Michaelia Cash (WA, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Immigration) Share this | Hansard source

Exactly. The MUA—good old Labor union mates. Seriously, Mr Deputy President, you can actually see Mr McGowan, can't you, sitting in his office and thinking, 'I've got this great thing happening'? It is almost like: 'It is my party, Ms Gillard. I will invite who I want to, and I can tell you: you ain't on my list of people who will be coming over.'

As most senators and members would know, we spend hours going through the invitations that come to our office and working out: 'Can we? Can't we? Should I make it a priority? Should I juggle my diary to ensure that I can get to a certain event?' The good news for the Prime Minister is that she can do a lot of juggling, because she is not allowed to get on that plane to make the almost five-hour journey west and go anywhere near Western Australia. Her staff are probably in her office on a daily basis thinking, 'Please, please, something from WA.' But the edict is very, very clear. The Labor Party in Western Australia have spoken. Federal Labor should not and will not come anywhere near our great state. Why is that? Mark McGowan, the leader of state Labor, has made it very clear. He has totally ditched Labor's carbon tax. Why has he ditched it? Because he knows it is an impost on business. It is an impost on families. He knows that federal Labor should ditch that policy. He also knows that Labor's mining resource rent tax is an anti-WA tax, and this is, of course, despite the federal member for Brand, Gary Gray, proudly standing in the parliament in its last sitting and stating:

The mining tax is an outstanding tax, works effectively and has many, many benefits.

The people of Brand should be very, very worried when their own federal representative supports a tax that is vehemently anti-Western Australia and is the one tax that the Labor Party introduced which raises next to no money. And then, Mr Deputy President—and do not start me on it—there is the Western Australian position on Australia's borders. They were behind John Howard every single step of the way.

The question that the Labor Party at a federal level need to ask themselves is: 'If state Labor have worked out that those three policies are not in the interests of Western Australia, when is the federal government going to work that out?' (Time expired)