Dennis Jensen (Tangney, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

The gall and hypocrisy of the Labor Party and, in particular, the member for Perth is astounding. On this issue, she knows the actions to sell off earmarked lands at Fremantle prevented the highway from going from port to airport as originally envisaged by the Stephenson and Hepburn report in 1955.

I recall being on the transport committee and, quite frankly, asking the question: what analysis was conducted to recommend the deletion of Fremantle Eastern Bypass? The response was: it was a state government decision. I reiterated the question: what analysis? The response: it was a state government decision. In other words, politics writ large and no analysis. Since the deletion of Fremantle Eastern Bypass in 2004 from the metropolitan road scheme, Leach Highway has become the default Perth Freight Link. The only planning the member for Perth did while she was state minister for planning was on how to buy more votes from greenies from the loony left.

The case for the Perth Freight Link is strong. The most significant of the many reasons is the effect the Perth Freight Link will have in terms of community and road user safety. One of the statistics from the City of Melville's document Roe 8 Melville's position: the facts states that for crash rates on urban routes involving trucks—now this is significant—the metropolitan average is 5.4 per cent. So, 5.4 per cent of crashes with road users involved trucks. On Leach Highway, it is 11.1 per cent, and on Kwinana Freeway and Roe Highway—that spaghetti junction that the former minister and now member for Perth deliberately designed as a truncation which was going to cause problems—it is a staggering 31 per cent.

In Western Australia, the Liberal federal government is investing $4.7 billion over five years to build the roads of the 21st century. The extension of Roe Highway is something that I have campaigned long and hard on in the past. This project is tremendously popular and important in my electorate of Tangney. The freight link will remove 500 trucks a day from Leach Highway by 2031, bypass 14 sets of traffic lights, improve access to the Murdoch activity centre and the Fiona Stanley Hospital and create 2,400 jobs.

With specific reference to the member's motion, I note that Fremantle's harbour is forecast, in the next decade, to double to 1.2 million containers per annum. About 20 per cent of Western Australia's economy is linked to trade going in and out of Fremantle. Heavy vehicles and other road freight transport account for around 22 per cent of traffic on key access routes to the Fremantle port inner harbour. This corridor turns over some $16 billion and employs 15,000 people and will double in the next five years. Both the export and import volumes through Fremantle port will continue to grow for years to come. More trade, in particular more exports from WA, means more growth, more jobs and more opportunity for people in WA to get ahead. Without the Perth Freight Link as a productivity-enhancing piece of strategic road infrastructure, this worsening congestion will increasingly act as a handbrake on our economy.

Some people have suggested the Perth Freight Link will not be necessary once we build the second port further south. This is just wrong. Even when a second port is eventually built, it will complement, not replace, Fremantle port. Also, the Perth Freight Link will contribute to more efficient freight movements not just to Fremantle port but to any future second port as well. Indeed, the long-overdue Roe Highway extension will also service any outer harbour in the future.

Today, the member for Perth is campaigning against the strategic road infrastructure in the same way that she campaigned against the construction of Northbridge Tunnel and Graham Farmer Freeway about 15 years ago. In the same way that she was not able to stop the Northbridge Tunnel, which today is used by more than 100,000 cars per day, she will not be able to stand in the way of the Perth Freight Link project.

Ms MacTiernan interjecting—

It is the same sad old story and the same member for Perth screaming out because she does not have any answers.

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