Gary Gray (Brand, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Resources) Share this | Hansard source

It gives me great pleasure to rise in this chamber in support of the motion moved by the member for Perth. It gives me also great sorrow to rise in this chamber on the need to speak in favour of Western Australia and the place that we must hold in the minds of the Australian Commonwealth government and of this parliament.

The reality of the financial situation of Western Australia over the course of the last decade is that, since the election of the Rudd-Gillard and then Rudd governments, Western Australia saw a massive turnaround in support funding through infrastructure from the Commonwealth. From an average of less than $100 per Western Australian to an average of almost $300 per Western Australian, infrastructure funding increased.

When ministers from the Commonwealth government, when any parliamentarian or any tourist, arrives in Western Australia, they arrive at the airport and they will travel out of that airport on the Gateway project. That Gateway project is funded by both the Commonwealth and the Western Australia government—a partnership to build Western Australia, a partnership not about politics but about building Western Australia.

I took great pride in being in the Kimberley in late 2008 with the Premier of Western Australia announcing a massive investment in social infrastructure in the East Kimberley: $200 million that was spent on schools, on hospitals, on social infrastructure in Wyndham, massively overdue—massively overdue because successive governments, Commonwealth and state, had underfunded social infrastructure in the East Kimberley. It was a matter of pride for both governments to come together to fix that wrong—to fix funding for hospitals, to fix funding for home construction, to fix funding in schools, and to fix funding in trades training in the Kimberley. It was the first time it had been done and it should not be the last time.

My great concern is that the Commission of Audit into the Australian government's finances, which the government have been sitting on and have held secret for the past three weeks, as we were told in question time today—and quite probably for the next two months, I fear—will have a massively damaging impact on infrastructure in Western Australia. Worse than that, it will have a massively damaging impact on education funding in Western Australia. It will, I fear, have a massively damaging impact on hospitals in Western Australia.

It is important in the four weeks left before the biggest ever by-election in Australia's Commonwealth history, the by-election for the Senate in Western Australia, that the Commonwealth come clean, not on budget day on the second Tuesday of May, but before 29 March, before 5 April. Give people at least a week to understand the nature of that document and its impact on Western Australia, because two million voters will cast their votes on their Senate to represent Western Australia. They should be as well informed as they possibly can be on the impact of that budget on education, on hospitals, and on infrastructure funding, both road and rail but also community infrastructure.

Community infrastructure in my communities of Rockingham, Kwinana and Mandurah is critically important. We know that there are demands before the Commonwealth, agreed to by the Liberal Party during the election campaign—for instance, for massive funding for a swimming pool in Mandurah, something which has not just bipartisan support but historic bipartisan support in the City of Mandurah. We know that there are demands before the government for surf lifesaving club funding—funding that is deeply bipartisan but which has been held up pending the secret audit report, which we were told today in question time the government has had for three weeks.

At some stage in the next four weeks there will be an election. That election will be on 5 April. All Western Australians deserve to understand what that report means for Western Australian infrastructure, for schools and for our hospitals. That is not simply a political statement; it is a statement of dignity, of honesty and of common sense. Western Australians should know what is before them when they cast that most important vote in the biggest-ever by-election in Australia's constitutional history. I take this opportunity before our parliament to ask for that. (Time expired)

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