Josh Wilson (Fremantle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am glad to have this opportunity to speak about the government's failure to protect workers and the social and economic consequences of that failure. I am not glad to speak about the circumstances that prevail currently in Western Australia, because the reality is Western Australia is in a recession. We have the second highest unemployment rate in the country. We have a sequence of falling full-time employment rates that have been unmatched since the deep recession in 1990s. Underemployment is at its highest level since the ABS began keeping those statistics in 1978. As the member for Perth said, there are 100,000 people out of work in my home state.

What is most disappointing though is that this was foreseeable. Western Australia does have a resources economy. That resources economy has peaks and troughs. A responsible government prepares for those, yet nothing has been done. The Barnett government has perpetrated a long con on the people of Western Australia, quietly building up a mountain of debt and passively watching as jobs began to disappear.

It is entirely appropriate that the federal House of Representatives members from Western Australia speak on this topic because the Barnett government have been aided and abetted by the Turnbull government. The Barnett government should have been prepared for change. They should have ensured there was greater emphasis on local content participation when the resources economy was running strongly. As the economy cooled there should have been a focus on productive infrastructure investment. There has been complete inadequacy when it comes to that investment. WA has been badly let down by the Abbott-Turnbull government in all of those departments.

During the last election there were 78 road and rail projects announced or promised by the coalition. How many in WA? Three—three out of 78. Of $860 million worth of road and rail projects, barely $40 million, or 4.6 per cent, was delivered in Western Australia. That was in July last year. Last week the federal government announced projects being funded under the Regional Jobs and Investment Package—$220 million for 10 projects. The goal of the program is 'to help regions in Australia diversify their economies, stimulate long-term economic growth and deliver sustainable employment'. How many of the 10 projects are in Western Australia? None, zero, even though some of the relevant Western Australian regions have unemployment rates three times higher than those selected for funding. It is a bitter irony, as my colleagues have pointed out, that the only sniff of infrastructure funding we have is in relation to the Perth Freight Link—

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