Nationals leader Matt Canavan will use a National Press Club address to pitch what he calls an Australian economic revolution, a five-point plan he has dubbed the Patriot Agenda for an Australian Economic Revival. In a draft speech seen by the ABC, Canavan will say, "I am proposing an Australian economic revolution, not a replay or a reset." He will also say, "We won't get revival by tinkering around the edges. Some of this will require the long-overdue slaying of sacred cows." The speech, delivered in the language of national revival and managed growth, is aimed at reshaping the country from the top down while ordinary people are told to wait for the benefits to trickle through the apparatus. **Who Gets Sold the Vision** The ABC said the vision is for "an Australia on steroids" and that Canavan will address the National Press Club today, Tuesday 7 Apr 2026 at 7:10pm, in his first major address since winning the Nationals leadership last month. The timing matters: this is not a grassroots assembly or a community forum, but a stage built for political messaging, where power speaks to itself and calls it national renewal. Canavan will say the first "sacred cow" must be "our naive belief that open borders for goods and people are always and everywhere a good thing." That line frames movement, trade and migration as problems to be managed by political authority, not realities shaped by the needs of people on the ground. The speech presents the border as a lever for the state to pull, with the public expected to absorb the consequences. **What the Plan Actually Means** The plan includes a domestic space industry, a baby boom, new dams and more factories. Canavan will argue for a national works program to build infrastructure projects including dams and roads, as well as seaports and spaceports. He will say, "Our continent is uniquely placed for rocket launches," pointing to the Australian Space Agency, which the article says was previously established by the Coalition. He will say a renewed space age could help secure Australia communications, defence and national security interests and could also boost regional populations. That is the familiar top-down script: big projects, big promises, and the people told to trust the planners. The article ties the space push to communications, defence and national security interests, showing how state priorities are folded into the pitch for development. The same logic runs through the rest of the plan, where regional growth is treated as a problem to be engineered by policy rather than by communities deciding what they need. Canavan will identify the steel industry as a sector worth protecting, saying it has fallen victim to overseas imports. He will say, "Australia is the largest exporter of coking coal and iron ore in the world, the two main ingredients to make steel." He will add, "We should not need to import foreign steel but, just like on fuel, we have become reliant on other countries for a basic material because we have not acted in response to their protective barriers." The language is all about sovereignty, but the beneficiaries are the industrial and political structures that already control production. **Who Pays for the Revival** Canavan will say scrapping the net zero plan is key to a successful manufacturing industry and domestic fuel security. In the speech, he will say, "To restore sovereign capability and unleash energy abundance, we must end net zero, scrap all carbon taxes and end all bans on energy production in Australia." He will also say, "A real Made in Australia agenda will only work when it is fuelled by all types of Australian energy," in reference to the Albanese government's multi-billion-dollar push to spur local manufacturing and renewables. The contest here is not between freedom and control, but between competing blocs of authority deciding which industries get backed and which communities bear the costs. Canavan will call for the borders to be closed to "mass migration" and will argue for measures to boost the birthrate, including favourable tax settings for dual-income households and promoting working from home. He will say these measures would help increase populations in regions and smaller towns. He will say, "In the past the opening of a new mine or factory could convince the whole family to move but today, unless the other partner has a job in their career, the family will likely stay and fly in and out instead." The line reveals the hierarchy underneath the rhetoric: families are expected to move, commute, and reorganize their lives around the needs of mines and factories. Canavan will say promoting working from home in professional jobs and in the public services would help make regional relocations possible for families, and that "The public service should lead by example, and we should look at tax incentives or infrastructure concessions to encourage it in the private sector too." Even the supposed flexibility comes packaged as a directive from above, with the public service cast as a model for the private sector and tax incentives used as another tool of management. The address also focuses on the Farrer by-election. The ABC said the upcoming Farrer by-election is already being talked about as a litmus test for the new opposition leader and an ascendant One Nation, and that it will also be a measure of major party politics. The electoral theater keeps rolling while the same institutions compete for control of the same levers. Canavan will argue that growing and developing regional Australia would relieve strain on services in big cities and boost those in country areas. He will point to Albury Wodonga Health as an example of where service delivery has failed. The article says the service has been beset by problems in recent years and that its executive management was the subject of a no-confidence vote by doctors last month. That is the cost of hierarchy in plain view: people in the system deal with the fallout while management and politicians trade slogans. Albury Wodonga Health is shaping up to be a major election issue leading into the May by-election, along with concern about the Murray Darling and water security for growers. The Coalition has already announced a commission of inquiry into the Murray Darling, and Canavan will argue that dam building and refurbishment are required to protect the foodbowl. He will say, "If we don't start planning now for their refurbishment we will lose our nation's food bowl." The language of protection and planning lands on top of a landscape already shaped by political decisions, with growers and regional communities left to live with the consequences.
