Alannah Mactiernan (Perth, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Can I commend the member for that wonderful tribute to his friend and former colleague.

I rise on a more traditionally political matter. I want to talk a little bit about the cone of silence that is surrounding a project known as the Perth Freight Link, and I want to address some of the nonsense we heard in the state parliament yesterday. As many members will know, the Perth Freight Link emerged like a UFO in the May 2014 budget—a $1.6 billion project which has an unusual quality in that it actually has not been planned; it was not planned prior to it being announced. We now find the governments, both federal and state, hurtling towards entering into contracts but refusing to release any documentation, on the grounds that it is going to damage contractual negotiations.

We had a small victory in the Administrative Appeals Tribunal earlier this week. The department has been fighting releasing any documents—even traffic counts and traffic forecasts, apparently, as if these are high state secrets! They wanted $2½ thousand for some 88 documents. But, fortunately, the Administrative Appeals Tribunal rejected the government's argument that I just wanted these for my own personal interest, and said, 'No, these are clearly of interest to the public,' and waived those charges entirely. It was quite an extraordinary case. With the black letter law firm that they engaged, it probably cost them at least $10,000 to try to pursue a charge of $2,500. I think that is pretty typical of Minister Briggs's concept of value for money.

Earlier this week the minister refused to release the documents to the Senate. There was an order from the Senate for the release of documents in relation to basic traffic projections and traffic count cost estimates—that sort of thing—and the minister refused to do so. Interestingly, yesterday in the state parliament we saw a series of questions asked by the shadow minister for planning and transport, Rita Saffioti. She asked the hapless transport minister, Minister Nalder: the federal government was claiming that the state government did not want the documents released; was this why the state government was not releasing them? His response was that they were just taking the same approach that I—that is, me personally—took when I was Minister for Planning and Infrastructure when I would not release documents in relation to the Perth-Mandurah rail line.

Well, I have just gone through the Hansard and double-checked and it is absolutely, completely and utterly incorrect. We went through a very extensive master-planning phase for that project. We released that. I released that master plan and all its supporting appendices to parliament. It was released to the parliament in August 2002, a good year-and-a-half before any contracts were entered into. There was the ability of the community to have a look at this project, at our projections and at our cost estimates so that we could have a proper debate on this before we committed to that project. We certainly are seeing anything but that here. The governments are desperately trying to enter into these contracts before a single document is released supporting this absurd project. I think the government will be condemned for that. We will continue the fight to lift the cone of silence on this absurd project.