Melissa Parke (Fremantle, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Health) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Yesterday more than 1,500 people gathered at Bibra Lake to protest against the WA government's proposal to build Roe Highway Stage 8 through the Beeliar wetlands as the first part of the disastrous Perth Freight Link. As I said at the rally yesterday, Bibra Lake is a place full of life—a place that embodies the full circle of life. It is a birthplace and a burial ground for the Whadjuk Noongar Beeliar people and it is an incredibly precious wetland ecosystem. There are unique species that live their entire life cycle, generation upon generation, in that place. There are internationally protected migratory birds that return there, generation upon generation, as they travel from north to south. It is a special, powerful, beautiful, ancient, fragile place. It is not the place to build a massive truck freeway. It is not the place to waste hundreds of millions of taxpayers' dollars on a road to nowhere. It is not the place to lock Western Australia into a toll road and truck freight future.

To Premier Barnett the Rethink the Link Alliance says, 'You've picked the wrong place and the wrong time and the wrong plan—and you're messing with the wrong people.' The people in the Fremantle electorate, including the local council areas of Cockburn, Fremantle and East Fremantle, as well as the people of Kwinana, Mosman Park and Cottesloe have time and again expressed their strong opposition to the Perth Freight Link proposal and their desire to see appropriately planned infrastructure, including a new outer harbour, better public transport and more freight on rail. Abandoning the Perth Freight Link would free up more than a billion dollars to achieve this much-needed work. I am confident the community can and will win this fight. It is not too late to stop Roe 8.