Patrick Gorman (Perth, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister to the Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

I am proudly the member for Perth. I'm proudly a Western Australian. I am proudly a federationist. I believe that secession is false hope. It's a fringe idea with real-world costs. And, as we read in the Australian this week, we're seeing in Western Australia a new generation of secessionists launching a 400-page, 15-chapter book entitled Secession by Western Australia. Now, that sounds like a very painful read for anyone—but, I'll tell you, nothing compared with the pain of separating Western Australia from the federation. As you look around the world in 2026, now is not the time for idiotic ideas like secession. Global conflict is a sobering reminder that Australia is stronger together. One hundred and twenty-five years ago this year, we federated to make sure we were better off together than we were as separate colonies. Back then, our trains didn't connect, it was very hard to post a letter from one side of the country to the other, and we clearly were not reaching our economic potential.

I don't want to see my constituents left worse off through these nutty ideas of secession, and I look forward to the fight against them. Those on the side of federation have won these fights many times over the years. I note that it was the Liberal Party in Western Australia who in 2017 passed motions urging that Western Australia leave the Commonwealth. That wouldn't have set Western Australia up for the sort of success we're seeing today.

In my remarks on this bill I want to talk about what the Commonwealth is delivering for Perth, in my electorate. I was there at the WA Cricket Association grounds just the other week, opening the significant redevelopment of the WACA grounds, giving a new community centre for my community in East Perth, along with a fantastic waterslide, buckets to tip water on the kids, a fabulous swimming pool and a new home for cricket in the west. I'm so proud the Albanese government has supported that. I also went to the welcoming of the students at ECU's City Campus on top of the Perth City Link, a project the Prime Minister himself championed, making sure we now have some 10,000 students and education staff in the heart of Perth, revitalising our city, giving young Australians those benefits of education that come from further education.

I was proudly there at the Angela Wright Bennett Centre, celebrating their first year of operation—again, something that was funded by the Commonwealth, investing in support for women and children leaving violent partners. I'm really proud of the work we've done. I want to commend the now Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations and former Minister for Social Services for her championing of that project.

Similarly, in the Perth electorate we have a massive investment from the Commonwealth in Leederville Oval, some $1.5 million to make sure that women and girls who play AFL there can get the changing facilities they need so we can use that oval to its full potential. In the next decade, Leederville is going to pop, because we're going to see thousands and thousands of new homes built thanks to the planning money we've provided to the city of Vincent. I want to make sure there's a good oval with good changing facilities for the young people who want to play there. As a former—I'm still coming to terms with that!—Auskick coach, I know how great footy is for young people in recognising all their skills and building up not just their sporting skills but their self-confidence. I want to make sure that's available to every young person in my electorate. And I want to thank Mayor Alison Zamon for championing that project and making it possible.

If, like me, you realise early in life that maybe footy isn't your thing and your skills maybe aren't going to get you to the top grade, there are outstanding STEM careers in Western Australia. We understand that there are some 247,000 STEM workers in Western Australia, contributing some $87 billion to our local economy. It's one of the driving reasons that this Albanese Labor government is investing in the next generation of STEM workers with a significant investment in Scitech, Western Australia's science education centre. One in three of those STEM workers attribute Scitech as having influenced them to choose a STEM career. We need those workers, and we need people to see the opportunities that are there for the future. That's why we're spending $100 million, working with the WA state government, to build a new forever home for Scitech, making sure the next generation of young scientists and mathematicians can see the amazing careers in the west and experience the joy of understanding a little bit more about how our universe works.

If you're more into natural beauty, then come and join me at Hyde Park in the months ahead as we do replanting of our islands and of the banks of the beautiful Hyde Park lakes. People in my community were devastated when the shot-hole borer meant that we had to tear down hundreds of trees in Hyde Park, but I'm pleased to have announced, alongside the member for Sydney, significant investment in Hyde Park, some half a million dollars to help with the replanting of Hyde Park to make sure that it can be a venue for weddings, birthdays and family celebrations for many years to come.

Similarly, if you love the outdoors and you love public transport and you want to bring those two loves together, then we've got significant investments that this appropriation bill will support in supporting expansion of the Perth ferry network. We've done the METRONET train line. It's now time for 'metro wet', the ferry service that will ensure that people can get around Perth, including to the electorate of my good colleague the member for Tangney. We've committed some $60 million to make sure that we can get those ferries on the Swan River, and part of that will contribute $10 million to stage 2 to plan the future expansion of the network, hopefully up to Optus Stadium, Maylands, Bayswater and beyond.

So that's a little bit about the benefits we have of this federation, where we can do real-world things that make a difference for people every day, and it comes on top of all of those things that you'd lose if you took away the federation agreement and you left the states on their own—or, in the case of Western Australia, left Western Australia on its own. Not only do you lose all of the trade negotiations and all of the defence services, but you lose all those things that people rely on every day. You lose Medicare. You lose the PBS. You lose free TAFE. You lose the school funding deals. And, ultimately, if the secessionists win, Western Australia loses. But I think in this place we can be fortunate that very few people buy into those ideas these days. There have been people of this place in the past who've championed them. Thankfully, we're in a different era, and these views can stay on the fringe, where they belong.

I'm proud to be in a government focused on delivery, a government that is focused on delivering for the Australian people and supporting them in practical ways with everything from their household budgets to getting the jobs and opportunities that they want. But it couldn't be lost on me, as I'm sure it's not lost on anyone else in this chamber, that it was at this very dispatch box that a very important document was tabled to the parliament, and I rushed to the table office. They do very efficient work. I got my copy from the table office of tabled parliamentary papers of the parliament, which was the review of the campaign run by the Liberal Party of Australia in 2025. This is a review that the Liberal Party never wanted their own people to see. It tells a story of, in their own words, 'policy failures' and 'lack of a values statement and a comprehensive policy package'. The submissions received were clearly desperate, having experienced such an awful campaign where those submissions 'urged a more empathetic and modern presentation of leadership'. Having received the review for a more empathetic and more modern presentation of leadership, what was the first thing that the Liberal Party did on receiving this review? Naturally, they rolled their leader.

I think a word that you see a few times in this review is the word 'incoherent'. That is how they describe their own policy agenda at the last election. It's also how I would describe some of their actions over the last few weeks—and even they themselves. Pretty much every person who still sits opposite put out flyers in their electorates and put out social media that said, 'Here's the nuclear plan, and here's the plan to end work from home.' They all campaigned on it. What did their own review tell them about that? It was 'politically mistimed or alienating'. They would often tell us about just how good they were when it came to economic management, and you'd see it again on the flyers that the Liberal Party put out in my electorate and other electorates, telling us how they had this great economic plan. What does their own review say about their economic plan? It describes it as 'confused and short term'. So, having had that confused, short-term economic plan, what is the solution that the Liberal Party of Australia come up with? They make the architect of that plan their leader.

We now see huge confusion about what it is that the Liberal Party stand for. We know that they stood for higher taxes. We know that the tax cut that's coming in, in just a few months, is a tax cut that they didn't want Australians to have in their pocket. In fact, the Liberal Party were so mean that they didn't want Australians to have a tax cut in their pocket this year and they didn't want them to have a tax cut in their pocket next year. It's no wonder that their standing with so many Australians has fallen—as the review itself says, 'persistent concern over the party's standing with young people, women and multicultural Australians'. When it comes to the proposal from the person they've now made their deputy leader, Senator Jane Hume—architect of a policy to end work from home—their own review said it was 'so deeply unpopular' that they had to can it within weeks.

There've been a lot of challenges in the Liberal Party and even in the National Party over the last few weeks, but every now and then I give credit to those opposite. Sometimes you get someone who actually talks the truth about how they feel about their colleagues. I am, of course, talking about the member for Canning. Now, I have many policy disagreements with the member for Canning. I think he was treated appallingly in some of the backgrounding by the now leader of the opposition's supporters in their trying to push him out of the race. But I would give advice to the member for Canning that, as much as I enjoy him being honest about his colleagues, it might not be a great vote-winning strategy.

When you call your own coalition colleagues cowards—they're not my words; this is a comment that the member for Canning posted on his social media, which he spends a lot of time on. He called his own coalition colleagues cowards. And then, in case they didn't quite get the message that he wasn't particularly happy with them, he also went on to call them muppets. I think that calling them muppets was what I actually found the most offensive of all, because I was in this place when then prime minister Scott Morrison assured us the 'muppet show' was over. Clearly, the muppet show is still going on the other side. But I do give the member for Canning serious credit for being absolutely upfront with the Australian people about what he thinks of his own colleagues.

Of course, clearly, some of those comments might have upset others. We did see comments from a former member of this place, Mr Peter Dutton, who accused the member for Canning of 'going on strike' during the campaign. I'd note that, actually, industrial disputes are down under this government compared to under the previous government, but there are still some industrial disputes happening in the coalition party room.

I think it's a fascinating read, but, having quoted from it extensively, I do think it's appropriate that I recognise that others, including Mr Dutton, said that this is a gratuitous and personal hit job—but it's not a hit job from anyone outside of the Liberal Party. This is a blue-on-blue attack. This is a Liberal-on-Liberal attack. I think it says a lot as well that it did leak out within moments of the attempts from the new leader of the opposition to keep it secret.

I think that tells you a lot about where we are when it comes to the sad state of some parts of those who, I think, in other times, we would have to rely upon to defend the federation from the lunatic secessionists that exist within the fringes of Western Australia, including in the Western Australian Liberal Party, as I said earlier. It was the WA Liberals who put this through as a policy motion at their conference. I'm happy to fight the Liberals against secession, I'm happy to fight the authors of this tortuous 400-page book about secession, and I'm happy to fight to make sure that we have a government focused on the Australian people, focused on delivering for the Australian people and focused on building Australia's future.

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