Christopher Back (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am delighted to rise to speak to this issue associated with the Perth Freight Link. I remind those listening that the coalition government has made a historic infrastructure investment commitment of some $50 billion to get on with building infrastructure that this nation so badly needs. In fact, it is the largest expenditure in our history. But in the context of Western Australia it is the Perth Freight Link project along with others like the NorthLink Perth-Darwin highway that Senator Sterle just spoke of, the Gateway WA project around the airport, the Forrest Highway in its time and now the commitment to Armadale Road. But it is the Perth Freight Link project for which the federal government has committed some $925 million towards construction. It is two stages at the moment and there will be a third. The first is the extension of Roe Highway in what is known as Roe 8. The extension beyond that is to the western side of the Swan River and then eventually will be the continuation, and that will be a doubling of the Stirling Bridge and approaches to it.

I then ask: where is the problem and why the issue? We know that congestion is crippling our city. We know, for example, that container traffic through the Port of Fremantle has gone up some 70 per cent from 2003-04 to 2013-14. Now some 700,000 boxes or 20-foot sea containers per year are destined to go towards 1.2 million. Senator Sterle quite correctly has drawn attention to the problems associated with Leach Highway, and I am going to confirm in my contribution that he has been talking about this for at least some 10 years when I draw attention to some comments he made.

But why have we got a problem? Because, contrary to what Senator Sterle said—that there was never a plan—of course there was always the Stephenson-Hepburn plan from 1955. The Stephenson-Hepburn plan included what is planned to be Roe 8 and an area known as the Fremantle Eastern Bypass, and that is where it all went wrong. The reason is the then minister, a Ms MacTiernan, now the federal member for Perth, protecting the political future of Mr Jim McGinty, the then Labor member for Fremantle, decided with him in her wisdom that they would actually delete the Fremantle Eastern Bypass and have it rezoned to residential. And this is why we are in this problem today. The government of the day made 17 million lousy dollars out of that exercise and, had that whole project been completed at that time, the estimates of cost are around about $220 million to $250 million in total. Instead, now we are looking at about $1.3 billion.

What did people at the time say? I am quoting now from the Hon. Simon O'Brien, still in the legislative council, from 7 April 2004. He was making reference to comments made by a TWU representative who we all now know is our good friend Senator Glenn Sterle. This is what he said, in part, on the idea of removing the Fremantle Eastern Bypass:

… this will create a frightening congestion problem of mammoth proportions in the very near future on all highways and major roads leading to the docks.

This was somebody of the same political persuasion as he. Mr Sterle said:

Even now Leach Highway, which carries most trucking to and from the port, is battling to handle the heavy freight …

That was in 2004, and of course we now have the horrific situation of Leach Highway. But it is even more interesting that his then colleague and, I guess, boss, Mr Jim McGiveron from the Transport Workers Union, made the comment about congestion killing, and of Ms MacTiernan, the then minister, he said:

Congestion kills our People; stuffs up our Environment, and it will destroy our Economy.

Yet Alannah in Wonderland is too busy playing choo choos with all our "Monopoly Money" to do anything about the impending traffic crisis.

He said she needed to spend a week in a truck driving backwards and forwards on Leach Highway to work out the gridlock situation that exists. I cannot actually use the words that Mr McGiveron used about Ms MacTiernan, because it would be un-parliamentary, but, if I was referred to the north end of a south travelling fat rat, I think you would get some sense of the words that Mr McGiveron was using in relation to whether or not Ms MacTiernan gave any care or consideration to truck drivers. He said, 'She didn't understand us and never recognises the vital role we play.'

So it is good to see Senator Sterle in this place today in fact confirming what we always knew, and that was that this Roe 8 has to be constructed, that Leach Highway was never designed—and for all the reasons Senator Sterle, with his depth of knowledge in the trucking industry, the number of sets of lights et cetera and the mixture of heavy vehicles and light vehicles. There are some hundreds of houses along Leach Highway that face straight onto and try to drive onto Leach Highway. It is predicted that we will see a 75 per cent increase in heavy vehicle traffic by 2021, rising to 110 per cent by 2031.

Something has to be done. Leach Highway is already carrying more than one and a half times the average metropolitan road traffic. There is already a rate of doubling of heavy vehicle accidents and incidents on that particular road. Something has to be done. We went into government at the state level back in 2008, when I was a candidate for the seat of Alfred Cove and unsuccessful—which, of course, allowed me to be able to then put myself forward as a candidate when then Senator Chris Ellison resigned. I very often thank both the Greens political party and the Labor Party for preferencing some 95 per cent against me in the seat of Alfred Cove, which has landed me where I am today.

But the simple fact of the matter is that there never has been any doubt that this was going to go ahead. I quote from an article in The West Australian newspaper from 12 November from a Mr Martin Stewart, a resident of the suburb of Willetton, in the approaches to Roe 8, where he and his wife bought in in 1985. In it he says, 'When my wife and I bought our land, clearly marked on the map was the route of the Roe Highway. We duly noted it. We bought our land anyhow within 300 metres of the proposed highway. As part of your approval process why don't you just get on with it?'

I want to lend my name and my voice to the fact that we will definitely have to have an outer harbour in the Kwinana area at some time into the future. It is disappointing to all Western Australians, in my view, that planning has not already started for the outer harbour. We are going to need the outer harbour, there is no question; and I would urge state and federal governments to get on with that planning process.

It is my understanding that back in the 1890s when Charles Yelverton O'Connor was brought from New Zealand to the colony of Western Australia by Sir John Forrest, amongst others, as the chief engineer to build a new harbour, O'Connor said to Forrest that the place they needed to build it is where we are contemplating the outer harbour. So there are no arguments about that.

There are two points to be made. Firstly, we know very well that even if we started the planning process today it would be 10 or 15 years before an outer harbour would be ready to be used. Secondly, we know that the inner harbour will always be used for container and related freight services. We know that the inner harbour will go up to maybe a million boxes rather than 1.2, but we know there will always be that demand.

Senator Reynolds, who is sitting beside me, participated in the Senate hearing in Fremantle recently, along with Senator Ludlam, Senator Bullock and Senator Sterle, as I recall. It is disappointing to me that the community were not given a better and wider brief of the next phase, and that is the phase beyond Roe 8 up to the approaches of the Stirling bridge. The point that I made into the Hansard, answered by the relevant federal department person who was in Perth, was that contrary to the fears and expectations of the doomsayers and others, the actual extension of this road will have a heavy vehicle trench and residential traffic will not be on the road in competition with heavy traffic through that area. It is grossly disappointing that one of the witnesses who appeared before us was terribly upset by the fact that her home, along with others along High Road and Leach Highway, will be lost as part of this process. It was not appropriate for me to say to her, 'Your problem rests with Ms MacTiernan back in the period before 2002-04 when this problem should have been addressed by the Stephenson-Hepburn plan of 1955.