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

It is with some humour that you hear the member opposite refer to the net debt of a state jumping from $3.6 billion to just $30 billion, while saying that the additional $26 billion is quality debt as opposed to that very bad $3.6 billion in debt! The additional $26.4 billion is quality debt? What nonsense! What we have seen in Western Australia over the last decade has been profligate spending on projects of passion for premiers and not projects of infrastructure for the meaningful development of Western Australia.

We have seen vanity investments, while the members opposite know full well that investments in schools and hospitals have suffered as a consequence of these choices. We have seen the AAA credit rating of Western Australia disappear. We saw the hard work in budget management that had been done and understood by successive treasurers of Western Australia undone by a wilful Premier—not by the treasurers, but by a wilful premier who has refused to accept, although he understands the laws of economics, that the laws of economics apply to him. In that single point of ignorance, the Premier has driven investments that have not been prudent investments in the interests of Western Australia.

From time to time, we do see the need of state governments to invest in meaningful infrastructure—in roads, in rail, in port—and we also see the needs of premiers and of governments to make tough calls on spending decisions. We see time and time again the need to be prudent in front-line services. But when we see a blow-out in debt from an inherited debt of under $4 billion to currently a debt in the order of $30 billion and increasing, all of us in this place should be alarmed. We should not simply use those numbers as political ping-pong balls to belt across the table here. We should be concerned. If Western Australia were to be reflected in the national economy, that would be $300 billion worth of debt. We should all be concerned in this place, because what that level of debt does to Western Australia is it compromises the ability to deliver services through schools, it compromises the ability to deliver services through hospitals and it compromises the ability to have vision for the future to make sure that we can invest in the productive infrastructure of the future, as opposed to the vanity projects that we now see springing up around Western Australia.

I know that I am in a massive minority when I argue that we do not need to spend $1 billion on a new football oval. I know that that decision has been made and that commitment has been made. But I sat at the football on Saturday in a stadium that is more than equal to the task. I watched a game where, unfortunately, I do not think the Dockers were necessarily equal to the task, but the stadium was. What you learn from that is that once again this a vanity investment, on this occasion of $1 billion for a new football stadium to replace a currently functioning facility. It is an investment choice by state government that is so poorly thought through that it will just send more and more debt to the next generation of schoolteachers and nurses and public servants to try to deal with, as they deal with our kids in schools and sick people in hospitals.

It should be the place for this parliament to stand back and say, 'No; we need to rein this government in.' It is not good enough for members opposite to say, 'Oh, but the GST distribution treats us so badly.' The GST distribution formula was agreed to by a cabinet in Western Australia in the late 1990s of which Colin Barnett was a member. He signed up to this formula. He signed up to this agreement. He signed up to the agreement that has produced the current GST outcome. No cabinet was better informed of that decision than the cabinet of which Colin Barnett was a member. And now we see the Western Australian government continually complaining that it cannot manage its own finances because of the GST. That is not true. It cannot manage its own finances because it is a profligate government that simply spends, that thinks that vanity projects are investment projects in infrastructure for the future and that has decided, in so doing, to take investment in real infrastructure that would benefit Western Australians to investment in vanity projects for the benefit of the Premier.

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