Dean Smith (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

You do remember that, don't you? A railway station that was not even located where the people are! This demonstrates a consistent problem with the WA Labor Party: they like to talk big. They have a nice, colourful map and a few logos for their projects, and the spin gets underway. They hoodwink Western Australian voters, and then of course, in the end, Western Australian voters are left with nothing. But scratch the surface and, time after time, they have the detail badly wrong. That is something that Western Australians will be bearing in mind as we approach the state election on Saturday, 11 March.

While on the subject of transport infrastructure in my home state of Western Australia, it would be remiss of me not to mention the brazenly irresponsible decision of the WA Labor Party to oppose Roe 8, which is a critical element of the Perth Freight Link project, in a cynical attempt to win a few preferences from the Australian Greens in advance of the election. The Labor Party has bought into this ridiculous notion that we have to make a choice between road and rail. That is simply a false choice. We need both. It will come as news to the Labor Party, but not everything can move around by rail alone. It is not a perfect solution. That is why Roe 8 and the recently announced Roe 9 tunnel are absolutely critical to meeting Perth's freight needs.

It is odd that the Labor Party are constantly talking about the need to create jobs—and they are right; job creation is critical in Western Australia—but they never want to actually build the road infrastructure that will deliver it. Instead, they want to get together with the Greens and pursue an ideological fetish for passenger rail. Roe 8 and Roe 9 are critical projects that will both help WA to diversify its economy and make it easier to export our goods to growing markets in Asia. Roe 8 and Roe 9 will remove nearly 7,000 heavy vehicles per day from Perth's southern urban arterial road network. This will make for a safer and more reliable road journey into and out of Fremantle. Together, they will also allow heavy vehicles and other road users to bypass the 14 sets of traffic lights now on the Leach Highway and Stock Road, creating a safer environment for all road users. Moreover, the project is anticipated to create 1,900 direct jobs, with a total on-site workforce of over 6½ thousand during the construction phase. This is something that WA Labor—