Anne Aly (Cowan, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

The government has failed to protect the interests of local workers and consumers, especially in Western Australia, where the benefits of the mining and construction boom have been squandered by the Liberal government. The only thing that they have to show is record debt, record deficit and record unemployment. What the Liberal government fails to understand is that to have jobs and growth, to promote local jobs and foster local business, you need infrastructure—the kind of infrastructure that employers need to be able to carry out their business, the kind of infrastructure that local workers and consumers need to be able to live. It is infrastructure that delivers an effective and reliable internet. It delivers people to jobs and jobs to people, consumers to business and business to consumers.

You cannot trust the Liberals to deliver. The Liberals and the Nationals have broken too many promises. After announcing a $30 million 'fully funded plan' to upgrade Wanneroo Road and boasting about it on social media—they had videos and everything, let me tell you—the WA Liberal government then turned around and revealed at the mid-year review that only $10 million was actually allocated to the project. Wanneroo Road, which is in my electorate, has already been identified as one of Australia's top 10 most congested roads by 2030. On any given day and at any given time you can spend up to 30 minutes getting through traffic on Wanneroo Road. It takes precious time away from families and it affects productivity, and Labor knows this. We know that everyday West Australians in the outer suburbs need a government that will not waste money on vanity projects and budget blowouts. That is why we have committed to a fully funded plan to ease the congestion on Wanneroo Road, not some half-funded plan that the Liberals have put forward.

West Australians also know that you cannot trust the Liberals to deliver on their promises. In just 24 hours they broke their promise to fully fund the Wanneroo Road upgrade. Twenty-four hours—that must be a record. It is a pity that the Liberals cannot be as timely in delivering on their promises as they are on breaking them. The people of Cowan are still waiting on the promise of an effective and affordable internet. By recollection, I think they were told that by the end of 2016 they would have it. Well, the end of 2016 has come and gone, and within my electorate people are being told that they will have to wait another two years. Meanwhile, schoolkids cannot do their homework, businesses have had to close and young entrepreneurs, the very people we should be encouraging, cannot even start up a business. The situation is so dire that in some parts of my electorate you have to drive to the next suburb just to be able to access any form of internet.

The member who was speaking before me asked whether or not we have gone out and spoken to businesses. I have. I have gone out and spoken to businesses in my electorate. I speak to them on a daily basis. Let me tell you what my local businesses want. They want this government to fulfil its promise of internet and of an NBN that is reliable and effective and timely and affordable. And they are not getting it. We know that you cannot trust the Liberals to deliver on their promises.

The people of Western Australia know that you cannot trust the Liberals to deliver on their promises, whether those promises are about building vital infrastructure to ensure that businesses can continue to do their business or whether those promises are about the NBN and the delivery of an internet that we have been promised for three years now, and there is still nothing—still nothing in Cowan!

The Liberals are divided and they are confused. But there is one thing that they can agree on—one thing that they are agreeing on—and that is the privatisation of Western Power. The one promise that they are going to be able to deliver on is the privatisation of Western Power. And why? To pay for their recklessness and their failure to plan for life beyond the mining boom. Thank you.

See this speech in context