Dean Smith (WA, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Competition, Charities and Treasury) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of answers given by ministers to all questions without notice asked by coalition senators today.

There is one question on the minds of Western Australian families, and that question is this: what have they done to deserve the economic mismanagement of Anthony Albanese, the Labor Prime Minister, and Dr Jim Chalmers, the Labor Treasurer? Why has the Labor government let down Western Australian families when, just 2½ years ago, the WA Labor Party elected Labor Party members in Western Australia on the back of a promise? Labor's promise was that they would stand up for WA and for WA families. We know that Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is getting desperate when it comes to Western Australia and the next federal election. Why do we know that Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, supported by his WA federal Labor MPs, is getting desperate? That's because he's now trying to create a GST scare campaign in Western Australia when there doesn't need to be one at all.

So I want to use this opportunity just to remind people about Labor's record when it comes to the GST. Despite Roger Cook and Prime Minister Albanese's efforts to confuse the GST debate, Western Australians have not forgotten that it was federal Labor that was the last to join the chorus of local Western Australian voices arguing for a fairer GST deal in Western Australia. In fact, it was the West Australian newspaper who first complained about the silence of federal Labor parliamentarians, in April 2017, noting:

To date, WA Labor members in Canberra have done nothing about the GST other than grumble the system is a rip-off.

At the same time, the Sunday Times newspaper in Western Australia reported that federal Labor representatives had 'let WA down', and that their submission to the Productivity Commission inquiry at the time contained no answers to fix the situation. A few months later, it fell to Roger Cook, now the Premier, who was then the Acting Deputy Premier, to implore his federal Labor MPs to take more notice and get real about the GST issue. And who can forget that Bill Shorten, then the Leader of the Labor Party, the opposition leader, turned his back on Western Australia in November of that same year, admitting that he and Labor would not change the GST carve-up or introduce a GST floor? Instead, he said that Labor would offer Western Australia just $1.6 billion in infrastructure funding, compared to the very generous GST deal that Western Australians now enjoy as a result of the coalition government. In January 2018, Labor's candidates in five seats said that they would defend Bill Shorten's opposition to the GST changes and instead support a very meagre—just $1.6 billion—infrastructure deal.

Western Australian families are being let down by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Dr Jim Chalmers. WA households' disposable income has now fallen by more than eight per cent, mortgage rates are up, and the expectation for ordinary WA families is that interest rates will continue to rise. And, as we've heard, per capita GDP is in freefall in this country. So why is it that 2½ years ago Anthony Albanese and federal Labor MPs went to Western Australian electors and said, 'We will stand up for Western Australia', and, just 2½ years later, those same Western Australian families and households are now paying a very, very high price for Labor's poor economic management? Why is it that federal Labor have turned their backs on Western Australian voters?

Well, soon we'll know what Western Australians think. When we go to the polls—perhaps in early December or perhaps in February or May next year—Western Australians are going to vote, and they're going to vote Anthony Albanese and all of those federal WA Labor MPs down, because they have failed them. They have broken the trust, and they've broken their promises.