Tim Hammond (Perth, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

At 6 pm on Saturday, 11 March, as the polls drew to a close throughout Western Australia, something historic was about to occur. One by one, as the scrutineers did their job and the ballots were counted and the results came in from the booths, the result became very clear: an overwhelming and historic victory to Mark McGowan and the Western Australian Labor Party at the Western Australian state election. It was a campaign in which not an inch was given from as far out as 12 months before the date of election. It was in April 2016 that Mark McGowan went to the community with a plan, and that plan was quite simply titled: Plan for jobs. It created a comprehensive regimen of steps that Mark McGowan and the Western Australian Labor Party were prepared to undertake in order to make sure that we never see again the level of unemployment and underemployment that Western Australians had experienced in recent times under Colin Barnett and the state Liberal government. What did that look like? Whilst the manifesto that Mark McGowan presented 12 months out from the election was clear, the answers required lots of hard work. It involved articulating to the community of Western Australia precisely how Mark McGowan and his team, as a credible alternative government, intended to get Western Australia back on track.

That started with a very clear vision not to sell off Western Power. Selling off Western Power was very clearly a short-sighted attempt to try to rein in some of the record net debt created under the watch of not only Colin Barnett but the seven treasurers who were asleep at the wheel over the course of the eight years of the Barnett Liberal government. Mark McGowan made it very clear that Western Power was not to be sold on his watch. Mark McGowan and his team also presented a very clear alternative vision for infrastructure, and that alternative vision was Metronet, a public transport system that would revolutionise the way in which Western Australians make their way around our great city. Those billions of dollars in funding committed to Roe 8 and Roe 9—largely seen, for good reason, as a road to nowhere—will instead be put into a state-building infrastructure project that not only will, as I said before, transform the way in which Western Australians get around the city but will create thousands of jobs.

Not only do the congratulations go to Mark and his team but also to a new cabinet—sworn in and getting to work from day 1, meeting over the weekends and kicking off with a cabinet meeting first thing Monday morning in which they are all determined to roll up their sleeves and get to work to do what it takes in order to get Western Australians and our great state back on track. Two appointments in particular that I would like to take this opportunity to recognise—in addition to Mark McGowan and Roger Cook, the deputy premier of the state as well as our new minister for health—are Ben Wyatt, a great friend of mine, I am proud to say, and also the state's first Indigenous treasurer, who could not be more ready and more capable of taking the reins of the treasury and doing what it takes to make hard decisions and to get Western Australia back on track again; and also my predecessor in this place, Alannah MacTiernan, again rolling up her sleeves for the great state of Western Australia, now elevated to the ministry, quite rightly so, and getting ready to dominate the state, as you would only expect from Alannah, in relation to the areas of agriculture, the regions and state development. Congratulations to those two and to all of Mark's team.

A special congratulations to my state colleagues who have helped paint the federal seat of Perth a sea of red: to John Carey, the new state member for Perth; to Amber Jade Sanderson, the new member for Morley; to Lisa Baker, the member for Maylands; to Dave Kelly; and also a special tribute to Simone Millman, the new member for Mount Lawley. As a special acknowledgement to all of those wonderful candidates who ran but came second—I will not read it today—Theodore Roosevelt's 'The Man in the Arena' quote is for you, and well done.