Dennis Jensen (Tangney, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

It could be. The majority of Fremantle residents wanted the Fremantle Eastern Bypass built for their own safety and for relief from the freight vehicles that are increasingly invading their streets. However, the member for Fremantle did remember that her state Labor crony Jim McGinty had promised 100-odd voters that he would make their properties more valuable by deleting a crucial road reserve. So much for the one-vote, one-value champion! Thousands want the bypass built—hundreds do not—but Labor does not care.

This politically motivated decision was rationalised with junk planning. You know that I am incensed by junk science; the Labor Party have discovered junk planning. They replaced a brilliant and successful transport network system with a six-point plan. Labor seem to love these six-point plans. Have a look through their documents; there are six-point plans everywhere. What was this plan? The big solution, point 1, was to put more freight on rail. Labor’s promise was that 30 per cent of freight would be on rail by 2006. Halfway through 2007, what do we have? Around five per cent to six per cent. Great planning!

To achieve Labor’s target, you would have to run 600-metre-long double-stacked container trains at least three times a day through the heritage and tourism precincts of Fremantle. It would take about 15 minutes for each train to get through level crossings. But McGinty’s few voters are happy. They do not live anywhere near the noise and delays. Here is the kicker: even if the government put 30 per cent of freight on rail, what would happen to the other 70 per cent? Do Alannah MacTiernan and her Labor government expect it to levitate over residential areas, schools, universities and hospitals? Of course, it was the Lawrence government that deleted it in 1992, and a Liberal government had to clean up the mess in 1994. Even in those days, Labor ignored expert advice and community needs.

The planning department, Main Roads, Fremantle port authority and surrounding councils strongly recommended the retention of the Fremantle Eastern Bypass. This was in addition to independent consultations and over 1,000 submissions from the public calling for the retention of the bypass. History repeated itself in 2004 when the Gallop government deleted the Fremantle Eastern Bypass, yet again, knowing that the need for the FEB was demonstrably greater. The unpredicted growth in Spearwood and the industrial areas in Cockburn, Canning Vale and Welshpool made the need for the completion of the ring-road blindingly obvious. The government’s own consultants had advised against the dismantling of the thoroughly planned integrated transport route. Labor ignored the results of its own consultation process and a record 8,290 submissions received from people and businesses that strongly objected to the deletion of the Fremantle Eastern Bypass. Submissions came from as far away as the Port of Albany in the south. The significance of the freight route to the port of Fremantle was clearly appreciated state wide. Even as late as 1997, the Main Roads report on the Fremantle Eastern Bypass stated that it would provide a vital link in the integrated transport network and that it would remove through-traffic and heavy vehicles from Fremantle streets, with accidents on Hampton Road predicted to fall by as much as 50 per cent. But Labor did not care.

The Labor government’s consultants, Sinclair Knight Merz, clearly stated that the FEB and Roe Highway stage 8 were integral components of the freight network—something the majority of residents, transport companies and the TWU had been telling the Labor government free of charge. Did the queen of controlled community consultation, Alannah MacTiernan, listen? No. She rejected the advice of her own department’s consultants and that of the people directly impacted by the cynical and politically motivated decision. The report made a mockery of the WA Labor government’s six-point plan, touted as the alternative to the ring-road. The minister wanted the report rewritten because it did not suit her politically motivated and antiplanning purposes. In order to deal with the pesky objections that were still coming out loudly and clearly from betrayed communities across three councils—Canning and Melville in my electorate and Fremantle in the member for Fremantle’s electorate—the farce called the Local Impacts Committee was formed by Alannah MacTiernan, minister for misrepresentation and misinformation, and chaired by the disgraced former minister Tony McRae.

McRae did not even care about his electorate of Riverton because he does not even live there. He even privately admitted that the bypass of Roe Highway stage 8 should be built. The Local Impacts Committee comprised Labor government MPs, members of MacTiernan’s Department of Planning and Infrastructure, and Main Roads Western Australia. They had to compromise their professional integrity by toeing the party line to keep their jobs. They had seen what happened to the engineers who had expressed opposing views to the minister’s intentions. Representatives from the City of Melville and the City of Canning were hopelessly and purposefully outnumbered so that the chair did not have to worry about their votes. These are the council areas through which we are getting this massive build-up of traffic. The state Labor government has spent $32 million on the rail loop at the port. More than half of that amount was Commonwealth funding. It is still only taking about five to six per cent of the freight.

With Fremantle Ports planning to deepen the harbour and expecting growth of about 10 per cent per annum, this growth in traffic will be travelling through our suburbs, past homes, schools, colleges, universities, hospitals, retirement villages and shopping centres. Growth in container traffic is increasing by 3½ per cent per annum—501,400 TEUs and growing. The vast majority of container freight has its origin and destination in the metropolitan area. Even the optimistic projection of carrying 30 per cent of this on rail will not alleviate the current and future congestion and its associated dangers on suburban roads.

My electorate, and that of the member for Fremantle, will continue to see an increase in road trauma from a lethal mix of heavy freight and family cars as the WA Labor government ignores the need for a completed integrated transport plan. Indeed, when we held hearings in Perth, I put the question to MacTiernan’s bureaucrat as to what studies had been conducted to indicate that the FEB should be deleted. His response was that it was a state government decision. I repeated the question and he repeated that it was a state government decision. In other words, no planning and no analysis has been conducted and a route has been deleted that has been in the planning for over 40 years.

We have travelled throughout Australia and had hearings in all sorts of ports and towns. Just about everywhere, they indicated how important it is that ring-roads be completed. What do we have in Western Australia? We have the enviable situation where we have most of a ring-road completed and we have land set aside for the completion of the ring-road; and the state Labor government is deleting the final portion of it—the portion that is actually critical to the entire thing because it leads right into the port of Fremantle.

The Labor government in Western Australia need to rethink the way in which they have planned for our future freight task. They need to complete both Roe Highway stage 8 and the Fremantle Eastern Bypass to ensure that we have a freight network that is viable in the 21st century.

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