Madeleine King (Brand, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On Saturday, 28 July, when the voters of Fremantle and Perth in Western Australia turned out to vote in the by-elections, something was missing. Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull had gone missing. In fact, the entire Liberal Party of Western Australia had gone missing. The Liberals' refusal to field candidates in those important by-elections was simply a slap in the face for Western Australia's Liberal voters. It says a lot about the character of the Prime Minister that he and the WA Liberal Party gave up on these two important contests.

This Prime Minister has visited WA a total of six times, and only twice this year. In contrast, Bill Shorten, as Leader of the Opposition, has visited WA 16 times, five of which were this year. I'm happy to say that Jamie and I enjoyed a lovely casual lunch at the wonderful Cruising Yacht Club in Rockingham with Bill and his family. We were joined by Premier Mark McGowan and his family. Both Mark and I were happy to show off the wonderful Rockingham beachfront that sits in the heart of our respective electorates. It's a place you rarely see a Liberal parliamentarian go, unless they are driving straight through to go to directly to Garden Island. There's still no sign of a Liberal candidate for the seat of Brand.

It's a funny thing: Malcolm Turnbull was back in WA after the by-elections, and it was just last week in fact that he rolled into Perth and zeroed in on the fragile marginal seats held by nervous members on the other side. Of course, I didn't see him in Brand—but then, we never do. To celebrate the PM's triumphant return to Western Australia, the WA Liberals ran a full-page advertisement in The West Australian on Saturday, the last day of his visit. This full-page ad in The West Australian cost around $12,000. That was on top of two other full-page Liberal ads recently run in the same paper in the week of the two by-elections in Western Australia. That's right: they ran two full-page ads in the only daily paper published in Western Australia in the week of the by-elections they had not bothered to turn up for—a wacky investment of tens of thousands of dollars that must dishearten Liberal donors. And even that significant investment went off the rails the very next day. Up got the state leader of the WA Liberal Party, Mike Nahan, in his major annual address at the WA state Liberal Party conference, to tell us that no-one was reading The West Australian. The Liberal leader told journalists:

It's not something that I relish, but it's a reality … People are not reading The West Australian.

The state Liberal leader repeated his mantra inside and outside the conference. He kept saying that mainstream media does not penetrate. He kept saying that it does not work. I don't agree with everything The West Australian paper does. I abhor how it takes column space away from quality journalists and gives it to the divisive Bolt columns, but I really wouldn't write off a 130-year-old Western Australian institution.

So I ask: what are Western Australians to make of the hapless Liberal bunch? The Prime Minister only ever turns up to try to save his own political bacon. He advertises his policy in a newspaper that his state leader has entirely discounted. Is it any wonder that the Liberals failed to nominate and field candidates in the Perth and Fremantle by-elections? They simply do not have the confidence or belief in their arguments or their leadership. As a result, voters gave a resounding vote of approval to two outstanding Labor candidates, Patrick Gorman and Josh Wilson.

And Labor candidates did not take the by-elections lightly, unlike the WA Liberals, who just didn't turn up. They did not take their supporters for granted. Patrick and Josh wore out their shoe leather, and the phones were running hot. Patrick Gorman and his team knocked on nearly 10,000 doors, and Josh and his exceptional team spoke with over 20,000 voters in the great seat of Fremantle. The Fremantle and Perth by-election results simply vindicated Labor's position that Western Australians do not believe they are getting, or will ever get, a fair deal from the Turnbull Liberal government. They joined other Australians, in Longman, Braddon and Mayo, in rejecting the Turnbull government's tax cuts for big banks and their cuts to schools and hospitals across this whole country. The Prime Minister said this was a test of leadership. He failed. He said it was a test of the business tax handouts. They were flatly rejected by all these electorates. We had the better candidates and the better policy, and we knew it wasn't about us; it was about these communities and building a better future for them, and putting people first. Voters can see through the empty promises of this ramshackle government.

I might add that the Turnbull government also put up a completely unfunded GST reform for Western Australian voters and then failed to even bother to campaign on it by putting up Liberal candidates in the Western Australian by-elections. It's an outrage. It's ridiculous. They are fools. Everybody knows that you cannot trust Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and you certainly can't trust WA Liberals. They've abandoned Western Australia utterly.