding up a Bible in front of a church, I said, “This guy’s not with us. This is not a smart guy.” But he didn’t like it. I said, “I want every single…” Because I was getting out of… But I would’ve kept Bagram, because Bagram is one hour away from where China, forget about Afghanistan, where China makes its nuclear weapons, one hour away. The biggest, most powerful runways in the world, we built it many years ago for tens of billions of dollars, and we gave it away one night.

(58:24)
We just left the lights on. We did leave the dogs behind. Everyone says, “Oh, did they take the dogs? Because they’re dog lovers.” No, we left the dogs behind. And the Taliban doesn’t like dogs, by the way, not at all. But we left in disgrace. It was the most embarrassing moment in the history of our country, in my opinion. And it probably is what caused Putin to say, “Wow, Trump is gone. This is a great time to take over Ukraine.” Right? It’s probably a reason that that happened. But I stand here today and I’m the only candidate who can make this promise. I will prevent and very easily World War III, very easily. And you’re going to have World War III, by the way. You’re going to have World War III if something doesn’t happen fast, you’re going to have World War three. And by the way, just to conclude that little story, when Abdul heard me say that, he said, “Your Excellency, thank you so much for telling me that.”

(59:38)
He said, “But why, but why?” I thought it was a very interesting plan, words I’ve never heard. I use it now sometimes myself. I liked it. He said, “But why, but why, Mr. President, do you send me pictures of my home?” He said that. I said, “You’ll have to ask your wives that question.” And we didn’t have, Mark will tell you this, we didn’t have one soldier killed in 18 months, not one soldier was killed, not one soldier, right? In fact, it was so good that the media didn’t mind that I called. I took a lot of heat, tremendous heat. “Why do you call him?” I said, “Well, they asked Jesse James, the great bank robber from many years ago, “Why is it that you robbed banks? Why do you always go after banks?” And he looked at him, he says, “Because that’s where the money is.” Well, I spoke to Abdul because that’s where the problem was.” But we won 18 months until that horrible day when we lost 13 soldiers.

(01:01:02)
And the thing that nobody ever talks about, we lost 13. We lost 85 billion worth of the greatest military equipment in the world, goggles, night goggles that are so good, so sophisticated, better than anything, we have brand new, never even taken out of the box. And the Afghans, and they’re actually very good. The Taliban are good fighters. Afghan, because it’s really very much the same thing, frankly. They didn’t fight good for us, but they fought good for themselves and they took a lot of money from us. I asked General Mattis, I said, “We got to get out of there. They’ve been there for 20 years. We got to get out of there.” “Sir, they’re fighting for their country, sir.” I said, “Hmm, that’s right. I guess they are.” Then about two days later, I was thinking about it. I said, “I don’t know why,” because we had more blue on green, green on blue where they’d get their gun and then they’d shoot our master sergeants and our sergeants that are training them.

(01:01:59)
I said, “Why are they fighting for us if we’ve never had this problem to the extent that we had it?” But he said that. He said, “They’re fighting.” And I said, “Are we paying them a lot of money to fight?” And I had it checked. Yeah, we were paying billions and billions and billions of dollars to these Afghan soldiers, tens of billions of dollars. I said, “They’re not fighting, General…” I called him back, “They’re not fighting because they love us or they love their country. They’re fighting because they’re the highest paid soldiers in the world. We’re basically bribing them to fight.” And they didn’t fight, but the Taliban did fight. Same people, but the Taliban did fight. But they didn’t kill anybody for 18 months. I’m very proud. In fact, Biden got up and he actually said that, “They didn’t kill anybody. I will say that they didn’t kill anybody for 18 months.” And you know what happened? Because people start screaming, “Don’t say that,” because that’s a good thing for us.

(01:02:57)
But then when we left, we lost soldiers, 13 killed. But what they don’t talk about, they talk about the equipment. They talk about the fact that there are still to this day, a lot of Americans in there that we’ve lost contact with, it’s a rough place. But they don’t talk about the fact that many of these soldiers were absolutely destroyed. Destroyed. They lost their arms, they lost their legs. They had their face blown off, and they were absolutely destroyed. And they don’t talk about that. They don’t talk about it. That it’s very sad because these people, many of them, we lost 13, they died, but nobody ever talks about the gravity of the injuries to these soldiers. And it’s a very sad thing. I got it down to 2,500 people. I was the one that got it down. But we were going to get out with dignity, with strength. We were going to be respected and admired. And I could just see Abdul, they took out the soldiers first.

(01:04:03)
You don’t take the soldiers first. You take the soldiers out last. You get the Americans out first. Because they feared our soldiers, they feared our soldiers. They feared the F-16s, and now they own them. Think of it, you get the soldiers and they go out last. You take our American citizens out, you then take our equipment out. And Millie said to me, “Sir, it’s cheaper to leave the equipment than it is to take it out.” I said, “Let me ask you, General. So we have a plane that cost a hundred million dollars, brand new. You want to let…” “Yes, sir. It’s cheaper, sir.”

(01:04:39)
I thought he was another April fools deal, right? I said, “No, General, you fill it up with a tank of jet fuel. You fly it back home, or at a minimum you fly it into Pakistan or some semi friendly country and you take it from there.” “No, sir.” I actually told them I want the tents. You know the tents, they have big canvas, incredible tents with the… “I want every piece of steel. I want every screw. I want every nut. I want every bolt. I want every tractor. I want every Jeep.”

(01:05:12)
You know what they did? They left 700,000 rifles and guns, 700,000. They left 70,000 vehicles, 70,000, many of them brand new, many of them armor-plated where they have six inches of steel on the bottom. Of course, your millions of dollars to build. And they left that all behind. There’s not a car company, used car lot, new car lot anywhere in the world that would have 70,000 vehicles. I said to a friend of mine who’s one of the Arrigo in Florida, great guy. I said, “How many cars?” He said, “I think he’s like the biggest in Florida.” They sold, they did very well, thank you. But the biggest. I said, “How many cars would you have?” “I don’t know. A couple of hundred extra. Couple of hundred.” And he’s like, “A big one. Real big one. Run runs a great operation.” 70,000 vehicles. So now I read the other day that the Taliban, that Afghanistan is the second-largest seller of arms anywhere in the world because they’re selling everything that we gave them.

(01:06:25)
And by the way, as I’m speaking, I see cash? Is that cash? Oh, my eyes are better than I think. And is that Rick Grinnell? Huh? Wow. I better check with Gordon and I better check this audience a little more closely. I’m going to miss a lot of people in here. Great, two real patriots. They really are two great people, thank you very much. But they’re the second largest to us. They’re the second largest arms dealer in the world. They’re selling off all the beautiful brand new equipment we gave them. The Apache helicopter, which is the best in the world. They gave one to Russia, gave it. They gave one to China, and they’re very good. They take it apart and they reduplicate it. They take it apart, they reduplicate it because they’ve never been able to build one like we have. Now they’re able to do it because they’re very smart, actually. Before I even arrive at the Oval Office, I will have the disastrous war between Russia and Ukraine settled. It will be settled quickly quickly.

(01:07:36)
I will get the problem solved, and I will get it solved in rapid order, and it will take me no longer than one day. I know exactly what to say to each of them. I got along very well with them. I got along very well with Putin, even though I’m the one that ended this pipeline. Remember they said, “Trump is giving a lot to Russia.” Really? Putin actually said to me, “If you’re my friend, I’d hate like hell to see you as my enemy,” because I ended the pipeline, do you remember? Nord Stream II, nobody ever heard of it, right? Nobody ever heard of Nord Stream II until I came along. I started talking about Nord Stream II. I had to go call it the pipeline because nobody knew what I was talking about, but I ended it. It was dead. I told every company that had sucked into it that you’re not doing business with the United States of America if you go forward and allow this to be built, it was done.

(01:08:29)
On day one, Biden came in… And this is the biggest economic development project. This is the most important project that Russia has on day one. This is the biggest money they could ever make. There’s nothing they could ever do to compete with us. This is the biggest pipeline in the world. Going to supply Europe, Germany in particular. On day one, Biden came in and what did he do? He approved the Nord Stream pipeline. And then they’d say, “Trump was soft on Russia.” I was the one that gave a thousand Javelins, that’s the anti-tech busters. And they are vicious because I looked at those tanks and they ended up, they got hit one shot, and that was the end of that, you wouldn’t want to be in those tanks. But I was the one that supplied the Javelins. They supplied the bedsheets, do you remember? They supplied the bedsheets and maybe even some pillows from Mike who’s sitting right over here. Where the hell is Mike? Did you send some pillows over there? Maybe? But they supplied the bedsheets, they call it. We supplied the sheets. They didn’t want to get involved.

(01:09:36)
I gave the Javelins, and then they say, “Trump was weak on Russia.” Disinformation. Again, it’s disinformation, right? That’s all they’re good at, cheating on elections and disinformation. Instead of spending hundreds of billions of dollars to defend the borders of distant foreign countries. Under my leadership, we will defend our borders first. Three years ago, we had the safest border in the history of our country, and I will quickly do that again. As you know, I built hundreds of miles of wall and completed that task as promised, and then I began to add even more in areas that seemed to be allowing a lot of people to come in. So we’re going to do another 200 miles of wall, and it could have been done and completed in three weeks but the Biden administration said they weren’t going to do it. And in fact, the wall was sitting there waiting to be installed, the easiest part, and Biden, they took it away. So the Texas and Arizona couldn’t use it.

(01:10:48)
Texas and Arizona said, “Could we use that wall? We’ll finish it right up.” And they said, no. And they actually took it away and they hid it. They put it in a hiding area, which of course was revealed pretty quickly, all you have to do is send a couple of helicopters up. But they wouldn’t let them use it. Under my leadership, we will seal it up and expand that wall till we have total control. Well, we did a great job in the wall. Remember with Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell? “Yeah, we’ll give it to you next year.” I said, “Nope, nope. Give it to me this year.” “Well, sir, if you approve this budget, we’ll give it to you next year.” I said, “All right, that’s okay.” So I waited, then they didn’t give it, and yet Mitch McConnell approves five and a half trillion dollars for Green New Deal garbage. It’s a disgrace. But I took it from the military because I considered it an invasion.

(01:11:42)
So Marjorie, I said, “You know what I’m going to do? I’m going to take it right out of the military because they’re invading our country.” And I got it built, and we did a great job. We did it quickly. And we used the Army [inaudible 01:11:53] Engineers, they were fantastic. Before Biden came into office, we had illegal immigration at a record low, refugees were at the lowest level in history. Human trafficking, women and children was at the lowest in 30 years. And drug dealers were finding the US border a very inhospitable place to be. It was very inhospitable. In my last year, less drugs came through the southern border than had been seen in many, many decades. We weren’t playing games. Now we have complete chaos. Fentanyl is pouring in. Families are being wiped out, destroyed, and there’s death everywhere, all caused by incompetence. Millions of illegal aliens are stampeding across our border. Interior enforcement has been shut down. Everyone is overstaying their visas. Nobody even thinks about reporting it anymore. My wonderful travel ban is gone. I had a travel ban, it was so wonderful.

(01:12:54)
Refugee numbers are through the roof. And spies and terrorists are infiltrating our country totally unchecked like never before. When I’m back in the White House, the very first reconciliation bill I will sign will be for a massive increase in Border Patrol and a colossal increase in the number of ice deportation officers. And I want to thank the Border Patrol. These are incredible people. And I want to thank ICE. And in particular, I want to thank Brandon Judd, Border Patrol and Tom Holman, Central Casting. He’s Central Casting. Under my leadership, we will use all necessary state, local, federal, and military resources to carry out the largest domestic deportation operation in American history. Other countries are emptying out their prisons, insane asylums and mental institutions and sending all of their problems right into their dumping ground, the USA. Think of it, they’re emptying out their prisons, and you’ve heard me say that, but they’re also emptying out their mental institutions and to use a strong couple of words, insane asylum.

(01:14:19)
Insane asylum, that’s where… Anybody see Silence of the Lamb? That’s where they come from. Insane asylum. That’s a stronger word than a mental institution. And they’re putting them into our country, thank you very much. I will ask every state and federal agency to identify every known or suspected gang member in America and every one of them that is here illegally. And the towns know who they are, the towns and cities or the police. We love our police. The police know who they are. And we will pick them up and we will throw them out of our country and there will be no questions asked. We had a problem when I first assumed the office in 2016, it was a big problem. We’d have these people, we’d round them up, MS-13 gangs, the worst people. These are absolute brutal killers. They used to knife 16 year old girls because it was more painful. It would take longer to kill her. These are real animals. And Nancy Pelosi said, “How dare you call them animals? These are human beings.”

(01:15:27)
I said, “No, they’re not.” But these are real animals. And we couldn’t get them back into their countries because the country was like, especially three… You take a look at Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras in particular, and Mexico to an extent, you couldn’t get them back in because they didn’t want them. They sent them out in the first place here. They forced them into our country, just so you know. These are very smart people that run these places. They’re very streetwise. So I said, “What’s the problem?” “Sir, we have thousands of people, but they won’t allow us to land the planes. They won’t allow the buses to cross the border. They won’t allow them back in their country.” I said, “How much money do we pay to these various countries?” “Sir, we pay $750 million a year.” I said, “All right, inform the country that we’re no longer paying any money. And if they ask why, you can tell them.”

(01:16:16)
“Yes sir, we’ll do that.” So the following morning, almost simultaneously early, about eight o’clock, I got calls from all three at one time. In fact, I had to tell two of them, “I’ll call you back,” because they all came in right on time, Matt, right on time, like you call on time. And what happens is they came in and they called. They said, “Sir, there must be a misunderstanding. We would love to have MS-13 back in our country.” And we started dropping them off by the tens of thousands, and I still hadn’t paid them back their money. I kept it. I figured, let’s hold it as long as possible because they’ve been ripping us off long enough. To stop the flow of deadly drugs, it will be my policy to take down the cartels just as I took down the ISIS caliphate that everybody said was impossible to do. A lot of parents in this audience that lost a child, that lost a loved one to Fentanyl and all of the drugs that are pouring in so many different kinds, fentanyl is a big problem.

(01:17:26)
In fact, with the ISIS caliphate, a certain general said, ” It could only be done in three years and probably it can’t be done at all, sir.” And I did it in three weeks. I went over to Iraq, met a great general. “Sir, I can do it in three weeks,” you’ve heard that story. “I could do it in three weeks, sir.” How are you going to do that? They explained it. I did it in three weeks. I was told it couldn’t be done at all, but it would take at least three years. Did it in three weeks, knocked out 100% of the ISIS caliphate. We have a great military. The reason I say that, we have a great military. And I will direct the Department of Justice to go after Marxist prosecutor’s offices to make them pay for their illegal race-based enforcement of the law. By the way, we have one of those great generals with us, General Kellogg. Where’s General Kellogg? Is he around here [inaudible 01:18:21]? Where is General Kellogg? He’s the greatest. He’s here. Thank you, General. Thank you. Thank you, General. And in cities where there’s been a complete breakdown of public safety, I will send in federal assets, including the National Guard, until law and order is restored. We’re not supposed to do that. And one thing I think about a lot is when we had some difficulty in certain cities like Minneapolis. And if you take a look at Portland, how’s Portland doing? They don’t even have storefronts anymore. Everything’s two by four is because they get burned down every week. They don’t put news storefronts up. It’s chaos. But what we had in Seattle, remember they took over a large portion. I was ready to send in the National Guard. They heard that. More than the National Guard, I was ready to go to town. And they heard that. You know what they did? They said, “We’re going to break it up now.” They left. But we saved Minneapolis.

(01:19:19)
The thing is, we’re not supposed to do that because it’s up to the governor, the Democrat governor. They never want any help. They don’t mind. It’s almost like they don’t mind to have their cities and states destroyed. There’s something wrong with these people. All of us have seen too many videos of 13 year old carjackers and 14 year old hoodlums viciously beating their victims, saw it just yesterday, a horrible situation. They kill people without retribution because they may be day short of the age required to put them away, put them in jail, and throw away the keys for a long time. My administration will crack down on these out of control monsters. Young though, they may be an imposed tough consequences on juvenile criminals. Criminals use young people. They actually hire young people, pay them some money, not a lot, because if they get caught, nothing’s going to happen to them.

(01:20:13)
That will end. I will end the scourge of homelessness taking over our cities and suburbs. I just drove through Washington DC coming here for the first time in quite a while, and the roads and highways were littered with trash like I’ve never seen before. It looked like somebody just took their garbage and just threw it all over the highways, the beltway. It’s so disgraceful, so disgusting. I always made it a point as president, when I saw the highways were dirty or that the homeless encampments were starting to form, to take care of the problem immediately. I used to have people out here all the time, sweeping highways, cleaning highways, hosing them down.

Donald Trump (01:21:00):

It bothered me so much. I’m in the Beast. I’m being driven back to the White House from some site, and I’d see this filthy, dirty highway with paper that hasn’t been … You could see it’s been laying there for months, and I’d have them cleaned up. I wouldn’t even call the mayor because it was never going to get done with the mayor. Frankly, the federal government should take over control and management of Washington, DC, good project because it’s horrible.

(01:21:35)
I think of it differently. Foreign leaders come in to see us. We want them to do what we want them to do, and they drive through these terrible, disgusting streets, where their streets are much better, much better maintained, much nicer. They see camps and homeless all over our once beautiful parks, all over, hundreds and hundreds of tents. I used to have them taken down … I’d see one or two or three. I said, “Do it fast, immediately.” Then I’d check, and it was done.

(01:22:07)
They’d never have time to do it. Once they have 500, 600, 700 of these things up, it’s a much more difficult thing, but you can do that, too. Under our leadership, we will take the homeless, drug addicted, and severely deranged, get them off our streets and create tent cities where we will get them the help they so desperately need. On day one, I will revoke Joe Biden’s crazy executive order installing Marxist diversity, equity, and inclusion czars in every federal agency, and I will immediately terminate all staffers hired to implement this horrible agenda.

(01:22:55)
I will urge Congress to create a restitution fund for Americans who have been unjustly discriminated against by these Biden policies. They’re so unfair. They’re so un-American. They’re so un-American. We will ban all racial discrimination by the government. I will fight for parents’ rights. Can you believe that here we are and I’m saying I’m going to fight for parents’ rights? Who would think that you have to ever say, “Parents’ rights?” Don’t you think parents have pretty good rights, right? Who would think that you have to actually say it? But you do because they took the rights away, including universal school choice and the direct election of school principals by the parents.

(01:23:37)
We want the school principal to be appointed and elected by parents. You’ll get some good principals then. Who loves the children more than the parents? If any principal is not getting the job done, the parents should be able to fire that principal immediately and select someone new. Continuing the work of our 1776 Commission, we will teach our values and promote our history and our traditions to our children. We will, in other words, be proud of our country again.

Audience (01:24:18):

USA, USA, USA, USA, USA, USA, USA, USA.

Donald Trump (01:24:35):

I will revoke every Biden policy promoting the chemical castration and sexual mutilation of our youth and ask Congress to send me a bill prohibiting child sexual mutilation in all 50 states. That should be easy. We will keep men out of women’s sports. How ridiculous. That will take place on day one. I will destroy the illegal censorship regime and bring back free speech in America because we do not have free speech.

(01:25:23)
I will stop Joe Biden’s demolition of our economy with his crushing inflation and mass layoffs. We will take care of inflation very, very quickly. 4.9 million people have dropped out of the labor force since I was president. As the Trump administration’s great Larry Kudlow … Does everybody know Larry? As Larry Kudlow said, “Biden is setting a record on economic regulations that are absolutely killing American companies. His spending and his borrowing are at record levels. It’s causing historic inflation, sir, which is only going to get worse and worse, sir.”

(01:26:07)
He just called me before I got here. I said, “I don’t want to say this, Larry. It’s only going to get worse and worse. It’s driving up interest rates, and new cars and homes are going to be impossible to buy.” Amidst this economic disaster, Biden talks about saving you a few dollars on some junk fees, don’t mean anything. By defeating Joe Biden, I will save your economy. I will save your retirement accounts, and I will save your jobs. We had the greatest job history of any president ever.

(01:26:37)
I will create a true national trade policy like the kind that made America the world’s economic powerhouse. What we were doing prior to the dust coming in from China was … Nobody’s ever seen it. There’s never been anything like it. That period of two and a half years was … There’s never been anything like it. I’ll tell foreign nations where we spend billions of dollars on military protection that if American products do not receive preferential treatment in their markets, our military is packed up and leaving, which some countries I did that with.

(01:27:16)
Usually it took a phone call and everything was just fine because economic security is national security. I will revoke China’s most favored nation’s trade status immediately on day one, and I will implement a four-year plan to phase out all Chinese imports of essential goods and gain total independence from China. We have to do it. We have to do it. I will hold China financially accountable for unleashing the China virus upon the world, and I will again withdraw from the WHO, which stands for We Hide Outbreaks. We Hide Outbreaks. The United States was paying.

(01:28:15)
I think this is important because, again, it’s so much common sense involved. The United States was paying the World Health Organization $450 million a year. Now, in terms of money and the kind of trillions and trillions we’re talking about, it’s not that much, but it’s still $450 million a year. I took them out. That’s what it was. The price was 450, and that’s for 350 million people. China was paying $39 million a year for 1.4 billion people. Doesn’t sound too right, and they had total control, by the way. We had no control. They’d literally own it.

(01:28:57)
When I withdrew from the WHO, they offered me to stay in, “Please don’t leave, please, please, please. But what China pays,” they said, “we’ll bring it down to 39 million.” I was actually close to doing this deal, If you wanted know the truth, but you would have been angry at me. I said, “I don’t don’t want to have CPAC angry at me.” But I might have gone back in, but I could have done it for 39. I could have probably done it for less than that. But now Biden has gone back for the full price of $450 million. Now, all he has to do is read the newspapers. They were begging me to come back in for 39 million, so why would you pay $450 million? Do you understand that? Gordon, do you understand that? How crazy. So China’s in for 39. They’re saying, “You’re right. It’s unfair. It’s unfair. We will do it for 39. We will take you back.” The head man, you know who that is. “We will take you back.” Then I started to say, “Actually, it should be much less. It should be like five or six million, right?” But I didn’t want to go there.

(01:30:01)
“We will take you back for 39 million. You’re right, President.” I said, “Well, we’ll think about it. We’ll see what happens. But the offer will remain open, right?” “Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Yes, sir.” They went back in for the original amount. It’s so sad, and we have no control, by the way. China controls WHO. So that’s what it does. WHO is totally controlled by China. We could have saved $400 million a year. It’s a lot of money. Now they’re asking for even more dictatorial power and more and more and more of our money, but they’re getting nothing more from China.

(01:30:40)
When we’re dealing with the Biden administration, it seems that every single day is April Fools’ Day, every day. They want an open border so that anybody can come in, and everybody else wants it to be closed. It’s April Fools’. We want an open border. That’s April Fools’. We want voter ID. They don’t want voter ID. Who wouldn’t want voter ID? 88% of the Democrats, except for the leadership because they can’t cheat with voter ID, but 88% of the Democrats want voter ID, but they don’t want voter ID. It’s April Fools’ Day.

(01:31:31)
They want to take the soldiers out of Afghanistan before we take our people and equipment out, but we want the soldiers to come out last. So then they blow it into a catastrophe, the most embarrassing event in the history of our country. It’s April Fools’ Day. They want all electric cars that don’t go very far. I have a friend. He bought a car. He said, “The car’s wonderful. But I go for an hour and a half and I got to put a charger and I can’t find a charger. I’m going crazy.” Also, all the batteries and everything, the material comes all out of China.

(01:32:14)
We have oil and gas, but we don’t want the oil and gas cars. But we want everything, including electric cars. But we also want gasoline because the cars go longer, and they’re preferred by many people. We don’t like quick drives that are stopped for two and a half hours. It’s April Fools’. They want all electric stoves all over the country, but we don’t have the electric power for that. We want electric stoves, but we also want gas stoves. It’s April Fools’. Why do they want that?

(01:32:58)
They want windmills all over the place that ruin our fields, kill our birds, and are very unreliable and are the most expensive energy ever developed. We want oil, gasoline, natural gas because it’s cheaper, better, and much more powerful. It’s April Fools’ Day. Under my leadership, we will regain energy independence that we had three years ago. We were on our way to massive energy dominance. We would have been paying off our debt because energy is big numbers.

(01:33:33)
It’s not like you’re selling a little product. You’re selling the biggest product of all is energy. We would have been paying off our debt. We would have been the strongest. We were going to be. We were already bigger under my administration, bigger than Saudi Arabia or Russia. We were going to be much bigger than both of them combined. Within about a year, we would have made the kind of money they’re making times five, and we would have been paying off debt and we would have been reducing taxes. It would have been a beautiful thing. But they came in and they said, “We don’t want that.”

(01:34:06)
I will fight for a constitutional amendment to impose term limits on members of Congress, and I will move heaven and Earth to fully and finally secure our elections. All Republican governors should immediately go for paper ballots, one-day voting, and voter ID. The problem we have is we have governors, and some of them we like and some of them we don’t, but they’re all talk. Think of it. They control the state. We have a lot of governors. They should go for that, paper ballots, same-day voting.

(01:34:59)
France had 37 million people voting. They voted in one day, and at 10:30 in the evening, they called the winner. There were no problems. They had paper ballots, same-day voting, voter ID. They only had a little mail-in, and we would have this, too, for soldiers that are very far away or people that are legitimately sick, legitimately, as opposed to millions and millions of ballots flooding the offices. They used COVID to cheat. But until that day comes, Republicans must compete using every lawful means to win. That means swamping the left with mail-in votes, early votes, and election day votes. Have to do it.

(01:35:49)
We have to change our thinking because some bad things happened. For some reason, Republicans like to vote on election day, right? The problem is you get there, and they have so many already started. But worse, if you take a look at Kari Lake in Arizona where they waited and waited. “Don’t vote now. Wait till Tuesday. Wait till Tuesday. Wait till Tuesday.” In the Republican areas, a tremendous percentage of the machines were broken, and you couldn’t vote. They had lines that were a mile long all over the place, Republican areas, and they couldn’t vote.

(01:36:28)
They said, “Come back in seven hours.” But people can’t do that. They have Little League. They have doctors. They might love Kari. They might love the Republican party and everything we stand for, but they can’t do that. They were standing in the hot sun for hours and hours. And then they sent in mechanics to fix them, and when the mechanics left, they were far worse. They lose those cases in courts because our judges have no courage to do what’s right. They have no courage to do what’s right.

(01:36:56)
I can tell you that was the case in 2022, where we can’t get rid of drop boxes. We need them in every church. What we have to do, we have to put our own drop boxes in. Zucker Bucks spent $500 million. If you contribute $5,700, $1 more than that, to a candidate, they put you in jail. This guy gave $500 million for all of this crap that they were doing shenanigans. They were handing out the money like it was candy, and that’s fine, but people are going to jail for spending like $93 too much because it’s not according to election law.

(01:37:46)
Until we can eliminate ballot harvesting, we will become masters at ballot harvesting. We have no choice, beating the Democrats at their own game. We’ll do it legally. The agenda I’ve laid out today will end America’s destruction, but it is not enough just to stop the forces tearing America down. I want once again to build America up. We have to build our country. We don’t build anymore. All we do is investigate everybody.

(01:38:20)
You ever see television? It used to be we’d build our military. We were proud of it. We’d be doing all things. All you see on the thing, investigation, investigation, investigation. Now, with that being said, you got to look at Hunter. I mean how crooked is that deal? But it’s not something I really … I’d like to get back to building our country and making our country great again, but it’s time to start talking about greatness for our country.

(01:38:50)
Our objective will be a quantum leap in the American standard of living, especially for our young people. As I announced yesterday, we will hold a competition to build new freedom cities on the frontier to give countless Americans a new shot at home ownership and the American dream. It’s such a wonderful, beautiful thing. I’ll challenge the governors of all 50 states, all 50 states, to join me in a great beautification campaign. We will rename our schools and boulevards not after communists, but after great American patriots. We will get rid of bad and ugly buildings in return to the magnificent classical style of western civilization. We will support baby boomers, and we will support baby bonuses for a new baby boom. How does that sound? I want a baby boom. Oh, you men are so lucky out there. You’re so lucky. You are so lucky, men. Our country will shine, thrive, and prosper like never before. All of this is within our reach, but only if we have the courage to complete the job, gut the deep state, reclaim our democracy, and banish the tyrants and Marxists into political exile forever.

(01:40:26)
They are bad for us. They want us to fail. They want our country to go down. They are sick people. Change only happens if we plow fearlessly ahead and declare with one voice that the era of woke and weaponized government is over. That is our task. That is our mission. This is the turning point and the time for that decision because, as you’ve probably heard me say before, we will not back down. We will not bend. We will not quit. We will not yield. We will press forward with push. We will press forward with vigor. We will push onward, and we will finish what we started.

(01:41:14)
We started a great, great, positive revolution. Nobody’s ever seen anything like it before. It’s called Make America Great Again. We want to make America great again. We will cross the finish line. We will dismantle the deep state. We will demolish woke tyranny, and we will restore the American republic to all of its radiant glory, and with God’s help and your support, we will make America powerful again. We want to have a powerful country. We need to have a powerful country.

(01:41:58)
We will make America wealthy again. We will make America strong again. That’s what we want. We want strength. Think of your heart pounding, we will make America proud again. We will make America safe again, not like our streets of the cities which are a disgrace for the entire world to watch, and we will make America great again. Thank you very much, CPAC. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you, everybody. Thank you. Thank you.

Jacinda Ardern: ' A belief that you can be kind, but strong', Resignation speech - 2023

19 January 2023, Napier, New Zealand

Good afternoon.

Today, I have two important announcements to make.

The first is the election date. Under the last government, the practice began of sharing the election date at the beginning of election year. Early announcements allow for planning and for preparation by the Electoral Commission, by government agencies, and political parties -- and is, I believe, best practice. That’s why in 2020 we announced at the beginning of election year, and I do so again today.

The general election for 2023 will be held on Saturday the 14th of October. (I can see in the room who has won the sweepstake.) In setting this date, I've considered the advice of the Electoral Commission, public holidays and school holidays, the advance voting periods, and important events and fixtures. I believe this date best accommodates each of these factors.

Consideration of the date over the summer, and the impending election and new political term has also given me time for reflection. I'm entering now my sixth year in office. And for each of these years, I have given my absolute all. I believe that leading a country is the most privileged job anyone could ever have, but also one of the more challenging. You cannot, and should not do it unless you have a full tank -- plus a bit in reserve for those unexpected challenges.

This summer, I had hoped to find a way to prepare not just for another year, but another term -- because that is what this year requires. I have not been able to do that. And so today, I am announcing that I will not be seeking re-election and that my term as Prime Minister will conclude no later than the 7th of February.

This has been the most fulfilling five and a half years of my life. But it has also had its challenges. Amongst an agenda focused on housing, child poverty, and climate change, we encountered a major biosecurity incursion, a domestic terror event, a major natural disaster, a global pandemic, and an economic crisis. The decisions that had to be made have been continual and they have been weighty.

But I am not leaving because it was hard. Had that been the case I probably would have departed two months into the job. I am leaving because with such a privileged role comes responsibility, the responsibility to know when you are the right person to lead, and also when you are not. I know what this job takes and I know that I no longer have enough in the tank to do it justice. It's that simple.

But I absolutely believe and know there are others around me who do. We have achieved a huge amount in the last five years -- and I'm so proud of that. We are in a fundamentally different place on climate change than where we were, with ambitious targets and a plan to achieve them.

 We have turned around child poverty statistics and made the most significant increases in welfare and the state housing stock that we have seen in many decades.

 We’ve made it easier to access education and training.

 We've improved the pay and conditions of workers, and shifted our settings towards a high wage, high skilled economy.

 And we’ve worked hard to make progress on issues around our national identity. And I believe that teaching history in schools and celebrating our own indigenous national holiday [Matariki] will all make a difference for years to come.

 And we’ve done that while responding to some of the biggest threats to the health and economic wellbeing of our nation, arguably, since World War II.

The team that has done all of that, they have been some of the best people I've ever had the privilege of working with, and they are well placed to take us forward as we continue to focus on our economic recovery with one of the strongest economies in the world. They are also a team who are incredibly well placed to contest the next election. In fact, I am not leaving because I believe we can’t win the election, but because I believe we can and will, and we need a fresh set of shoulders for that challenge.

I know there will be much discussion in the aftermath of this decision as to what the so called “real” reason was. I can tell you that what I am sharing today is it. The only interesting angle that you will find is that after going on six years of some big challenges I am human. Politicians are human. We give all that we can, for as long as we can, and then it’s time. And for me, it’s time.

I intend to remain the Member for Mount Albert through till April. This will give me a bit of time in the electorate before I depart and also spare them and the country a by-election. Beyond that, I have no plan, no next steps. All I know is that whatever I do, I will try and find ways to keep working for New Zealand and that I am looking forward to spending time with my family once again. Arguably, they are the ones that have sacrificed the most out of all of us. And so to Neve, Mum is looking forward to being there when you start school this year. And to Clarke, let’s finally get married.

As for the next Labour leader, the caucus has seven days to ascertain whether one individual holds more than two-thirds of the caucus support. Caucus has agreed today that a vote will occur in three days' time on Sunday the 22nd of January. If a leader is successfully elected, I will issue my resignation soon after to the Governor-General, and a new Prime Minister will be sworn in. If no one is able to garner this level of support within caucus, the leadership contest will go to the wider membership.

My opportunity to thank the many people I need to will likely come in April when I depart Parliament, 15 years after having been sworn in. Till then, I see my role to help the Labour Party, who I consider to be my family, navigate this next phase; and then, to leave the next colleague who takes on this role, all the space they need to make their mark.

For my part, I want to finish with a simple thank you to New Zealanders for giving me this opportunity to serve, and to take on what has and will always be the greatest role of my life. I hope in return I leave behind a belief that you can be kind, but strong; empathetic, but decisive; optimistic, but focused; that you can be your own kind of leader -- one that knows when it’s time to go.

Simon Pegg: 'F*ck the Tories', Rant about Maths curriculum - 2023

I love Simon Pegg pic.twitter.com/g9lSf5meeK

— Janey Godley (@JaneyGodley) January 5, 2023

5 January 2023, London, United Kingdom

So, Rishi Sunak our unmandated, unelected Prime Minister twice removed has decided that it should be compulsory for children to learn Maths up until the age of 18, What a prick!

What about arts and humanities, and fostering this county’s amazing reputation for creativity and self-expression? What about that?

What about the kids that don’t want to do maths? I hated maths! I dropped maths as soon as I could. And, I’ve never needed it other than the skill set I acquired at the age 12.

No Rishi Sunak wants a fucking drone army of data-entering robots. 
What a tosser! Fuck the Tories! Get rid of them, please. Fuck! Fuck you Rishi Sunak and fuck the Tories

Jon Stewart: 'I am not used to the cruelty', Senate blocking PACT Act - 2022

29 July 2022, Washington DC, USA

So ain't this a bitch? Ain't this a bitch?

America's heroes who fought in our wars outside sweating their asses off, with oxygen, battling all kinds of ailments while these motherfuckers sit in the air conditioning walled off from any of it.

They don't have to hear it. They don't have to see it. They don't have to understand that these are human beings.

Do you get it yet? Do we see that these are … these aren't heroes. These are men and women, mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers that we just let stand outside in the heat when they can't breathe.

I'm going to read you something. This is beautiful. I'm going to read you something beautiful. You know what... I said a curse word and I'm sorry about that. That was my fault. Let me say something beautiful.

There's a tweet from Senator Rick Scott of Florida from yesterday. It's beautiful. And I'm sorry about the cursing and let me say something beautiful to make it up to you.

"I was honoured to join the USO today and make care packages for our brave military members in gratitude ... In gratitude! ... of their sacrifice and service to our nation." And there's a beautiful picture. I wish you could see it. He's standing with a little package. Did you get the package? It's like, I think it has M&Ms in it and some cookies. And some moist towelettes.

Honestly. I don't even know what to say, I've been coming down here. 10, 15 years. I'm used to the hypocrisy. Christina Keen will tell you from DFW, she sat in an office with Mitch McConnell and a war veteran from Kentucky and he looked that man in the eyes and he said, 'We'll get it done'. And he lied to him cuz Mitch McConnell yesterday flipped.

I'm used to the lies. I'm used to the hypocrisy. Senator Pat Twomey won't take a meeting with the veterans groups, sends out his Chief of Staff. I'm used to the cowardice. I've been here a long time.

The Senate is where accountability goes to die. These people don't care. They're never losing their jobs. They're never losing their healthcare. Pat Twomey didn't lose his job. He's walking away. God knows what kind of pot of gold he's stepping into, to lobby this government to shit on more people.

I'm used to all of it, but I am not used to the cruelty.

They passed it June 16th. They passed the PACT Act 84 to 14. You don't even see those scores in the Senate anymore. They passed it. Every one of these individuals that has been fighting for years, standing on the shoulders of Vietnam veterans who have been fighting for years, standing on the shoulders of Persian Gulf War veterans fighting for years, Desert Storm veterans to just get the healthcare and benefits that they earned from their service. And I don't care if they were fighting for our freedom. I don't care if they were fighting for the flag. I don't care if they were fighting cuz they wanted to get out of a drug treatment centre or it was jail or the army. I don't give a shit. They lived up to their oath and yesterday they spit on it in abject cruelty.

These people thought they could finally breathe. You think their struggles end because the Pact Act passes. All it means is they don't have to decide between their cancer drugs and their house. Their struggle continues.

Crowd member: This bill does a lot more than just give us healthcare

Gives them healthcare, gives them benefits. Lets them live.

Crowd member: Keeps veterans from going homeless. Keeps veterans from becoming addicts. Keeps veterans from committing suicide.

Senator Twomey's not going to hear that cuz he won't sit down with this man cuz he is a fucking coward. You hear me? A coward. And like I say, I'm used to it. But this type of cruelty on those that we say we hold up as our most valued Americans. Then what are we? Pat Twomey stood up there ... 'Patriot Pat Twomey', Excuse me, I'm sorry. I want to give him his propers. I wanna make sure that I give him his propers ... 'Patriot Pat Twomey' stood on the floor and said, 'this is a slush fund. They're going to use 400 billion to spend on whatever they want.'

That's nonsense. I call bullshit. This isn't a slush fund. You know what's a slush fund. The OCO, the Overseas Contingency Operations fund. 60 billion. 70 billion dollars every year on top of 500 billion, 600 billion, 700 billion of a defence budget. That's a slush fund. Unaccountable, no guardrails. Did Pat Twomey stand up and say 'This is irresponsible. The guardrails?' No, not one of them did. They vote for it year after year after year. You don't support the troops. You support the war machine. That's all you care about.

Crowd member: He personally signed the doc proclamation to

Boy, they haven't, haven't met a war they won't sign up for and they haven't met a veteran they won't screw over. What the fuck are we?

Veteran: Barbaric! Barbaric.

And now they're going to go away. Pat Twomey says, 'I've got veterans groups behind me'. I call bullshit. These are the veterans groups. VFW, American Legion, IADA, Wounded Warriors, DAV, Amvets. They're all here.

This is the veterans community, Senator. They don't stand behind you. In fact, you won't let them stand in front of you.

Crowd member: Cowards.

Cowards all of them. Cowards all of them. And now they say, well, this'll get done, maybe after we get back from our summer recess, maybe during the lame duck because they're on Senate time. Do you understand? You live around here. Senate time is ridiculous ...

These motherfuckers live to 200. They're tortoises. They live forever and they never lose their jobs and they never lose their benefits and they never lose all those things. Well, they're not on senate time. They're on human time, cancer time.

Don't you have families? Don't you have people who are deciding how to live their last moments? I know some of them, they've been down here advocating with us. They spent their remaining time advocating so that other soldiers didn't have to face the indignities and the depravity and the desperation that they faced. And none of them will hear it. And none of them care except to tweet. Boy, they'll tweet it. Can't wait to see what they come up with on Veterans Day, on Memorial Day! Well, this is the reality of it.

I honestly don't even know what to say anymore. But we need your help because we're not leaving. These people cannot go away. I don't know if you know this. Obviously I'm not a military expert. I didn't serve in the military. But from what I understand, you're not allowed to just leave your post when the mission isn't completed. Apparently you take an oath, you swear an oath and you can't leave.

But these folks can leave cuz they're on Senate time.

Go ahead, go home, spend time with your families cuz these people can't do it anymore. So they can't leave until this gets done. Cuz these people will not give up, they will not give in and they will not relent.

This is an embarrassment to the Senate, to the country, to the founders and all that they profess to hold dear.

And if this is America first, then America is fucked.

Anthony Albanese: 'A better future for all Australians', election victory speech - 2022

21 May 2022, Canterbury-Hurlstone Park RSL Club, Sydney, Australia

I begin by acknowledging the traditional owners of the land on which we meet. I pay my respects to their elders past, present and emerging. And on behalf of the Australian Labor Party, I commit to the Uluru Statement from the heart in full.

And I say to my fellow Australians, thank you for this extraordinary honour. Tonight, the Australian people have voted for change. I am humbled by this victory and I'm honoured to be given the opportunity to serve as the 31st prime minister of Australia.

My Labor team will work every day to bring Australians together. And I will lead a government worthy of the people of Australia. A government as courageous and hardworking and caring as the Australian people are themselves.

Earlier tonight, Scott Morrison called me to congratulate myself and the Labor Party on our victory at the election.

Scott, very graciously, wished me well. And I thanked him for that and I wish him well. And I thank him for the service that he has given to our country as Prime Minister.

I also want to acknowledge and thank Jenny Morrison and their two daughters for their contribution and sacrifice as well.

My fellow Australians, it says a lot about our great country that a son of a single mum who was a disability pensioner, who grew up in public housing down the road in Camperdown can stand before you tonight as Australia's prime minister.

Every parent wants more for the next generation than they had. My mother dreamt of a better life for me. And I hope that my journey in life inspires Australians to reach for the stars.

I want Australia to continue to be a country that no matter where you live, who you worship, who you love or what your last name is, that places no restrictions on your journey in life. My fellow Australians, I think they've got the name by now. I think they've got that.

I know at the beginning of the campaign they said people didn't know me but I reckon they've got it.

During this campaign, I have put forward a positive, clear plan for a better future for our country. And I have shared the two principles that will be part of a government that I lead.

No one left behind because we should always look after the disadvantaged and the vulnerable. But also no one held back, because we should always support aspiration and opportunity. That is what my government will do.

That is the what, but the how is also just as important? Because I want to bring Australians together.

I want to seek our common purpose and promote unity and not fear and -- optimism, not fear and division. It is what I have sought to do throughout my political life. And what I will bring to the leadership of our country, it is a show of strength to collaborate and work with people, not weakness.

I want to find that common ground where together we can plant our dreams. To unite around our shared love of this country, our shared faith in Australia's future, our shared values of fairness and opportunity, and hard work and kindness to those in need.

And I can promise all Australians this — no matter how you voted today, the government I lead will respect every one of you every day. And I'll seek to get your vote next time.

We are the greatest country on earth. But we can have an even better future if we seize the opportunities that are right there in front of us. The opportunity to shape change, rather than be shaped by it. And we can shape change more effectively if we seek to you knowing people on that journey of change.

Together we can end the climate wars. Together we can take advantage of the opportunity for Australia to be a renewable energy superpower. Together we can work in common interests with business and unions to drive productivity, lift wages and profits.

I want an economy that works for people, not the other way around. Together we can as a country say that all of us, if the Fair Work Commission doesn't cut the wage of minimum aged workers, we can say that we welcome that absolutely. Together we can strengthen universal healthcare through Medicare.

We can protect universal superannuation. And we can write universal childcare into that proud tradition. Together we can fix the crisis in aged care. Together we can make forward equal opportunity for women a national economic and social priority. Together we can and will establish a national anti-corruption commission. Together we can be a self-reliant, resilient nation, confident in our values and in our place in the world. And together we can embrace the Uluru Statement from the Heart.

We can answer its patient, gracious call for a voice enshrined in our constitution. Because all of us ought to be proud that amongst our great multicultural society we count the oldest living continuous culture in the world. And I acknowledge Australia's next Indigenous Affairs Minister, Linda Burney, who is here.

My fellow Australians, no one gets here by themselves. And I wouldn't be standing here tonight without the support, hard work and belief of so many people. To my parliamentary team, including my Deputy, Richard Marles, and my Senate leader, Penny Wong. My terrific economic team led by Jim Chalmers and Katy Gallagher.

On Monday morning, arrangements are in place to have these people sworn in as members of my team. To enable Penny and I to attend the important Quad leader's meeting in Tokyo, with President Biden, Prime Minister Kishida and Prime Minister Modi. And I want the leaders of the economic team to start work on Monday morning as well.

I wanted to thank my shadow ministry and my amazing caucus members, including the people who are here tonight at this joint function in the corner of our seats, including Tony Burke, who is here. I want to thank all of our Labor candidates. I want to thank all those who have worked so hard for this victory.

We stand on your shoulders, most rank and file members of the Labor Party will never ask for anything. They knock on doors, they make calls, they work so hard. They hand out how to votes. They push the cause of Labor at the local P & C, the local kid's footy, the local netball, when they're shopping in the supermarket, when they talk to their neighbours.

I thank each and every one of the true believers of the Australian Labor Party.

And I proudly thank the members of the mighty trade union movement.

I do want to thank my campaign director, our amazing national secretary, Paul Erickson, and his team. My staff are led by my first campaign director back in 1996. And my electorate office team who haven't seen that much of me, who look after this electorate led by Helen Rogers. Thank you very much.

But to all those — and I'm not going to name them because there's too many — there's a lot of people who believed in me and backed me over many decades in this great movement to be where I am today. You know who you are and I know who you are and I thank you.

I said I've been underestimated my whole life during the campaign. Now while all that is true, I have also been lifted up by others who saw something in me and who encouraged me in life on this journey.

And I pledged to the Australian people here tonight, I am here not to occupy the space, but to make a positive difference each and every day.

And to the amazing diverse people of Grayndler. All politics is local. And in 1996, there were various people who wrote off the chances of Labor holding on to that seat. This is my 10th election. And I want to say thank you for placing your faith in me. It is an absolute honour to be your voice in our national parliament.

To my partner, Jodie, thank you for coming into my life and for sharing this journey.

And to my proudest achievement, my son, Nathan. Thank you, mate, for your love and support. Your mother, who's here tonight, Carmel, we are both so proud of the caring, wonderful, smart young man you have become. Love you, Nathan.

To my Mum, who's beaming down on us. Thank you. And I hope there are families in public housing watching this tonight. Because I want every parent to be able to tell their child no matter where you live or where you come from, in Australia the doors of opportunity are open to us all.

And like every other Labor government, we'll just widen that door a bit more. Friends, we have made history tonight. And tomorrow, together, we begin the work of building a better future. A better future for all Australians. Thank you very much."

Jordon Steele-John: 'The Morrison government let the community down', Response to the pandemic - 2022

8 February 2022, Canberra, Australia

I rise to speak on the motion to suspend standing orders. During this great COVID-19 pandemic, the Australian community—disabled people, older Australians, First Nations peoples, young people—needed their government. They needed their government to listen to them and to act to provide help. And over the last two years this Morrison government, time and time again, have failed. They have let the Australian community down. The Australian community said, 'Let us have vaccinations. Let them get to the people that need them. Let's get it in quick; let's learn from the failures of other jurisdictions around the world as they battled the pandemic,' and the Morrison government let us down. The Australian community said, 'Let us have income supports so that we can focus on getting better, rather than worrying about where our next meal comes from,' and the Morrison government let the community down. The community said, 'Let us access, for everyone, the basics that we need to be safe during the pandemic. Let us access RATs and masks and proper ventilation in our schools to keep our kids safe,' and the Morrison government let the community down. Failure compounded failure, and the outcome was people put at risk and people dying.

Disabled people in this country will never forgive this feckless government for its disgraceful failure to keep that community safe, to keep our community safe. We will never forgive you, nor will the older Australians of this country, nor will the First Nations peoples of this country and nor will the immunocompromised of this country, for propagating the absolute lie, the total misrepresentation, that it is acceptable for our lives to be lost in this pandemic and that anybody with an underlying condition can be and should be written off as collateral damage. You have done so much harm in your time here. So much good work that needed to be done has gone undone. So much time has been squandered. The work of so many dedicated community members during this pandemic, attempting to keep each other safe, has been undermined by the reality that this government sees human lives far more in dollars and cents than it does in inherent human value.

For all these reasons and so much more, this government divided, this government benighted, this government failed and rambling into ruin, must now be swept from this place. A lack of confidence does not nearly cover it. Condemnation and allocation to the dustbin of history is all that you deserve. May you go there and never be thought of nor spoken of again.

Mia Motley: 'We have the collective capacity to transform', COP 27 Conference - 2022

8 November, Cairo, Egypt

Excellences, distinguished ladies and gentlemen, permit me to thank you your Excellency President El-Sisi for your wonderful hospitality, and for all courtesies extended to us. And I want to congratulate Simon Steele, a son of the Caribbean of whom we are very proud in his new role as executive director.

I came here to say a few things, but the chorus that we've had from this stage has been clear. I don't need to repeat that we have the power of choice. Every speaker on this platform has done that.

I don't need to repeat that. This is the COP that needs action. All of us as a chorus have said that.

I don't need to repeat the horror and the devastation wrecked upon this earth over the course of the last 12 months since we met in Glasgow, whether the apocalyptic floods in Pakistan or the heatwaves from Europe to China, or indeed in the last few days in my own region, the devastation caused in Belize by Tropical Storm Lisa or the torrential floods a few days ago in St Lucia.

We don't need to repeat it because a picture spoke a thousand words earlier.

But what we do need to do is to understand why, why we are not moving any further. '1.5 to stay alive' cannot be that mantra, and I take no pride in being associated with having to repeat it over and over and over. We have the collective capacity to transform. We are in the country that built pyramids. We know what it is to remove slavery from our civilization. We know what it is to be able to find a vaccine within two years when a pandemic hits us. We know what it is to put a man on the moon and now we put a rover on Mars. We know what it is.

But the simple political will that is necessary not just to come here and make promises, but to deliver on them, and to make a definable difference in the lives of the people who we have a responsibility to serve, seem still not to be capable of being produced.

I ask us how many more and how much more must happen. And I say so because there is no simplicity in it. We get it. I come from a small island state that has high ambition, but that is not able to deliver on that high ambition because the global industrial strategy that we have has fault lines in it. Our ability to access electric cars or our ability to access batteries or photovoltic panels are constrained by those countries that have the dominant presence and can produce for themselves.

But the global south remains at the mercy of the global north on these issues. But it isn't only in that. We heard our gorgeous north speak about the difference in the course of capital to those of us in the global south. And I ask us how many more people must speak before those of us who have the capacity to instruct our directors at the World Bank — is that called the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development only for the 20th century? — at the IMF, which has least has been trying more than the World Bank, how many more countries must falter , particularly in a world that is now suffering the consequences of war and inflation, and countries therefore are unable to meet the challenges of finding the necessary resources to finance their way to net zero.

This world looks still too much like it did when it was part of an imperialistic empire. The global North borrows at interest rates of between one to 4%. The global south at 14%, and then we wonder why the just energy partnerships are not working.

Similarly, we ask ourselves if countries that want to finance their way to net zero, and want to do the right thing can't get the critical supplies, will they not have to rely again on natural gas as that clean bridge?

This is the ball reality, and we have come here to ask us to open our minds to different possibilities.

We believe that we have a plan. We believe that there can be the establishment of a climate mitigation trust that unlocks $5 trillion of private sector savings. If we can summon the will to use the SDRs. 500 billion of SDRs, special drawing rights, in a way that unlocks the private sector capital. We believe that that requires a change in the attitude of Congress. Because the agreement that establishes the International Monetary Fund requires 85% to change that agreement. And if the United States government has 17% of the quarter, then it can't be done, Mr. Gore, without your Congress.

Similarly, we accept that there was and must be a commitment to unlocking concession funding for climate vulnerable countries. There is no way that developing countries who have been graduated can fight this battle without access to concessional funding.

We heard it on this stage from the head of my old alma mater at USC. We believe that it is critical that we address the issue of loss and damage. The top must come to an end. And I'd like to salute Denmark and Belgium and Scotland, for their own modest ways of trying to accept the precepts and principles of loss and damage as critical and as morally just.

But for loss and damage to work, we believe that it can't only be an issue of asking state parties to do the right thing, although they must, but we believe that the non-state actors and the stakeholders, the oil and gas companies and those who facilitate them need to be brought into a special convocation between now and COP 28. How do companies make 200 billion in profits in the last three months and not expect to contribute at least 10 cents in every dollar of profit to a loss and damage fund?

This is what our people expect and I ask us as we reflect on what a loss and damage fund can look like and who should access it, that we convene a special convocation that doesn't only involve state parties, but non-state actors such as the same companies. We believe as well that a time has come for the introduction of natural disaster and pandemic clauses in our debt instruments. I have said that if Barbados is hit tomorrow, because we have natural disaster clauses, God forbid if we are hit tomorrow, we unlock 18% of GDP over the next two years, because what we do is effectively put a pause on all of our debt and put it at the end for two years and put it at the end and we pay back that money at the end. But what we get is the flexibility in the first two years to address issues of damage and loss.

And finally, we believe that the multilateral development banks have to reform. Yes, it is time for us to revisit Bretton Woods. Yes, it is time for us to remember that those countries who sit in this room today did not exist at the time that the Bretton Woods institutions were formed for the most part, and therefore, we have not seen, we have not been heard sufficiently. And if we are therefore to rise to the occasion to play our part, to stop the tragic loss of life that we have seen on these screens, and the impact on livelihoods that we are feeling across our countries, then there needs to be a new deal with respect to the Bretton Woods institutions. And we need to ensure that they have a different view to their risk appetite, that we look at the SDRs, and that we look at other innovative ways to expand the lending that is available from billions to trillions.

My friends, the time is running out on us. And yes, we have the power of choice. When asked, what should he do when he became president of South Africa, should he pursue a path of vengeance or should he seek to build a state, Nelson Mandela chose to be able to build a state and to keep a country together.

He chose blessings instead of curse, because he believed that it would make a defining difference.

When given the choice of how to treat to post-war Europe, President Truman settled the Marshall Plan that made the definable difference to the countries that were responsible, yes, for the destruction of so much and for the loss of life of so many. But in spite of that they chose to rise above it.

I ask today, what will our choice be? We have the power to act or the power to remain passive and do nothing.

I pray that we will leave Egypt with a clear understanding that the things that are facing us today are all interconnected. I thank President El-Sisi for his comments that there needs to be peace, because countries like ours continue to suffer as a result of a war that we have no part of, and a war that we want to see come to an end.

Our people on this earth deserve better and what is more our leaders know better.

Because while many of us may not have been alive during the Great wars, the consequences of those wars to live with us and we have the capacity to choose differently. I ask the people of the world and not just the leaders, therefore, to hold us accountable and to ask us to act in your name, to save this earth, and to save the people of this earth. The choice is ours. What will you do? What will you choose to save?

Thank you.

Barack Obama: 'Democracy itself is on the ballet!', Midterms rally for Shapiro and Fetterman - 2022

5 November 2022, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA

Sometimes they miss class in the morning and in the afternoon. That person, they might tell you they're voting, but they might not have voted yet. So you've got to help them make sure that they turn out, because this election requires every single one of us to do our part.

It's that important. It is that important.

You heard our president talk about the stakes in this election. You heard Josh Shapiro and John Fetterrman talk about the stakes in this election, A fair economy that gives working people a fair shot. That's on the ballot. Fundamental rights are on the ballot, right? Yeah? Truth and facts and logic and reason and basic decency are on the ballot. Democracy itself is on the ballot. The stakes are high! Yes, the stakes are high.

But look, I wanna be honest cuz sometimes political rallies, everybody's feeling optimistic, everybody's getting fired up. But I listen, I want folks to listen to this. I want people to be clear. Midterms are always hard for whichever party is in the White House. And typically midterms are tougher on Democrats. A lot of folks don't pay attention to politics the way they do in a presidential year. Maybe they don't think that Congress matters as much. Maybe they don't think their vote will matter as much. Younger people especially are less likely to vote in midterms. And that hurts Democrats because younger people trend in a more progressive direction.

And I can tell you, I can tell you from experience that midterms matter. A lot. Some of you are too young. But let me refresh your memories or give you a history lesson. When I was president, I got my butt whooped in midterm elections. I was elected in the midst of a financial crisis. And we did the right things to get the economy back on track, but it was slow and people were frustrated

Just like they are right now, after we're coming out of a crisis, sometimes it takes a while for things to settle down. But people are experiencing things right now, immediately. right? And so we lost in 2010, we lost the House. And then in 2014, even though now the economy was improving, we saw the lowest voting rate recorded in modern history, maybe in recent memory. And we lost the Senate. And because we did, progress on big important issues from immigration to gun safety to climate change, either got a lot harder or in some cases just ground to a halt.

There you go. Now I'm not big on looking backwards, but sometimes I can't help imagine what it would've been like if enough people had turned out to vote in those elections. And imagine if we had maintained control of the House and we had maintained control of the Senate. Imagine if we had been able to fix our broken immigration system back in 2011. Imagine if we had been able to pass meaningful gun safety legislation back then to prevent more deaths. Imagine if we'd been able to reduce our emissions even further than we did. We'd be further along in avoiding the worst impacts of climate change. If we had kept the Senate in 2014, we'd have a very different Supreme Court making decisions about our most basic rights.

So midterms are no joke. Yeah, sometimes we get so focused on the presidency. But I am here to tell you that our democracy works as a team sport. A president can't do stuff alone. That's not how our system is set up. So what happens in the House, what happens in the Senate is vitally critical. And the good news is, you have an outstanding president right now in the White House.

So you don't have to just imagine what might happen. He's doing stuff right now, solving problems right now with a Democratic Congress and he can continue it if you vote.

Think about what Joe Biden has already got accomplished, despite a historic pandemic. He not only repaired the economy and kept unemployment low, which by the way, you should not take for granted. Because a lot of folks thought with a historic pandemic like that and the shutdown, that we would potentially go into a great depression. And we did not. And unemployment is very low right now because of the actions he took. He's lowered healthcare and prescription drug costs. He passed a infrastructure bill that will put more folks here in Pennsylvania and around the country to work and make our economy stronger. He's made the biggest investment in clean energy in history. If you help Democrats keep the House and get a few more seats in the Senate, you can guarantee he'll make more progress on the issues you care about.

You've seen, you've seen what he's accomplished with the barest of margins. If you vote, he can do even more. But it depends on you.

It depends on you.

Now Republicans know this and that's why they're doing everything they can to prevent you from voting. This is one of the only major parties, in worldwide that actively tries to discourage citizens from voting.

Hey, don't boo, vote. Vote. They can't hear you boo, but they'll hear your vote.

So they pass laws to make it harder to vote. They're a lot of times many of the elected officials or the people who are running to run elections right now, are suggesting that maybe they would not count votes, nullify votes, overturn votes. But the big tactic that they're gonna use, because they always do this, especially in midterms, year after year, election after election, they will try to make you afraid. They will resort to fear. They want to scare the living daylights out of everybody. And most of the time those fears have a very slender relationship to reality.

So back in 2010, Republicans try to make everybody afraid about deficits and death panels. Oh, deficits are gonna ruin the country. It turns out the deficits didn't explode. We actually brought them down. And by the way, as soon as they got a Republican in office, they didn't suddenly care about deficits and passed big tax cuts for the wealthy, weren't paid for., thank you, man. we've got some outstanding historians here. That's good because you were only eight when all this happened! So I'm impressed you knew this.

10 years later, not a single person has faced a death panel for Obamacare. On the other hand 35 million people now have health covers thanked to the Affordable Care Act. And Joe Biden just made it that much cheaper to sign up. So that was their tactic in 2010.

2014, same playbook, try to make you afraid of everything. Ebola and ISIS and immigrants, and they were all coming to your neighbourhood

It turned out there were no ISIS fighters pouring across the border. By the Fall. the number of migrants, they were mostly unaccompanied children had dropped considerably. And then it turned out that we knew how to prevent Ebola from reaching our shores because, you know what? We believed in science. It was very helpful in dealing with this disease.

But you know what? People got afraid. People got afraid. It was visceral. And so they either didn't turn out, didn't turn in the right places. We lost the Senate. You know what happened because of it.

So midterm elections matter. Republicans understand this. I understand it. I promise you. And Joe Biden understands it. And if you keep that in mind, if you ignore the fearmongering, if you ignore the cynicism, if you vote, then we will keep this country moving forward.

But you gotta do it. You have to do it. The only way to make this economy fair, the only way to make our democracy stronger is if we fight for it. You can't take it for granted. And that starts with electing people who know you, who see you, who care about you, who can walk in your shoes and see through your eyes and know what it's like to struggle. Know what it's like to get sick. Know what it's like to have to pay off student loans. Know what it's like when things aren't just handed to you, but you gotta work for em.

That's what you did two years ago when you sent Joe Biden to the White House. He knows you. He's been there. He's fighting for you every day, doing everything you can to put more money in your pocket, to make streets safer, to bring more good paying jobs here to Pennsylvania.

I can tell you that the presidency does not change who you are. You can tell by my successor it didn't change him. It reveals who you are. It reveals who you are under the stress and strain of the presidency, and the decency, the empathy, the belief that everybody counts, that we have seen on display from Joe Biden these past two years. That's who he is. And that's why you need to vote for more leaders like him. That's why you have to vote for Josh Shapiro. That's why you have to vote for John Fetterman. They've shown you who they are.

There are a lot of issues at stake in this election. But in every election, the most basic question you should be asking yourself right now is who will fight for you? Who cares about you? That's the choice that you make in this election like every election. Who will fight for working people who are struggling to pay the bills?

Listen, inflation is a real problem right now, not just here but around the world. It's one of the after effects of the pandemic, it's screwed up supply chains. And it's been compounded by the war in Ukraine, which made energy prices shoot up. And it takes a bite outta everybody's paycheck. And it's frustrating and scary if you're on a fixed income. I get it. So does Joe.

But the question is, who's actually gonna do something about it? The Republicans who wanna gut social security and Medicare while giving more tax cuts to the wealthiest among us, more tax cuts to big corporations. I don't think that's gonna help you. Or is it Democrats like Joe Biden who are lowering the cost of prescription drugs and helping to bring down gas prices and hold oil companies accountable and make healthcare more affordable?

That's the choice in this election. I mean, who do you really think knows more about budgets and having to pay the bills? John Fetterman or Dr. Oz? Come on

<laugh>,

Who will fight to keep your family safe? The Republican politicians who wanna flood our streets with more guns; voted against more resources for police departments? Or democratic leaders who worked with Joe Biden to pass the first major gun safety legislation in nearly 30 years. That's the choice in this election. That's what's at stake right now.

Who will fight for your freedoms? Is it Republican politicians and judicial appointees who think they should get to decide who you love or when you start a family? Or is it Democratic leaders who believe the most intimate personal decisions that we can make belongs to every individual American, not mostly male politicians in Washington.

That's the choice in this election. That's why you have to decide.

And who is gonna actually make democracy work for you? Republicans, they, they've already promised, they've said it. I'm not making this up. They've said it. You can look it up. They've said they're their top priority, they're gonna spend the next two years investigating their political opponents. Now I don't know how that's gonna help you <laugh>. Hey, some of 'em said we're gonna impeach Biden. They're not quite sure why, or what for, but that's irrelevant to them. Think about that. How is that gonna help you, your family, young people, launch a career, start a family, get a mortgage?

So that's one option. The other option is President Biden and Democratic leaders who've worked together and sometimes even gotten Republicans against their best instincts, I guess, to work with them to create new jobs and lower costs and fight climate change.

That's the choice in this election

Between politicians who seem willing to do anything and say anything to get power. And those who share your values and want to make your lives. You just heard from Josh Shapiro. You know what Josh is focused on. He was one of the first people ever to endorse my campaign for president. For some reason he looks the same and I look a lot older. I don't know why!

<laugh>,

But he had my back, he had my back. If you elect him your nice governor, he will have your back every single day. Growing the economy, cutting taxes for working people, not folks who don't need it. Fully funding our schools, supporting our teachers. That's who Josh is,

Now, Josh's opponent. Oh wait, he, he's willing to take the most extreme positions on pretty much everything. I mean, you name it. Global warming. He says it's fake science. Doesn't matter what the thermometers say. Should gay people be allowed to get married or adopt children? Nope. He doesn't think so. He does think it's okay to dress up in a Confederate uniform for a staff photo at the college where he used to teach and hey, it wasn't even Halloween! It was like casual Friday or something.

Listen, Pennsylvania, let's remember what century it is. And listen, this would be funny. It would be an SNL skit if it weren't so serious. You cannot let somebody that detached from reality run your state. So let's get out and vote for somebody you can trust. Josh Shapiro!

You need to vote for John Fetterman. This is a guy who has been fighting for regular folks his whole life. You can tell, just talk to him. He's just a dude. He, he's just like, he is who he says he is. He does not pretend to be somebody else. He doesn't put on airs. He doesn't treat people differently depending on who he is talking to, you can tell what's in his heart, what's in his gut. As your Senator John will help build an economy that works for everyone cuz that's his track record. As a mayor, as somebody who worked with kids who didn't have advantages. He's gonna improve our criminal justice system. He'll lower costs for Pennsylvania families. And he's tough. And not just because he wears shorts in the winter, which I do not do. He knows

But John's stroke didn't change who he is. It didn't change what he cares about. And it will not change who he fights for when he gets to the United States Senate. He will fight for you!

The only person John's fighting for is himself and maybe Donald Trump. [Boo]

What did I say about booing, do not boo, vote, no booing, just voting.

Look it. It's, let's face it, it it's easy to joke about Dr. Oz. I mean, some of these remedies he's pushed on TV - the raspberry ketones and the lavender soap and the palm oil for dementia.

But you know what? That matters. Because if somebody who knows better, who knows better, is willing to sell snake oil just to make money, then he's gonna be willing to do anything and say anything to get elected. Even if it's not good for you. And Pennsylvania, you deserve someone that's that's honest with you. You deserve somebody who cares about you. You deserve somebody who will tell you what they really think, what they really believe. That won't be looking to see what Donald Trump tells them they should be doing or thinking because it's expedient. Somebody who's gonna work for you every day and fight for you.

And by the way, somebody who's actually from Pennsylvania! You deserve somebody like John Fetter,man!

And you deserve leaders who will stand up for a woman's right to control her own body and make her own healthcare decision. I genuinely believe there are people of good conscience who differ from me on abortion, and they should be free to make those choices as their conscience guides them. But we should all agree that women everywhere, whatever their economic station, whatever states they live in, should be able to control what happens with their own bodies.

Josh's opponent says he thinks both women who get an abortion and the doctors who help them or treat them should be prosecuted. John's opponent said the decision about whether they have an abortion should be made by "women, doctors and local political leaders. "

Really? I mean, are you gonna petition the mayor? Are you calling the sheriff?City council member ? School board? Who exactly should tell you when to start a family? You should make that decision. And if that's not worth 15 minutes of your time, the amount of time it takes to vote, I don't know what is.

But if you need another reason to go vote, consider the fact that democracy really is on the ballot. Listen, Democrats may not be perfect. I'm the first one to admit it. I wasn't, wasn't perfect, Joe. He'll tell you, listen you're making decisions all the time. We're all human, We all got foibles. But right now, at this moment, with a few notable exceptions, most Republican politicians aren't even pretending that the rules apply to them anymore. They're not even pretending that facts apply anymore. They just make stuff up. Josh's opponent was on the Capital on January 6th. He was there and wasn't just an observer!

John's opponent hired people who were there to work on his campaign. He decided, well now, yeah, I don't know if it was the guy with the Viking hat or who, but he decided 'I need that guy on my campaign.' Both of them have to this day have refused to say that Joe Biden won the last election.

Now listen, I understand that democracy might not seem like a top priority right now, especially when you're worrying about paying the bills. But when true democracy goes away, we've seen throughout history, we've seen around the world, when true democracy goes away, people get hurt. It has real consequences.

This is not an abstraction. Governments start telling you what books you can read and which ones you can't. Dissidents start getting locked up. Reporters start getting locked up if they're not towing the party line. Corruption reigns because there's no accountability. People get hurt, there are consequences. There's a reason why generations of Americans fought and died for our democracy. There's a reason why suffragists and union members and civil rights activists march and struggled and in some cases gave their lives for this precious thing, this experiment in self-governance. They understood how precious it was.

They fought to broaden and expand who would be included in 'we the people.' And they understood that when democracy withers, it's hard to restore. You can't take it for granted. You have to work for it. You have to nurture it. You have to fight for it.

Now the good news is, you get to make a difference. As long as you turn out to vote, you can fight for it. As long as you turn out to vote. You can bolster and strengthen our democracy, as long as you get out there and do what needs to be done!

We both joke in my household that Michelle, she got a dazzling smile. Yeah, I mean, listen, I understand there there's, in terms of popularity, there's basically Michelle, Malia, Sasha, Sonny, our dog and me. I understand she's hot. She's smart, she Is charming, she's intelligent. I get it.

But here's a little secret about Michelle. In our household, she can be a little bit of the glass half empty person sometimes. She can get a little discouraged about what she sees happening. And I'm the hope and change guy, so I'm usually a little more optimistic. And so if she's been watching the news or reading the papers and some crazy stuff is taking place, which is basically every 10 minutes, she can get a little down and I'll say, 'Honey, everything's gonna be okay.' And I believe that. I believe things will be okay, but I also know that things won't be okay on their own. They'll be okay if we make the effort. It'll be okay if we work for it. Not just on election day, but every day in between. And I know, look, I know some of you probably feel like Michelle does sometimes, cuz I feel even me, the hope and change guy, I can get discouraged. Politics is so nasty and mean and it just seems like people will say anything and do anything. And it can be depressing sometimes.

And a lot of what we used to take for granted, things like respect and common decency and telling the truth and believing in science and the idea that every vote should count and that the person with the most votes win - all that somehow has become controversial.

But I was listening backstage to what Josh talked about, the experience of him running for governor and travelling around the state. And it reminded me of the experience that I had first as a state senator travelling around my district. And then as a US Senate candidate in Illinois. And then as a presidential candidate. It's such a privilege to be able to meet people from every walk of life. Folks who look different and live in different places. And it would always remind me, and what we have to remind ourselves, is that there's this common thread. There's this thing that binds us together as Americans. A belief that no matter who we are or where we come from, what we look like, who we love, what our last name is, how we worship a belief that all of us matter,

The kind of slash and burn politics that we're seeing right now. That doesn't have to be who we are. We can be better. And it has nothing to do, by the way, with political correctness or being too woke. It's about fundamental values that my grandparents from Kansas taught me. Values I grew up with. Values. you grew up with. Values we try to teach our kids. Values we learn in churches and mosques and synagogues and temples. Honesty, fairness, opportunity, hard work, values that Josh Shapiro and John' Fetterman stand for. Values that Joe Biden stands for. Values that we're enshrined in our founding document a few miles from here. A clarion call for freedom and equality that Philly's own Liberty Bell represents. That's what America stands for. That's who we are.

So if you're anxious and frustrated right now. Don't complain. Don't mope. Don't tune out. Get off your couch and do what?

Vote!

Put down your phones and do what?

Vote!

Vote for Josh Shapiro. Vote for John Fetterman. Vote for leaders who will fight for you and your families. Vote for folks who will fight for that big, inclusive, hopeful, forward looking America that we believe in. Who will work with Joe Biden to build a country that is more fair and more just and more equal and more free.

That's our task. Let's get to work. I love you Philly.

Claude Malhuret: 'Putin is mad as blood is red', Statement on Russia's invasion of Ukraine - 2022

1 March 2022, Paris, France

Déclaration du Gouvernement, suivie d’un débat sur cette déclaration, en application de l’article 50-1 de la Constitution, relative à la décision de la Russie de faire la guerre à l’Ukraine

Monsieur le Président,

Monsieur le Premier ministre,

Mes chers Collègues,

L’invasion de l’Ukraine pourrait bien être le premier clou sur le cercueil de la dictature de Poutine, comme l’invasion de l’Afghanistan fut le premier clou sur le cercueil de l’Union Soviétique.

Poutine est fou comme le sang est rouge. Ce n’est pas une insulte, c’est un diagnostic. Le discours sépulcral du 21 septembre ne laisse aucun doute. Un paranoïaque doublé d’un mythomane. Plus il élimine toute contradiction, plus il échappe à la réalité, au profit de son idée fixe et funeste, se venger de la chute de l’URSS. Comme beaucoup de dictateurs, ce Caligula botté souffre d’une autre infirmité. Ceux qui ont découvert stupéfaits la taille grotesque de la table où il recevait notre Président ont cru à une manœuvre pour l’humilier. Les réunions ubuesques avec ses ministres à 20 mètres révèlent la vérité : le COVID le terrorise. Néron se faisait raser par ses filles de peur d’être égorgé, Staline faisait goûter ses aliments, lui, chef de la deuxième force nucléaire au monde, qui se fait filmer dans des fausses chasses à l’ours, pétoche devant le virus comme un matamore fuyant devant une souris. En face de lui, un homme, debout, Zelensky.

Lorsqu’on ignore la réalité, elle se venge. Il voulait diviser l’Europe, il la cimente. Ridiculiser l’OTAN, il la retrempe. Humilier les États-Unis, il ressuscite Biden après Kaboul. Rallier à lui les régimes autoritaires, la Chine s’inquiète, la Turquie montre les dents, le Kazakhstan refuse l’envoi de ses soldats. Il pensait prendre l’Ukraine en trois jours, il est embourbé pour longtemps.

Confiné dans son bunker, il n’a pas vu le monde changer. Il se croit au temps où ses complices du KGB et du Politburo mataient par des chars la Hongrie ou la Tchécoslovaquie et où lui-même rasait Grozny à l’abri des caméras. Il n’a pas compris que les images des smartphones font le tour du monde en une seconde et qu’en 2022 personne, pas même les russes, n’est prêt à accepter les bombardements de Kiev et les morts.

S’il en est arrivé là, c’est en partie à cause de nos propres lâchetés. L’invasion de la Géorgie, l’annexion de la Crimée, le Donbass, la Transnistrie, les crimes contre l’humanité en Tchétchénie ou en Syrie, les centaines d’assassinats et les milliers d’emprisonnements en Russie même, nous avons laissé faire. Quelques discours à l’ONU sur les droits de l’homme et le droit international et puis circulez, y a rien à voir.

Ce n’est pas seulement par lâcheté que nous n’avons rien fait, c’est parce que les démocraties ont en leur sein une cinquième colonne, le plus souvent soudoyée par le Kremlin, qui reprend mot à mot sur les réseaux antisociaux, avec les milliers de faux comptes, de trolls et de bots pilotés depuis Moscou, sur les radios et télés RT, Sputnik et hélas d’autres, la propagande de Poutine : l’Ukraine n’existe pas, elle est dans la sphère russe, ses dirigeants sont des nazis.

Wladimir Zemmour, Joseph Vissarionovitch Mélenchon et Anastasia Le Pen sont depuis longtemps les généraux en chef de cette cinquième colonne, mais leurs dernières déclarations atteignent des sommets. Mélenchon le 18 janvier dernier : "Qui ne ferait pas la même chose avec un voisin pareil, un pays lié à une puissance qui les menace continuellement ? ». Le Pen : « Mon point de vue sur l’Ukraine coïncide avec celui de la Russie. ». Zemmour : « Il faut arrêter de faire de Poutine l’agresseur, c’est Poutine l’agressé. Poutine est l’allié qui serait le plus fiable ».

Depuis que tout le monde a compris leurs mensonges, ils ont réinventé le « Oui mais ». Ils condamnent car ne pas le faire serait un suicide électoral, mais ils ne changent pas d’avis : tout est de la faute de l’Occident, surtout pas de sanctions et attention à la troisième guerre mondiale. Mélenchon jeudi dernier continue ses bobards : « Je n’ai jamais soutenu Poutine, jamais ». Le pire c’est Zemmour, le trois fois condamné pour racisme, qui crache sur les résistants ukrainiens et sur les réfugiés, qui donne des leçons de patriotisme, lui qui après s’être soustrait au service militaire, n’a pas hésité à se rendre samedi sur le plateau des Glières. Ses propos souillent les tombes des maquisards.

Ces paillassons de Poutine après en avoir été les caniches, sont candidats à la Présidence de la République. Ils ont condamné le dictateur du bout des lèvres, mais leurs trolls inondent les réseaux de messages à sa gloire et leurs députés européens ont refusé de voter l’aide à l’Ukraine.

Pendant des années nous avons tenté de faire comprendre qui était Poutine. Nous étions trop peu nombreux face aux idiots utiles de l’Europe, en Allemagne qui s’est mise dans les griffes de l’ours et de son gaz par l’incroyable erreur d’avoir cédé aux verts sur le nucléaire, en France ou le fond de l’air, fait d’un gaullisme du pauvre qui n’a rien à voir avec le gaullisme et d’un antiaméricanisme héritier de la vieille droite anti-anglosaxonne et de la vieille gauche anticapitaliste, conduit certains à prêcher l’équidistance entre Amérique et Russie, demain entre Amérique et Chine, sans comprendre qu’il y a d’un côté le camp de la démocratie et de l’autre celui des dictatures. Trop peu nombreux, nous étions par là-même trop faibles.

Le 24 février 2022 restera dans l’histoire comme le jour prodigieux du grand basculement. Le plus grand succès de Poutine, c’est de nous avoir ouvert les yeux. Nous nous sommes réveillés bien tard. Mais nous nous sommes réveillés.

Pour la première fois nos sanctions sont plus que des coups de griffe. Le blocage des réserves de la banque centrale, la déconnexion de SWIFT, l’arrêt de Nord Stream II, la saisie des avoirs des corrompus, la fermeture des espaces aériens, le bonheur de la livraison d’armes aux ukrainiens par l’Allemagne elle-même, mouton devenu non pas tigre mais au moins lionceau. Et enfin, enfin, la chasse aux agents de désinformation. Voilà 5 ans que je demande la fermeture de RT, de Sputnik et de leurs satellites, 5 ans qu’on me répond que ce serait bafouer la liberté d’expression. On vient enfin de comprendre que les organes de propagande du FSB n’ont rien à voir avec la liberté d’expression. Mesdames et Messieurs les dirigeants européens, permettez-moi d’ajouter à mes félicitations pour ces sanctions une supplique : qu’elles soient précises, sans exception, efficaces, non contournables et prolongées. Et surtout qu’elles soient rapides et accrues, car les résistants ukrainiens, aussi héroïques soient-ils, ne tiendront pas longtemps par leurs seuls moyens. Et enfin, qu’elles soient accompagnées du message clair, que l’assassinat de Zelensky entrainerait une riposte bien plus massive encore. Quant à la cinquième colonne, elle va se déchaîner dans toute l’Europe pour relayer les menaces du tyran et expliquer que, comme vous êtes responsables de la guerre en Ukraine, vous serez responsables demain de la troisième guerre mondiale dont Poutine brandit la menace. Pour l’heure, autre miracle, personne n'y croit. Comment penser qu’un hypocondriaque qui s’ausculte toute la journée soit prêt à mourir sous les frappes ou à finir ses jours dans un abri anti-atomique comme Caïn dans son souterrain ?

Lorsque nous aurons pris ces sanctions et que nous nous serons préparés à un long conflit, car cette guerre sera longue, il nous faudra relever un autre défi, plus redoutable encore. Celui du rétablissement de la puissance de l’Europe. « L’Europe ne se fera qu’au bord du tombeau » disait Nietzsche. Propos prophétique car l’Europe est née des charniers de la deuxième guerre mondiale et elle n’a progressé qu’en surmontant ses crises. Celle du COVID a permis un pas de géant par la mutualisation des dettes du plan de relance. L’invasion sanglante de l’Ukraine a fait comprendre à tous, à commencer par les allemands, ce que le Président de la République ne cesse d’expliquer depuis le début de son mandat, c’est que l’Europe ne sera jamais une puissance si ses États ne se réarment pas et si une défense commune ne voit pas le jour. Jamais Poutine n’aurait pu nous faire un meilleur cadeau.

Pour l’heure, nous allons participer à cette guerre par les mesures déjà prises, par notre unité avec nos alliés européens et américains et par notre fermeté face au tyran qui s’est lancé dans une aventure sans issue.

Mais ce n’est pas nous qui allons la gagner. Les seuls qui peuvent la gagner, ce sont deux peuples. Le peuple russe qui, pour la première fois, malgré une répression impitoyable et une propagande effrénée, est en train de comprendre que Poutine le conduit vers le gouffre. Le sursaut viendra-t-il de la rue, ou de quelques Brutus qui comprendront l’urgence d’agir avant qu’il ne soit trop tard, je ne sais. Mais le dénouement pourrait bien surprendre.

Et surtout, ceux qui vont gagner cette guerre, ceux qui sont déjà en train de la gagner quel qu’en soit le coût, ceux qui nous donnent une grandiose leçon de courage, guidés par un Président devenu en quelques jours un héros de la trempe d’un de Gaulle ou d’un Churchill, Wolodomir Zelensky, ceux qui vont gagner cette guerre, c’est le peuple ukrainien soudé contre Poutine et prêt au sacrifice pour défendre sa liberté et la nôtre, sa démocratie et les valeurs européennes qu’il partage. Puissions-nous les admirer, les acclamer, les soutenir et nous montrer dignes d’eux.

Please forgive the limitations of computer translation services

Mr President, Mr Prime Minister, Dear Colleagues, The invasion of Ukraine could well be the first nail in the coffin of Putin's dictatorship, just as the invasion of Afghanistan was the first nail in the coffin of the Soviet Union. Putin is mad as the blood is red. It's not an insult, it's a diagnosis. The sepulchral speech of September 21 leaves no doubt. A paranoid doubled as a mythomaniac. The more he eliminates all contradiction, the more he escapes reality, in favor of his fixed and fatal idea, to take revenge for the fall of the USSR. Like many dictators, this booted Caligula suffers from another infirmity. Those who were stunned to discover the grotesque size of the table where he received our President believed in a maneuver to humiliate him. The ubiquitous meetings with his ministers 20 meters away reveal the truth: the COVID terrorizes him. Nero had his daughters shaved for fear of having his throat slit, Stalin had his food tasted, he, the head of the second nuclear force in the world, who is filmed in fake bear hunts, petoche in front of the virus like a braggart fleeing from a mouse. In front of him, a man, standing, Zelensky. When we ignore reality, it takes revenge. He wanted to divide Europe, he cements it. To ridicule NATO, he retempers it. Humiliating the United States, he resurrects Biden after Kabul. Rallying the authoritarian regimes to him, China is worried, Turkey shows its teeth, Kazakhstan refuses to send its soldiers. He thought he could take Ukraine in three days, he is stuck for a long time. Confined to his bunker, he has not seen the world change. He believes he is in the time when his accomplices in the KGB and the Politburo subdued Hungary or Czechoslovakia with tanks and when he himself razed Grozny away from the cameras. He did not understand that images from smartphones go around the world in a second and that in 2022 no one, not even Russians, is ready to accept the bombings of kyiv and the deaths. got there, it's partly because of our own cowardice. The invasion of Georgia, the annexation of Crimea, Donbass, Transnistria, the crimes against humanity in Chechnya or Syria, the hundreds of murders and the thousands of imprisonments in Russia itself, we have left TO DO. A few speeches at the UN on human rights and international law and then move on, there's nothing to see. It's not just out of cowardice that we haven't done anything, it's because democracies have within them a fifth column, most often bribed by the Kremlin, which takes word for word on anti-social networks, with the thousands of fake accounts, trolls and bots piloted from Moscow, on RT radio and TV, Sputnik and alas others, Putin's propaganda: Ukraine does not exist, it is in the Russian sphere, its leaders are Nazis. Wladimir Zemmour, Joseph Vissarionovitch Mélenchon and Anastasia Le Pen have long been the chief generals of this fifth column, but their latest declarations reach new heights. Mélenchon on January 18: "Who wouldn't do the same with such a neighbour, a country linked to a power that continually threatens them?" Le Pen: "My point of view on Ukraine coincides with that of Russia Zemmour: "We have to stop making Putin the aggressor, it's Putin the attacked. Putin is the ally who would be the most reliable".Since everyone understood their lies, they reinvented the "Yes but. They condemn because not to do so would be electoral suicide, but they do not change their minds: everything is the fault of the West, especially no sanctions and beware of the Third World War. Mélenchon last Thursday continues his canards: "I have never supported Putin, never. The worst is Zemmour, the three times condemned for racism, who spits on the Ukrainian resistance fighters and on the refugees, who gives lessons in patriotism, he who, after withdrawing from military service, did not hesitate to go to the he Glières plateau. His words soil the graves of the guerrillas. These doormats of Putin after having been poodles, are candidates for the Presidency of the Republic. They paid lip service to the dictator, but their trolls flood the networks with messages praising him and their MEPs refused to vote for aid to Ukraine. For years we tried to make people understand who Putin was. There were too few of us in the face of the useful idiots of Europe, in Germany, which fell into the clutches of the bear and its gas through the incredible error of having yielded to the Greens on nuclear power, in France or the bottom of the air, made of a Gaullism of the poor which has nothing to do with Gaullism and of an anti-Americanism heir to the old anti-Anglo-Saxon right and the old anti-capitalist left, leads some to preach equidistance between America and Russia, tomorrow between America and China, without understanding that there is on one side the camp of democracy and on the other that of dictatorships. Too few, we were thereby too weak. February 24, 2022 will go down in history as the prodigious day of the great changeover. Putin's greatest achievement is to have opened our eyes. We woke up very late. But we woke up. For the first time our penalties are more than scratches. The blocking of central bank reserves, the disconnection of SWIFT, the shutdown of Nord Stream II, the seizure of the assets of the corrupt, the closure of airspaces, the happiness of the delivery of arms to the Ukrainians by Germany she -even, a sheep that has become not a tiger but at least a lion cub. And finally, finally, the hunt for agents of disinformation. For 5 years I have been asking for the closure of RT, Sputnik and their satellites, 5 years that I have been told that it would violate freedom of expression. We have finally come to understand that the propaganda organs of the FSB have nothing to do with freedom of expression. Ladies and gentlemen European leaders, allow me to add to my congratulations on these sanctions a request: that they be precise, without exception, effective, non-circumventable and prolonged. And above all that they be rapid and increased, because the Ukrainian resistance fighters, as heroic as they are, will not hold out for long on their own. And finally, that they be accompanied by the clear message that the assassination of Zelensky would lead to an even more massive response. As for the fifth column, it will be unleashed throughout Europe to relay the tyrant's threats and explain that, as you are responsible for the war in Ukraine, you will be responsible tomorrow for the Third World War, of which Putin is brandishing the threat. For now, another miracle, no one believes it. How can we think that a hypochondriac who examines himself all day long is ready to die under the blows or to end his days in an anti-atomic shelter like Cain in his underground? When we have taken these sanctions and we have prepared for a long conflict, because this war will be long, we will have to take up another challenge, even more formidable. That of the restoration of the power of Europe. “Europe will only be made on the edge of the tomb” said Nietzsche. Prophetic statement because Europe was born from the mass graves of the Second World War and it only progressed by overcoming its crises. That of COVID has allowed a giant step forward by pooling the debts of the recovery plan. The bloody invasion of Ukraine made everyone understand, starting with the Germans, what the President of the Republic has been constantly explaining since the beginning of his mandate, which is that Europe will never be a power if its states do not rearm and if a common defense does not emerge. Putin could never have given us a better gift. For now, we will participate in this war by the measures already taken, by our unity with our European and American allies and by our firmness in the face of the tyrant who has launched in an adventure with no way out. But it's not us who are going to win it. The only ones who can win it are two peoples. The Russian people who, for the first time, despite ruthless repression and frantic propaganda, are realizing that Putin is leading them into the abyss. Will the start come from the street, or from a few Brutus who will understand the urgency of acting before it's too late, I don't know. But the outcome could well surprise. And above all, those who will win this war, those who are already winning it whatever the cost, those who give us a great lesson in courage, guided by a President who has become a few days a hero of the caliber of de Gaulle or Churchill, Wolodomir Zelensky, those who will win this war are the Ukrainian people united against Putin and ready to sacrifice to defend their freedom and ours, their democracy and the European values ​​it shares. May we admire them, acclaim them, support them and prove ourselves worthy of them.

Charles III: 'She made sacrifices for duty', The King's first speech - 2022

9 September 2022, London, United Kingdom

I speak to you today with feelings of profound sorrow. Throughout her life, Her Majesty The Queen – my beloved Mother – was an inspiration and example to me and to all my family, and we owe her the most heartfelt debt any family can owe to their mother; for her love, affection, guidance, understanding and example. Queen Elizabeth was a life well lived; a promise with destiny kept and she is mourned most deeply in her passing. That promise of lifelong service I renew to you all today.

Alongside the personal grief that all my family are feeling, we also share with so many of you in the United Kingdom, in all the countries where The Queen was Head of State, in the Commonwealth and across the world, a deep sense of gratitude for the more than seventy years in which my Mother, as Queen, served the people of so many nations.

In 1947, on her twenty-first birthday, she pledged in a broadcast from Cape Town to the Commonwealth to devote her life, whether it be short or long, to the service of her peoples. That was more than a promise: it was a profound personal commitment which defined her whole life. She made sacrifices for duty. Her dedication and devotion as Sovereign never wavered, through times of change and progress, through times of joy and celebration, and through times of sadness and loss. In her life of service we saw that abiding love of tradition, together with that fearless embrace of progress, which make us great as Nations. The affection, admiration and respect she inspired became the hallmark of her reign. And, as every member of my family can testify, she combined these qualities with warmth, humour and an unerring ability always to see the best in people.

I pay tribute to my Mother’s memory and I honour her life of service. I know that her death brings great sadness to so many of you and I share that sense of loss, beyond measure, with you all. When The Queen came to the throne, Britain and the world were still coping with the privations and aftermath of the Second World War, and still living by the conventions of earlier times. In the course of the last seventy years we have seen our society become one of many cultures and many faiths. The institutions of the State have changed in turn. But, through all changes and challenges, our nation and the wider family of Realms – of whose talents, traditions and achievements I am so inexpressibly proud – have prospered and flourished. Our values have remained, and must remain, constant.

The role and the duties of Monarchy also remain, as does the Sovereign’s particular relationship and responsibility towards the Church of England – the Church in which my own faith is so deeply rooted. In that faith, and the values it inspires, I have been brought up to cherish a sense of duty to others, and to hold in the greatest respect the precious traditions, freedoms and responsibilities of our unique history and our system of parliamentary government. As The Queen herself did with such unswerving devotion, I too now solemnly pledge myself, throughout the remaining time God grants me, to uphold the Constitutional principles at the heart of our nation. And wherever you may live in the United Kingdom, or in the Realms and territories across the world, and whatever may be your background or beliefs, I shall endeavour to serve you with loyalty, respect and love, as I have throughout my life.

My life will of course change as I take up my new responsibilities. It will no longer be possible for me to give so much of my time and energies to the charities and issues for which I care so deeply. But I know this important work will go on in the trusted hands of others. This is also a time of change for my family. I count on the loving help of my darling wife, Camilla. In recognition of her own loyal public service since our marriage seventeen years ago, she becomes my Queen Consort. I know she will bring to the demands of her new role the steadfast devotion to duty on which I have come to rely so much.

As my Heir, William now assumes the Scottish titles which have meant so much to me. He succeeds me as Duke of Cornwall and takes on the responsibilities for the Duchy of Cornwall which I have undertaken for more than five decades. Today, I am proud to create him Prince of Wales, Tywysog Cymru, the country whose title I have been so greatly privileged to bear during so much of my life and duty. With Catherine beside him, our new Prince and Princess of Wales will, I know, continue to inspire and lead our national conversations, helping to bring the marginal to the centre ground where vital help can be given. I want also to express my love for Harry and Meghan as they continue to build their lives overseas.

In a little over a week’s time we will come together as a nation, as a Commonwealth and indeed a global community, to lay my beloved mother to rest. In our sorrow, let us remember and draw strength from the light of her example. On behalf of all my family, I can only offer the most sincere and heartfelt thanks for your condolences and support. They mean more to me than I can ever possibly express.

And to my darling Mama, as you begin your last great journey to join my dear late Papa, I want simply to say this: thank you. Thank you for your love and devotion to our family and to the family of nations you have served so diligently all these years. May “flights of Angels sing thee to thy rest”..

Max Chandler-Mather: "But I've seen the power of collective hope", First speech to parliament - 2022

2 August 2022, Canberra, Australia

Thanks, Deputy Speaker. Since the invasion of this continent, generations of First Nations warriors, organisers and leaders have fought, and continue to fight, to protect their lands, seas, air, people and culture against colonisation. I would like to pay homage to them, in particular the Yuggera and Turrbal peoples, who are the traditional owners of so-called Brisbane and my electorate of Griffith, and the traditional owners of this place, the Ngunnawal people.

As with so many issues in this place, there is often a deep hypocrisy when it comes to the way some politicians talk about First Nations people. How often are we told that governments support the rights of First Nations people but then fail to introduce the 339 recommendations of the Aboriginal deaths in custody royal commission, over 30 years after they were handed down? Or allow coal and gas mines to open up on land, often against the express wishes of traditional owners? While billions of dollars of mining revenue flow offshore into the coffers of billionaires, First Nations people too often lack basic health care, housing, education and incomes. Politicians make decisions that destroy First Nations land and then write laws that allow their corporate donors to rob their wealth and put it in the hands of people like Gina Rinehart.

It is abundantly clear to me that billionaires and big corporations run parliament. Indeed, when it comes to representation, I imagine that people like Clive Palmer and Gina Rinehart must feel pretty good that sometimes it feels as though 89 per cent of this place ultimately represent their interests. The major parties have proved often willing to accept an enormous human and environmental cost in order to serve the interests of big corporations and billionaires, such is their power over this place. Three million Australians live in poverty, with millions more on the brink, while Australia's richest 200 people just ticked over half a trillion dollars worth of wealth. Our nurses, teachers and doctors are viciously overworked, just to make up for the chronic underfunding of our public hospitals and schools. Meanwhile, the next federal budget will include billions of dollars in subsidies for fossil fuel corporations that just happen to be making record profits.

In the middle of one of the worst housing affordability crises in our history, where single mums are forced to live on the street after massive rent hikes, the big four banks just announced $14 billion in after-tax profit. Close to a million people are on the waiting list for social housing, suffering severe private rental stress or homeless, but 89 per cent of this place would rather support billions of dollars in tax concessions for property investors than even contemplate capping rents or building enough public housing for those who need it.

Eighty-nine per cent of this parliament literally supports spending $224 billion giving every politician and billionaire an extra $9,000 a year in the form of the stage 3 tax cuts. But apparently bringing dental into Medicare is too expensive. Apparently scrapping crippling student debt and making uni and TAFE free is too expensive. Apparently building enough but beautifully designed public housing so everyone has a place to call home costs too much. Apparently raising JobSeeker and the pension above the poverty line so people don't have to live in abject poverty is too expensive. The top 10 per cent of Australians now hold over half the total wealth in this country, but apparently that 10 per cent need a massive tax cut. Truly, one of life's great mysteries is why people don't like politicians!

One of the worst things about Australian politics is the way it works to make some of the greatest injustices and outrages seem perfectly normal and reasonable. Like a sedative it dulls the senses, and it relies on a certain logic. What is considered possible isn't determined by what actually is possible with the resources our country has to hand, but instead the major parties, media and various public and private institutions work to constrain the scope of political debate into an ever-narrowing band—one determined not by what everyday people want, need or believe, but by the interests of the billionaires and multinational corporations that parliament ultimately serves.

This logic is perhaps best exemplified when it comes to climate change. The consequences of two degrees or more of global warming are so devastating it's actually quite hard to explain, but the recent devastating bushfires, floods, heatwaves, droughts and storms really are only a small preview—massive crop failures, sea level rises displacing hundreds of millions of people, 99 per cent of the Great Barrier Reef lost. A recent study found that in 30 years time my home town of Brisbane could be virtually unliveable in summer for those who can't afford air-conditioning. But over two degrees of warming is exactly what 89 per cent of this place supports. In fact, currently this place supports expanding coal and gas mining and using public money to do it.

Australia is the third-largest exporter of fossil fuels in the world behind, you know, two great countries it's really good to be a part of: Russia and Saudi Arabia—great company. The idea that the moderate position on climate change is 'Use public money to expand coal and gas mining and drive global warming beyond two degrees' only makes sense when you consider that the power holders in parliament are coal and gas corporations, not everyday people. It's like standing in front of a burning house and declaring that the moderate position is 'We only put the fire out in one room while we send someone out back with a can of petrol to pour fuel on the fire.'

The most insulting lie, I think, though, when it comes to climate change, is that Australia needs to expand coal and gas mining to protect workers. That would be more believable if the political establishment didn't also believe that workers should pay more tax than the multinational corporations they work for. But the reality is that over the next 10 years coal and gas corporations will export hundreds of billions, if not trillions, of dollars of our wealth—our wealth. That's more than enough to guarantee the jobs and income of not just every coal and gas worker but ensure every regional mining community becomes a thriving hub of publicly owned manufacturing, renewable energy and new industries, with good hospitals, schools, public facilities and housing.

I would argue the political establishment doesn't give a toss about workers. What they're really worried about is the profits of their donors. The political system is so completely disconnected from the lives of everyday people. In fact, spending only a week in this place has been a stark lesson in how so much of the pomp, ceremony and rules of this place work to deepen and reinforce that disconnection.

Literally this same week that the Business Council was holding a special event in Parliament House with the Prime Minister—we walked past, and it was frankly bizarre—children peacefully calling for action on climate change were dragged out by police. Technically, I should be kicked out of parliament if I don't dress like a businessman, but you're more than welcome to vote for laws that materially benefit corporations that also happen to donate millions of dollars to your political party.

Every member of parliament was forced to pledge allegiance to the British monarch last week. One would think we should be swearing allegiance to the Australian people. Then there was the installing of massive security fences around the once publicly accessible lawns above Parliament House that were specifically designed to represent the democratically accessible nature of this place. As symbols go, I think that was probably a bit on the nose.

The sense that politics and politicians in general are completely disconnected from the lives of everyday people was a sentiment shared by almost everyone I spoke to during this campaign. Over 14 months, I personally knocked on almost 15,000 doors, or thereabouts, and time and again people told me they were fed up with politics. But what also became clear was just how low people's expectations are when it comes to politics.

It is this sense of low expectations which remains one of the political establishment's greatest assets. Deny people hope that things can get substantially better and you take their power, but I've seen the power of collective hope. Indeed, it really is the only reason I'm standing here. Over 14 months, over 1,000 Greens volunteers in Griffith knocked on almost 90,000 doors, hand-delivered hundreds of thousand of letters and flyers and gave up countless, evenings, mornings, rainy arvos and weekends to fight for something greater than themselves. We had tens of thousands of conversations with residents across Griffith where we actually took the time to listen and, often, learn about the issues that people faced in their daily lives. Together we built the single biggest single-seat campaign, I would argue, in the history of Australian politics and helped continue to build a movement inextricably linked to the communities from which it has emerged.

One of the questions I asked repeatedly on the Griffith campaign, borrowed from Bernie Sanders, was: are you willing to fight for someone you don't know as hard as you would fight for yourself? Time and again the answer was yes. We fought for each other not out of a sense of charity but out of a sense of solidarity, of righteous anger and, most importantly, of hope—hope not that we could defy virtually every political and media expert and win in Griffith but that we could collectively build a movement that would fundamentally transform Australian politics in favour of everyday people.

The philosophy of organisation of our movement was perhaps best represented by the response to the Brisbane floods. The floods of this year were a harsh, brutal and unjust symbol of the consequences of a political system stacked in favour of fossil fuel corporations. This apparent one-in-500-year event occurred just 10 years after another one-in-100-year flood—an alarming demonstration of the corporate and political grip on climate change. The slow response from emergency services and government was a consequence of decades of the hollowing out and underfunding of our public services and institutions. The disproportionate number of low-income and middle-income renters and homeowners badly affected by the floods were a reminder that, while this housing crisis is caused by a system treats housing as a commodity first and a home last, climate change will make it worse. But, as in Lismore, where incredible resident self-organisation drove a collective clean-up, in Griffith we proved that, where a broken system fails, ordinary people step in to fill the breach.

Over the course of those weeks, we suspended our campaign and, along with the brilliant member for South Brisbane, Amy MacMahon; Councillor Jonathan Sri; and their brilliant teams and officers, we used our organisational and logistical capacity to coordinate hundreds of volunteers in delivering free food, ice and eskies for those who had lost power. We taxied residents to crucial services. We cleaned up entire neighbourhood blocks, hauling flood damaged furniture, cleaning houses and sometimes just providing a shoulder to cry on. But it wasn't just the floods. We coordinated protests against worsening flight noise pollution, planted community gardens and used the produce to provide free food to those trapped in COVID isolation.

Ultimately, I believe, you build power by acting collectively as a community. If we want to take on the power of billionaires and big corporations then we must build a party and a movement that is capable of improving people's lives outside the cycle of electoral politics.

Of course, when it comes to this movement and, in particular, to our success in Griffith, there are some people who need thanking. To the thousands of volunteers, donors and supporters: I was constantly inspired by your drive, commitment and perseverance. Indeed, in many a dark moment on that campaign, the only thing that got me up in the morning was imagining one of you rocking up with a smile on your face to the fifth door-knock of that weekend, not demonstrating one ounce of fatigue. Frankly, I don't know how they did it. My brilliant campaign team is, I would argue, the best campaign to member country. Liam Flannerty, Mal McAuliffe, Nat Baker, Lachlan Morris, Claire Hudson, Louisa Randall, Eva Tollo, Josh Saunders-Mills, James Cummins, Kelsey Waller, Paul Rees, Zoe Lawrence, Heather Bennett, and Hannah Wright.

To Kitty Carra, the often unacknowledged director of the Queensland Greens, who has overseen the most successful period in the history of our party. She both procreated the space for and led many of transformations in the Queensland Greens that have led to so much success.

To Adam Bandt and his chief of staff Damien Lawson: thanks for believing in and supporting our little movement in Queensland years before any other southerner gave us a shot!

Thanks to my parents, Kim and Tim, for giving me many of the principles of right and wrong that I still hold today while providing the space to develop my own politics with guidance and the odd radical book recommendation.

To my partner, Joanna, without whom there's no way I could have survived this campaign: I love you and I can't imagine life without you.

Finally, to the people of Griffith, thank you for your trust not just in me but in our broader Greens' movement. To you I give you this commitment: whether you're struggling to put food on the table or pay the rent, whether you're a refugee in hotel detention in Kangaroo Point or you're facing eviction from your public housing, whether you're fighting against a profit-hungry airport corporation or a dodgy developer, whether you want to help plant a community garden or just fix up your local school, whether you have been abandoned by state authorities as another climate fuelled flood disaster hits your neighbourhood or you are just in need of a friendly chat, we will have your back

Really, at the end of the day what we are fighting for is a future where we everyone has what they need to live a good life. Perhaps the greatest injustice of all is that in such a wealthy country our system denies so many people the chance to fully enjoy their one short life on this earth. Health care; education; housing; a good, well-paying job and a beautiful home are the foundation to do what makes life truly meaningful: time with family and friends, footy in the park, painting a picture, reading a book, a day at the beach, a hike through the wilderness, a beer at the pub. I so strongly believe in a four-day work week with no loss of pay, because it would do so much to give people that most precious of resources: time.

Beyond all the specifics it can sometimes be hard to describe what exactly we mean by a good life. Funnily enough, the great feminist writer Virginia Woolf's writing in A room of one's own, for me, comes close to describing what I mean. Woolf reflects on the instinct for possession; the rage for acquisition, which keeps, 'the stockbroker and the great barrister going indoors to make money and more money and more money when it is a fact that 500 pounds a year will keep one alive in the sunshine'. With that 500 pounds, she wrote, came the freedom to think and write as she pleased.

So often in political debates we reduce people to numbers, but what value do you put on a family no longer having to worry about paying the rent and finally having the money to spend the summer at the beach? What value do you put on an afternoon playing footy in the park with your kids rather than working a sixth day of work? How much human enjoyment, creativity, new loves and friendships are denied by a political and an economic system that too often prioritises the profit of multinational corporations over the happiness of everyday people?

What has given me so much hope is that the vast majority of everyday people across Australia share this vision that we should tax billionaires and big corporations to fund things like dental into Medicare and free child care, and build one million public and affordable homes. It is a view that I believe is shared by the vast majority of people across this country. What's more, it is a truly universal vision.

That a small town in regional Queensland, Biloela, demonstrated a greater level of kindness and solidarity towards refugees than this place has done in decades is a reminder that while the decisions this place makes often impose unimaginable cruelty on people fleeing persecution, war and famine—often created by the foreign policy decisions of our government—those decisions don't reflect the will of the people. After all, what sort of good life is it when our country demonises and mandatorily imprisons our brothers and sisters for the crime of seeking that same good life?

This is why I have so much hope that ultimately we can win, because no matter what the political establishment throws at us, no matter how many times they tell us not to hope for anything better, no matter how me times they try to divide us up, no matter how many millions of corporate dollars they spend trying to stop us, we'll keep fighting, because we recognise that we all have more in common with a refugee in detention than a billionaire like Clive Palmer. We don't fight for self-interest; we fight for each other. And we won't stop until everyone—everyone—has what they need to live a good life, to be alive in the sunshine.

For those watching at home who despair at the state of our world but feel powerless to change it, I understand. After all, how often are we browbeaten and lectured about expecting anything but the bare minimum from politics? Often by self-proclaimed experts. But here's the thing, I've lost count of the number of times political and media experts said we had absolutely no chance of winning Griffith. And the thing is that they were wrong and people like you were right: the cleaners, paramedics, nurses, students, tradies, retirees, refugees. Ordinary, everyday people who fought every day for a better future on the Griffith campaign were right, and the representatives of the political establishment were wrong. Believe me that knowledge terrifies them. So next time an expert or politician tells you that it's unrealistic to expect that in a wealthy country like Australia no-one should go hungry or without a home, know that we were right and they were wrong. Know that when they tell you that tax cuts for billionaires, more coal and gas, and mandatory detention of refugees is the best you can hope for, they were wrong. If the Greens' wins in Brisbane, Ryan and Griffith prove one thing, it is that the only barrier—the only barrier—to change is our capacity to organise campaigns like this around the country. Our collective power terrifies the major parties and corporate donors but it should give you hope, because the Griffith campaign wasn't the end of something but the start. And if our political establishment thinks that this is our movement at our biggest, that somehow this is the best that we can do, then, oh boy, do they have another think coming! We really are just getting started.

So if, like me, you think that we should use $224 billion providing free breakfast in every school so no kid goes hungry rather than dishing out $9,000 to a federal politician; if you think everyone deserves a good home; if you think we shouldn't divide people up by the colour of their skin, gender, sexuality or the way they talk, but rather find common cause with everyone in this country who has been screwed over by the political system; and if you think that tackling climate change is more important than the share price of BHP, then join our movement, because I have seen the power of collective hope and I know what it can achieve. Thank you.

Sally Sitou: ''Good governments change lives. I know because they changed mine", First speech - 2022

1 August 2022, Canberra, Australia

This month is a special month for my family. My parents are celebrating 40 years of being Australian citizens. There is a beautiful serendipity about today—that I am now standing in this chamber as a member of parliament on the 40th anniversary of my parents' Australian citizenship. This moment here is surreal, in the best way possible—that one could dare to dream this big. For this was an improbable candidacy. Being elected into our federal parliament is a big deal, but it's an even bigger deal for my parents. They fled their homeland, fearful of what might happen to them because of who they were and the values they held. Even after arriving here they continued to carry that fear, not wanting to talk about politics, not wanting to share their views. And here they are, in the public gallery, watching their daughter speak in our federal parliament.

So you can imagine what this means for them: how much they've come to embrace the best of this country—our freedoms to speak out, to hold a faith and to build the life we want, and our responsibilities to those around us so that we may all prosper together. I marvel at how much has changed for my family in just one generation. That is the power of the Australian story, because stories like mine are possible only in countries like Australia. I am the daughter of migrants, a proud Chinese-Lao Australian. I grew up in Cabramatta in south-west Sydney. I'm the product of good public education. And now I'm the federal member for Reid.

I stand here on the land of the Ngunnawal and Ngambri people, and I represent an area that is the land of the Wangal people. Australia is home to the oldest continuing culture in the world, the significance of which should never be diminished. The culture of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders has endured for more than 65,000 years, in all its richness and diversity. They were our first scientists, philosophers, teachers and bakers. They nurtured this land. We ought to celebrate the culture of Australia's First Nations people, acknowledge their rightful place as the traditional and first custodians of this land. We ought to enshrine their voice in our Constitution, and I want to be part of a parliament that does that.

For the sake of future generations, we must do more than pay our respects to their elders past, present and future. We ought to learn from them, continue their care of country and ensure that their culture remains the oldest living culture in the world. First Nations people have gifted us a tradition of custodianship: the idea that we are all here in service of others and must leave this country better than when we found it. When I acknowledge country I'm reminded that I am but a small addition to a long and continuing history. I am a custodian for the present so that future generations may also care for this country.

I stand here as the member for Reid, and I want to acknowledge the members who came before: my predecessor, Dr Fiona Martin, an advocate for improving mental health support; and thank you to former members John Murphy and Mary Eeasson for generously sharing their wisdom with me. To the people of Reid, thank you for trusting me to be your representative. This is a community I love. It's a wonderful microcosm of multicultural Sydney, imbued with the customs of migrants from around the world. They, too, enriched us with cultures and traditions that make our community stronger. I stand in this institution, as their representative, aware of the weight of responsibility, because it is in this institution that decisions are made that have a profound impact on people's lives. I know this not as an intellectual exercise; I know this because decisions made here have recharted the course of my family's story and the stories of so many Australians.

In 1977, then Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser developed Australia's first comprehensive refugee policy. He may have been in a different political party to me, but on this I believe he was on the right side of history. He welcomed refugees fleeing Indochina following the Vietnam War, and one year later, in 1978, he welcomed my parents. My family is of Chinese heritage, but my parents were born and raised in Laos. They fled their homeland and were incredibly lucky Australia gave them refuge. When my parents came here, they had limited formal education and spoke very little English. They worked hard in factories, where they were able to find secure work with good conditions. They gave my brother and me the work and education opportunities they never had, and my family was able to thrive here. I went on to have the most incredible career, working in international development in the Asia-Pacific and then in international education.

As I reflect on my family's story—a story shared by so many Australians—I also need to reflect on the journey we as a country have travelled to get to this point, because it wasn't an easy journey. Charting through the decisions that have shaped our country, it's important to remember that for much of our history the path on which we walked was not towards multiculturalism but towards a White Australia policy. It was a path that said there was no place in this country for people like me. It was a path that denied our First Nations people their identity, land and kin. Those decisions were made based on fear and a failure of imagination. But we were able to fulfil the potential and promise of Australia when leaders in this place were driven not by fear but by hope and compassion. They looked around and saw what was and imagined what could be. They imagined a country not weakened by diversity but strengthened by it.

In more recent history, when it looked like fear might again overtake imagination, Prime Minister Bob Hawke said in this place:

One of the great and rare distinctions of Australian political leadership in the last generation has been its bipartisan rejection of race as a factor in immigration policy. This has been a triumph of compassion over prejudice, of reason over fear, and of statesmanship over politics.

It was an appeal to turn to the better angels of our nature, and turn we did. In just over half a century, we have moved from an embrace of a White Australia policy to a country that is now a majority-migrant nation. But what is more remarkable is how this news was received—not with backlash but with a genuine embrace of modern Australia. And there is no better display of that than in our federal parliament.

As I look around the House today, it feels like finally it is starting to live up to its name—a House made up of people who truly reflect and represent the communities in which they live. I believe it was important I put my hand up to stand for Reid, a thriving multicultural and multifaith community, because, as audacious as this dream was—to run for our federal parliament—it has never been more important for someone like me to dream it. I grew up watching Home and Away and Neighbours, but I also grew up with a slight unease, not sure of who I was, not sure if I'd gone to the right schools and acutely aware of the postcode I grew up in—not sure of my place in this country. That's why I think it's important to have someone like me in our federal parliament, not for diversity's sake but because representatives that embody all of the Australian story make our parliament better and our democracy stronger.

I speak about my family's story because it is core to who I am. It's what shaped me and the values I want to bring to our parliament. It also connects me to my community. The men on the factory floor in Silverwater remind me of my dad, who worked in an automotive factory for 35 years. Religious leaders who fled their homelands because of persecution—their stories remind me of my own family fleeing their homeland. Parents talk to me about wanting to give their kids good-quality education. It's the same desire I have for my son and the same desire my parents had for me. When I encounter racism and prejudice, I know firsthand how it corrodes our community and holds Australia back from being the best country we can be. And this is a message I'm going to share with all young Australians: you are not defined by your postcode, the school you went to or where your parents came from; in this country, you are defined by the content of your character and what you want to do for others, where the potential and promise of this nation is only limited by our imagination.

On 21 May this year we faced another key turning point in our nation's history: do we continue on with another decade of inaction on climate change or do we imagine a better future for our kids? It was, again, an appeal to turn to the better angels of our nature, and turn we did. We chose care for country and future generations over fear. In the six short years my son has been alive, he has experienced the consequences of climate change, events described as 'once in a generation' experienced in just a few short years. He has now lived through the 2019-2020 New South Wales bushfire season, a once-in-a-generation event. This year he lived through a once-in-a-generation rain and flooding event and now heatwaves breaking records across Europe, all once-in-a-generation events. Surely we can no longer look at the situation before us and believe this is okay. Surely we cannot say to my son and his generation that what we are doing to address climate is enough. Surely it is time to be audacious dreamers and imagine a better way. It is time for us all to learn from our continent's First Nations people and take on roles as custodians of country. The policies and decisions and values of governments matter. The decisions made today matter for our generation, my son's generation and generations to come.

Good governments change lives. I know because they changed mine. Former Prime Minister Paul Keating said education provided the keys to the kingdom because it unlocks opportunities for all. I was fortunate enough to have teachers who not only guided me through my academic life but also taught me about life outside the classroom—teachers like Craig Cantor, who volunteered to take six year 8 kids camping. It was the first time I'd pitched a tent and slept under the stars, and I loved it. My history teacher, Frank Federico, taught me that progress, while not always linear or guaranteed, was possible if there were enough brave people willing to stand up for what's right. I didn't just get an academic education; I got an education in life. And that is the power of education.

But we have lost sight of that in our current education system. We have failed to value our teachers. After 2½ years of COVID, our teachers are exhausted, and yet we've never asked more of them. We need to radically overhaul the administrative burden we place on our teachers. They should have more time doing what they love: teaching. We need to value them and finally pay them what they are worth. Sometimes we have even failed to provide our students with the most basic infrastructure. There is a school in my electorate where the toilets are so terrible students elect to drink less water to avoid going. There is a community in my electorate who have waited so long for a promised high school the kids are now at university. Our concept of education, too, needs an update. It doesn't start in kindergarten. We should instead think about education as starting from birth. Our early childhood educators are as vital to educating our kids as our primary and high school teachers and university lecturers are.

We have allowed our university and TAFE sectors to languish, and, worse still, the previous government actively undermined tertiary education. They oversaw the most job losses the sector has ever seen—estimates of around 12,000 jobs lost in the higher education sector because of the pandemic. And the sad irony is that it was our university researchers we relied on to help us manage the pandemic: epidemiologists, virologists, public health experts. But it's not just applied research that matters. We also need research in our arts, mathematics and basic science to be valued, because they provide the essential foundations for all future applications. If we can get this right, there is a kingdom that awaits us all, one made up of highly skilled and fulfilling jobs, an economy that is productive and makes the most of our talents and where imagination is valued.

My parents were laser focused on ensuring my brother and I had a good education. They had to be, because their life in Australia was precarious—they did not have the comfort of being able to fail. We were lucky, though, because we had two communities supporting us. The Chinese-Lao-Australian community were like my big extended family, because I always had a collection of aunts and uncles watching over me. It's a resilient community, too. We've had to be, because we've spent two generations searching for a place to call home, and now we've finally found it.

The second community who supported us was the mighty trade union movement. When my dad was injured at work, it was his union that stepped in to help negotiate a new role that would accommodate his injury. When the company my mum worked for went insolvent, it was her union that stepped in to make sure she got her entitlements. I want to thank the union movement. You stood by my parents when they came to this country, just as you stand with all working people who want a better life. I acknowledge and thank all the union representatives present in the gallery here tonight.

During the campaign I had the great privilege of meeting dedicated people who work to make our local area a community. I met Vicki Liubinskas, who started Let's Get Going because she wanted to ensure that adults with disabilities were able to exercise in a fun and safe way. I met Paula Nicolas from St Merkorious Charity. She gives people who are homeless dignity and respect by inviting them in for a hot meal and fellowship. I met the Wentworth Point Residents Action Group—a group of determined locals who got together to make their voices heard and advocate for local infrastructure in their community. These are people in Reid who looked around at what was and imagined what could be. They imagined a community where we were supporting each other, and I am inspired by their example and am determined to continue their good work.

Throughout my campaign I had the support of volunteers who were committed to creating a better future for this country. They stood beside me and made me believe it was possible. They were my campaign community. It's thanks to them that I am the federal member for Reid.

I want to pay tribute to the Australian Labor Party, a movement I joined when I was young and idealistic. I am older now but no less idealistic. To Kevin Rudd, Maxine McKew, Jason Li and Linda Voltz, thanks for the frequent special guest appearances on the campaign trail. There are many in this House I have admired for so long. That I now get to call you colleagues and friends brings me sheer delight. I want to thank the members for Watson, McMahon, Greenway, Chifley, Sydney, Kingsford Smith and Cowan for your support throughout the campaign. Thank you to Senators O'Neill and Sheldon for your generous help. To Senator Wong, thank you—not just for your guidance but for the leading example you have provided to me and so many others. And to my old boss, the member for Blaxland, you bring a level of decency, respect and empathy that I hope to emulate. To the Prime Minister, thank you for bringing compassion back into fashion.

The audacity of this dream was only possible because of three people. They believed in me long before I believed in myself: Jodi McKay, Kirsten Andrews and Dom Ofner. To the campaign team—Mitch Wright, Emma Ross, Ed Saloman, Louise Tran, Jacqueline Price, Phillip Kim, John McManus and LJ Margeit—you were the engine room of this campaign, making it all possible. To Greg and Felicity Davis, Karen Pensabene, Kym Ralley, Jacqui Thorburn, Tom Hore and Susan Yates, thank you for looking out for me and for your continuing support. To all the wonderful women associated with Asian Women at Work, particularly their drumming group and the Sydney Chinese Drum Art Troupe, thank you for helping me connect with my community. To all my Labor family in local government, our mayors and councillors, and to all the branch secretaries, presidents, local branch members and volunteers, you kept the light on the hill shining brightly. I will carry that passion for a better tomorrow with me every day.

I'm lucky to have an incredible family. My brother, Law; sister-in-law, Sharon; and niece, Haegan: it has been such a comfort knowing you are always there for us. To my parents-in-law, Shounan and Jian: thank you for your continuing support and love. To my parents, Phet and Syphan: for the sacrifices you have made, the love you give and the inspiration you have provided, thank you. To the two people who have been my biggest cheerleaders in life, my husband, Rui; and my son, Max: you are my reason for being, and I love you both.

I want to dedicate my first speech to my ama, my maternal grandmother. She was the most remarkable woman. Ama was a widower and a single mother of eight. She had to uproot her life twice, first from China to Laos and then from Laos to Australia. I think about her often because so much of her life happened to her. She had very few choices. She didn't get to choose a career or even where to live. The last photo I have with her is on the dance floor at my wedding in Laos. Ama stayed on in Laos after the wedding, choosing to spend her final years there. It was one of the few choices she had an opportunity to make. It's because of her and the sacrifices she has made that my life was possible, where a world of opportunities has been unlocked for me. I have been able to make choices about what I want to study and what career I want to pursue, and the choice to stand for parliament. While we still have some ways to go before we achieve gender equality, when I think about how different my life is compared to Ama's, I know we're on the right path. If my ama were with us today, I think she would have been astounded but very proud too.

Michelle Ananda Rajah: 'It is an electorate beating with a lion heart,' First speech - 2022

1 August 2022, Canberra, Australia

In 2022 the Australian people showed us the way. Self-interest is out and the national interest is in, but it's planetary and interspecies interests that are trending. Our First Nations people have known this for eons. I am looking forward to enshrining their voice in our constitution and embedding their wisdom into our ways. I am honoured to stand on the lands of the Ngunnawal and Ngambri people and I pay my respects to their elders past, present and emerging.

I am the unlikeliest of politicians: no political experience in the conventional sense, no history with the Labor Party and no political pedigree. People ask: 'How did this happen? How did you make history? How did lifelong conservatives vote Labor?' In no other country nor electorate would my story even be possible.

It was the pandemic that led to my political awakening. In the first half of 2020 I stopped sleeping as I watched healthcare workers in Italy die. Hospitals resembled war zones. Patients lined corridors. Death was everywhere. At my hospital, colleagues in hushed tones disclosed to me concerns about their safety at work. They felt powerless against a medical establishment that steadfastly held that COVID was spread by droplets and surgical masks were fine. At that time vaccines were a pipedream and we were going into battle with sticks rather than lightsabres.

I had to act. I tried corridor diplomacy, but hit brick walls. Aerosol scientists were shouting from the rooftops that COVID was airborne, floating in the air like smoke, slipping through the gaps in our masks and around the perspex screens that had sprung up like weeds. At the time, I would have been safer cracking rocks underground than working on a hospital ward. Miners had access to the best respiratory equipment, like machines that kept deadly particles out of their lungs, and they had the licence of their CEO and board, who were liable if things went wrong. It's a credit to our mining industry and unions that they have these standards.

Meanwhile, nurses and doctors were having the right masks ripped out of their hands due to PPE shortages. Staff infections spread to the community, triggering an extension of lockdowns while we waited for the vaccines to arrive. And we waited—while people got sick or got sick of lockdowns. It was cold comfort to my doctor husband and me that we had sorted out our wills. At least my children would be fine if their parents died. As it transpired, the cure for my insomnia was activism. Speaking truth to power brought a psychic peace. It was my political awakening that helped me sleep.

With like-minded colleagues, I co-founded Health Care Workers Australia and advocated for better: for masks that fit your face; for transparent reporting of healthcare worker infections, because you can't improve what you can't measure; for recognition that COVID is spread through the air; and for better national guidelines, because they determine our safety in hospitals, aged care, schools and businesses. I urged the then government to broaden our limited vaccine repertoire, because I could see variants coming.

One of my proudest works was the first Australian study documenting the experiences of healthcare workers. 'Hearing the voices of Australian healthcare workers during the COVID-19 pandemic' says it all. Their stories were the reason for the season.

What I've learnt, I now bring to parliament—that is, the need to listen to the front line. Whether it's health care, business or the environment, those at the coalface know the problems and will proffer solutions before they become crises. That is the wisdom of the edge. National leadership that prioritises work health and safety is essential. Healthy, happy workers make the economy hum, especially in mission-critical industries like health care, aged care, education or business. This much we owe to our nurses, doctors, allied health professionals, paramedics, support staff and educators, whose deep wells of altruism are nearly dry. A future CDC must prioritise the welfare of our first responders, because there is no pandemic response without them. Today I pay tribute to my friend Millie, a nurse, and my friends Marco and Sarah, doctors, who are in the gallery.

Watch out for the tail. It has a sting. For COVID, it will be chronic disease and mass illness disrupting lives and constraining our productivity for years to come. This is not inevitable but depends on what we do next. Cleaning the air is one important but neglected lever that will help apply downward pressure. National guidelines on ventilation will empower our people and businesses to stay safe and live more freely. It will spawn a new industry in air safety, making us more resilient against respiratory viruses and a future disease X.

Diversity is the antidote to groupthink, so welcome those contrarian voices. The discomfort leaders like us feel when hearing what we don't like from people with skin in the game is usually a good thing. They are often the truth-tellers.

Finally, be aware that the four most dangerous words in science are, 'there is no evidence'. These four words have shut the gate on life- and economy-saving measures. When there is no evidence, then default to common sense and err on the side of caution until daylight emerges.

After experiencing the powerlessness of not being listened to, I understand the profound power of being heard. It's a lesson I carried with me to the streets and the homes of Higgins. I had thousands of conversations, walking up and down our electorate in my gold runners. It was a real grassroots campaign, powered by the greatest force for good—people.

Higgins is 39 square kilometres—a little bit smaller than Lingiari—and encompasses South Yarra with its famous Chapel Street, the iconic Prahran market, the stately homes of Toorak, the leafy streets of Malvern and Armadale with their vibrant small businesses, south to the multicultural foodie hub of Koornang Road, Carnegie, bordered by the wide, quiet streets of Murumbeena, Glen Iris and Ashburton. Dog walkers abound, parents grab coffees between pick-ups, young people jog the streets, school kids jumble into trams. Since its inception in 1949, Higgins has been a Liberal stronghold, until now. It has produced two prime ministers, Gorton and Holt, four if you include Menzies and Fraser, who lived there. I take this opportunity to acknowledge the former member for Higgins Dr Katie Allen for her contribution to public life.

Higgins is a high-performance electorate where people are self-made or well on the way but disadvantage hides in plain sight. I observed too many young adults in full-time work still tethered to their parents, unable to buy a home. I met a young mum unable to return to full-time work because she could not afford $200 a day on child care. Marion, an educator who had been on a casual contract for over a decade, was now facing the prospect of losing her home because her hours had been cut. A small-business owner cried every night because she is exhausted by the pressures of the past two years. And I lost count of the number of male retirees, and they were always men, who demanded I tax them more because they were appalled at the level of inequality in our society and didn't need the 'welfare'—their words not mine.

People from every background and belief were inspired to make a change at that election because they understood what it meant for our nation.

It is an electorate beating with a lion heart.

Dr Ennis, an endocrinologist and Higgins resident of 50 years, sums it up. As a child he asked his father who he should vote for. His father replied, 'Families like ours always do well when the Liberal Party are in government but sometimes you have to do what is best for everyone and what is best for the community. That's why I always vote Labor.' Three days after Dr Ennis died, Higgins returned its first Labor member. Dr Ennis did his bit; now will I do mine.

The people of Higgins will judge us by the force of our actions rather than the froth of our words, as Churchill said. But listening to locals, hearing their stories on front steps and on the end of the phone became for me the reason for the season.

To the people of Higgins: I carry with me your wishes and your worries into government. It is a humbling and heavy responsibility, and I thank you for it.

I could not have climbed this mountain without the support of my incredible volunteer army, the Labor branches who came and gave; my friend the member for Macnamara, who reached out and mentored me; my campaign team, Michael, Josh, Jet; and all of my Labor colleagues here, including the frontbench, pretty much the whole frontbench; and the Prime Minister for their generous support. Prime Minister, you're calm, considered approach imbued with wisdom and kindness is just the medicine our country needs. To my husband, you are a tower of strength. To my teenagers Annika and Ash, you are far more accomplished than I was at your age. Look outwards always and make a positive contribution to this world.

Today is bittersweet because not everyone could make it. My sister is caring for a child with COVID and my brilliant colleague Nada is laid low with long COVID after two bouts of illness, but she is watching. Such is the pandemic's long reaching shadow. But we can and must push back against this shadow because our party, after all, is the light on this hill.

Nothing is built without a foundation, and mine was laid by my parents Robert and Vimala. My father came from a village in northern Sri Lanka, the middle of seven children to a single mother, having lost his own father when he was 12. That he rose to become an accountant and small-business owner raising three professional children is nothing short of a miracle. My mother juggled full-time work and running a home, turning out delicious meals to the strains of Elvis and Abba. As Tamils, my parents left Sri Lanka in the 1960s due to ethnic tensions. I was born in the UK then moved to Zambia where I lived for 12 years before coming to Australia on the skilled migration program in 1984 when I was 11. In Zambia, I went on safari in the way my kids go to the beach: gripping on for dear life in the back of a Land Rover, awestruck as a little kid in front of Victoria Falls—a torrent of water known as Mosi-oa-Tunya, 'the smoke that thunders'. But it was Australia that made me an infectious diseases and general medicine physician, an academic, activist and now a parliamentarian. What a country! My story is one of intergenerational upward mobility, where education and hard work bent the arc of our lives. But that wasn't all. A person like me, who has experienced more headwinds than tailwinds, benefited from the Hawke and Keating economic legacy, a Catholic education and a cohesive society that welcomed a stranger.

We have a lexicon for economic progress, ranging from GDP to unemployment figures, but we lack the language for social cohesion. And yet it is like money in the bank: social capital put away in good times to be drawn down in bad. As a migrant, I have watched with alarm as words used in this chamber ricochet around the country, tearing at our social fabric. Spillover effects are acts of hate on our streets against Asians, Jews, Muslims, people of colour, the gender diverse. And the gun gets fired here. We have a choice. We can accept the politics of division or devalue that currency to junk. I am proud that the Australian people and the people of Higgins did just that. 'Do better,' they cried. The triumph of modern Australia—a diverse multicultural nation—is worth celebrating every single day. Social capital is our true sovereign wealth fund, that, if managed well, will pay a dividend to us, its shareholders, forever.

Standing in this chamber, I still feel the pull of medicine: a rewarding career of service and advocacy that will be extended here. I saw, for 25 years, the sins of society wash up in our public hospital system: homelessness, poor education, childhood trauma, social isolation, poverty, racism, unemployment and climate change. According to the WHO, these so-called social determinants of health can account for over half of all health outcomes, where one problem reinforces another. Health is all about context. For example, diabetes clusters with poor nutrition and poverty. The Lancet describes syndemics, the synergistic interaction of social, economic and environmental factors. It's a framework relevant to our future CDC, but just as pertinent to this place too. I prescribe pills for problems rooted in disadvantage, but these are problems that need a parliament, not a prescription pad.

As a doctor, I saw things as they were. Now, as a parliamentarian, I see things as they could be. The venerated fair go, much like our safety at work, does not happen by luck. Barriers must be identified and dismantled, like inequality and unconscious bias so that, as Kennedy said, man has the freedom to grow to his full stature. Structural reforms must be introduced and embedded until they become part of the furniture, like Labor's Medicare. For women, the motherhood penalty clips our wings just as we unfurl them after years of slog and study. In the blur of home and work, years slip by, and ambition is dimmed until it snuffs out altogether. That double shift nearly broke me, which is why I am delighted that child care has been elevated in the economic agenda. With mountains of work to do, who can afford to leave the talent of women on the table? It makes me proud that the Labor caucus is now 52 per cent women—and they are fierce. And 50 per cent of our new Labor members are from culturally diverse backgrounds, including First Nations. It makes me even prouder that Higgins had something to do with this high watermark.

Within the seams of the bedrock of our ancient land, like precious ores, lie new ways of thinking. The One Health model encompassing human, animal and environmental health immediately elevates stewardship. Our First Nations have known this all along. We cannot privilege one above the other, because we are nourished both physically and spiritually by the natural world.

Climate change is the threat multiplier, adding pressure to every system and every sector in society, but its effects will be unequally felt, so ironing out inequality now is a matter of urgency. Obama said:

We are the first generation to feel the effect of climate change and the last generation who can do something about it.

Our journey to a low emission future will be contingent on taking our coal and gas communities along. We owe them much, and we are, after all, the party of the Hunter and Higgins—a broad church indeed! A land crisscrossed by zero emission high-speed rail will bring our regions closer to us and us to them, triggering a regional boom. On intergenerational justice, the cries are only getting louder. An affordable home backed by secure work is like the warmth of a million suns. It should be the norm, not the exception.

Innovation will be key to solving many of these challenges. For that, we must again embrace the power of listening. As a nation we produce excellent research but need to do better at commercialising it. Our PhDs want to be CEOs of their own start-ups. I was a Research Australia finalist last year for my work on artificial intelligence but had been underfunded for years. It shouldn't be this hard. Unless things change, and fast, we will continue to lose our best young minds in The Hunger Games of funding.

In Higgins I met John, a postdoc. who was taking up a biomedical fellowship in the US because he felt like Australia had given up on him. To get great research into the market requires the science of implementation, but implementation science withers on the vine if we devalue the humanities, our creatives and social sciences. There is a big difference between inventing vaccines in the lab and getting them into arms—one is a science, the other an art. Different but complementary skills are needed, so let's usher in a flourishing of enterprise, embracing the diversity that makes us stronger than the sum of our parts.

It is said that the people perish when there is no vision. Mine is for an inclusive, sustainable and competitive Australia. As a nation, we have an embarrassment of riches, hearts bursting with aspirations, bodies alive with animal spirits, brains fizzing with ideas. Our task as leaders is to listen to our frontline and knock down their barriers, reject short-termism in favour of generational investment—raising, not dimming, ambition so that our people take flight and soar. Because only by unifying, empowering and electrifying our people can we reach that cleaner, greener, fairer future. I thank the House.

Monique Ryan: 'I am the first woman, and the first independent to represent this electorate', first speech - 2022

28 July 2022, Canberra, Australia

Thank you, Mr Speaker, and thank your for very warm welcome to this place. It is a great honour to address you today as the new member for Kooyong. Firstly, let me acknowledge that I do so on Ngunnawal and Ngambri land, and that the traditional owners and original custodians of Kooyong are the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin nation. I pay my respects to them and to all the First Nations people of this wide and beautiful land. I honour their wisdom and their culture. I look forward to working towards them having a voice to this parliament. We have an extraordinary opportunity to join in a makarrata—a coming together after a struggle—and an opportunity to walk on this country with its traditional owners in trust, strength and truth.

To the people of Kooyong: thank you for entrusting me with this great responsibility to be your elected representative. I do so with humility and I am honoured to serve you. The electorate of Kooyong sits in eastern Melbourne. Its 59 square kilometres include Balwyn, Kew, Hawthorn, Camberwell, Deepdene, Canterbury, Surrey Hills, Mont Albert and Glen Iris. The seat is believed to have derived its name from the Wurundjeri name for resting place or camp.

In its 122 years, the federal seat of Kooyong has had only seven previous members, including Sir Robert Menzies, Andrew Peacock and Petro Georgiou. Those men were all true liberals. They recognised that open markets are the best way to boost prosperity. They were committed to protecting individuals' rights. Even before Federation, Alfred Deakin spoke in Hawthorn on the virtues of equality of opportunity and of generosity to the less fortunate in society. My predecessor, Josh Frydenberg, a well-respected member of this place, spoke in his first speech of the honourable legacy of previous members for Kooyong. I hope to honour that legacy by representing the electorate with dedication, integrity and effect.

I am the first woman and the first Independent to represent this electorate. I will not be the last. I've spent much of my life in Kooyong, as a child, as a student and now as a parent and a member of my community. My grandparents were first- or second-generation migrants from Wales, Ireland, Germany and Mauritius. For two of my grandparents, a bus trip to Sydney was the furthest they ever went in their lives. With all respect to my crossbench colleagues, they didn't like Sydney much, so they soon came home.

The Australian story is one of opportunity, of evolution, of adaptation to our circumstances. My paternal grandfather, George Alan Davis, was born in 1900—the year the seat of Kooyong was founded. When he was six months old his family tried to move from Bathurst to Melbourne in a two-horse covered wagon. One horse dropped dead as they tried to get through the Blue Mountains, so they turned around and ended up in Sydney. He had to leave school at 15 to support his family, joining the New South Wales Public Service. He admired Jack Lang—'the Big Fella'—and was moved sideways in the Public Service for agitating for an increase in junior clerks' pay, then 60 pounds a year. At age 21, he doorknocked and electioneered for Joe Cahill, a close friend who later became the Labor Premier of New South Wales. My grandfather rose through the Public Service and by 1940 was head of the federal Directorate of Defence Foodstuffs in the Ministry of Supply, an important job in a time of war. When my grandparents lost their elder son in 1943—drowned in Port Phillip Bay—Ben Chifley, the then Prime Minister and a friend of my grandfather, made the trip to Melbourne to commiserate on that loss. But, when my grandfather wrote his autobiography in 1978, he was very clear on who he believed to be our greatest ever Australian: my predecessor in Kooyong, Robert Gordon Menzies, who he described as a brilliant man, superb in wit and dialogue. In a true democracy, one votes on one's values, for a person, not for a party.

My parents were of the first generation in their families to attend university, to travel and work overseas and to dream of bigger lives. My father worked as a senior business executive, but his great love was his lifelong commitment to the nation's service in the Army Reserve; he rose to a senior rank in that force. My mum raised her family. Then she established a charity in Kenya which has in 18 years sent more than 3,500 primary and secondary school children to school and has assisted hundreds of women in the Kibera slums with literacy and skills training. My parents raised their seven children to work hard and to give back to those less fortunate. They gave us unconditional love and an understanding of the paramount importance of family. They gave me a twin sister, Anny, who has always been my best and most loyal friend. My brothers and sisters and I have all made homes in this country. We've been a very fortunate family but for the loss of a gifted boy, my nephew Hector, in a car accident in 2017. Together, my siblings and I have raised 18 members of the next generation, the generation which will deal with the legacy of the world that we in this place make for them.

I received an excellent education at a convent school. The nuns who ran that school were feminists who cared about social justice. Some volunteered in my campaign in Kooyong in 2022. The founder of the Loreto order of nuns, Mary Ward, said in 1612:

There is no such difference between men and women that women, may they not do great things? And I hope in God that it may be seen in time to come that women will do much.

I will be forever grateful to my parents for an education in which it was made clear that I could and should try to do much in my own life. We have in this place an opportunity to support education and to ensure gender equality in all facets of Australian life, which should never be taken for granted.

I grew up in Hawthorn. My husband, Peter, a generous and loyal man, a wonderful father and a steadfast husband, grew up in Balwyn. We have together forged a family with three kind, compassionate and trusting children: Annabel, Campbell and Patrick. I would not be here without their love and support, for which I will be forever grateful. We have a blended family, like many Australian families, which has its benefits and its challenges. The age of the traditional family unit has passed. In Kooyong, as in the rest of Australia, people who love each other live together in all sorts of units. All are to be celebrated.

We love our home: the wide streets; the parks with their big sky; the Yarra, Melbourne's beautiful upside-down river; and Kooyong's sporting fields, shopping strips, libraries and restaurants. At the start and at the end of every day, more than 35,000 children fill the streets of Kooyong, going back and forth from school. Most of them seem to catch the Glenferrie Road tram. The electorate is fortunate to have its own university, Swinburne, established in 1908, ranked in the top one per cent of universities worldwide and recognised for its research in the space industry, medical technology and the first National Centre for Reconciliation Practice. In these last challenging years during the long months of COVID lockdowns, we have realised more than ever how lucky we are to live in Kooyong.

I studied medicine at Melbourne university before undertaking training in paediatrics and paediatric neurology in Melbourne, Sydney and Boston. For 30 years, I have worked in the Australian public health system. Until recently, I was head of the department of neurology at the Royal Children's Hospital. The Royal Children's Hospital is a much-loved institution in Victoria. To be a neurologist for children and head of a department at that hospital was for me, for a long, long time, the best job I could possibly imagine. My area of specialty was nerve and muscle disorders of childhood, conditions which are generally uncommon and severe, the diagnosis of which is complex and treatment of which was, until recently, rarely curative. I was fortunate to finish my training at a time when new therapies for these disorders were just coming into clinical trials and to make a research career from studies into the causes and treatments of those conditions. During that career I led more than 30 clinical trials in Sydney and in Melbourne and at the end of last year my team gave the first dose of gene therapy ever given in Victoria for a previously fatal neurological condition of infancy: spinal muscular atrophy. That treatment was developed in international clinical trials. The children's hospitals in Melbourne and Sydney played an important role in that research. We helped transform the lives of those children and their families, and the lives of those who are to come.

We have in this country a wonderful health system. Our medical professionals are as good as any in the world. The NDIS has the potential to be a world-leading program for disability support. Our medical research is similarly competitive at a global level, but it has been underfunded and ill supported in recent years. The last few years have been terribly difficult for our doctors, nurses, allied health and other healthcare professionals. We have to ensure that health care in this country remains fit for purpose, accessible and resilient. There are many challenges to that, including not just an ongoing pandemic and an exhausted workforce but economic challenges of staffing and technology, new diagnostics and therapies, rehabilitation and disability support. These are challenges both of equity and of ethics. This 47th Parliament contains a number of doctors. I look forward to working with them for better health for all Australians.

But the greatest challenge of our generation is climate change. We have lived through a wasted decade of ineffective action on climate change. As a doctor, researcher and scientist my job has always been to care for children and protect their futures. I stood for election for the seat of Kooyong because I felt, and the people of Kooyong felt, that our previous government was not doing that. In recent years the effects of the climate emergency have been apparent to us all. Science has shown us that we need increased ambition and urgent action in our rapid transition to a net zero emissions world. We stand on the precipice of a great opportunity: a transformation to a new clean energy economy—an economy which will not need to rely on volatile markets and international security for a secure energy supply, an economy that is moving away from polluting fuels and combusting vehicles to quiet electric vehicles and clean air for our children. Our renewable energy resources are the envy of the world. We can use these natural advantages to bring down the cost of electricity for households; to protect our elderly neighbours from heatwaves; to ensure Australian families don't have to decide between heating and food; to support our small and large businesses; and to help position our country as the natural home of energy-intensive industries in the Asia-Pacific.

Taking effective action on climate change also means restoring and protecting our water supplies, sustaining the nation's food bowls and helping farmers put fresh food on our tables. Our systems are all interconnected. We can't have a resilient agricultural industry if we continue to drag our feet on climate change. Strong government leadership is crucial to manage a just transition, facilitate investment in low-cost clean energy and turbocharge economic activity and job creation across Australia.

In recent years the people of Australia have lost faith in our political system. We have been ashamed by the lack of integrity and transparency that it has shown. We have lost trust in its processes and have become disaffected and disappointed. We can restore confidence in our democracy by establishing a national integrity commission, improving whistleblower protections, restoring freedom of the media and legislating for transparency in political donations and truth in political advertising.

In 1949 Ben Chifley spoke of working for the betterment of humankind. He called it the 'light on the hill'. In his first speech the member for Melbourne expressed hope that that light would now be powered by renewable energy.

In these last years many Australians have perceived a dimming of the light of Australian democracy. Many of us felt that our elected representatives no longer reflected our values and that our government was not listening to our voices.

But then in 2012 a candle was lit in the seat of Indi, where the McGowan sisters, their nieces and their nephews and Helen Haines harnessed the power of a community and demonstrated the possibility of a new political paradigm in this country—independent representatives chosen by their community. Australia has had independent members since Federation, but this was something different. That first candle inspired more, individual but with collective effect, first in Warringah and now in Mackellar, North Sydney, Wentworth, Curtin, Fowler and Goldstein.

When I think of the people of Kooyong, I see that same spirit of community burning brightly. It started with Oliver Yates in 2019. By 2021 a people powered coalition of the willing and the passionate had come together and listened to the voices of our electorate, the Voices of Kooyong. We had a core team. I would not be here were it not for the members of that team: Robert Baillieu, Hayden O'Connor, Tamar Simons, Julia Cutts, Carolyn Ingvarson, Helen Sawczuk, Campbell Cooney, Rosemary Wilmot, Jedediah Clark, Brent Hodgson, Nancy Huang, Qingze Han, Peter Garnick, Jennifer Henry, Liza Miller and Elle McKinna. The support of the Climate 200 crowdfunding platform gave us the ability to kickstart a campaign that faced all the power, influence and money of an entrenched incumbent. Most of all, we had that inimitable, tireless, fearless, brilliant gem of a campaign manager, Ann Capling. If you build it, they will come. We built it and the people came. I would not be here were it not for the more than 2,000 volunteers—the Grahams, the Jennys, the Jos, the Kates, the Robs, the Davids, all the Peters; there were a lot of Peters—who brought energy and excitement, optimism and active hope, who gave us their time and their trust, who chopped wood and carried water and together built something.

I'm a child of the 1980s. During that time Steven Morrissey told us that there is a light that never goes out, but perhaps Albus Dumbledore put it better when he said, 'Happiness can be found even in the darkest of times if one only remembers to turn on the light.'

Kooyong has always been a seat held by conservative politicians. Since it was formed in 1944, the Liberal Party has always held Kooyong. The last time an incumbent lost his seat in Kooyong was 1922, proof positive that not all once-in-a-century events are bad things. But the Kooyong of 2022 is not the Kooyong of 1922. Nineteen per cent of voters in Kooyong in 2022 identified as Chinese Australian. Thirty-three per cent spoke a language other than English at home. Kooyong has more voters aged between 18 and 25 than any other electorate in Victoria. And it has an above-average proportion of women, all of whom are above-average women. In some ways, Kooyong is a quintessential urban seat and a microcosm of the housing affordability crisis in Australia, with young constituents in the area stretching themselves financially to remain close to their parents and the community in which they grew up. Forty-five per cent of the voters in the Hawthorn end of the electorate are renters, most living in a flat or an apartment. A third of them are in acute rental stress.

The people of Kooyong, like all Australians, value fairness, integrity and respect. They sought change not for their individual interests but for decency and democracy and, above all, for the next generation to be safe and prosperous in a hospitable world. To the rural communities of western New South Wales and Queensland, with farms and towns hit by drought: the people of Kooyong voted for you. To the people of Cobargo and Mallacoota and Kangaroo Island, whose homes burnt during that black summer: Kooyong voted for you. To the people of Lismore and Woodburn, whose houses have been inundated again and again this year by flood: Kooyong voted for you. To those who have dedicated their lives to education, to science, to the arts and to the caring professions, who have felt ill supported by a government which gave pandemic job subsidies to casinos but not to universities: Kooyong voted for you. For those women of Australia who are underpaid, undervalued and unsafe in their homes and in their workplaces: Kooyong voted for you. For immigrants subjected to fear and suspicion, and for the First Nations Australians still struggling for recognition: Kooyong voted for you. For those subjected to detention for trying to come to this country, for those who have been punished for speaking truth to power: Kooyong voted for you. I'm honoured to have been elected by such a community.

I'm committed to supporting responsible economic policy with foresight and long-term planning. That policy has to be predicated on effective and immediate action on climate change. I'm committed to integrity and honesty in politics and to supporting safeguards of transparency and fairness. I commit to working for world-standard health, disability and aged care. I commit to working for true equality and safety for women and to fostering respect for Australians of all ancestries regardless of when and how they came here, their gender, their sexuality, their religion or their beliefs.

To the people of Kooyong, know this: my vote will always be independent. It will always be informed by evidence and it will always be guided by you. As the first independent elected for Kooyong, every one of my votes will be a conscience vote. I'm honoured to serve as your representative, and I will never take that responsibility for granted. To the people of Kooyong, the community of Kooyong: when our children ask us what we did for our country, we will be proud to answer that we were the change that we wanted to see, and that in doing so we changed Australian history.

My final words are to the next generation, to the future of our country. My children. The children for whom I provided medical care. Those schoolkids on the Glenferrie Road tram. The young adults of Kooyong wondering how to pay for their tertiary education and their own homes: Yours is the light that has guided me to this place. Keep shining brightly. Your voices are being heard.

Petro Poroshenko: 'How many citizens of the UK died because of Brexit?', Message to Boris Johnson - 2022

This is extraordinary.

Former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko sends a message to Boris Johnson: “How many citizens of the UK died because of Brexit? Zero … please, no comparison” pic.twitter.com/JKO1dEN0Ih

— Rachel Wearmouth (@REWearmouth) March 22, 2022

22 March 2022, Ukraine

How many citizens of the United Kingdom died because of Brexit?

Zero

Can you imagine how many Ukrainians died before the mad Putin aggression?

Thousands.

Only today we have more than 150 children which were killed by Russian soldiers and by Russian artillery.

Only during the last week, 2000 of the children, only from Mariupol, was captured and delivered back to Russia.

Can I ask you how many houses were destroyed because of the Brexit?

We have whole cities which were completely erased.

Starting from Mariupol, which is much worse than Aleppo, starting from where you are, here , I dunno, seven or eight kilometres from you and from me! We have [names cities], we have the city of Kiev with destroyed houses.

With this situation, definitely, please, no comparison.

Joe Biden: 'To lose a child is like having a piece of your soul ripped away?', response to Uvalde school shooting - 2022

25 May 2022, Washington DC, USA

Good evening, fellow Americans.

I had hoped, when I became President, I would not have to do this again.

Another massacre. Uvalde, Texas. An elementary school. Beautiful, innocent second, third, fourth graders. And how many scores of little children who witnessed what happened see their friends die as if they’re on a battlefield, for God’s sake. They’ll live with it the rest of their lives.

There’s a lot we don’t know yet, but there’s a lot we do know.

There are parents who will never see their child again, never have them jump in bed and cuddle with them. Parents who will never be the same.

To lose a child is like having a piece of your soul ripped away. There’s a hollowness in your chest, and you feel like you’re being sucked into it and never going to be able to get out. It’s suffocating. And it’s never quite the same.

And it’s a feeling shared by the siblings, and the grandparents, and their family members, and the community that’s left behind.

Scripture says — Jill and I have talked about this in different contexts, in other contexts: “The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit.” So many crushed spirits.

So, tonight, I ask the nation to pray for them, to give the parents and siblings the strength in the darkness they feel right now.

As a nation, we have to ask: When in God’s name are we going to stand up to the gun lobby? When in God’s name will we do what we all know in our gut needs to be done?

It’s been 340- — 3,448 days — 10 years since I stood up at a high school in Connecticut — a grade school in Connecticut, where another gunman massacred 26 people, including 20 first graders, at Sandy Hook Elementary School.

Since then, there have been over 900 incidents of gunfires reported on school grounds.

Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. Santa Fe High School in Texas. Oxford High School in Michigan. The list goes on and on.

And the list grows when it includes mass shootings at places like movie theaters, houses of worship, and, as we saw just 10 days ago, at a grocery store in Buffalo, New York.

I am sick and tired of it. We have to act. And don’t tell me we can’t have an impact on this carnage.

I spent my career as a senator and as Vice President working to pass commonsense gun laws. We can’t and won’t prevent every tragedy. But we know they work and have a positive impact. When we passed the assault weapons ban, mass shootings went down. When the law expired, mass shootings tripled.

The idea that an 18-year-old kid can walk into a gun store and buy two assault weapons is just wrong.

What in God’s name do you need an assault weapon for except to kill someone?

Deer aren’t running through the forest with Kevlar vests on, for God’s sake. It’s just sick.

And the gun manufacturers have spent two decades aggressively marketing assault weapons which make them the most and largest profit.

For God’s sake, we have to have the courage to stand up to the industry.

Here’s what else I know: Most Americans support commonsense laws — commonsense gun laws.

I just got off my trip from Asia, meeting with Asian leaders, and I learned of this while I was on the aircraft. And what struck me on that 17-hour flight — what struck me was these kinds of mass shootings rarely happen anywhere else in the world.

Why? They have mental health problems. They have domestic disputes in other countries. They have people who are lost. But these kinds of mass shootings never happen with the kind of frequency that they happen in America. Why?

Why are we willing to live with this carnage? Why do we keep letting this happen? Where in God’s name is our backbone to have the courage to deal with it and stand up to the lobbies?

It’s time to turn this pain into action.

For every parent, for every citizen in this country, we have to make it clear to every elected official in this country: It’s time to act.

It’s time — for those who obstruct or delay or block the commonsense gun laws, we need to let you know that we will not forget.

We can do so much more. We have to do more.

Our prayer tonight is for those parents, lying in bed and trying to figure out, “Will I be able to sleep again? What do I say to my other children? What happens tomorrow?”

May God bless the loss of innocent life on this sad day. And may the Lord be near the brokenhearted and save those crushed in spirit, because they’re going to need a lot of help and a lot of our prayers.

God love you.

Adam Bandt: 'Google it, mate', Response to journalist 'gotcha' question - 2022

13 April 2022, National Press Club, Canberra, Australia

Journalist: Just very quickly, talking about fact checking exercises, you said in the speech that wages growth wasn’t going particularly well, what’s the current WPI?

I am sick …. I am sick …. If you want to know why people are turning off politics, it’s because what happens when you have an election that increasingly becomes this basic fact-checking exercise between a government that deserves to be turfed out and an opposition that’s got no vision.

This is what happens. Elections should be about a contest of ideas.

Politics should be about reaching for the stars and offering a better society. And instead, and instead, there’s these questions that are asked ‘can you tell us this particular stat’ or ‘can you tell us that particular stat?’

And those questions are designed to show that politicians are somehow out of touch and not representative of everyday people.

Well newsflash, most people in Canberra are on six figure salaries, just passing time until they go out and work for the coal or gas companies, and get a six or seven figure lobbying job.

Do you know what would be a better way of showing that politicians are in touch with the need of everyday people? It would be passing laws that lift the minimum wage. It would be making dental and mental into Medicare.

It would be making sure that we wipe student debt and build affordable houses.

And when you’ve got wages growing at about 2 per cent and inflation at 3 and a half per cent, that is the part of the problem.

And I hope that at this election, we can lift the standard and turn it into a genuine contest of ideas.

Chris Murphy: 'What are we doing? Why are we here?', speech following Ulvade school massacre - 2022

25 May 2022, Washington DC, USA

Mr. President, there are 14 kids dead in an elementary school in Texas right now. What are we doing? What are we doing?

Just days after a shooter walked into a grocery store to gun down African American patrons, we have another Sandy Hook on our hands. What are we doing? There were more mass shootings than days in the year. Our kids are living in fear every single time they set foot in a classroom because they think they're going to be next. What are we doing?

Why do you spend all this time running for the United States Senate? Why do you go through all the hassle of getting this job, of putting yourself in a position of authority, if your answer is that, as the slaughter increases, as our kids run for their lives, we do nothing? What are we doing?

Why are you here if not to solve a problem as existential as this? This isn't inevitable. These kids weren't unlucky. This only happens in this country and nowhere else. Nowhere else do little kids go to school thinking that they might be shot that day.

Nowhere else do parents have to talk to their kids, as I have had to do, about why they got locked into a bathroom and told to be quiet for five minutes just in case a bad man entered that building. Nowhere else does that happen except here in the United States of America. And it is a choice. It is our choice to let it continue. What are we doing?

In Sandy Hook Elementary school after those kids came back into those classrooms, they had to adopt a practice in which there would be a safe word that the kids would say. If they started to get thoughts in their brain about what they saw that day, if they started to get nightmares during the day, reliving stepping over their classmates bodies as they tried to flee the school. In one classroom, that word was "monkey."

And over and over and over, through the day, kids would stand up and yell ‘monkey’. And a teacher or a paraprofessional would have to go over to that kid, take them out of the classroom, talk to them about what they had seen, worked them through their issues. Sandy Hook will never, ever be the same. This community in Texas will never, ever be the same.

Why? Why are we here if not to try to make sure that fewer schools and fewer communities go through what Sandy Hook has gone through, what Uvalde is going through? Our heart is breaking for these families. Every ounce of love and thoughts and prayers we can send, we are sending.

But I'm here on this floor to beg, to literally get down on my hands and knees and beg my colleagues. Find a path forward here, work with us to find a way to pass laws that make this less likely. I understand my Republican colleagues will not agree to everything that I may support, but there is a common denominator that we can find.

There is a place where we can achieve agreement that may not guarantee that American never, ever again sees a mass shooting, that may not overnight cut in half the number of murders that happen in America. It will not solve the problem of American violence by itself. But by doing something, we at least stop sending this quiet message of endorsement to these killers, whose brains are breaking, who see the highest levels of government doing nothing, shooting after shooting.

What are we doing? Why are we here? What are we doing? I yield the floor.

Anthony Albanese: 'I hope there are families in public housing watching this tonight', Election night victory speech - 2022

21 May 2022, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

I begin by acknowledging the traditional owners of the land on which we meet. I pay my respects to their elders past, present and emerging. And on behalf of the Australian Labor Party, I commit to the Uluru Statement from the heart in full.

And I say to my fellow Australians, thank you for this extraordinary honour. Tonight, the Australian people have voted for change. I am humbled by this victory and I'm honoured to be given the opportunity to serve as the 31st prime minister of Australia.

My Labor team will work every day to bring Australians together. And I will lead a government worthy of the people of Australia. A government as courageous and hardworking and caring as the Australian people are themselves.

Earlier tonight, Scott Morrison called me to congratulate myself and the Labor Party on our victory at the election.

Scott, very graciously, wished me well. And I thanked him for that and I wish him well. And I thank him for the service that he has given to our country as Prime Minister.

I also want to acknowledge and thank Jenny Morrison and their two daughters for their contribution and sacrifice as well.

My fellow Australians, it says a lot about our great country that a son of a single mum who was a disability pensioner, who grew up in public housing down the road in Camperdown can stand before you tonight as Australia's prime minister.

Every parent wants more for the next generation than they had. My mother dreamt of a better life for me. And I hope that my journey in life inspires Australians to reach for the stars.

I want Australia to continue to be a country that no matter where you live, who you worship, who you love or what your last name is, that places no restrictions on your journey in life. My fellow Australians, I think they've got the name by now. I think they've got that.

I know at the beginning of the campaign they said people didn't know me but I reckon they've got it.

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During this campaign, I have put forward a positive, clear plan for a better future for our country. And I have shared the two principles that will be part of a government that I lead.

No one left behind because we should always look after the disadvantaged and the vulnerable. But also no one held back, because we should always support aspiration and opportunity. That is what my government will do.

That is the what, but the how is also just as important? Because I want to bring Australians together.

I want to seek our common purpose and promote unity and not fear and -- optimism, not fear and division. It is what I have sought to do throughout my political life. And what I will bring to the leadership of our country, it is a show of strength to collaborate and work with people, not weakness.

I want to find that common ground where together we can plant our dreams. To unite around our shared love of this country, our shared faith in Australia's future, our shared values of fairness and opportunity, and hard work and kindness to those in need.

And I can promise all Australians this — no matter how you voted today, the government I lead will respect every one of you every day. And I'll seek to get your vote next time.

We are the greatest country on earth. But we can have an even better future if we seize the opportunities that are right there in front of us. The opportunity to shape change, rather than be shaped by it. And we can shape change more effectively if we seek to you knowing people on that journey of change.

Together we can end the climate wars. Together we can take advantage of the opportunity for Australia to be a renewable energy superpower. Together we can work in common interests with business and unions to drive productivity, lift wages and profits.

I want an economy that works for people, not the other way around. Together we can as a country say that all of us, if the Fair Work Commission doesn't cut the wage of minimum aged workers, we can say that we welcome that absolutely. Together we can strengthen universal healthcare through Medicare.

We can protect universal superannuation. And we can write universal childcare into that proud tradition. Together we can fix the crisis in aged care. Together we can make forward equal opportunity for women a national economic and social priority. Together we can and will establish a national anti-corruption commission. Together we can be a self-reliant, resilient nation, confident in our values and in our place in the world. And together we can embrace the Uluru Statement from the Heart.

We can answer its patient, gracious call for a voice enshrined in our constitution. Because all of us ought to be proud that amongst our great multicultural society we count the oldest living continuous culture in the world. And I acknowledge Australia's next Indigenous Affairs Minister, Linda Burney, who is here.

My fellow Australians, no one gets here by themselves. And I wouldn't be standing here tonight without the support, hard work and belief of so many people. To my parliamentary team, including my Deputy, Richard Marles, and my Senate leader, Penny Wong. My terrific economic team led by Jim Chalmers and Katy Gallagher.

On Monday morning, arrangements are in place to have these people sworn in as members of my team. To enable Penny and I to attend the important Quad leader's meeting in Tokyo, with President Biden, Prime Minister Kishida and Prime Minister Modi. And I want the leaders of the economic team to start work on Monday morning as well.

I wanted to thank my shadow ministry and my amazing caucus members, including the people who are here tonight at this joint function in the corner of our seats, including Tony Burke, who is here. I want to thank all of our Labor candidates. I want to thank all those who have worked so hard for this victory.

We stand on your shoulders, most rank and file members of the Labor Party will never ask for anything. They knock on doors, they make calls, they work so hard. They hand out how to votes. They push the cause of Labor at the local P & C, the local kid's footy, the local netball, when they're shopping in the supermarket, when they talk to their neighbours.

I thank each and every one of the true believers of the Australian Labor Party.

And I proudly thank the members of the mighty trade union movement.

I do want to thank my campaign director, our amazing national secretary, Paul Erickson, and his team. My staff are led by my first campaign director back in 1996. And my electorate office team who haven't seen that much of me, who look after this electorate led by Helen Rogers. Thank you very much.

But to all those — and I'm not going to name them because there's too many — there's a lot of people who believed in me and backed me over many decades in this great movement to be where I am today. You know who you are and I know who you are and I thank you.

I said I've been underestimated my whole life during the campaign. Now while all that is true, I have also been lifted up by others who saw something in me and who encouraged me in life on this journey.

And I pledged to the Australian people here tonight, I am here not to occupy the space, but to make a positive difference each and every day.

And to the amazing diverse people of Grayndler. All politics is local. And in 1996, there were various people who wrote off the chances of Labor holding on to that seat. This is my 10th election. And I want to say thank you for placing your faith in me. It is an absolute honour to be your voice in our national parliament.

To my partner, Jodie, thank you for coming into my life and for sharing this journey.

And to my proudest achievement, my son, Nathan. Thank you, mate, for your love and support. Your mother, who's here tonight, Carmel, we are both so proud of the caring, wonderful, smart young man you have become. Love you, Nathan.

To my Mum, who's beaming down on us. Thank you. And I hope there are families in public housing watching this tonight. Because I want every parent to be able to tell their child no matter where you live or where you come from, in Australia the doors of opportunity are open to us all.

And like every other Labor government, we'll just widen that door a bit more. Friends, we have made history tonight. And tomorrow, together, we begin the work of building a better future. A better future for all Australians. Thank you very much."