Anne Aly (Cowan, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I find it quite extraordinary that this government is focused on patting itself on the back for investing in 34 infrastructure projects in WA over the last three years and, in particular, that the members for Forrest and Durack should be speaking to this motion. It seems that they are either unwilling or unable to call out their colleagues on the matter of an absolute neglect of Western Australia. The purpose of the National Stronger Regions Fund is to promote economic growth and to address disadvantage—a noble purpose indeed. It is supposedly a mechanism for allowing communities to identify their own priority infrastructure projects. But this government knows that that is not happening at all. The federal government uses the regional infrastructure fund to pump tens of millions of dollars into capital city projects, mainly in coalition-held seats.

In its first round, Senator Glenn Lazarus was right to call it 'another head scratcher from the government'. Why? Because the National Stronger Regions Fund does not actually spent all of its money in regional Australia. The first round of funding, worth $212 million, committed $57 million to projects in Melbourne, Adelaide, Brisbane, Perth and Darwin. The third round, announced just last year, committed $2½ million to connect South Perth to the Western Australian Liberals' vanity project of Elizabeth Quay. As my colleague the member for Perth mentioned, in WA all but one of those projects have gone to Liberal electorates.

Close to 60 per cent of the projects over the life of this initiative have been in coalition-held seats. This should come as no surprise, given this government's extraordinary track record of what can only be described as pork-barrelling. During the election campaign last year, this government came out with some extraordinary promises, in an unashamed and crude exercise of pork-barrelling. Seventy-six of its 78 projects were in seats held by the coalition before the 2 July poll. In the marginal seat of Swan, the Turnbull government pledged $20 million for an on-ramp to Manning Road and the Kwinana Freeway. In the seat of Hasluck, another marginal seat, $300,000 was promised to upgrade Hale Road. In my seat of Cowan, previously held by the Liberals, the government promised $20 million for an overpass at Ocean Reef Road and Wanneroo Road. But WA has been ripped off by the Turnbull government, with just three of 78 infrastructure projects promised during the election campaign actually being allocated in the state. Despite promising $860 million, announced during the election campaign, for road and rail projects in WA, the government will instead dedicate just over $40 million, or 4.6 per cent, to these much needed projects.

I stand here as a proud Western Australian. I have not lived there all my life but I have lived there for most of it. I cannot stand here as a Western Australian without mentioning this government's appalling lack of attention to and incredible neglect of WA and just how complicit in all of this the WA Liberals have been. We have here in this chamber, in this Commonwealth parliament, senior federal ministers on that side of the House. When have any of them spoken for Western Australia? Why are they all so silent? They have failed to deliver a fair GST, and in the same breath the federal Liberal Mathias Cormann has threatened to pull even more money out of Western Australia. The Liberal Party has continued to rip-off Western Australians for far too long. They have taken Western Australia for granted over our GST share for far too long.

The National Stronger Regions Fund pays lip service to the regions, which is why it is so extraordinary that we have a motion here actually praising the government for investing in the regions. In all of this the outer suburbs of Perth in particular continue to suffer. Voters who live in the outer suburbs have had enough. This government offers no vision for addressing their issues. Those who live in the outer suburbs of Cowan can spend hours in their cars each day just to get to and from work and other basic services. It is not good enough, I am afraid, to congratulate the government on relatively minor spending on much needed infrastructure in WA, especially in the outer suburbs and especially when Western Australia is already coping with years of neglect by both Commonwealth and state Liberal governments.

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