Ms Catherine King (Ballarat, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Health) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak about a very sad development in the politics of my home state of Western Australia. Colin Barnett and the WA Liberals have abandoned the WA National Party, the party they formed government with in 2008, the party that saved Premier Barnett's political career and made him Premier. Colin Barnett has abandoned the WA Nationals in favour of Pauline Hanson's One Nation party. With friends like Colin Barnett, who needs enemies?

I am not sure what Premier Barnett might have hoped his legacy to the people of WA might be—Elizabeth Quay, with its children's water park full of bacteria, or the new Perth children's hospital, with asbestos in the roof and lead in the water? Or will it be his 'pragmatic achievement' of ditching the WA Nationals and instead elevating and normalising Pauline Hanson's One Nation party in Western Australian politics?

It is clear to me the Liberals are more concerned with doing deals with this One Nation party than with developing a plan for the future of Western Australia. One Nation will not secure jobs for Western Australia. One Nation will not provide a better education for your children in Western Australia. One Nation will not improve health care in Western Australia or fix the failing healthcare system. Their candidate for the Pilbara has said single mothers are 'lazy' and 'ugly'. One of their Queensland candidates called the Stolen Generation a 'concocted myth'. The One Nation party as a whole appears to reject science as a whole but particularly ignores any science or evidence concerning climate change.

Some might remember that Australia recently held a seat on the United Nations Security Council—a Labor initiative, I might add. This coincided with the terrible and shocking shooting down of MH17 with the loss of 300 lives, 38 of which were Australian, over the Ukraine by Russian backed fighters. Now the Liberal Party is making deals with the party that wants Australia to exit the United Nations and whose leader, Senator Hanson, has drawn a moral equivalence between Australian leaders and the violent, authoritarian rule of President Vladimir Putin. This open democracy of Australia is in no way like Putin's Russia.

This is Pauline Hanson's One Nation. This is the party Premier Barnett is dealing with. This is the party the Liberals want to form government with in Western Australia. This is the party the Prime Minister has brought back into the parliament with his double dissolution folly last July. The Western Australian Liberals have chucked their mates, the Nats, under the bus to try to limp over in this upcoming WA state election. They are prepared to sell out and deal with whatever they can to hold onto their power and get their pay cheques.

In my electorate I know that only a Mark McGowan Labor government will build a new train station in Karnup, providing more opportunities for the people of Baldivis and Secret Harbour. The METRONET plan will ease congestion, free up parking and enable better public transport options to Warnbro station. What I know for sure is that now, beyond doubt, a vote for Colin Barnett and the WA Liberals is a vote for One Nation.