Christopher Back (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I was not going to rise to speak on this matter but those who might be listening need to have Senator Ludlam's comments put into perspective. If I can draw attention firstly to the legal challenges of those opposed to the Roe 8 project, the first was a challenge to the Supreme Court in Western Australia, not so much to the project but to the manner of environmental approval by the Environmental Protection Authority. Chief Justice Wayne Martin upheld the request of the applicants. On appeal, unanimously, Chief Justice Martin's colleagues in the Supreme Court of Western Australia overturned the decision and, in fact, the project was approved to proceed. Senator Ludlam did not make that point in his contribution.

I then turn to the matter of the Federal Court in which a challenge took place to the approval by the federal environment minister. In January this year that was also overturned, and the decision of the federal minister was upheld. But it is important that there be some historic perspective of this because Roe 8 was part of the Stephenson plan from the 1950s, a plan which had gone internationally to tender and Stephenson—a Scotsman—and his associates had won the tender to develop an overall transport plan for metropolitan Perth. So successful was it that Stephenson moved his family from Scotland to Perth to oversee that project. Much of what we see today in place—the freeway system, the highway networks et cetera—were all there as part of the Stephenson plan.

In her wisdom, the then state minister for transport, Alannah MacTiernan—having once been in the state parliament, briefly in this one and now back being recycled again in the state election for another crack at the state parliament—working in conjunction with the then member for Fremantle, Mr McGinty, decided that they would stop the conclusion of the Stephenson plan into Fremantle port. In so doing, they had the land rezoned and they had that component of it zoned residential. The then secretary, I think, of the Transport Workers Union in WA at that time resoundingly criticised Ms MacTiernan and Mr McGinty for the foolhardiness and stupidity of the decision they took. That secretary was a person for whom I have enormous regard. He is now in the Senate. It is Senator Glenn Sterle, and he was quite right when he criticised Ms MacTiernan and Mr McGinty for their failure to give effect to the conclusion of a program that was some 40 years in the making.

The reason the progress is now occurring with Roe 8 and Roe 9 is so there can be reasonable movement of heavy transport to and from the Port of Fremantle. Into the future, if and when—as you know, Deputy President Lines, because you are Western Australian—there may well be an outer harbour constructed down in the Kwinana area to assist in future freight demands, Roe 8 will always be needed to be built. The actions of then transport minister MacTiernan are even worse, because those of us familiar with the Roe Highway know that as we come to the Kwinana Freeway, very close to my parliamentary office, there is a project which was referred to as Roe 7. It was always intended that roadworks should be put into place so that Roe 8 would continue in an east-west direction across the north-south Kwinana Freeway. Minister MacTiernan, in her actions, ensured that there would be no future provision made for a Roe 8, and today several tens of millions of dollars have been added to the taxpayer burden as a result of the refusal of minister MacTiernan at that time to allow for the future provision of Roe 8.

Senator Ludlam is correct in the sense that there is a small area of Roe 8—I have walked it—