Louise Pratt (WA, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Environment and Water (Senate)) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you for drawing me to order, Mr Acting Deputy President. Our Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, can be seen instead to be too busy talking here in the eastern states about corporate tax cuts to the big end of town—too busy looking after his friends over east, too busy cutting penalty rates for working people and too busy ignoring the ordinary needs of Australians.

It's also a government that's ignored the needs of Western Australia for too long. The government has been too slow to act on giving Western Australia its fair share of the GST. You've been able to see that debate take place in this place today—their absolute confusion and defensiveness about where they want to take this policy. They are too busy talking about Tasmania, South Australia and other places around the country, and have not spent enough time talking to Western Australia and putting real money on the table. WA is not getting its fair share of the GST. People in WA know it, I know it and Bill Shorten knows it.

I'm delighted that the Leader of the Opposition has said he will invest $1.6 billion in a fair share for a WA fund. That will bring Western Australia's share of the GST up to an equivalent of 70c in the dollar. This is what our state needs. We have an incredibly fragile state budget and we need this investment in job-creating infrastructure to bring more jobs to the people of WA, yet we still hear silence from our Prime Minister and from the federal Liberal government. The Prime Minister has barely been to Western Australia, let alone made any commitments for our fair share. A clear choice that is emerging for our state in WA—and one that will become a key political theme of the year ahead—is that only a future Labor government will be prepared to deliver to Western Australia and give us a fair go. I'm looking forward to getting out and about and campaigning with our new candidates to talk to our community about these important issues.