David Johnston (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

In response to the answer given by the Minister for the Environment and Heritage, I will commence by acknowledging the fact that the proprietor of the brickworks concerned is a person who has achieved a great deal in Western Australia. Starting from a low base, he has built up a very diversified and successful business in building and construction, in cement and concrete manufacture, in the fabrication industry and in transport. In achieving that success, he has along the way alienated and aggravated the Australian Labor Party in Western Australia. One of the reasons he has aggravated and alienated them is that he does not bow or kowtow to union heavy-handedness or thuggery.

When we come to this place, obviously those who support such tactics want to make some mileage out of the recent approval by the Minister for Transport and Regional Services of a site at the Perth Airport for a new brickworks. The most important thing that can be said about the new brickworks is that it meets a very important demand, particularly for young people seeking to build their first homes in Western Australia. Anybody who has an understanding of the Western Australian building and construction industry, particularly the cottage industry, knows that there is a chronic shortage of bricks.

There are only two effective brick producers—the Midland Brick Company and Austral. That duopoly situation is very unhealthy for homebuyers, particularly young homebuyers. I note that that is not a concern of the Labor Party in this debate about the airport. I note that they do not give a fig at all for the fact that bricks are scarce and very expensive. They do not care that builders are hard-pressed—and, unlike my learned friends on the other side of this chamber, I talk to builders about the fact that they are very hard-pressed to comply with their contractual time constraints, given the shortage of bricks.

I would have thought that, if senators on the other side and, indeed, the Western Australian government and the Australian Labor Party were doing the right thing, they would be interested to see the supply of bricks to the housing construction industry increase and, with that, the market constriction would be eased. But, no, they simply seek to make political points out of the fact that Mr Len Buckeridge and BGC have been given a leasehold, a commercial lease, on land at the Perth Airport upon which to construct a brickworks. The emissions from that new brickworks will be Australia’s lowest for a plant of that size and dimension. This is a world-class, cutting-edge, state-of-the-art brickworks which will emit virtually less than five per cent of the emissions of its comparative competing brickworks, so I am told.

The point about all this is that questions relating to the brickworks are about nothing more or less than crass politics. It really is a bit sad that senators from Western Australia on the other side of this chamber think that it is a good thing to attack someone who has built up an industry, built up a business, who seeks to provide an industrial capability to the people of Western Australia, as isolated as we are, for housing and construction, because they happen to be of a different political persuasion. That is, of course, indicative of the state of mind of very many in the Labor movement at the moment. It saddens me that someone who has achieved so much and who seeks to achieve more is going to be belittled and pilloried in his work because of that. My question is: why can’t we leave politics behind here and focus on the benefit to Western Australians in their ambition to acquire and construct a home?