Andrew Hastie (Canning, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Defence) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This has been a bad year for Labor. Australians are turning against the Prime Minister, his government and his fellow travellers in state parliaments, especially in Western Australia. Whatever you're reading in the national polls, it's worse for Labor in my seat of Canning. In the weeks after the referendum, I've been speaking to locals—mainstream Australians who are friends and neighbours, who run small businesses and who are raising families and paying down mortgages. Talking to Australians is something the Prime Minister does not do. It's something that state Labor MPs—the member for Mandurah, the member for Dawesville and the member for Murray-Wellington—have stopped doing. What the people of Canning are telling me loud and clear is that they know that Labor will not fight for their interests. The Albanese government, the Cook government and Labor state MPs are obsessed with pet projects like the Voice and the failed Aboriginal cultural heritage laws. They've forgotten entirely what matters to Australians and, for the whole of this year, they've been missing in action, focused on themselves and not on the people that they're elected to represent.

Important projects that would improve or even save lives in my electorate have been cut or sacrificed by Labor. The upgrade of the Peel Health Campus is not even on the drawing board, but three years ago they committed $152 million to fix the hospital. Ambulance ramping is once again on the rise. At the same time, Labor has overseen a cost-of-living crisis. Soaring interest rates and rents are piling the pressure on families. More working families are relying on food banks and emergency shelter. The people of Pinjarra, who are forced to dodge over 690 trucks every day thundering through town, are asking the Prime Minister why he has axed the Pinjarra heavy haulage deviation. He promised it, then he delayed it and then he axed it all together—$200 million cut from the regions. It is a shocking kick in the guts for the people I represent. Again I ask: Where is the Prime Minister? Where is Premier Roger Cook? Where are David Templeman, Lisa Munday and Robyn Clarke?

The people of Canning did not ask for the referendum on the Voice. They did not ask for the cultural heritage laws. They did not ask to be belted with Labor's cost-of-living crisis, housing crisis and axing of important infrastructure road projects that could save lives.

Labor does not listen, and it is not fighting for my community. I guarantee the people of Canning this, though: the Liberal Party will be fighting for you, and Peter Dutton is fighting for you. I'll continue to advocate for your interests in this place, and we'll be putting you front and centre over the next 18 months.