Ben Small (Forrest, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

This week, WA Premier Roger Cook and Treasurer Rita Saffioti are in town here in Canberra meeting with Prime Minister Albanese as fairness fighters for our GST deal, which, of course, was legislated by the last coalition government. But it begs the question as to what's going on between the Assistant Minister to the Prime Minister and the WA government themselves. Maybe it's because they saw how easily they steamrolled him on a $217 million racetrack that nobody seems to want, but they're seriously worried about WA's federal Labor MPs being rolled here in Canberra.

I don't want to be unfair to the member for Perth. After all, there are 11 federal Labor MPs and five Labor senators to get on the plane every week to come to Canberra when we're sitting, so it'd be churlish to blame him alone. But, finally, under much pressure after the election, the PM has included an extra cabinet minister from the great state of WA, which wasn't a small increase, but rather a 100 per cent increase, in representation for WA, because we previously had, in the first term of the Albanese government, just one cabinet minister from WA, which is a long, long way short of the five cabinet ministers from WA that we had in the last coalition government.

So why don't Roger and Rita trust any of them, or trust all of them? More to the point, if WA Labor can't trust their own federal MPs to ensure that our great state of WA is not left one dollar worse off under the GST deal, then why should Western Australians have confidence in them either?

This isn't the first time that Roger and Rita have blown money on some advocacy here in Canberra. Just last year they opened an embassy one kilometre from here, down the road in Canberra. What a joke! Hundreds of thousands of dollars in rent, outgoings and staff, yet 17 federal Labor politicians come here to represent WA every sitting week. Again, why do WA Labor have no confidence in the WA federal Labor team?

There's only one test for the Prime Minster when it comes to the GST deal, and that's ensuring that the state of Western Australia is not left a single dollar worse off. He's promised it. Now he needs to deliver it.

The Prime Minster is very happy to pocket millions of dollars in royalties and taxes that are generated by WA's mining and resources sectors in particular, so the last thing he should do is breach a solemn promise to the good folks of WA and penalise our success. At the end of the day, the resources and mining industries in WA were built on successive governments backing the private sector to do what it does well. If the Prime Minster thinks he can treat WA like a cash cow, he will be reminded of how important WA is at the ballot box.

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