Barry Haase (Kalgoorlie, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Infrastructure, Roads and Transport) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It will come as no surprise to members of the House that I rise to speak tonight on the Western Australian election. Saturday-next in Western Australia the opportunity arises for the people of Western Australia to break this yoke of wall-to-wall Labor governments across the nation. It gives me a great deal of pleasure to have the opportunity to voice the opinion of so many of my constituents about what is wrong with the west today—and how much better it could be. Already, we know that we are the economic powerhouse of the nation. My own electorate—some 30 per cent of Australia—produces much above Australia’s average production, but so much more could be done if it were not for the head-in-the-sand attitude of the current Western Australian Labor government.

We have, for instance, the $200 million Yannarie salt project being proposed by Straits Resources. This has been knocked on the head by the Western Australian EPA in chorus with the Western Australian government. The reason it was knocked on the head by the EPA is because the bitterns would discharge from the project and upset the balance of salinity in the gulf. There is no bitterns discharge from the project. It is an absolute nonsense. In league with the Western Australian government, we have got a Labor federal government who wish to bash Woodside shareholders to the tune of $2½ billion over the next four years, because they want to welsh on a deal that was pivotal to Woodside getting off the ground. We have got an INPEX petroleum project—

Mike Symon (Deakin, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Symon interjecting

Barry Haase (Kalgoorlie, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Infrastructure, Roads and Transport) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The members opposite want to be most vocal. Their turn will come one day and they know not of what they speak—they have not been to the west in the main. INPEX is an organisation that wishes to develop the Browse Basin field onshore in the Kimberley. They are being hunted out of Western Australia by a head-in-the-sand state government. They are going to go to Darwin because in Darwin they actually appreciate development—they actually appreciate the opportunity to have somebody come and make a quid in their patch and create revenue. However, in the Western Australian situation that I am speaking of, where we wish to change the government on Saturday, there is no appreciation of the opportunity to make a quid, to produce more jobs, to create more revenue and—dare I say it—to provide jobs for Indigenous people in the community. Dare I say that Indigenous people that live in the community these days deserve a crack at a real job, financial independence and the self-esteem that can be derived from that?

The state government in Western Australia seems to have an attitude that, if it is out of the metropolitan area and it is going to make a quid, dud it, because somebody—especially the tree-hugging greenies, whom the Labor Party is in bed with—wants to have progress stopped in Western Australia. But, until such time as the greenies start riding wooden bicycles around the electorate, I am not going to believe that they are fair dinkum.

We have so much to lay at the feet of the culpable Western Australia government when it comes to the inability for small business to find employees in Western Australia. Housing affordability is nonexistent in towns like Karratha and Port Hedland. We have got a situation in Karratha, for instance, where the only way that you can staff the take-away food joint is to import people from the Philippines to put on the job there. Thank goodness for a federal government that allowed that, under 457 visas.

On Saturday the 6th of this month, Western Australians will have the opportunity to go to the polls and get rid of this head-in-the-sand Western Australian government who would try and prevent Western Australians from making a quid, who would try and curtail the situation where unemployed Australians on the eastern and south-eastern seaboard can come to the west, get a job, find a new life, get a new lease of life and raise their family with a future of prosperity in a wonderful state—a wonderful state that will be governed by a Liberal government that has some vision for the future, that does not think earning a quid is a crime, that does not think profit is a dirty word and that does not think making a quid is something to be ashamed of. (Time expired)