Don Randall (Canning, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I would like to speak on the appropriation bills before this House and raise an issue of extreme importance not only to my electorate of Canning but to the people of Western Australia in general. There is gross mismanagement of two major infrastructure projects in Western Australia, and the fact is that this mismanagement has caused a great deal of angst in the community because the responsible minister is very much involved in a game of nastiness and spite through a vindictive campaign because she cannot get her own way with certain people she is dealing with. My concerns go to her competence to fulfil the role of planning and infrastructure minister in Western Australia. I am referring to Alannah MacTiernan, the state Minister for Planning and Infrastructure. It is serious to the extent that the new Premier, Alan Carpenter, who is currently defending her in her role, may wish to have a close look because it is about to cost the people of Western Australia many millions of dollars through mishandling and misappropriation of public funds. Minister MacTiernan thinks that public moneys are almost her slush fund to do with as she wishes. She wantonly spends public funds irresponsibly so that, ultimately, she gets her own way, but the people of Western Australia suffer because she has not been able to deliver projects under her jurisdiction as planning and infrastructure minister.

The issue I am talking about is to do with the building of the Perth to Bunbury highway, of which I have often spoken in this House. In fact, it is also called the Mandurah bypass or the Peel deviation. I need to set out some of the background here because this is the strongest issue for people not only in my electorate but also in the Peel region. They want the highway delivered on time and on budget. Both since and before I became the member for Canning this issue has continuously been on the radar because there is a huge bottleneck in the city of Mandurah which not only is dangerous as a result of the number of road accidents—and there have been many road accidents in which people have been killed, particularly around Lake Clifton, recently—but causes a lot of environmental concerns due to the number of people stuck in their cars at traffic lights, pouring out fumes when they could be running in a seamless fashion on the highway. I am very concerned that the longer this is delayed the more people will be maimed or killed on this bit of road.

Before the federal election in 2004 the government committed $150 million which had been asked for by the state Labor government. It then said it needed an extra $20 million, so it was increased to $170 million. We agreed on a total package of $340 million. We were going to fund it fifty-fifty. But, surprise, surprise, the minister then came out and said that it was going to cost more than $340 million and that it was now going to cost $450 million or even more. She put the AusLink funds at risk for Western Australia, but the federal government held its line and was determined to see the AusLink money spent in a responsible way—that being that the Kwinana Freeway and the Mandurah bypass would be finished as a single build with a set finish date. We said that construction had to start by 2006—this year—and that traffic had to be running on the road by 2009. So we put a start date and a finish date on it and agreed that any future blowouts, for which the minister is well known, would be absorbed by the state government. After saying many times that she would not sign the AusLink agreement, she eventually signed it, as everyone expected her to do. Her Premier, the Treasury and her cabinet were never going to let her throw away $170 million and put in jeopardy the rest of the AusLink funding for Western Australia.

Earlier this year everything seemed to be going along very well with the continuous build of the Perth to Bunbury highway. It was announced in early January that a preferred tenderer had been notified by the minister and the roads department. The successful tenderer was the Southern Gateway consortium headed by Leighton Contractors in alliance with WA Limestone. That company in the last month has been recruiting staff and has started to put together its bid as the preferred tenderer. In an absolute surprise, in an article in the West Australian newspaper last Friday headed ‘Alannah wallops Leighton—MacTiernan deals contractor huge blow in its bid to win $450m road contract’, she suddenly announced that she was going to pull preferred tender status off Leightons.

That announcement, first of all, is a breach of faith with the company that had been named as the preferred tenderer. There are also the costs involved. But the most alarming part of this is that, if this bid is delayed any further and the work does not start in 2006, the minister gives up $20 million in funding for this road, because the condition that this government—and the Prime Minister in particular—put on when this funding was announced was that the work had to begin by 2006 for the state government to receive the extra $20 million. If the minister thinks we are not serious about the fact that if this work is not begun by 2006 the $20 million will be put in jeopardy, she should remember that we are not going to be stared down by her in her game of trying to have this road declared a disagreed item before the AusLink proposal was signed.

That was the first alarming thing the minister did. But it gets worse. The minister has acted out of both spitefulness and vindictiveness. This is not the only occasion on which the minister has displayed spiteful and vindictive behaviour. I will refer to the announcement of a measure before Christmas last year. An article that ran in the West Australian newspaper for some time stated that planning minister Alannah MacTiernan had decided to withdraw planning approval over a large development in an area called Gin Gin against a family company called Plunketts. This approval had been granted by the previous government in 1995. The then planning minister, Richard Lewis, quite properly went through the process of checking that the application had gone through the correct procedures and gave it planning approval.

People might ask why, 10 years later, a minister would withdraw this planning approval on a matter that had been in the pipeline for 10 years. It is very simple. The minister lives near the Plunketts in Highgate and she had a neighbourhood dispute with the Plunkett family many years ago. She threatened that she would square up with them eventually and would deal them some sort of blow for having a neighbourhood dispute about an overshadowing planning issue when she was in opposition. When she became planning minister it gave her a great opportunity to come back in a vengeful way and deal with the Plunkett family by withdrawing the planning approval.

I can assure you, Mr Deputy Speaker, that the Plunketts are not going to take this lying down. This matter will go to court. We are talking about approval for a development of 557 hectares. The Plunketts intend to engage the best possible legal advice to fight this. This incident demonstrates that the minister will do anything to square up with her enemies, whether they be political or, as in this case, neighbourhood enemies.

In addition to that, the minister, at a local level, shares the electorate of Armadale with me. I speak about facts when I say that the minister has attacked me in the state parliament a number of times over the Mandurah bypass issue. She has attacked me in a scurrilous way, calling me a great many names. I have been called worse names by better people, so that does not worry me. I will not be in name calling; I am just giving the facts. For example, Minnawarra House, which provides training for those with disabilities et cetera in the electorate of Armadale, is run by a woman called Sandra Leeder and her group. But because she is opposed to Alannah MacTiernan’s decision to alter the planning approval through the Armadale Redevelopment Authority, which she essentially controls, she has made it known that she is going to deal with Sandra Leeder and make sure she gets turfed out. She will even drill down to a local level like this by dealing with a woman in the electorate who has offended her.

Another case in point—and this is getting down to the grubbiest tintacks—is that a local government councillor decided that she would not support everything the minister did, so what did Minister MacTiernan do? She set about running a campaign to dislodge her from the council at the last local government elections. She was successful and bragged about having done that. Here is a minister who decides that when she is taken on by somebody she is going to pay them back. This is all about payback.

How does the payback come to Leightons? Leightons won the contract to build the Perth to Mandurah rail. The Perth to Mandurah rail is a small railway line. It runs for only 80 kilometres. Yet when the minister first took it over and changed the route the cost went from $900 million-odd—and that was the previous Kenwick route; the current route goes straight up the freeway and is the least efficient route—to $1.2 billion. The minister kept assuring everybody that it was on track, on budget, and there were no cost blowouts. In this time the cost has gone from $1.2 billion to $1.56 billion. It is blowing out all the time, yet she tells the public, people on air and the parliament that it is going to be delivered on time and on budget.

Minister MacTiernan decided the rail line would take the most dangerous route by tunnelling through West Perth, when that was not necessary, again because she wanted to put her own stamp on the route and change it from that decided by the former Richard Court government. This is the same minister who bagged the duplication of the Narrows Bridge and then opened it when she became minister. This is the minister who spoke against what is called the ‘Polly pipe’ tunnel in East Perth, and was then a great barracker for it. She changes her stance all the time. Leightons won the contract to build this rail line, but more particularly, the Leightons Kumagai Joint Venture won the contract for tunnelling through the West Perth end.

This project has been beset by industrial and planning delays—all sorts of problems. It is no accident that the CFMEU have had a real input to the delays on this project. Leightons have decided that they are sick and tired of this and they are going to sue the CFMEU. Currently Leightons have a claim lodged against the CFMEU. Minister MacTiernan says that Leightons have been monstered by the CFMEU, so she agrees with the claim, but they are going to sue her. I would be surprised, having lost one day in every fortnight as a result of industrial action, if Leightons do not have some sort of claim. This includes behaviour such as the ‘blue flu’. I understand John Holland is going to sue the CFMEU as well, also claiming that they have been sabotaged by the blue flu.

The problem is that the start date could be affected by the minister in her efforts to delay the bidding and the awarding of this project to one of the consortia. The Leightons Kumagai Group are currently in dispute with Alannah MacTiernan and the state government for something like an extra $300 million, which would take the project cost to nearly $1.9 billion. So we are heading towards the $2 billion price tag which Mr Clough said he would have had to bid for the project initially. Minister MacTiernan has taken it very personally. In fact, she would not go on ABC Stateline last Friday night because she refused to talk about the issue any more.

When the new Premier, Alan Carpenter, was asked on Stateline if it was going to cost $2 billion, his only assurance was that he hoped not. So this project has gone from a budget of just over $1 billion to be now heading towards $2 billion. Ultimately, the minister has decided that the best way to do this is to form an alliance. We know that alliances are quite often fraught with danger. At the end of the day, if a company like Henry Walker Eltin could go broke—as they did—that would expose the Western Australian public. That prospect is quite alarming.

I go back to the fact that this minister has personally intervened to take this project from Leightons. The article in the West Australian by Gareth Parker and Mark Drummond on 10 February 2006 says:

Ms MacTiernan revealed yesterday that she had stripped the Leighton-led consortium of its so-called preferred tender status to build the road ... compete with another contracting group for the States largest single contract.

…       …            …

Ms MacTiernan denied any link between her ferocious battle with Leighton over the railway and her decision to revise the tender program.

You do not have to be too bright to figure out that she is absolutely furious over Leightons suing her for $300 million when she suddenly reverses the announcement of Main Roads of a month or so ago that Leightons were to receive this contract and then decides to blame Main Roads Western Australia for having announced it without her authority and has decided she is going to take on Leightons and get them for having decided to sue her over the Mandurah rail issue. She is in the blame game. She is never, ever wrong. It is always everyone else’s fault. The article says:

Ms MacTiernan last night blamed Main Roads for her having to strip Leighton of its superior status saying the department had acted against her instructions by awarding the Leighton consortium the preferred bidder position in the first place.

They have got four months now to get involved in the next stage of the bidding process. We are in February. If it takes four months to put in another preferred tenderer, and then they form an alliance, we are heading towards the end of the year—you do not start digging the day after—and this $20 million of federal money is in jeopardy as a result. I believe that Main Roads and the minister herself may be looking at another legal case. If Leighton have put this month’s worth of time and effort into preparing their bid under preferred tender status, I would say that they have got a claim because they were told in writing by Main Roads that they were the preferred tenderer.

Let me bring this to a conclusion by saying that at the end of the day the minister has put this project in jeopardy not only at the expense of the people in the Peel region but also at the risk of the lives of people driving on this road. Why has it been put in jeopardy? It has been put in jeopardy because the minister has had a hissy fit with Leighton Contractors and has decided that she will deal with them, that she will pay them back. Everybody in the industry knows that this is the way she operates.

Her stamping of the feet and her nastiness towards somebody who has decided to take her on will cost Western Australian taxpayers, Western Australian motorists and all the good people who drive on that road dearly. Ultimately, they will have to face this delay and this problem because Minister MacTiernan has decided that she has an axe to grind with Leightons. I think it is disgraceful. I think Carpenter should do something about it. He should take her off this project like he took her off the Plunkett project and give it to somebody who can competently manage it rather than somebody who has decided that she is going to square up not in this case with a political enemy but with an enemy in the business community. She is a disgrace. (Time expired)

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