Glenn Sterle (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise tonight to speak about the Howard government’s betrayal of the good people of Rose Hill, Hazelmere, Forrestfield, High Wycombe and also Mr Stuart Henry, the federal Liberal member for the electorate of Hasluck. Late last night, 15 August 2006, Mr Warren Truss, the Howard government minister for transport put out a press release approving a draft major development plan for the BGC brickworks on the Perth Airport site. This announcement must have come as a bitter blow for Mr Henry. It would explain why he was looking for people to blame. Mr Henry, unfortunately, has tried to blame the Western Australian state government for this decision.

On 30 June 2006, Mr Henry sent out a letter to his constituents in the electorate of Hasluck in which he tried to peddle the ridiculous claim that:

... State Government MP’s couldn’t put aside their political interests to strive for this community’s cause and concern.

Mr Henry knows that the submission of the Western Australian government on the BGC brickworks proposal to the Howard government stated clearly on page 2:

The State government submits therefore that the Minister for Transport and Regional Services under s94 of the Airports Act 1996 should refuse to approve the Draft Major Development Plan.

It is there in black and white and Mr Henry knows it, but he continues to sledge the Western Australian state government and imply that they do not care. Mr Henry is playing politics on this and he knows it.

Mr Henry knows that the only government that wants a BGC brickworks in Hasluck is the Howard government, of which he is a member. To be fair to Mr Henry, he has had a go on this issue. He has got to his feet five times in the other place to plead with the Howard government ministers to oppose the brickworks proposal. In his letter of 30 June, he also told his constituents that the previous week he had taken the community’s concerns about the brickworks proposal directly to the Prime Minister’s office. I can imagine Mr Henry with his cap in his hand, on his knees begging for the brickworks proposal to be canned. But, unfortunately for Mr Henry and the people of Hasluck, his pleas were in vain and his words counted for nothing with the Prime Minister.

You have got to wonder why the Prime Minister would hang Mr Henry out to dry over the brickworks. The Prime Minister and his transport minister, Mr Warren Truss, listened to Mr Henry’s concerns and chose to ignore them. Considering that Mr Henry holds the seat of Hasluck on a wafer-thin margin of 1.8 per cent, this decision looks like political suicide.

As far as I can tell, there are three main reasons why Mr Henry’s pleas have fallen on deaf ears. The first reason is that Mr Henry has had to put up with Mr Wilson Tuckey, the member for O’Connor, working against him the whole time. In an adjournment debate on 9 November 2005 I quoted Mr Tuckey in a speech he gave in parliament on 11 August 2005, in which he said:

... Len is ... struggling to get a site to erect his brickworks on.

He then went on to say—and I am sure that Mr Henry was horrified to hear it:

... the Commonwealth government is, through the Airports Association, giving him some assistance.

I went on to describe Mr Tuckey’s comments as ‘Wilson’s little slip’. Just in case senators are concerned that I might have taken Mr Tuckey out of context, he got up again in parliament the next day and said:

... Senator Sterle referred to remarks I had made in this House on 11 August in support of this process as ‘Wilson’s little slip.’ It was no slip. Everything I said was deliberate ...

There you go. It seems Mr Tuckey forgot to tell Mr Henry that he and the rest of the Howard government were against him.

The second reason Mr Henry’s pleas were ignored might have been that the Prime Minister was forced to make a choice between Mr Henry and that great friend and benefactor of the Liberal Party Mr Buckeridge. There is a long history of Liberal Party ministers bending over backwards to help their mate Mr Buckeridge. Western Australians all remember the time Western Australian taxpayers lost $74,000 after the Liberal Court government sold Mr Buckeridge a block of land for less money than it had been bought for 10 years earlier and for less than half the value put on it by the state’s Valuer-General. Western Australians also remember the time the Peppermint Grove Shire Council issued a stop-work order against Len Buckeridge’s company Homestyle Pty Ltd when it was found guilty of departing from council-approved building plans, only for then Liberal minister Paul Omodei—now leader of the Western Australian opposition—to reject the advice of his own department and overturn the stop-work order. Western Australians also remember Liberal planning minister Richard Lewis ruling against the advice of the Wanneroo City Council and the Town Planning Appeals Committee to approve a concrete batching plant for Len Buckeridge’s company BGC, giving it a considerable commercial advantage over its competitors.

But why would Len Buckeridge get such preferential treatment from Liberal Party ministers? It might have something to do with all the money that he and his companies have poured into Liberal Party coffers over the years. Is it the case that Mr Henry is just collateral damage in the war for campaign donations? I do not know.

The third reason that the Prime Minister might have ignored Mr Henry’s pleas is that Mr Henry’s voice carries no weight at all in the government party room. This is the most depressing reason for the people of Hasluck. The people of Hasluck have just learnt that their federal member carries no weight in the Howard government, of which he is a part. You would have to imagine that Mr Henry pointed out to the Prime Minister the concerns of the Howard government’s own Department of the Environment and Heritage in its environmental assessment of the BGC brickworks proposal. On page 21 of that report the department came to this conclusion:

... the Department is not satisfied that the information provided to date is sufficiently rigorous to conclude that the modelling addresses air quality concerns.

The report went on to say:

Although BGC claims to have addressed the risks of the cumulative impacts from pollutants, uncertainties with respect to local pollutant loads and the effectiveness of proposed mitigation measures mentioned earlier, raises doubts about whether the BGC assessment accurately addresses the risks to public health.

I hope he told him, but if he did then the Prime Minister just did not care.

The people of Hasluck are already doing it hard. They have had to put up with three straight increases in their interest rates since Mr Henry was elected as their federal member. It costs $22 more to fill the tank of the family car since Mr Henry was elected as their federal member. And since Mr Henry was elected as their federal member—a member of the Howard government—the Howard government has approved a brickworks in their backyard. The Prime Minister and his government have taken the votes of the people of Hasluck for granted. At the next election they will have a chance to elect someone else, who will carry their voice with the weight it deserves.