House debates
Thursday, 5 May 2016
Governor-General's Speech
Swan Electorate
1:37 pm
Steve Irons (Swan, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source
Mr Deputy Speaker Scott, I congratulate you on your service to the parliament and wish you all the best for the future. As we head towards the inevitable election, I would like to thank the constituents of Swan for putting their trust in me for the last three terms and briefly mention some, not all, achievements, including the $490 million GST that I advocated for that was in the budget and is being allocated to the brand new railway line to High Wycombe, the Forrestfield link line, as it has been named. Many more could be listed but I do not have the time, so I will not be doing it at the present time.
One thing I will not be doing during the election period is promoting a change to the date of Australia Day from 26 January. I certainly will not be changing political parties for personal advancement. I have been a member of the Liberal Party for many years. I am happy being a member of the Liberal Party and can say that I have always voted for the Liberal Party. I have not voted for other parties and then changed to different parties. I will not be setting up a community group to promote a certain ideology and political agenda and pretends to care about the people in the community. The people in Belmont know about that. I certainly will not claim to be a longstanding resident of the electorate after working for more than eight years in Sydney. I look forward to the election. I will say that I will miss Don Randall in the next parliament.
Tibor Majlath
Posted on 10 May 2016 8:33 am
The member claims the $490 million GST in the May 3 budget is being allocated to the brand new railway line to High Wycombe, the Forrestfield link line.
Do the feds. really hand out GST for specific state projects? I thought the states make the decisions on how the GST is to be spent?
The budget paper says that $490 million will be allocated under the National partnership on infrastructure projects in Western Australia . Funding in 2015 - 16 under this National Partnership will be allocated to the development of the Forrestfield - Airport Link.
The Australian Government will provide an additional $490.0 million in 2015-16 for the Forrestfield Airport Link in Western Australia. Western Australia continues to receive the lowest share of GST revenue, as a proportion of population share, of any state or territory. This investment recognises this and effectively stops the drop in Western Australias share of the GST, ensuring Western Australias GST relativity is maintained at its 2014-15 level.
That's a bit clearer.