Josh Wilson (Fremantle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

The recession in Western Australia—many quarters of falling demand in Western Australia, for the member for Tangney's benefit. That's the definition of recession: falling state demand, record high unemployment.

Mr Morton interjecting—

For the member for Tangney's benefit, we've just had two consecutive quarters of growth. We've broken the recession that was bequeathed to the people of Western Australia by the Barnett government, during which time the member for Tangney was the state Liberal director of Western Australia.

In any case, let me finish by pointing out something else. Let's not forget in Western Australia. Let's not allow the GST to cover a multitude of sins. The GST has been very poor because of Liberal federal and state governments. We've fixed the first part. We have a McGowan Labor state government. Now we're going to try to fix the next part. That's when we'll deal with the GST. In the meantime let's not, with our focus on the GST, ignore all other areas where this coalition government has short-changed Western Australia. We are getting far and away the worst deal when it comes to the NBN. The fibre-to-the-node, 19th-century copper technology is without doubt the worst NBN technology, and Western Australia is getting 60 per cent of its line network in fibre-to-the-node, which is half as much again as any other jurisdiction. New South Wales, Queensland and Victoria are all getting around 40 per cent of their line network in fibre-to-the-node, a much higher proportion of fibre-to-the-curb and a much higher proportion of fibre-to-the-premises. We're getting 60 per cent.

When NBN decided earlier this year that they were going to provide an additional 400,000 premises with fibre-to-the-curb, did they use that to help correct what was going on in Western Australia? No. We got less than 10 per cent of the additional premises. We are being short-changed on the NBN. We are getting ripped off when it comes to the ABC. The member for Moore has had a recent conversion to the practice of honesty and transparency. The member for Moore has come out and said that we're getting a terrible deal on shipbuilding, and that's why he had to support the end of that Prime Minister in the middle that I was talking to you about before—Mr Turnbull. The member for Moore had to support bringing him down because he acknowledged we were getting a terrible deal on defence shipbuilding. So we do need to fix the GST. We need a federal Shorten Labor government to do that and to fix all the other ways in which we've been taken for granted by the Liberals for too long.

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