Andrew Hastie (Canning, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Defence) Share this | Hansard source

Pinjarra locals are disappointed in Robyn Clarke, our local state MP for Murray Wellington. They are not mugs, and she has been misleading them about the Pinjarra heavy haulage deviation. Over 700 heavy haulage trucks thunder through Pinjarra every single day. As industry grows in our region, that number will rise. The deviation is a bypass and it will send hundreds of trucks around town, making it safer and quieter.

I fought hard to secure funding with the coalition government, and we got $200 million to build the deviation. That was cut by the Albanese government last year. Last November, Robyn Clarke promised that the Cook government would fund the difference. She has been telling locals that a project would be delivered in this budget. But last month, when Labor released its state budget, the lie was revealed. Of the estimated $250 million it will take the build the deviation, only $40 million is in the forward spending. When I pointed this out on Facebook, Robyn Clarke said I couldn't read a budget paper and the money was there. But unfortunately for Robyn, I and others on Facebook can read a budget paper and the promised money simply isn't there.

The sad truth is that Robyn Clarke is misleading my community. Labor has delayed the project yet again, and there is no chance of this deviation being close to finished before 2030 under Labor. My region needs a deviation now and only our shire president, David Bolt, now the Liberal candidate for Murray Wellington, has a plan to deliver this project. He is your man to back in March next year.

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