Melissa Parke (Fremantle, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Health) Share this | Hansard source

It is vitally important that we take this opportunity to focus on a project that is wrong on so many levels—a project that should be stopped before a great deal of pointless harm is done and a great deal of public funding is wasted.

As my colleagues have made abundantly clear, the Perth Freight Link is not worth the paper it is written on. In fact, it is a fair question as to whether it is written on any paper it all! It is a project that was simply pulled out of the hat of political expediency and carelessness, with no regard for the damage and waste involved. Nobody knows or can explain where this crazy project came from.

What we do know is that the Abbott government, in an apparent state of budget emergency and when every cent was allegedly precious, decided to throw $1 billion at the Barnett government to build the mother-of-all roads, a super-sized truck freeway that WA never asked for and never planned—a road whose only logic is to underwrite the privatisation of Fremantle Port, which is wrong in itself—at the cost of sensible long-term freight planning and long-established neighbourhood amenity.

As the member for Perth has pointed out very eloquently, the total cost of the project has now soared above $2 billion—$2 billion for a road no-one wants at the extraordinary expense of sensible, strategic transport and infrastructure planning for the long term. I am very grateful to my colleagues today for their comprehensive demolition of the folly that is the Perth Freight Link. I especially thank the member for Perth, whose track record in delivering genuinely transformative transport projects is unparalleled.

The clear and present danger in my electorate is stage 1 of the Perth Freight Link project, a completely new road, called Roe Highway stage 8, that was deemed unnecessary more than a decade ago, that was judged unacceptable by the Environmental Protection Authority more than a decade ago, at a time when the EPA's judgement was considered meaningful. At that time the EPA said that Roe 8 would 'lead to the ecological values of the area as a whole being diminished in the long term' and that 'every effort should be made to avoid this'.

My community is very conscious that, while the entire Perth Freight Link project has countless unresolved problems and issues, the WA government retains a maniacal focus on crashing ahead with six lanes of bitumen through the middle of the Beeliar Wetlands from Kwinana Freeway to Stock Road. I want to put forward, on behalf of the community I represent—tens of thousands of households and families—the impact on local people in the Fremantle electorate. I want to mention Mr Hume, a Noongar elder, who died only a few months ago, and who consistently applied his incredible energy and leadership to the protection of the Beeliar Wetlands and its Indigenous heritage. North Lake and Bibra Lake, which this road will rip apart, are known as Coolbellup and Walliabup to the Beeliar group of the Whadjuk-Noongar. There is archaeological and cultural evidence that these wetlands were the site of semipermanent camps, that they were a birth site and also a traditional burial ground.

I want to mention Gail Beck and the South West Aboriginal Land and Sea Council, which represents the traditional owners, who have expressed their unanimous opposition to this road. I want to mention Tania Smirke and her family, with four young kids, who live in Palmyra and received a letter out of the blue, as did hundreds of people, telling them their house may need to be demolished. I want to mention Native ARC and the Cockburn Wetlands Education Centre for the work they do to engage people across WA in the beauty and magic of Coolbellup and Walliabup. I want to mention Felicity McGeorge, Kate Kelly and all those involved in the Save the Beeliar Wetlands community action group for their indefatigable fight over many years. I want to mention Christine Cooper and the Bibra Lake Residents Association for their work in identifying the military heritage that is at risk. I want to mention the Rethink the Link alliance, which has brought together all these groups and more in a widening and united front that will fight against the Perth Freight Link and that will fight for a sustainable transport future.

Finally, I want to mention Joe Branco, a representative of the North Lake Residents Association, who has fought against the destruction of the wetlands for more than 20 years, who has stood in front of the bulldozers and who will stand in front of the bulldozers again. And I want to make it clear that I will be standing with Joe, with Gail, with Felicity, with Christine, with Kate, with Tania and with thousands of others if that day should come, because there is a steely determination, hardened over many years and many battles, that these precious, rare, fragile, remnant wetlands will not be ruined by an outdated, unnecessary, massively expensive and wasteful truck freeway; that our neighbourhoods, from the freeway to the port, will not be sacrificed to the blindness and carelessness of the road-mad Abbott and Barnett governments.

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