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

I am astonished. We have just heard from a minister for infrastructure who does not seem to understand that the first thing about infrastructure is planning; the second thing about infrastructure is funding; and the third thing about infrastructure is thought. About this particular piece of infrastructure, we have not seen, we have not heard and we are not able to read any consideration of freight-corridor studies—no consideration of the work that may or may not have been done with stakeholder groups; no consideration of the work that would have been done to properly plan and implement this piece of infrastructure, which is not just important for Western Australia and Perth, but it is important for the export economy of our nation.

This very corridor of which we speak is responsible for the exportation of Australia's grain crop. It is important for the exportation of our live animal trade out through the Fremantle port. It is important for keeping safe a major piece of suburban infrastructure while, at the same time, driving economic growth, jobs and, most importantly, the future of the logistics through the south-western corridor of Perth. I am astonished that we would have a minister get up in this place and not make any reference at all to the freight-corridor planning work that should have been done and that should simply be axiomatic in the consideration of a piece of infrastructure of the size and scale of which we have just spoken.

Then again, I am even more astonished that in this place we see important initiatives that are beyond any question to the benefit of Western Australia simply thrown around like political confetti. The China-Australia Free Trade Agreement is critically important to Western Australia. Australia's China relationship is fundamentally a West Australian relationship. It is a West Australian relationship because we are the state which exports most to China—from the creation of the Channar agreement 30 years ago, to the direct investment that takes place in Gorgon, that will take place in Browse and that has taken place in our iron ore exports. For over 40 years we have seen the growth in our trading relationship with China, and we see the importance of our free trade agreement with China that underpins, in so many ways, the importance of the infrastructure investment that must follow hand in hand.

Yet what we see more and more often is the use of these mechanisms—these tools for economic growth—as nothing more than tools for politics. What we need is a genuine Australia-China FTA—a high-quality FTA; a trade agreement which achieves genuine market access for Australian exporters that reduces tariffs and creates jobs for Australians and Chinese. It can be achieved and it can be achieved to the advantage of both countries. It needs to be achieved because unemployment in Western Australia is going up as we speak. The China free trade agreement is prescient. It is why Labor needs to see critical safeguards in place in response to the movement of labour between our two countries that underpins the important Australia-China Free Trade Agreement.

Last year Mr Abbott promised that the coalition would retain labour-market testing—the requirement for employers to show that they cannot find suitable local workers before they bring in temporary workers for major projects. This is critically important to us, because the erosion of labour-market testing and safeguards runs the risk of our own community rejecting ChAFTA. That seems not to matter to members opposite. It does matter. It matters because the China-Australia Free Trade Agreement is important. The ability for us to carry in our communities, and for members opposite to carry in their communities, the importance of this measure is underpinned by labour-market integrity tests that can be supported by all of us in our community. Instead, what do we see? We see a government that simply plays to the lowest, base, political equation that it can find, and it throws into a terrible environment the worst possible language around free trade and the worst possible characterisation of those of us who defend Australian jobs and Chinese jobs in this process.

We support the goals of free trade. It may come as a surprise to members opposite that in the six years of the former Labor government $278 billion was invested in Western Australia's resources sector—$278 billion. Since the election of this mob over here, there has been not one dollar of new investment.

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