Matt Keogh (Burt, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

The confidence that was shown by the WA Liberal Party in the governance of this nation was writ large last week when they decided they had so much confidence in this Prime Minister, his governance and his financial management of the country that they want out. This is a pretty consistent line from the Liberal Party when we come to think about it, because, when it came to thinking about Federation, their like weren't particularly keen on it for WA at the time, but the workers of Western Australia—the people who were out in the Kalgoorlie mines—all knew that they wanted to be part of a federation. We made sure that WA came in, and an important step it was.

But Western Australia still didn't get a very good deal back then, because all of those protectionists across the nation wanted to impose protectionism on Western Australia—a classically free-trade jurisdiction. It was from then that our position in the Commonwealth has always had a question mark hanging over it. It has been since then that Western Australians in this parliament have had to stand up and roar to make sure that they were heard by those over east, and that is what I am proud to continue the tradition of doing. Because Western Australia, whilst making up only 10 per cent of the population of the country, still provides 15 per cent of the economy and takes up a third of the land mass of the continent of our great nation it is a force to be reckoned with, and it is a force that has delivered great Australian prime ministers like John Curtin and Bob Hawke, and I'm sure there are many more to come.

After that great blast into the Federation, we had the secession movement come to Western Australia, and it is a movement that has stuck with the Liberal Party because the president of the Liberal Party continues to fly that flag. He likes to come back to it again and again. It's a process that did deliver us the Grants Commission, which is a good thing in theory—except it doesn't really deliver for WA in practice anymore, but I'll come to that again. When we look at the trajectory from Federation, the next great step—as I understand, from my great research on Wikipedia—was the concept of the Brisbane Line. It seems the conservative forces on the other side, when we came to that great existential threat to our nation of the Second World War, thought that Western Australia could be given away. That's how much confidence they had in being able to defend our nation. That's how much store they put in the integrity of our Commonwealth over there. They were prepared to give WA away. But, again, that great Labor Prime Minister, John Curtin, when that idea came to his cabinet, said, 'Get stuffed; we are keeping WA in the Commonwealth.' And good on him for doing so.

This Liberal state government that we just got rid of in Western Australia has form when it comes to understanding our position in the Commonwealth. It basically spent its entire eight years not signing up to any Commonwealth agreements and not participating in any national schemes, and, when it came to Infrastructure Australia, it submitted no projects for Western Australia. We had to wait until we had a Labor government in WA—fortunately we now have the Mark McGowan WA Labor government—to even get around to submitting projects to Infrastructure Australia so that we could have them funded. That is what we've been getting on with since the election. But, of course, that would not have made any difference to this government if it weren't for the fact that WA not only had a great, resounding win at the state election but started returning some more federal Labor members as well. It was only after that that this government started to listen.

The member for 'Sukkilala'—sorry, the member for Deakin said that there were all these projects but he didn't actually know what any of them were. Let me tell you. We've got: fixing the Denny Avenue rail crossing; bringing forward the duplication of Armadale Road; the new Armadale Road bridge; the extension of the Thornlie rail line through to Cockburn Central—and that's all just in my electorate. There are many other projects as well. In fact, there's even some in the member for Tangney's electorate, because we understand the need to make sure that they happen. I know you're very supportive of it, member for Tangney. They're just a few of the projects.

But I think it is appropriate that I turn to the GST. We have many Western Australians in the cabinet of this government, in the ministry: the Deputy Leader of the Liberal Party and the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Julie Bishop; the Deputy Leader of the Government in the Senate and the Minister for Finance, Mathias Cormann; the Minister for Employment and the Minister for Women, Michaelia Cash; the Minister for Indigenous Health and the Minister for Aged Care, Ken Wyatt; the Minister for Social Services, Christian Porter; the Minister for Justice, Michael Keenan, who's at the table but not speaking about this issue at all, apparently; and the Chief Government Whip, Nola Marino. They're all from Western Australia and they have delivered diddly squat for Western Australia when it comes to the GST. They came in and offered a $100 million tax incentive for mining, which is of course welcome but not limited to Western Australia. (Time expired)

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