Rick Wilson (O'Connor, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I commend the member for Perth for bringing forward this motion because it does give us the opportunity—as proud Western Australians, all of us here!—to talk about our great state. My colleague the member for Curtin has already touched on the fact that 50 per cent of the nation's mercantile exports emanate from WA. We certainly do punch above our weight on the economy. My electorate of O'Connor, of course, is one of the main electorates that produces that wealth, not just in gold, nickel, lithium and cobalt, and some of those products that are very important for the move into more batteries, but also in agriculture, where grain, wool and, of course, meat, both chilled and alive, are very important contributors to our nation's exports.

I know we've all got very short memories, Member for Perth, but there is one thing that hasn't been mentioned—three letters: GST. The Western Australian government is currently enjoying, in this 2019-20 year, an additional $814 million in its budget, which it can spend on any infrastructure projects and health projects that it chooses. We need to be reminded that it was the Western Australian members—my colleague the member for Moore will remember—who met many times with Treasurer Morrison, now the Prime Minister, to thrash out the details of the GST fix. In the couple of minutes while I was waiting, I went onto Google and I searched for 'Labor WA GST' just to see what it threw up. Perth Now, on 4 November 2017 had the headline 'Bill Shorten admits Labor would not change GST carve-up system to appease Queensland'. This was just prior to the Queensland election. It goes on to say:

Bill Shorten's Labor has slammed the door shut on fixing WA's GST rip-off and opened a rift with Premier Mark McGowan.

I've got to commend the Premier for fighting very hard to fix the WA GST problem.

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