Jamie Briggs (Mayo, Liberal Party, Assistant Minister for Infrastructure and Regional Development) Share this | Hansard source

You cannot injure a business enough in WA and make it more successful. Of course you cannot, and the member for Brand knows that. The member for Brand of all people in this place knows very well that the mining tax is killing Western Australia.

We have done for Western Australia what Western Australians want us to do. We have announced plans to fund and deliver road upgrades, not deliver a record such as the member for Perth when she was a state minister: the Pilbara was exploding and she refused to release more land so more houses could be developed, so those towns could not develop and take the opportunity. Don't you worry about that, Mr Deputy Speaker Kelly, when I was in the Pilbara at the beginning of February that was exactly the message they had. Thank goodness for Colin Barnett. Thank goodness for a federal Liberal government that has come to the party and said: 'We will fund—we won't just announce out of a mining tax that does not raise any revenue—the upgrades which can allow WA to make the most of the opportunities, the enormous opportunities, that the state has.' We will work with Colin Barnett and Troy Buswell to deliver the upgrades to Western Australian infrastructure which will ensure we have the strongest economy we can possibly have.

We have funded projects which were left unfunded by the Labor Party. When you hear the member for Perth claim that we are cutting funding, it is a complete and utter fib. What the Labor Party did in their last years is put money outside the forward estimates. That is what they did, and in fact if you look at the difference between the total overall budget and the next four years, between what we have intended to spend on infrastructure and what those on the other side would have spent had they been re-elected—and thank goodness they weren't—we are spending $6.2 billion extra.

We have not even had our first budget. I say to the member for Perth: hold onto your hat, because on budget night on 13 May, I think you should sit there quietly—I know it is going to be difficult—and listen to the Treasurer deliver for Western Australia, because that is what we will do. And the people of Western Australia know that. Whether it is the five serious and senior ministers of the Abbott government, our plans to get rid of the carbon tax and the mining tax or our plans to invest in the infrastructure of the 21st century, this is best government Western Australians could hope for. We will deliver for Western Australia. We will not go to war with the state government of Western Australia like Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard wanted to and always did. We will go and talk to Colin Barnett. We will work to implement an infrastructure program which will ensure that Western Australia can be as strong and as prosperous as it should be. That is why the Abbott government was chosen last September, and we will deliver.

See this speech in context