Gary Gray (Brand, Australian Labor Party, Minister for the Public Service and Integrity) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak about the locality of Kwinana and its recent qualification as a city in the 2011 census. Kwinana is a township in the northern part of my electorate, in the southern metropolitan area of Perth, a city now of 30,000 people. It is a city that for all of its life has been an integral part of the economic structure of Western Australia, from the days before European settlement, when it was part of an important trade and communication link pursued by local Noongar people from Perth through to what we now call Bunbury, up to now—the home town of the industrial hub of Western Australia.

Western Australia has four great pillars of economic activity—the mining industry, of course; the agricultural sector; our massively efficient ports; and the Kwinana industrial area, which generates in the order of $20 billion worth of economic product to the benefit of Western Australians. The graduation of the town of Kwinana to city status is extremely important. It brings to fruition the vision of successive mayors of Kwinana, from Frank Konecny through to the current mayor, Carol Adams, to grow the town in a way that supports the local community and supports the aspirations of the people who live in that community. Kwinana industries provide energy; they provide agricultural products. The port at Kwinana is Australia's largest export agricultural port. The port at Kwinana provides the export capacity through the CBH hub, which is a massive investment in the future of Western Australians—made by our farmers, made by CBH and made over 40 years ago—to the benefit of all Western Australians. It is an icon of my part of the coastal fringe of the Perth metropolitan area.

The Kwinana industries together—generating, as I said, $20 billion worth of product—grew from an insightful decision by a government almost 50 years ago to create the first registered state agreement on which the BP refinery is founded. That refinery then created the need for labour and built the housing stock that became the town of Kwinana, which has now graduated into city status, so that it stands equal to its neighbouring Coburn, Rockingham and Mandurah as a place of the future, a place of growth, a place of prosperity, a place of pride and a place that has built its future on a grumpy sense of self-reliance. It has had its own future taken in hand by great leaders of our town like Frank Konecny and successive mayors, building a town that will hold a place in the future as a city, and I congratulate Kwinana for it. (Time expired)