Michael Keenan (Stirling, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Today I wish to talk about the North Beach fishing platform project in my electorate, which the now retired state member for Carine, Katie Hodson-Thomas, and I both worked hard to achieve. Katie worked particularly hard to achieve it during her 12-year tenure in the Western Australian state parliament. Unfortunately, she has not yet been able to see it come to fruition. Whilst I wish Katie very well for her future endeavours, I would like to assure her that the groundwork she laid for this project will not be wasted and that, one day soon, she will be invited to a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the platform. I know for a fact that the baton on this project has been passed to the newly elected member for Carine, Tony Krsticevic. I am sure that he will continue to work at a state level to seek funding for this project.

The proposal is to refurbish an existing jetty, and the platform will be welcomed by anglers with a disability in my electorate—and, indeed, across the state—as there is no facility like the one we propose anywhere on the coastal strip, and this is the perfect site for the platform to be constructed. The newly elected member for Scarborough, Lisa Harvey—who is a very keen angler—will be supporting the project, even though it is just to the north of her electorate boundary. She will be very keen to see recreational fishing continue to flourish under the newly-elected Barnett government in Western Australia.

It is also very timely that I speak about this project for anglers with a disability at a time when Australians are focused once again on Beijing and on the successes of our Australian Paralympians. The North Beach fishing platform is not a multimillion dollar proposal but it is a local project that I as a local member am very keen to see constructed. The original jetty at North Beach dates back to 1914. It has been a very popular fishing spot for generations of anglers, but time and weather have taken their toll and the jetty has deteriorated to its present state; it is just a few metres long and it is not a stable platform for the elderly or for people with a disability.

During the last federal election campaign, I met with a number of supporters of the North Beach fishing project—in particular, Laurie Birchall and Philip Allchin—to hear about details of the proposal and how the desired outcomes could be achieved. During the November election campaign I gave an undertaking that a re-elected Liberal government would look favourably on a joint federal-state-local government proposal. Although we were not successful in that election, this is a project that I consider to be very worthy of merit and I will continue to work with my state and local government colleagues to achieve a safe fishing platform from which people with disabilities can fish and which young people and older people can also use.