Wilson Tuckey (O'Connor, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

By the way, I will make a loss on it and I am not hanging around here to get it. When we have these sorts of contests it is very interesting to see how attitudes change. The present state government is a Liberal-Nationals—‘coalition’ is hardly the right word—group who I am pleased to say is getting on pretty well. It is over there making a fuss about this matter.

During the period when the member for Armadale was in government, she on occasion after occasion complained about the treatment that the Western Australian government got from the Howard government. On 29 August 2001, 20 May 2003, 29 June 2004, 8 May 2005 and 25 August 2005 she was on the record quite properly arguing the case for WA. But there is a significance about those dates: there is no such matter on the record after 2007. Apparently since there has been a change of government in this place that member no longer thinks she has a responsibility to argue the case for Western Australia, as the incumbent member for Canning certainly does. Of course we had a huge debate over the Bunbury highway and her original position, as a minister for transport, in refusing an offer from the Howard government of $170 million to start that project. All credit to the member for Canning.

These are most important issues when one looks at the particular issue under debate. That issue is one relative to whether an otherwise unexceptional piece of legislation can result in a clawback of money from the government of Western Australia, who has been doing a pretty good job in this regard. I want to talk a little about the relevance of its good work to the oil and gas industry. Western Australia, as other states, relies heavily on payroll tax as a source of revenue. I do not have to convince the House that, when a major project employing 10,000 people—of which we can be very grateful—is in progress, payroll tax is significantly enhanced, for instance in Western Australia.

Yet the previous state government was unable to secure for Western Australia the Inpex development from Browse, because they could not make up their mind where they might put a hub on the 6,000-kilometre coastline that exists between Broome and Darwin. They could not find a place. Colin Barnett, the incumbent Premier, fixed that up in no time. The interesting point is that the Japanese group obtaining gas from adjoining deposits was prepared to come ashore in the Kimberley in Western Australia and do its development. The payroll tax revenue from the wages it would have paid in such a circumstance would probably build a hospital in WA. It certainly would have funded the road that is essential to shortening the transport distances to that wonderful area of development in Australia and to making eastern states manufacturers more competitive with overseas manufacturers, as an example outside my state.

The previous state government could not do it, so Inpex has gone to Darwin. Good luck to Darwin. It is not a very good environmental outcome. There are huge lengths of pipeline undersea, high-pressure requirements, more emissions and more emissions in the actual manufacture of the pipeline—all bad things. More particularly, the traditional landowners missed out on a billion bucks. It will not go to Indigenous people in Darwin because the deal was already done. We have a government in WA who this government believes cannot do the job. This government would like to take the responsibility off the WA government, when after a very short period of time we now have the major projects coming to Western Australia.

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