Madeleine King (Brand, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Yesterday, in Senate estimates we had the Department of Infrastructure and Regional Development confirm something that we have long suspected in relation to the federally funded Perth Freight Link—the Taj Mahal of the Barnett, Turnbull and Abbott Liberal governments. No planning or proposals have been put forward in relation to exactly how traffic and freight will actually make it to the port of Fremantle.

The Perth Freight Link is a fraud. There is no link for the freight from around Perth to get to the Fremantle Port. Despite its billion-dollar price tag on this road to nowhere, there is a great big three-kilometre missing link between the end of the destructive Roe 8 project and the port itself. This cobbled together deal between former Prime Minister Abbott and the Western Australian Premier Colin Barnett, carried on by Prime Minister Turnbull and Senator Cormann, is a ridiculous, wasteful and stupid use of taxpayers' money. The Perth Freight Link just gets dumb and dumber.

This government should give up while it is well behind and seek to invest in a game-changing, nation-building project that has been in the planning of WA's economic development since the 1960s—that is, the Kwinana outer harbour. A new commercial hub will bring multi-generational benefits not only to the communities of Rockingham and Kwinana which I represent but to all of Western Australia. It would create an estimated 25,000 direct news jobs and support the WA economy long into the future. This is quite a contrast from the estimated 500 jobs expected from the construction of the Perth Freight Link.

My home state of WA needs properly planned infrastructure, and I call on the government to try and do just that. (Time expired)