Glenn Sterle (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I wish to make a contribution on what is now termed the Perth Freight Link, but I think there is a little bit of a history lesson that would not hurt those listening in. Perth's major port is the port of Fremantle, and it is no secret, Australia being an island nation, that there are hundreds of thousands of containers that come through the Fremantle port each year. Our major warehousing and distribution centre is the area of Kewdale and Welshpool. We also have up there our international airport, and we also have our domestic airport. Over the years since the Howard government, the domestic airport is now also a major warehousing facility.

For years we have had a patchwork system in our state where we have chucked in traffic lights every time a footpath crosses a road. We used to have this road called High Street when I was a young fellow living in Fremantle, before I moved out to Perth's eastern suburbs, to a place called Langford. Let me tell the eastern staters: when you move out to Perth's eastern suburbs, you are not progressing up the social ladder, I can tell you. It was always going to be the freight link, so to speak, between the port, our warehousing and distribution centres, and our major transport centres. This also is the doorway, as Senator Back and other colleagues from WA would know, to the resource-rich north-west. This major freight corridor has, over the years, carted millions and millions and millions of tonnes between Perth, the port, Kewdale and Welshpool and through to our northern areas, the Pilbara and the Kimberley. I spent 12 of my years running freight up and down that link.

But over the years it has just got ridiculous, and the Leach Highway is probably one of the worst highways in this country. I have said this on a number of occasions: whoever thought whacking traffic lights onto the Leach Highway and having two lanes each way over the Shelley Bridge, being four lanes—well, they actually merge, three into two—was a good idea, and whoever thought we had to have bus lanes running off and that it was a fantastic idea to bring in B-doubles and pocket road trains climbing Stock Road Hill, with up to 68 tonnes of freight, and to integrate general traffic, cars and people taking their kids to school, seriously should have been taken out the back and whacked around the ears.

So what we have got is an absolute disaster, but it has got even worse because successive governments over the years have done a lot of talking about how we are going to combat or face or approach our transport task doubling by 2020. In my previous life, it was not a secret. We all knew—those of us who were in the transport game all knew—our freight task was going to double, but no-one had the nous to think, 'Hang on, we'd better do something.' There is also live export out of our port of Fremantle. Just about everything comes in and out of Fremantle except fuel and fertiliser. Our port will be at capacity in somewhere between eight and 12 years—there are a few different figures around—but we still have this goat track called the Leach Highway. We need another port, and there is no secret. I do not think there is a Western Australian who would argue. We have to have the outer harbour. The outer harbour would be down at Kwinana, some 25 or 30 kays south of Perth, south of Fremantle, and we need a freight route to get to it.

We actually have to face facts: freight has to move. We cannot just put it in bloody balloons and float it around the suburbs. And do not worry, Mr Acting Deputy President; I actually saw something. Someone went to Germany to see some proposal about how you could airlift freight in balloons so you were not clogging roads. This is the mentality of some of the people we have had in Western Australia.

But what has made it worse? No-one has done a damn thing. We found out back in about 2014, not long after the election of the Abbott government. An announcement came out, with a freshly minted government and some freshly minted ministers, that the Perth Freight Link would be built. Those of us who have been around for a long time knew what the eastern bypass was, and we know the history behind the Fremantle eastern bypass and why it did not go ahead. We know that. So we had to find out: what was this Perth Freight Link? It was, in a nutshell—others will add to this—to upgrade that freight route I was talking about, the Leach Highway, that disastrous piece of infrastructure, to turn it into a major truck route. I do not know where all the cars are going to go, but they will probably stay on the Leach Highway, and that is their penalty. It also would be a toll road—and we were told we would never have toll roads. But it is a number of stages, Roe 8 and 9.

What it virtually boiled down to was that the federal government had a photo opportunity. I think there was newly minted Minister Cormann, as a senior Western Australian member of the government, and I think Minister Johnston was there as well. I think Assistant Minister Briggs was there announcing that just under a billion federal dollars was going to be spent in Western Australia doing up this freight route, and the state government—which really looked like the rabbit in the spotlight—would have to find the other $600 million, $700 million or whatever it was. To cut a long story short, it was going to be a $1.6 billion upgrade to move freight along.

So, bearing in mind that the government in Perth has lost its AAA credit rating, we also have the Perth-Darwin highway, which I have been absolutely 100 per cent behind from day one. That is a vital piece of infrastructure that we need. Plus there have been a few announcements in the last couple of elections about a Forrestfield rail line, but unfortunately the government over there says a lot of things during elections and then finds more excuses than a pregnant nun for why it cannot do it. I might withdraw that. This does wind me up. I withdraw that.