Alex Hawke (Mitchell, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Yes, an F-minus—I have been corrected by my Western Australian colleagues. And there have been the border protection failures by those opposite which impacted so many of the communities in Western Australia in particular. This government has corrected that.

It is ironic, as the member for Swan eloquently pointed out, that the member for Brand can come into this place as a Western Australian member and tell us that his concern is with this government not keeping its promises. The member for Brand was right about one thing: we do have a program of cuts. That is very true. He said we have a program of cuts but that we cannot quantify them. We can quantify those cuts and we can identify what they mean. We are going to cut the carbon tax. We are going to cut the mining tax. We are going to cut red tape and regulation. These are quantifiable cuts and they will save Western Australia hundreds of millions of dollars in productivity, time spent working for the government, carbon tax payments and flawed mining tax payments. That will result in greater productivity and boost investment and growth in our key state.

It is funny that the Labor Party stump-up the member for Canberra to talk about public servant job losses in Canberra and somehow that is relevant to people in Western Australia. It is also funny that they stump-up a Tasmanian—a state that is basically subsidised by the hard work and productivity of Western Australia—to come in here and complain about Western Australia and our approach to Western Australia.

The coalition government have a plan for Western Australia—that is, to take the shackles off that Labor was so intent on putting on. In fact, it would not be unfair to characterise the last Labor administration as perhaps the most unfair to WA in the history of the Commonwealth. Most of the measures that it took, whether it be the carbon tax or the mining tax, triply impacted on Western Australia. They have impacted so much that voters were not fooled by the last government. That is why they only elected one Labor senator at the last election. If only the members opposite would get a signal from that. One senator is an awfully low proportion of the vote in Western Australia.

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