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

I move:

That the House:

(1) recognises the failure of the Western Australian and Australian governments to manage the Western Australian economy;

(2) notes that under the Western Australian and Australian governments in Western Australia:

(a) unemployment reached its highest rate in 13 years at 6.4 per cent, with 59,000 more Western Australians out of work since the Liberal Party formed government in Western Australia;

(b) business investment dropped 12.7 per cent over the year to June 2015;

(c) state final demand fell by 3.6 per cent in the year to June 2015;

(d) the state’s credit rating was downgraded by Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s;

(e) business and consumer confidence are at record low levels;

(f) state net debt has blown out from $3.6 billion in 2008 when the Liberal Party formed government in Western Australia to $30 billion in 2015; and

(g) cost of living increased sharply by 54.3 per cent; and

(3) condemns the:

(a) Australian Government for:

(i) cutting $3.1 billion from Western Australian schools and $5.8 billion from hospitals over 10 years; and

(ii) removing the level playing field from Western Australia in the manufacture of offshore patrol vessels; and

(b) Western Australian and Australian governments for squandering the mining boom and failing to diversify the Western Australian economy and create a jobs and growth plan for the future

Western Australia has really been bringing home the bacon for the national economy over the past decade, but now WA really does need some very serious attention. Unfortunately, it is quite clear that Prime Minister Abbott and the coalition government basically take Western Australia for granted. They see it as a blue state and, as such, we simply are not getting the focus and the attention that we need to deal with the serious economic issues that we are now facing. Indeed, such is the Prime Minister's distorted sense of himself that he seemed to believe that the mere fact of his election would create an economic miracle. He told Western Australians just before the election:

I know, you know, that there’s not much wrong in this state. I know, you know, that there’s quite a bit wrong with our country right now but there’s almost nothing, my friends, wrong with our country that a change of government wouldn’t be improved.

Clearly he had no concept of the headwinds that were already threatening the mining industry.

He did go on to say—and this is, I guess, one of the few election commitments that he has kept—that he would model his government on WA's Barnett government. He certainly has done that. Like WA, we have seen deficits skyrocketing, unemployment rising and dramatic declines in business confidence and business investment. Very critically, the unemployment rate in WA has increased from 4.6 per cent to 6.1 per cent since this government has been elected. So that is 25,000 more people unemployed in Western Australia. Indeed, most people in Western Australia believe that those figures are really underreporting the real impact of the economic downturn, with the reality of greater unemployment being masked by the fact that many people are still working through redundancy payments.

On economic growth, he promised that we were going to build a stronger economy, but in reality economic growth has declined to just over two per cent. Indeed, the state final demand in Western Australia, which excludes exports and therefore provides us with a clearer picture of the domestic economy, fell by 2.6 per cent in the year to June 2015.

We look at business and consumer confidence in Western Australia. Seventy-five per cent of businesses in the most recent CCI survey said that they expected that the economy would deteriorate in the coming year—that is 75 per cent. I guess that is matched by the Roy Morgan business confidence indicators that came out recently, which showed that there had been a plummeting from 136 points to just 102 points in August 2015. Consumers are also pessimistic. Fifty-six per cent of respondents to a CCI survey of consumer confidence predicted that the economy would worsen during the year.

We all accept that commodity prices are not within the control of government, but we do expect a government to have a bigger vision for our state than simply cutting the wages of baristas and taking steps that actually undermine the diversification of our economy. We look at what is happening with the renewable energy industry. WA has—or we had—a very vibrant renewable energy industry in solar, in wave, in wind and, indeed, in the development of battery technology. But since the Abbott government came in, over the space of 2014, we lost almost 1,000 jobs in the renewable energy sector as a direct result of Tony Abbott's systematic attacks on the renewable energy industry. I could go on and talk about the comments that have been made by renewable industry leaders across Western Australia about how this industry has been taken backwards by the negative policies and the uncertainty that was created around the Renewable Energy Target. (Time expired)

Ian Goodenough (Moore, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Is there a seconder for the motion?

Graham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I second the motion.

Dennis Jensen (Tangney, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Here the member for Perth goes again. Time after time, she will get up in this place and ask the public to un-remember what the Labor Party did when in government. In fact, the government that she was a part of lost government because people were asked to name three achievements of the Labor state government that had been in for two terms, and people could not think of three things.

Let me offer up an analogous parable that serves this motion well. Imagine the member for Perth as the ringmaster in a circus. In that circus no care is given to how many shows there are, or how good the show is, or how happy the viewer is. No money is put into the upkeep of the tent. But everyone gets a pay rise. Pretty soon the tent will begin to tear, the performers will seek a more challenging role, the customers will go and the only ones left will be the clowns—the Labor clowns. That is how the state Labor Party ran the WA economy. Labor celebrated the spending on recurrent expenditure and savagely underinvested in public infrastructure for schools, hospitals, and roads. More damning still, for all the years that the WA Labor Party were in power they never seemed capable of what the former US President George Herbert Walker Bush called 'the vision thing'.

Between 2007-08 and 2013-14 Western Australia's population grew at the fastest rate of all states and over that period increased by nearly 20 per cent, or around 410,000 people. The WA government have addressed the needs of a rapidly growing population, while at the same time they have broadened the economic base and transformed the infrastructure base of the state. Perth has taken its rightful place on the world stage and has attracted global companies to establish new head offices. The WA state government have invested in world-class hospitals, schools, sporting facilities and cultural attractions. Since 2009 they have provided $5.2 billion in Royalties for Regions funding to support those communities which fuel the economic engine of our state. Since 2009 the Barnett government has invested $4.4 billion on roads, $2 billion on public transport, $7.1 billion on electricity infrastructure and over $100 million to support cycling across the state.

And so, when the member for Perth speaks in her motion of state net debt going from $3.6 billion in 2008 to $30 billion in 2015,·she doesn't know or appreciate the difference between good and bad debt. She is not recognising the crippling inequity inherent in the GST distributions. Building critical productivity-enhancing infrastructure such as the Perth Freight Link is an investment in the future health of the WA economy. It is good debt. On the GST, revenue from GST grants is also forecast to decline in 2015-16. As in 2014-15, the distribution of GST will exacerbate revenue volatility rather than smooth it, as the process was intended to do and as the Commonwealth Grants Commission claims it should do.

Forty thousand additional jobs have been created in Western Australia despite the slowdown in the mining sector. Our population is still growing at an annualised 2.4 per cent, easily the highest in the nation. When one looks to the West, one sees a prime example of a leader, in Colin Barnett, and a prime example of good government. When the slowdown started and revenues dipped, the government sought to cut into waste and bureaucracy, not critical front-line services or productive infrastructure. WA under this good government will lead the way for the country in going from the mining boom to the dining boom. I am glad the member moved the motion, because it gives me an opportunity to talk about my great state of Western Australia and an opportunity to talk about good government in action.

Gary Gray (Brand, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Resources) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is with some humour that you hear the member opposite refer to the net debt of a state jumping from $3.6 billion to just $30 billion, while saying that the additional $26 billion is quality debt as opposed to that very bad $3.6 billion in debt! The additional $26.4 billion is quality debt? What nonsense! What we have seen in Western Australia over the last decade has been profligate spending on projects of passion for premiers and not projects of infrastructure for the meaningful development of Western Australia.

We have seen vanity investments, while the members opposite know full well that investments in schools and hospitals have suffered as a consequence of these choices. We have seen the AAA credit rating of Western Australia disappear. We saw the hard work in budget management that had been done and understood by successive treasurers of Western Australia undone by a wilful Premier—not by the treasurers, but by a wilful premier who has refused to accept, although he understands the laws of economics, that the laws of economics apply to him. In that single point of ignorance, the Premier has driven investments that have not been prudent investments in the interests of Western Australia.

From time to time, we do see the need of state governments to invest in meaningful infrastructure—in roads, in rail, in port—and we also see the needs of premiers and of governments to make tough calls on spending decisions. We see time and time again the need to be prudent in front-line services. But when we see a blow-out in debt from an inherited debt of under $4 billion to currently a debt in the order of $30 billion and increasing, all of us in this place should be alarmed. We should not simply use those numbers as political ping-pong balls to belt across the table here. We should be concerned. If Western Australia were to be reflected in the national economy, that would be $300 billion worth of debt. We should all be concerned in this place, because what that level of debt does to Western Australia is it compromises the ability to deliver services through schools, it compromises the ability to deliver services through hospitals and it compromises the ability to have vision for the future to make sure that we can invest in the productive infrastructure of the future, as opposed to the vanity projects that we now see springing up around Western Australia.

I know that I am in a massive minority when I argue that we do not need to spend $1 billion on a new football oval. I know that that decision has been made and that commitment has been made. But I sat at the football on Saturday in a stadium that is more than equal to the task. I watched a game where, unfortunately, I do not think the Dockers were necessarily equal to the task, but the stadium was. What you learn from that is that once again this a vanity investment, on this occasion of $1 billion for a new football stadium to replace a currently functioning facility. It is an investment choice by state government that is so poorly thought through that it will just send more and more debt to the next generation of schoolteachers and nurses and public servants to try to deal with, as they deal with our kids in schools and sick people in hospitals.

It should be the place for this parliament to stand back and say, 'No; we need to rein this government in.' It is not good enough for members opposite to say, 'Oh, but the GST distribution treats us so badly.' The GST distribution formula was agreed to by a cabinet in Western Australia in the late 1990s of which Colin Barnett was a member. He signed up to this formula. He signed up to this agreement. He signed up to the agreement that has produced the current GST outcome. No cabinet was better informed of that decision than the cabinet of which Colin Barnett was a member. And now we see the Western Australian government continually complaining that it cannot manage its own finances because of the GST. That is not true. It cannot manage its own finances because it is a profligate government that simply spends, that thinks that vanity projects are investment projects in infrastructure for the future and that has decided, in so doing, to take investment in real infrastructure that would benefit Western Australians to investment in vanity projects for the benefit of the Premier.

Luke Simpkins (Cowan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Let us make no bones about it: this motion is completely about Saturday and not about the future of Western Australia. But, in the end, whatever is said or whatever is proposed by those opposite with regard to this motion will not change the facts that on Saturday the people of Canning will have a very clear distinction in who they want to represent them. There are two choices. On the other side, there is the typical Labor lawyer who could not wait to move out of the area and move up to fashionable Mount Lawley, or wherever he goes. He could not wait to say, 'I don't want to be part of you any longer,' could not wait to move away from his roots. His first instinct was to turn his back on the Canning district. Now he turns back to the people of Canning when he sees that there is something in it for him. This is a history of self-service, and the people of Canning should keep that in mind on Saturday.

In contrast, there is our candidate, Andrew Hastie, a former SAS commissioned officer with a track record of determined service to his nation. This is a man that will pursue the interests of the people of Canning, and he will do so in the same selfless manner in which he fought and looked after his troops. I can see Andrew Hastie bringing the same approach, the same determined focus, as the great Don Randall brought to his representation of the people of Canning. As I said, the contrast could not be more obvious and clear. It is no wonder that Labor has promised multimillions of dollars around Canning trying to distract the people of Canning from the key issue of: who do you want as your elected member—someone who is more interested in themselves, or Andrew Hastie, a man with a distinguished record of putting others before himself and in the most difficult of circumstances?

But I am talking to this motion. Given that Western Australia is a state strong with commodities, I will speak first about the absolute deceit that this motion is all about. Let us talk about the classic Labor line about squandering the mining boom, which appears in the motion. I do not know how they can even say this with a straight face. There was a mining boom while they were in office. They may choose to forget that there was an election in 2007 that they won and that their reign lasted for six years. In 2007 they were left a surplus and assets in the bank. All of that was gone by 2013. Massive debt and deficit are the legacy of Labor in government. On this allegation of squandering the mining boom, how about those iron ore prices and therefore the reflected tax and royalty revenues during Labor's six years of wasteful spending? In November 2007 the cost of iron ore was $40 per tonne. By January 2008 it had gone up to $70. By March 2010 it was up to $190 per tonne. So when they talk in this place about squandering the mining boom, the Labor Party should really look in the mirror. The Howard government ran surpluses and, when possible, returned money to the people. The Rudd-Gillard-Rudd government spent everything and then could not even balance the books when the iron ore prices were almost five times what they were for the Howard government. So Labor knows how to spend and waste. That is the legacy of Labor. Apart from the massive differences between our candidate, Andrew Hastie, and others, the people of Canning should remember what Labor did with the iron ore revenues and the strong budgetary position that they were left in 2007.

It is interesting that the deception this motion tries to advance on employment is put forward by the Labor Party. I have already mentioned iron ore prices and what Labor did to the economy when those prices were at historical highs. But let me explain to those who would rather advance a political argument than a factual argument. We know that so many jobs were generated out of the construction side of mining projects. Investment in such projects is driven by returns based on commodity prices. When prices come down due to issues in China and elsewhere, further projects are no longer so attractive; therefore they do not go ahead. As existing construction projects finish and go to production, more construction does not occur, due to the investment environment. Our getting rid of the mining tax and the carbon tax has helped but it does not restore record commodity prices. The investment reality has an impact on jobs. When those opposite say here that they can change that, they are being utterly deceptive. I welcome the recent drop in unemployment. But what this country needs is the free trade agreement with China and the opening of or better access to a billion-person market. That is what Western Australia and Australia need. I note that the Labor Party hate free trade. They are always talking against this FTA—not the great reformers of Labor past, of course, but the wholly owned subsidiaries of the trade union movement who are the economic isolationists currently on the opposition benches. A better future for this country can be achieved through the diversification that the FTA offers and that those opposite oppose so strongly. For the best representation for Canning, the choice is clear. Andrew Hastie brings service and dedication to Canning. I urge the people of Canning to support him on Saturday.

Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Infrastructure and Transport) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Yesterday saw one of the most absurd media stunts I have seen for a long time: the Prime Minister purporting to open the Gateway WA road project in Perth. This is a fantastic road project—an upgrade of the roads around Perth Airport worth nearly $1 billion. There he was, the Prime Minister, beaming as he touted for votes in Saturday's Canning by-election, announcing that the project had been completed and was an example of everything the government was doing for the people of Western Australia. There are only two problems with that. The first is that this government had nothing to do with this project—did not add an additional cent, let alone a dollar, to this project, which was funded 2011. The member for Cowan was actually at the sod-turning at the beginning of major construction with me way back then.

Luke Simpkins (Cowan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thanks for inviting me.

Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Infrastructure and Transport) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We invited coalition members—unlike this government, which invited no-one from the Labor side, even though the project was initiated by the former federal Labor government. There is a second problem with this opening: the project is not finished. It will not be finished until next year. They have brought forward the opening, pretending it is all done in advance, so that they could do a media statement. But they could not do anything other than that, because not a single project anywhere in the country, let alone Western Australia, that was initiated by this government has been completed—not one. So what we have seen is a magical infrastructure reannouncement tour that never sleeps. It is like a rock'n'roll tour of a band with little to offer except lame cover songs. Well, it is time for a new playlist. Indeed, those opposite may well be looking for a new band leader.

Let us look at projects in Western Australia and who has actually supported building infrastructure. The Great Northern Highway was announced by Labor in the 2013 budget—and reannounced by this government in December 2013 and on multiple occasions since. The    North West Coastal Highway was funded by the former Labor government in the 2013 budget—and reannounced several times since. The Swan Valley Bypass is a good one. They decided, in order to hide the fact that it was a reannouncement, to give it a new name. It has a new name, Northlink, but it is not a new project. The Tonkin Highway was announced with a $140 million commitment in 2013 by the former government—and reannounced by this government in February 2014. The Leach Highway was announced and funded by the former Labor government—and reannounced in February 2014. The Esperance port access project—$60 million—was announced and funded by the former Labor government and commenced construction, when I was present, on 16 March 2012. They reannounced it as if it was new in February 2014 and—bingo—it was opened on 2 April 2014. It was a great project done two months. Unfortunately, of course, it was almost completed at the time when they pretended it was new. There are other projects: the Great Eastern Highway in the member for Cowan's electorate, the Great Northern Highway at Port Hedland, the Bunbury port access road, grain rail freight and of course public transport as well with the visionary Perth City Link project—a project that would never have been funded by those opposite, because they do not believe in funding urban public transport. We have further committed $145 million to the Community Connect South project, the duplication of Armadale Road and construction of the North Lake Road bridge. They finally caught up on the weekend and agreed to match Labor's commitment—again, Labor leading from opposition because of the failure of the government to provide leadership on anything. Labor has committed $25 million to upgrade Denny Avenue. We also have committed $2 million to advance planning work on the Kwinana Outer Harbour through a submission to Infrastructure Australia. Those opposite want to build the Perth Freight Link to a port that is full to capacity. They are not doing the proper planning work and are completely hopeless. It is no wonder that they are struggling in Canning, as they are right around the entire nation.

Debate adjourned.