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

We did the inquiry. We went to Fremantle, and there were a number of us at the inquiry. We wanted to hear from people. We invited everyone. We invited those who were pro the freight link and those who were opposed to the freight link. Sadly, the main players, who are all for it, did not even turn up. They did not want to come and front the committee and tell the people why we need to move freight safely. We need to integrate the movement of freight and separate it from public transport.

We have now got to what we do know. There is now a $1.6 billion project. If you know Perth, you know we have a river just before the port. When we leave the Leach Highway at Kewdale or Welshpool, just before we get to the port we have a river, and we have to get across the river. This grand plan, which has now blown out to about $2.2 billion, stops about 50 metres before the river. I do not know what we are going to do there, because the existing bridge—for those of us who have the displeasure sometimes of having to drive over it—is a nightmare, and for heavy vehicles that is the only way they can get over to the port and back to Kewdale and Welshpool and over to other areas like Spearwood and so on.

But in the state government now—it is very public—the Premier, Mr Barnett, is bluing with his minister, Mr Nalder. They have conflicting time lines. We have now found out that the Premier has said, 'Well, we're not going to build Roe all the way.' We now read in TheWest Australian, that fantastic organ that we have over there, that the first stage will be built; for the rest, we do not even know what is going to happen there. We do not know when that is going to happen, because the Premier is now playing a game with his federal counterparts that he does not want to spend that money doing up the last stage—before we even talk about getting a bridge and upgrading the rail bridge across the river too—because he has other things he wants to build.

As a Western Australian, there are a number of things I have to say in a short time. I want freight to move. I was calling for a freight route 20 years ago, and I was ignored. I called for a freight route 10 years ago, and I was ignored. What would I know? But now, all of a sudden, when we really are at the pointy end, no-one knows what the heck we are doing. There are conversations about the tunnel. We have heard that; we picked that up in our inquiry. But we do not know where the tunnel will start, if there will be a tunnel. Infrastructure Australia told us that they did the costings on it. They did the work on it, but there was no inclusion of a tunnel. So it went from $1.6 billion to $2.2 billion and it stops 50 metres before the river, before we talk about another couple of bridges. It is just absolutely shambolic.

I heard Mr Ian King—he heads up the Western Australian Road Transport Association—on talkback radio in Perth a couple of weeks ago going absolutely berserk because even those who are part and parcel of the transport minister's forums and workshops and all that do not even know what is going on, and they are the ones who are responsible for representing the trucking industry. We have a lot of residents who live along the Leach Highway high street. Unfortunately, their homes are marked for destruction. We heard from people there.

There is an issue that I will not comment on. I will leave that to the Greens. They can have this argument about some wetland stuff. That is what they will do, and I am not surprised. It is next to my suburb. I will probably wander past on my morning walk and find Senator Ludlam chained to a bulldozer or something. That will not surprise me.