Alannah Mactiernan (Perth, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you, Madam Speaker. This will be a debate about which party has delivered for Western Australia, and I will be focusing very much on the area of infrastructure. It was the federal Labor government that brought home the bacon after years of an eastern-state-centric Howard government. It was certainly the federal Labor government that got on board and supported the economic infrastructure that we needed in Western Australia. I would really like to set out some of these facts.

During its time in government, Labor more than doubled transport expenditure across Western Australia. If we take a look at our six budgets, we committed $4.2 billion worth of expenditure over those six budgets, over those first six years. That is $700 million per annum on average. Now if we contrast that with what happened in the last six years of the Howard government—I am being generous; I am just looking at those last six years of the Howard government—their average annual expenditure was $318 million. So $1.9 billion over their last six budgets, compared to our $4.2 billion. It is absolutely clear who has in fact done the heavy lifting in the development of infrastructure.

I want to talk about the extreme disengagement that we found under the Howard government to the needs of the mining community in the Pilbara. We had two projects that desperately needed to be funded. One was the realignment of the Great Northern Highway through Port Hedland, a $250 million project. The second was the duplication of the Dampier Highway, a $123 million project in and around Karratha and Dampier. The Howard government just simply would not fund these projects. They said, 'These are not on our national transport plan.' We are talking about Port Hedland and Karratha. The national transport plan, which had been developed by the coalition government—which always gives the transport portfolio to the National Party—built 'roads of National Party importance', not roads of national importance—'RONIs' we used to call them.

I have said this before in the House but let me remind you: on that national transport network we had Tamworth, the country and western music capital, we had Mildura, the raisin capital, and we had Shepparton, despite the best endeavours of the Prime Minister, Mr Abbott, and company. But it did not include Port Hedland or the Burrup Peninsula. Indeed, at the ministerial council meeting, when I pointed this out to the coalition minister, he said, 'What's the Burrup?', not 'Where's the Burrup?' This showed how eastern-state-centric this government had indeed become. But Labor got it. In the lead-up to the 2007 election, the Labor team committed to and over the next four years subsequently went on to deliver those two absolutely key projects into the biggest mining areas in Western Australia. The level of federal assistance has been unprecedented across the state. It included important projects in Perth—road, rail, passenger and freight transport.

Mr Briggs interjecting—

I know you are the Shane Warne of the Liberal Party, but just hold off on the sledging—I only have 10 minutes. If I had 30 minutes, I would love to engage with you, Sweetheart, but I am not going to because I am going to focus on exposing you guys for the reality of your hypocrisy and your failure to invest in Western Australia. The trajectory of this failure to invest in Western Australia continues today. The Abbott government has made very clear that they are ripping $500 million of expenditure from WA—expenditure already in the budget which they are removing. They have said the reason is that they do not do urban rail, although, I did notice the Minister for Infrastructure and Regional Development was 'wombling' around Perth City Link the other day, marvelling at the project, talking about this fabulous urban rail project, which was two-thirds funded by federal Labor. But now we are not going to do that. We are not going to invest in urban rail. This is a massive problem for Western Australia, a massive problem for Perth.

Perth, which accounts for around 76 per cent of Western Australia's population, is growing with around 1,000 people per week coming into our state and we desperately need to expand our transport network. Even the conservative Premier Colin Barnett recognises that there is an urgent need for expanding our road network. Indeed small business recognises it. Businesses generally recognise it. In a recent RAC survey, they found that 83 per cent of businesses in Perth are reporting that traffic congestion is having a negative outcome on their operations. So we have this massive problem.

Premier Barnett went to the last election having cobbled together a couple of public transport projects, very critical projects, which would have helped. Of course, these were all predicated on receiving federal funding but the federal government has said no. Today we have heard another 'womble-ish' answer come forward saying, 'That's not a problem because we're investing more in roads and so we'll free up all of this money.' When we look at what you are going to do over the next five years, we see that there is not a single road project that was not already in the budget. There is not one single cent more in road projects that you have committed to that which was not already in the last Labor budget. We had those projects, plus we had the $500 million of rail expenditure. You are taking that rail expenditure out. So that is a net loss to Western Australia of $500 million. You cannot explain that away.

I know you are going to pop up and talk about the mining tax. You are using it as a magic pudding. You say on the one hand, 'We don't get any money from the mining tax'; on the other hand you say that it is destroying the Western Australia economy. I want to say to you that there are three companies in Western Australia that would be the most likely candidates for paying the mining tax. Rio Tinto's full-year profit for last year was $3.7 billion—a record profit. BHP Billiton's half-year profit was $7.8 billion. FMG's half-year profit was $1.7 billion. All of these were record profits. The reality is that you are reverting to the days of the Howard government where you are not giving Western Australia a fair share—

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