Sue Lines (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In just over two weeks, Western Australian voters will make history when they become the first electors to vote in a stand-alone half-Senate election. This election provides a unique opportunity for Western Australians to take a close look at what Prime Minister Abbott said and promised when in opposition and what he has actually delivered in government.

Just over a year ago, whilst in opposition, Mr Abbott said how much he admired and respected the Western Australian Premier and how much he wished to model himself on Mr Barnett. At the Liberal campaign launch for the Western Australian state election, Mr Abbott said

… how much I respect the Premier of this state, how much I have learnt from him, how much I wish to model myself on him, should I get the opportunity to lead our country.

So obviously, for a big clue about how Prime Minister Abbott wants to lead and the sorts of policies his government will pursue, we need look no further than Premier Barnett's record. What a record it is! It is a record of broken promises on road, rail, infrastructure, education and health.

Premier Barnett began his second term by losing Western Australia's AAA credit rating. What's more, Premier Barnett showed his complete lack of understanding of our economy in Western Australia when he said, 'It didn't matter much.' In another interview Premier Barnett said:

Debt is high and is rising. Why? Because this state is growing.

Mr Barnett went on to say further that his government was:

… investing in hospitals, in schools, in improving our capital city, road projects, regional development and the like …

Mr Barnett then went on to say that he did not apologise for the high debt.

But actually he has not delivered on any of those promises—not one of them—because every single infrastructure project he promised before the election has now been scrapped. Then there are the severe cuts in Western Australia. They are cuts that come as a result of further broken promises. With Prime Minister Abbott, we have already seen broken promises on a number of key issues—particularly education. So far the Prime Minister is being like his role model, the Premier of Western Australia.

In addition to losing our AAA credit rating, Premier Barnett has cut $183 million out of Western Australian schools. That is 500 jobs. He stood there, with his Minister for Education, and announced in the parliament that 500 jobs were to go, as if that were some proud milestone achievement. There is no money for capital infrastructure; there is no money for capital investment. These cuts go further than that, because they scrap programs which were aimed at supporting vulnerable children. That was against his election promise where he guaranteed to deliver the highest standard of education. He went further and promised superbly built and designed schools. Yet we have seen school capital investment slashed for school after school throughout the whole state of Western Australia. Schools people thought were going to be built—and they probably voted on the basis of that—have now been scrapped.

So school upgrades have been scrapped, along with 500 jobs. On top of these severe cuts to Western Australian education, there is the backflip of Prime Minister Abbott and Minister Pyne's unity ticket on Labor's fairer and more equitable funding plan, which was designed to improve student performance. The Prime Minister joins Premier Barnett and breaks that promise on education.

So yes, the Western Australian Premier and the Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, are alike—neither can be trusted on school education. But Premier Barnett's cuts and broken promises go on and on, on an almost daily basis: road funding, cut; light rail, cut; airport line, cut. It is impossible in Western Australia to take public transport to our international airport—absolutely impossible. There is no public transport available for visitors from other states and overseas if they are using the international airport—what an embarrassment.

On health, the Premier and the Prime Minister are on a unity ticket—a unity ticket of ignoring the health of Western Australians. Our state-of-the-art, brand-new flagship hospital, the Fiona Stanley Hospital, is a mess. It is like something out of the comedy show Yes Minister. It is a complete fail by the Barnett government—fully costed and paid for under Labor but wrecked under Barnett. It remains closed and is scheduled to open not in a couple of months but at least one year behind its scheduled opening time. In addition to that, Premier Barnett, the Liberal Premier of WA, has contracted out almost all of the services at Fiona Stanley Hospital. Who have they contracted that out to? The detention centre contractor Serco—with no track record of running hospitals in Australia. Its only track record is in running prisons.

The cost of the Fiona Stanley Hospital, our flagship hospital, being closed is $261,000 a day. It is more than a quarter of a million dollars day after day that that hospital is closed. On that alone, the Prime Minister's role model, Premier Barnett, should resign—a quarter of a million dollars a day of Western Australia's money just going down the drain at Fiona Stanley Hospital.

But Mr Abbott and Premier Barnett's unity ticket on health does not stop there. The WA Liberal Premier has backflipped on the new children's hospital and has been criticised by health professionals, including the AMA, for again failing to deliver what Mr Barnett promised to. This again becomes like something out of Yes Minister. Despite completed architectural plans, the size of the children's hospital has been scaled back from three floors, which was promised at the election, to two. And what does our Premier say about that? He thinks you can simply put another floor on once the hospital is complete and there is more demonstrated need. Again, all the experts have said that is impossible and, even if you did, it would cost triple what it would currently cost.

What is our Prime Minister's record on health? Let us look at Medicare Locals. Who knows what the eventual fate of Medicare Locals will be? The Prime Minister still has not quite finished flipping and flopping on their fate. They were originally destined for the scrap heap under a coalition government. In the lead-up to the election campaign—perhaps the Prime Minister then visited one and saw that they were actually quite a vital part of local communities—we then got an election promise to keep them. Now of course, once in government, they are under review by the Prime Minister. Medicare Locals are playing a vital role in the delivery of health services in Western Australia.

Just one example of the provision of health services to vulnerable people in Western Australia in local communities is the Street Doctor program. These services provide street access to GPs for people who would not ever access mainstream health services, whether it is their local GP or an emergency department. These are generally homeless people or people with complex mental health needs who simply do not access the sorts of GP and other specialist services they need but they do access the Street Doctor program. Watch this space, I say, because I know that the word 'review' uttered from the mouth of the Prime Minister does mean cuts.

The RAC, our local automobile club, has called on the state government and the Premier—the man the Prime Minister wants to model himself on— and said that now is not the time to shelve vital infrastructure projects. For those truly interested in Western Australia, which is obviously neither Premier Barnett nor the Prime Minister, congestion is a major problem. Neither the Prime Minister nor Premier Barnett has shown any interest or inclination in fixing this issue. Of course we know congestion is a cost to business. It impacts on productivity and revenue and is a weight on the economy which cannot be ignored, according to the RAC. The RAC goes further to say that congestion by 2020 in Perth—whilst the Premier sits by and does nothing—will be a great cost to our economy, a cost of $2.1 billion every year.

The Perth Lord Mayor has criticised the decision to delay the light rail project. The Lord Mayor says the decision came as a shock. A lot of work had been done leading towards an implementation of the light rail system. But of course the Lord Mayor is very disappointed to hear of the cancellation of the light rail route. Again, the Lord Mayor was promised funds for this and was very supportive of the idea of light rail to provide greater public transportation for a lot of people.

Then there is the community of Ellenbrook. Ellenbrook must have really upset Premier Barnett, because it was promised light rail, fast transit buses and a new high school. For that community of Ellenbrook, which is incredibly isolated in the eastern suburbs of Perth, all of that has now been shelved. Every single project promised to the residents of Ellenbrook during the last state election has now been scrapped. This makes me wonder whether the Prime Minister still thinks that modelling himself on the Premier of WA is a good idea after the mess that Premier Barnett has made of the WA economy—our roads, our rail system, our schools and our hospitals.

The Prime Minister is adding to the woes of the business and community groups of Western Australia by refusing to commit to arrange of social welfare programs whose funding will finish at the end of this month. The Prime Minister will not commit to the National Partnership Agreement on Homelessness, he will not commit to the National Rental Affordability Scheme, he will not commit to fund emergency relief and he will not commit to fund financial counselling. This means that community organisations using these funds to support vulnerable West Australians will be left high and dry, along with their clients, in the next month or two unless the Prime Minister makes a commitment now. These are real issues that affect Western Australians every single day, and the great work that our community organisations do in providing for those who are least able to provide for themselves is being ignored by the Prime Minister. This is all on show for Western Australians who in just a couple of weeks, on 5 April, will vote again in a unique half-Senate election. They will be looking at the Liberal government's record and they will find it wanting.

What do the Prime Minister and, indeed, the West Australian Liberal senators who are up for election think about Western Australia? Judging by the comments they make in the Senate, Liberal senators see WA as one huge mining town. That is all they ever talk about—the mining industry. They rub their hands together and think of all the iron ore, oil and gas dollars that they can bring to their government. They continue to mislead Western Australian voters on the carbon tax. Labor attempted to amend the clean energy bills, scrap the carbon tax and bring forward an ETS, but the government and the Greens voted against Labor's amendments. In my view and in the view of many Western Australians, it suits the government to keep the carbon tax and to continue to try to mislead Western Australian voters before the half-Senate election.

How long will their lies continue? Their lies are not having an effect because Western Australians can see for themselves as they drive around and get caught up in the horrific congestion problems that Western Australians face every day. They can see the mess that Premier Barnett has made of Fiona Stanley Hospital, which is costing Western Australians a quarter of a million dollars every single day because Premier Colin Barnett has been inept in not managing to get that hospital open. I do not know of another hospital that is at least 12 months behind its opening date, and we are a long way from April next year. So who knows what the date will be when we get to 2015?

There are many issues in Western Australia that Prime Minister Abbott and the Liberal Western Australian senators are ignoring. The high cost of housing in Western Australia is one area. The Prime Minister believes the market will provide and thinks a booming housing market—a market where the cost of housing is increasing—is somehow good for our community. He has yet to explain how first home buyers get a foot into this booming market with housing prices increasingly moving out of their reach. Housing stress is a real issue in Western Australia, but one ignored by the Prime Minister and Liberal senators.

The Prime Minister and Liberal senators will shut down trade training centres. They have obviously never visited the Pinjarra Waroona Trade Training Centre to see the partnerships it has created with local businesses and to see how both students and teachers are very proud of their brand-new, state-of-the-art facility, to see how this trade training centre has brought their neighbouring school Waroona District High School and Pinjarra High School together. At the opening of this impressive facility, the president of the Shire of Murray said he was impressed with the centre and very pleased the government—and, of course, he was referring to the Labor government—was putting funds into projects such as the centre. The president went on to say that Pinjarra was experiencing about a five per cent growth each year and it needed facilities like the trade training centre to cater for growth. But communities like Pinjarra and Waroona are ignored by the Prime Minister and WA Liberal senators because they are not big mining centres.

What is their answer when parents ask why Western Australian schools are not equal? The Prime Minister and Western Australian Liberal senators want to slash first and ask questions later. WA voters will not be fooled and they know that on 5 April the only safe option is to vote Labor in the Senate.