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

Indeed, Infrastructure Australia made this comment about the selection criteria that were used to chose this one out of 12: 'the methodology showed significant weaknesses, was biased against low-cost options and had limited reliance on objective, quantitative evidence'. That is, they just made up the figures. This is a damning inditement, in reality, on this project. It is interesting that Infrastructure Australia goes on to note that, whilst the business case prepared by the state government claims that this is part of a broader strategy, it observes and actually lists the eight relevant planning and policy documents of the state government and notes that this project was not mentioned in any of them.

So how did we get here? We got here like this. I will describe what happened. At the beginning of 2014 the federal government had a problem. They were about to take $500 million that had been placed in the budget in 2013 for rail projects in Perth. This $500 million for those rail projects had been sought by the Barnett government, because they had gone to the 2013 election promising that they would build a number of rail projects but they depended on federal government funding for those projects. But, because of the Prime Minister's ideological problem with rail, the federal government could not accede to the request of the Barnett government. They could not leave that $500 million in but they knew that if they took it out they would have a hole to fill. So what were they going to do? I will tell the House what we reckon has happened, from the evidence we have.

The assistant minister, who is here today, and the finance minister, Senator Cormann, arranged a meeting with Minister Nalder. We suspect that this meeting—probably when the two of them flew across the Nullarbor together—would have taken place around 6 or 7 February. Poor Minister Nalder goes in with a brief from his public servants to pitch for federal funds for the Outer Harbour—because, as we all know and as the Infrastructure Australia report says, the fundamental problem is that Fremantle port is in the wrong place. He goes in with his pitch. For the last 20 years, successive governments in WA have been planning to move the container terminal to the Outer Harbour, and he goes in to make a pitch for federal funds for this project. Forty-five minutes later he comes out shell-shocked. He has not got funds for the Outer Harbour but what he has got is the Perth Freight Link. We have been able to extract a few documents under FOI, after spending thousands of dollars and over a year of time. What we have found is a schedule of documents that shows that the first dialogue that occurred on this project between the government agencies was in March 2014. And yes, this project was locked like a UFO into the May 2014 budget. There had been no money in the state budget for this project. Indeed the state government had promoted during the previous election the fact that they had taken the money for Roe Highway stage 8 from this project. Troy Buswell was going around saying, 'We're not going to build it; we've taken the money out of the budget.'

Compare that with what Labor did in government. When we came into government in 2001 at the state level we recognised that there was a problem. We recognised that there was a Fremantle Eastern Bypass that no-one was going to build. Richard Court was in government for eight years. He said, 'I'm not going to build it. I'll only build it when there's consensus.' We knew it was a 1970s idea that just did not fly today. So we had the Perth freight network review, a process that went on for two years—a public, transparent process involving business, industry, local government, all of the planning authorities, environmental groups and community groups, all coming up with a workable plan. We developed a six-point plan. An essential part of that was getting on and building the Outer Harbour. So it is quite extraordinary that we are now being saddled with a project that we know will already be out of date as soon as it is open. We acknowledge, as does Infrastructure Australia, that we will have to move the container terminal. We agree that Fremantle will continue to operate as a container terminal—you would expect for at least 10 to 15 years—but it will do so at radically reduced figures not warranting $2.5 billion investment in infrastructure. All of the planning that went on by the Court government, the Labor government and then the Barnett government has shown a continuity of moving forward with the Outer Harbour—until suddenly the assistant minister and the WA Libs had a problem and had to come up with a solution that was anything other than rail. We see already that the cost-benefit ratio of this project has dropped because of the extra $167 million cost blow-out. Imagine how it will drop once we add in the $700 million extra that they are going to need to tunnel underneath Hamilton Hill and to get the project into the port. This project is a complete and utter lemon and represents absolutely wasteful expenditure when we need long-term solutions in Western Australia. We do need this money spent in Western Australia but we do not need it spent on a project for which there has been inadequate planning and which is really incapable of being made retrievable.

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