Tim Hammond (Perth, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The    question I have is: when is a campaign promise not a campaign promise? That might sound like a trick question, but when it came to the 2016 federal election in my home town of Perth I can tell you right now, as far as the Liberal government is concerned, things were not all that they might have appeared to be.

In the course of that campaign, my opponent, flanked by the Minister for Justice, made it very clear that they purported to be investing in community safety. They purported to the good people of Bassendean to have turned up to commit $100,000 for CCTV at the Jubilee Street reserve, where it is badly needed to combat a rising drug problem. They then turned around and went to the city of Bayswater to purportedly contribute $150,000 to try to make it safer around the Noranda shops and sporting complexes. Now it appears that both of these so-called promises are the subject of a grant application and the funding is indeed uncertain. It completely lets down the people of Bassendean. It lets down the people of Bayswater. It does not give them the certainty they required in relation to keeping the suburbs safe.

Throughout the entire country and the world, communities are growing increasingly disillusioned with the conduct of the major parties. What they see from the Liberal government is more of this giving with one hand and taking with the other. With all of these broken promises, how can we possibly be expected to rise above the fray?