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

The ALP have fallen in Western Australia—victims of their own mismanagement, arrogance, incompetence and disgraceful corruption, continuing a pattern which has blighted state politics for 25 years. But, before they are even officially out of office, the results of their abuse of two terms in power are already coming back to haunt us. A massive resources infrastructure project planned for WA was jeopardised by state and federal Labor government meddling led by the federal Minister for the Environment, Heritage and the Arts and the former WA Minister for State Development, who is now the state’s Leader of the Opposition. It now seems that it may be too late for Western Australia to secure the Inpex LNG processing plant in the Kimberley, with the project going to Darwin instead.

When Inpex came to WA and said they would like to invest up to $20 billion—and this figure represents $10,000 for each man, woman and child in WA—they were not welcomed with open arms, as one would expect. No. Instead, they were told that they would have to wait while consent was obtained from every single one of the disparate Aboriginal groups in that vast region and that the environmental impact must be assessed—an action already carried out by the company at a cost of millions of dollars. The state and federal governments then told Inpex that they hoped to establish a single site in the north-west as a hub for all related resources plants but made no decision on this either. When given the option of serving the interests of an entire state of two million people—a state which props up the rest of the country with its massive resources royalties—the state and federal governments refused. Instead, they decided to serve the narrow self-interest of tree huggers and a handful of native title rabble-rousers—and I make a distinction here from those who genuinely work in the interests of the environment and Aboriginal people. When given a choice between economic rationalism and getting a warm and fuzzy feeling from their middle-class, superannuated, pseudohippy mates, they chose the latter.

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