Slade Brockman (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

First of all, I'd like to congratulate Senator O'Sullivan for his very fine words reflecting on our home state of Western Australia and the severe problems with infrastructure that we do have there. The fact is Western Australia is still a growing state, delivering not just for the economy of WA but for Australia. The fact is the Labor government, when it crows about its surplus, is really crowing about the impact of the revenues particularly from my home state of Western Australia when it comes to the iron ore and oil and gas industries that have delivered rivers of gold into both federal and state coffers for generations now.

We require a big and sustained infrastructure spend to allow for that growth to continue, to allow Western Australia to be its best. And what do we get from this federal government, when it came into power? It sits on the hose. Supposedly, it was going to be for 90 days. It ended up being for over six months, wasn't it, Senator McKenzie? They put these items under review for 200 days. That delay, in a high inflationary environment, when so many projects were effectively put on hold for six months, means those costs are never coming out of the pipeline now. Those costs are baked in. We're not going to see—well, hopefully we're not going to see; you never know with this government—a deflationary environment, so those extra costs that were baked into the infrastructure pipeline during that six months of delay are there forever. That means that not only will the projects that have seen cuts directly out of this infrastructure review suffer but all those other projects will suffer from increased costs due to delay. So we're going to see a pipeline shrunk over time as inflation eats up the capacity of Australia to build those projects, and we are going to see, particularly, my home state of Western Australia suffering.

Who is always the first cab off the rank to suffer under this Labor government? It's the bush; it's the regions. Let's look at the direct cuts that were made through this infrastructure review in WA. I've talked about these before and I'm only going to speak briefly, because we are under a guillotine here today. We are going to see this issue and many others chopped off at the knees without full debate. But I am going to go, very quickly, through those projects that were cut in my home state of WA and reflect on their locations: the Great Southern Secondary Freight Network, the Marble Bar Road upgrade, the Moorine Rock to Mount Holland road upgrades, and the Pinjarra Heavy Haulage Deviation, stage 1 and 2. I ask those in Western Australia listening: what do those projects all have in common? Guess what? They're not in Perth. Guess what? They're in the regions. Now is anyone at home listening along—

 surprised by that, Senator Pratt? Of course they're not surprised by that, because they know that both the state and federal Labor governments hate regional Western Australia. There've been cuts to regional representation, cuts to regional infrastructure spending and so many attacks on the bush that I'm not going to list them all here today. It's sustained, it's real, people know it and are paying attention to it. And it's not just those in the bush that know, recognise and realise what Labor is doing to the regions; those in the city have started to pay attention as well, and they are starting to look at what's happening to the regions and reflect on the fact that those wealth-generating components of the West Australian economy—be it the mining sector in the north, the oil and gas sector in the north or the agricultural sector north-east and south-west of Perth—are the ones who are suffering under state and federal Labor governments who don't give a damn about the bush.