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

I move:

That this House calls on the Australian Government to:

(1) suspend its commitment to funding the $1.6 billion Perth Freight Link until the Western Australian Government is able to provide credible, substantiated evidence of:

(a) how and when the Western Australian Government is proposing to fund the missing bridge link over the Swan River and the new proposed tunnel;

(b) the optimum capacity of the Fremantle container terminal and the projected timing of when that capacity will be reached;

(c) the planning so far for the development of the new container terminal in Cockburn Sound;

(d) how the Western Australian Government proposes to increase the percentage of rail freight into the Fremantle Port when it has failed to make any headway in its six years in office; and

(2) release all documents relating to the planning and cost benefit analysis of this project.

A big issue in the Canning by-election is the growing congestion on the roads in Perth's south-eastern corridor where you see suburbs literally mushrooming along Armadale Road, pouring thousands of extra vehicles onto those roads each day. Quite frankly the road infrastructure is unable to cope with this. It has led to gridlock as residents seek to access the job-rich areas to the north and to the west of Armadale. Labor has committed $145 million to the cost of the Community Connect South project, which would alleviate these bottlenecks. But the Abbott and Barnett governments find themselves incapable of making the same commitment, because instead they are pouring almost $2 billion into the highly ideological and poorly planned Perth Freight Link.

Today I have written to the Commonwealth Auditor-General asking him to conduct an audit of this project. I have referred the Auditor-General to the extraordinary statements of Premier Colin Barnett to his concerned constituents in a meeting in North Freemantle two weeks ago. In respect of the $935 million section 2 of the project he said, and he described this as the most fundamental point that people needed to have in mind, 'We haven’t even selected a route, haven't decided if it's going to be above ground or in a tunnel'—and tunnels are incredibly expensive—'haven’t decided yet whether it will be done at various interchanges, haven't designed it, haven't done the engineering work, haven't done the environmental work and haven't done the planning work. So the connection is still a long, long way away.' He said that trying to console them. And he said, 'I wish I could stand here and say I've got all the answers. I don’t. And I guess the only excuse I can make is that Roe 8 is ready to go. We have yet to do the work that is required on the connection to the port.' Here we have over 50 per cent of the cost of this project that quite clearly has not been planned. How can we possibly have a cost-benefit analysis done on a project where, as the Premier of Western Australia is telling us, we do not even know where it is going to go? We do not even know if it is going to be subterranean or above the ground. Simply, as he says, the work has not been done. So how can we be committing this $930 million of federal taxpayers' money to a project about which we know so very little?

The secrecy around this project has reached new heights. Members will be aware of my long-term battles against the Commonwealth in trying to collect documents. Late last week I received a request from Main Roads for the fourth extension of time for a mere 53 documents relating to this project. We know what the documents are—a confined number of documents—and they have asked for their fourth extension of time. They have used every lame excuse under the sun to try to justify not revealing these projects. Quite clearly this is a matter of enormous embarrassment. I also received a very interesting FOI today. We actually did get a couple of documents, diary entries out of Senator Cormann's office. It confirms that this was a deal stitched up with Treasurer Mike Nahan, Senator Cormann and the assistant minister for infrastructure at a federal level. They had their meeting in that office, and only two weeks later—we have now got evidence—the poor, hapless WA Minister for Transport went into the meeting expecting that he was going to be making his pitch for funding of the outer harbour and came out with this Perth Freight Link. But, as the Premier says, he has belled the cat. The Premier has said: 'We haven't done the work on this project. We don't know where it's going. It is a long way off.' Well, I say to you, let us withdraw that funding and fund the south connect project. Spend this money on roads where we have done planning and where we know what needs to be done to solve the congestion problems in Perth. (Time expired)

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