Slade Brockman (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

What a farce we have seen this week in Canberra. We've had the Premier of Western Australia, Roger Cook, and his deputy premier and treasurer Rita Saffioti over here supposedly lobbying this prime minister, who they trust, about the GST arrangements that only a coalition government could deliver.

You have to ask yourself, though: why did Premier Cook and Deputy Premier and Treasurer Saffioti feel the need to come over here to convince this federal Labor government to retain the coalition's GST arrangements if they trusted this federal government and the Western Australian members of this federal government to actually stand up for Western Australia and for that GST deal delivered by a coalition government in the face of Labor representatives from Western Australia saying that it was impossible? Labor members and senators from Western Australia said it was impossible, but the coalition government delivered it for Western Australia.

Now you have the premier, Roger Cook, coming over here to meet with his supposedly trusted friend Prime Minister Albanese to convince him to retain those arrangements. You have to be a bit suspicious for one reason. The Western Australian state government has also committed $1 million to an advertising campaign about protecting the GST arrangements.

I'd like those opposite to realise—and I'd like Premier Cook to realise—that that $1 million is taxpayers' money. If he really trusts Prime Minister Albanese and if he really trusts the WA members of this parliament to stand up for WA, why in goodness's name would he need to spend a million dollars of taxpayers' money advertising to defend that? You're only left with two choices—either Premier Cook and Deputy Premier and Treasurer Saffioti don't trust the Prime Minister and don't trust the Labor members of this parliament to actually stand by their word and defend that deal or the Labor premier and the Labor treasurer of Western Australia are willing to waste a million dollars of taxpayers' money advertising for their own political benefit. Either way, Western Australians need to take notice. You have a premier who's over here to supposedly lobby to protect the GST deal, but he's still willing to spend a million dollars of taxpayers' money, and he says he trusts the Prime Minister. He's either not being truthful in his statement that he trusts the Prime Minister or taking the taxpayers of Western Australia for mugs.

The taxpayers of Western Australia are not mugs. They know it was the coalition government that delivered the GST deal. It was Western Australian Liberals who took that GST deal forward and made sure that it was put in place, and it is the West Australian members of this parliament who will defend it—not the Labor members.