Extract from Hansard [COUNCIL — Tuesday, 12 August 2014] p4817b-4825a Hon Ken Travers

APPROPRIATION (CONSOLIDATED ACCOUNT) RECURRENT 2014–15 BILL 2014 APPROPRIATION (CONSOLIDATED ACCOUNT) CAPITAL 2014–15 BILL 2014 Cognate Debate Leave granted for the Appropriation (Consolidated Account) Recurrent 2014–15 Bill 2014 and the Appropriation (Consolidated Account) Capital 2014–15 Bill 2014 to be considered cognately. Second Reading — Cognate Debate Resumed from 25 June. HON KEN TRAVERS (North Metropolitan) [3.28 pm]: Mr President, I commence my remarks by joining in the remarks you made earlier this afternoon passing on the condolences of this chamber to the many people in not only Western Australia, but also Australia and around the world who lost family or friends on flight MH17. I concur with you in that, and I know there are a lot of people in Western Australia who were severely touched by this. An officer of the Department of Agriculture and Food was one of those people, and we should all note that; and as the shadow Minister for Agriculture and Food, I am sure that, along with the minister, we pass on all of our sympathies and condolences to the staff in the Department of Agriculture and Food who were affected and touched by this incident. Having said that, I move on to the matter before the house this afternoon—the debate on the Appropriation (Consolidated Account) Recurrent 2014–15 Bill 2014, which is to be an act to grant supply and appropriate and apply out of the consolidated account some $19 020 283 000 as supply granted for the current financial year. On top of those funds, other moneys are standing appropriations that will be spent by the Barnett government. We are concurrently debating the Appropriation (Consolidated Account) Capital 2014–15 Bill 2014, which is a bill to appropriate $2 484 968 000. Of course, that is only a small component of the capital works program, because—I am sure we will continue to have debates about this over coming years—significant money will be borrowed for the capital works program. I look forward to when we next debate a loan bill, which is something that has been rare in the past but is becoming all too frequent for the Barnett government. I want to focus heavily on my portfolio areas on behalf of the opposition. At the outset, I do not know whether I have done this formally in the chamber, but I congratulate Dean Nalder on his appointment as Minister for Transport; Finance. I have lost track of exactly how many Ministers for Transport I have now shadowed; I think it is around four. Some have been and gone and then come back, and there has been a fairly constant turnover. Hon Liz Behjat: You will always be the shadow. Hon KEN TRAVERS: Sorry, there are noises from the backbench on the other side of the chamber. The PRESIDENT: Order! It was an unruly interjection. Hon KEN TRAVERS: I wish the latest Minister for Transport for the Barnett government all the very best in the portfolio. It is a very wide-ranging and challenging portfolio. I think it is fair to say that the minster has to pick up a fair degree of mess left for him to sort out because for the past four or five years of the Barnett government, there has been no proper planning or process and the focus has been completely on the politics of issues and very little on policy. I always approach politics from the position that we have to get good policy first, and then turn that into good politics. Starting with the politics and not worrying about good policy will, over the long term, get one into deep and considerable trouble. If a party makes politics the issue at an election, post the election, the party is either left to implement poor policy outcomes, which ultimately it will always be found out on, or the party has to change its policies and break the policies it took to the electorate. My personal view is that the vast majority of people for the majority of my time in politics have been people who sought to act with integrity on the commitments and promises they have made. Sometimes circumstances change and people are forced to break their election commitments. I think that is a very different proposition from people going to an election and telling what they know to be complete lies to the electorate. Hon Nick Goiran: Is that like the carbon tax? Hon KEN TRAVERS: I think that is a perfect example, Hon Nick Goiran, in which circumstances after an election changed. I am more than happy and will talk about the carbon tax in my comments this afternoon—do not worry about that, Hon Nick Goiran! The member’s government is not showering itself with merit in that area. Circumstances change. But if a party goes to an election promising to build infrastructure that it knows it has no capacity to build and that will be useless unless it does other things first or if a party makes an issue of something such as the location of stations at the airport a key defining issue, knowing that they would be built in the wrong location, and in making that promise is deliberately lying to the people of Western Australia, they are very different things from circumstances changing. I refer to when people know the circumstances and their actions are cold and calculated. My history in this place is that that has not been the case.

[1] Extract from Hansard [COUNCIL — Tuesday, 12 August 2014] p4817b-4825a Hon Ken Travers

Hon Nick Goiran: That is what she said, “There will be no carbon tax.” You are somehow trying to differentiate. Hon KEN TRAVERS: I hope that if that is Hon Nick Goiran’s view of the world, when I sit down — Hon Nick Goiran: I cannot believe you don’t agree. Hon KEN TRAVERS: I put two things to Hon Nick Goiran: Prime Minister Julia Gillard said that she always wanted an emissions trading scheme and a price on carbon, and when the circumstances changed, the carbon tax was the best and only way to get that because of the intransigence of the Liberal Party, which had previously promised to bring in an emissions trading scheme, but it changed its position after misleading the people of Australia prior to the election when it said that it would support that position. Nonetheless, if Hon Nick Goiran is so outraged about that tax, I look forward to him standing in this place when I finish speaking and directing his comments to the President and railing against the clear and deliberate broken promises of the Barnett government, which clearly went to the election promising more than it could deliver on public transport and things it knew were wrong—and I promise not to interject. Let us go through some of these issues. I focus on the recurrent issues first. In the budget before us today, we have one of the most fundamental changes I have seen a government make to the way that it treats people in regional Western Australia that I have seen for a long time. I have always taken the view that we should seek to treat everybody in Western Australia equally. People who have to pay government charges should pay the same charges no matter where they live. Whether people live in Perth, Albany, Kununurra or Port Hedland, they should pay the same fee if it is to get the same government service. This budget changes all of that. I have no doubt the answer from the government will be that this is just a small amount for these matters, but it fundamentally changes the principle of universal tariffs. Of course, when the Liberal Party was in government back in the 1990s, the now Premier was very keen to get rid of universal tariffs for household electricity charges. Thankfully, a campaign led by Geoff Gallop and Eric Ripper stopped that from occurring and as a result, to this day, residential consumers of electricity pay the same no matter where they live. However, as a result of the Barnett government’s latest budget, as from 1 July this year people taking their motor vehicle in for inspection to meet the requirements of government legislation will pay different amounts depending upon where they live. For example, people living in Port Hedland will have to pay 19 per cent more than what people in Perth pay. People in Kununurra will pay 15 per cent more, and in Geraldton and the goldfields, 4.5 per cent more. I think that is absolutely outrageous and it is my intention at a later stage to seek to move a motion of disallowance of the regulations that allow that to happen. I give members notice now to go away and start thinking about this, and about whether they actually believe that people in regional Western Australia should not be treated equally, and should have to pay a fee for the delivery of government services based on cost recovery. Where does it stop? Do we charge a boat owner in Dampier more than we charge a boat owner in Perth? We could go on and on. Do we charge people greater motor vehicle licence fees because they have longer roads in the Pilbara and Kimberley? This is a fundamental change, and I think it is something that everyone in this house should be incredibly concerned about. I can assure members that Hon Darren West, Hon Stephen Dawson and I will be campaigning long and hard on this. Hon Darren West: It’s not fair. Hon KEN TRAVERS: It is not fair; it will fundamentally change the way people are treated, and it will not stop. If this is passed, future governments will continue to expand and look for opportunities to increase cost recovery, and it will make the cost of living in those areas even higher than it already is. The irony of it all is that the government argued that it was basing this on a regional price index—the same regional price index that says it is actually cheaper to live in certain regions of Western Australia; but did the government then say, “Well, we’ll reduce the fee that they pay”? No. The government argued that it was moving down a path of privatisation of motor vehicle inspections and therefore had to use authorised inspection centres rather than government employees for the inspection of motor vehicles. When we get to debate on the disallowance motion I will go into a lot of detail. I am happy to brief members on these matters outside the chamber. There are many other ways for the government to ensure that its privatised inspection services in the Pilbara, Kimberley, goldfields and midwest recover a reasonable return on the services they provide without damaging the principle of universal government fees and charges. That is the first thing in this budget that I think is absolutely outrageous and needs to be contended. I am pleased that members raised the issue of the carbon tax earlier during this afternoon’s debate. On 1 July the Barnett government increased public transport fees by 10c for zones 1 to 6, and by 20c for zones 7 to 9. It was very clear at the time: an increase of 10c was announced in the 2012–13 budget, and the government said that it was due to inflation, but it also said that there would be a further increase because of the carbon tax. This is the Liberal Party, at both state and federal level, that claimed that the carbon tax would add to Western Australians’ cost of living. The Liberal Party said that it would remove the carbon tax to bring down the cost of living; that is

[2] Extract from Hansard [COUNCIL — Tuesday, 12 August 2014] p4817b-4825a Hon Ken Travers an issue on which it went to the people, and on which Tony Abbott was elected. Members opposite may not have realised, they may have been asleep or on holiday, but the carbon tax was removed about three or four weeks ago and the savings on energy prices are to be backdated to 1 July, so the additional costs being incurred by the Public Transport Authority will not be incurred. Have we seen public transport fares come down by 10c? No. We have heard the Treasurer mumble something about complexities and how everything needs to be moved in 10c allotments. Absolutely, it has to be moved in 10c allotments; if we put it up by 10c, we bring it down by 10c. Every day that the government fails to do this, it is collecting another $10 000 from the commuters of Western Australia, and that is on top of the $2 a day it collects from people who park at train stations, and all its other fees and charges. Where are the voices of the Liberal Party backbench today complaining about the fact that their government is using the carbon tax to continue to rip people off? It is not good enough to say that it will be done in the midyear review. I will lay London to a brick that if it is done in the midyear review, the government will not agree to backdating fare increases, even for SmartRider. Of course, those people who have bought cash tickets cannot be backdated. If the Liberal Party were really serious about the impact of the carbon tax on the cost of living in Australia, as soon as it was announced that the carbon tax had been repealed, it would have reduced public transport fares by the 10c it was increased by. Of course, it has not. What kind of example is that to businesses throughout Australia? If governments like the Barnett government can rip people off, why would not every other business in Australia take the same approach? “Oh, it’s all very complex; we have to spend six months contemplating our navels before we can work this out, even though it was very simple at the time we increased prices.” It went up by 10c, bring it down by 10c. That is pretty straightforward. There is also money in this budget for the government’s taxi action plan. I say at the outset that I support reform of the taxi industry; anyone who sat in this chamber as we went through the Taxi Drivers Licensing Bill 2013 will know that I support reform of the taxi industry. I have campaigned for reform of the taxi industry for some considerable time—things like better complaints mechanisms and ensuring that the industry is meeting demand. The government’s approach of just releasing more plates, whilst it will have some impact, still does not fulfil and answer all of the problems in the industry. We have to have tools to allow the industry to better respond to areas in which it is not meeting public demand. It is clear that complaints and the standard of taxidrivers are two such areas in which the industry has not met public expectations. That is why I have advocated a central, coordinated, easy-to-use complaints system. That would be a good start. I have also argued that releasing more plates is not the answer, but that there are ways in which we could use the plates that are already out there more efficiently. One of the problems is that there often might be taxis out there, but they simply will not go to the jobs that people need them to go to. Taxi dispatch services need to have some ability to direct taxis to go to specific jobs or to be based in specific areas; that would be a good measure. Of course, it will cost taxidrivers if they have to meet those requirements, but there is the capacity within the $13 000 that the government charges per year for a leased plate to be able to negotiate with the industry a discount to allow drivers to meet demands such as being available at times when the dispatch services want them to be available or to be located in particular areas. We could go to places such as Bunbury or Mandurah. In Bunbury, the cooperative always ensures that a taxi is based in the area to meet the demand of the people in Australind. That is a good way of operating. We need to be able to give those tools to the industry in Western Australia, and I have been talking about that for a long time. There is also no doubt that technology will change the way in which the industry operates. For some considerable time—this is not new—the government has been meeting with and talking to groups such as Uber and goCatch. On the weekend, the libertarians of the Liberal Party, led by that intellectual giant Paul Miles, as I understand it, put up a motion that the government should remove all barriers to the introduction of Uber into Western Australia. It is funny that Hon Robyn McSweeney is laughing about that, because I am going to get to people like her who have railed against the erosion of private property rights in this Parliament for some time. A very simplistic motion was put forward that said that all the barriers to entry into the industry for groups such as Uber should be removed and the industry deregulated. As I understand it, Dean Nalder’s initial position was to not talk about complete deregulation and was not supportive of the motion that was being moved. As a result of getting rolled at the Liberal Party conference, he came out and said a couple of very important things after the passage of that motion. The first was that it is inevitable that the taxi industry will be deregulated, and the second was that when the taxi industry is deregulated, there will not be compensation for taxi plate owners. Dean Nalder is a minister of the Crown. His words have power and effect. As a result of him making that statement on the radio yesterday morning, he has devalued the value of taxi plates in the state of Western Australia. With those simple words uttered on the radio, as a minister of the Crown, he has immediately wiped out thousands and thousands of dollars of mums’ and dads’ savings. People who have worked in the industry for 20 years and were buying a plate saw the ability to sell that plate one day as their superannuation, but the minister has wiped that out. I have absolutely no doubt that over the coming weeks and months we will hear further tales. I have no doubt that Liberal Party backbenchers will understand that what the minister did with those comments was wipe out the value of taxi

[3] Extract from Hansard [COUNCIL — Tuesday, 12 August 2014] p4817b-4825a Hon Ken Travers plates. It is not an orderly running down of the value of taxi plates over the next 10 years; yesterday, plates lost their value because of that statement by the minister. I have sat in this chamber for a long time. I served on a committee with some very fine members that looked at the actions of government that erode private property rights. I have listened to members of the Liberal Party such as Hon Robyn McSweeney complain about the erosion of private property rights. I know that many members of this place meet with Hon Murray Nixon on a regular basis to talk about the erosion of private property rights. Did one of those members stand up at the state conference or have they spoken to the Minister for Transport and said, “What are you doing, eroding private property rights?” because that is what the minister did yesterday and what the Liberal Party did at its state conference on Saturday? They said, “Let’s erode people’s private property rights—hundreds of thousands of dollars in private property rights—and let’s not pay them compensation.” We now understand where the Liberal Party is today. It is not about private property rights — Several members interjected. Hon KEN TRAVERS: It is not about private property rights. Hon Robyn McSweeney interjected. Hon KEN TRAVERS: Feel free to interrupt when I am quiet but not when I am trying to speak. I cannot hear the member if I am speaking. The Liberal Party has made it very clear. Those members with that libertarian streak, or whatever they want to call it, who will deregulate completely and not care who they hurt on the way through, are now winning the debate against those who claim to argue for and protect private property rights. I do not think the minister even understood what he was doing when he said that. When he was asked a question today about these matters, he was unable to say why, if it is inevitable that taxis are going to be deregulated, the Barnett government was selling taxi plates to people in the last term of government. Why did the government sell them to people? A whole range of people went to the government and traded their peak-period transferable plates. They paid the government money—over $100 000. I am not going to say the figures; I want the minister to go away and research it because he clearly does not understand it. But people paid money to the government. They paid stamp duty as well, as I understand it, to get their peak-period plates upgraded. The government sold those plates; it made money out of it. Therefore, when the minister says that the government does not make money out of the taxi industry, either he is deliberately misleading people or he does not understand his portfolio. If he does not understand his portfolio, he should not go out there and make comments that destroy the life savings of mums and dads; he should not do it. He should hold his tongue until he understands what he is dealing with, because that is what he did. The other thing that I found absolutely bizarre about the minister’s comments was interesting to say the least. He said that the value of a plate should not be based on government regulation but on the customer proposition. It is interesting again that members who have been in this place long enough will recall that in about 2004 the then Labor government was concerned about the rapidly increasing value of taxi plates that did not seem to have any connection to anything other than an investor making a significant profit on those plates. We realised that that would be a long-term problem for the industry. Hon Alannah MacTiernan, one of the great visionaries of Western Australia, realised that we needed to do something. Did she go out and say, “We will deregulate the industry without compensation”? No. She put forward a proposal to buy back those taxi plates at their then value so that the government could stabilise the value at a more realistic level and it was not driven by investors making returns and customers paying for the constant increase in the cost of those plates. That was to get some stability back into the industry as part of a long-term reform process for the taxi industry in Western Australia. Hon Jim Chown: Did that happen? Hon KEN TRAVERS: No, it did not, Hon Jim Chown. Why did it not happen? It was because Hon Jim Chown’s mob blocked it. His mob said no. When I was Alannah’s parliamentary secretary, it was always interesting to ride in a taxi with her. At that stage, she was not always the most favourite person. Hon Jim Chown: It was blocked in this house, was it? Hon KEN TRAVERS: I am going to come to it. Just wait. Hon Jim Chown: It’s your story. Hon KEN TRAVERS: Yes, it is my story. I will tell it how I want, but Hon Jim Chown will love it. I am surprised that, as the parliamentary secretary, he does not know a bit more about it. Hon Simon O’Brien knows this story well, and he gets a few cameo performances in this little number. Hon Jim Chown: We’ll be very interested to hear your version of events. Go ahead.

[4] Extract from Hansard [COUNCIL — Tuesday, 12 August 2014] p4817b-4825a Hon Ken Travers

Hon KEN TRAVERS: Of course, Hon Jim Chown is right; that never occurred; what eventually occurred was a system of future plates that, rather than being sold, were leased. Again, when Hon Dean Nalder says that the government does not make money out of the taxi industry, I point out to him that he currently has $28 million from the lease plates sitting in the taxi industry development fund. Again, that was done in a way that ensured that there was not a wholesale devaluation of these plates; in fact, interestingly, the full conventional plates have continued to climb in value as a result of those initiatives. Therefore, it did not have a dramatic interest with respect to the lease plates. If the Liberal Party wants to deregulate the industry, something that the minister believes is inevitable and that the party called for on the weekend, it should very much thank Hon Alannah MacTiernan for putting that situation in place. If that had not been done and plates had continued to be sold, as was done in the 1990s and back in the Liberal Party’s last term of government, when big dollops of cash were gotten for those plates, the government would be looking at a far greater compensation figure than it currently is. That lot in the government should again thank Hon Alannah MacTiernan for having done that. Of course, at the 2008 election taxis were a pretty big issue. Members may not recall that, but the Liberal Party went to that election with a plan to improve taxi services. It has been going downhill since 2008, but the Liberal Party went there with a plan. A press release was issued by Hon Simon O’Brien, the then shadow Minister for Transport, later to become the first failed Minister for Transport in the Barnett government—the first of many. In that press release he promised the following — • The opportunity for drivers to invest in their future (if they wish) through a lease-buy scheme of license plates, rather than simply paying “dead money” to Government coffers through weekly leasing. The Liberal Party actually promised that during the 2008 election campaign, Hon Jim Chown. The Liberal Party opposed the concept of not only buybacks, but also leasing and it said it would turn it back; of course, it never did. Hon Simon O’Brien got rolled out of the portfolio. Hon Troy Buswell came in and when he saw the money rolling in, his eyes lit up. He knew he needed to find some revenue from somewhere and that any money sitting in a bank account would mean that state debt was kept down, so he was not going to sell them off when he saw the beautiful revenue streams coming out of leasing taxi plates. The Liberal Party never honoured that election commitment and it was probably one of the first Liberal transport policies destined for the graveyard of Liberal Party transport policies in this state. That is where we get to. The Liberal Party opposed sensible reform a decade ago, it made promises to the industry that it never kept and now it is telling the industry that it will deregulate the industry and not compensate. As I see it, that is a pretty fair summation. There is no doubt that there is a significant difference between small charter vehicles and taxis. It is a very simple proposition for anyone wanting to run a small charter vehicle to get that set up. If they want to run a taxi, they have to buy or lease a plate, privately or from the government. The cheapest way for someone to do this is probably to lease one from the government, which is 250 bucks a week before they even get anyone in their cab. They would have the exact same car that they would have if they were operating a small charter vehicle. They are required by law to pay a rank fee of about $150. They are required to implement meters and cameras, and there is a range of other expenses such as annual registration fees. Just to install the camera, the dispatch meter and all that other equipment, a person is up for about eight grand, or so I am told. Hon Jim Chown interjected. Hon KEN TRAVERS: They have to get the new driving licence. I do not know what that will go up by, but I am sure that the cost will increase when the government brings it through, Hon Jim Chown. I have no doubt that when the government announces the fees for the new taxidriver’s licence, as it is a Barnett government initiative, the cost will be up. There will probably even be a levy on it for the carbon tax, even though the carbon tax has gone! Hon Helen Morton: That is so funny. Hon KEN TRAVERS: I am not trying to be funny; I am being very serious, Hon Helen Morton. These are very serious matters. The government will realise how serious these matters are when it starts getting mums and dads losing their life’s savings thanks to its Minister for Transport’s actions yesterday—the value of plates will have immediately reduced. I think the minister said that he now wants to work out not what to do, but how it will be done. The government does not have to worry about that, because it has already done it. Those words had effect and meaning as he said them on the radio yesterday; they cost people money as he said them. I have no doubt that people will realise over the next couple of weeks that the value of plates has been stripped out with those words alone, so there is no opportunity for orderly progression. At the very least, why would anyone now pay more than $130 000, which is 10 years’ worth of state government lease plates? These are things that the government should have been working on over the last couple of years. The government should have had a plan; this should have all been part of its taxi action plan, but, of course, it was not. The government has had a completely chaotic and dysfunctional approach to taxis over that period. I feel incredibly sad for those people

[5] Extract from Hansard [COUNCIL — Tuesday, 12 August 2014] p4817b-4825a Hon Ken Travers who own taxi plates who have now been put into this position, because there is not much that this government has been able to do in the area of taxis without making a mess of things. Hon Ljiljanna Ravlich: Everything! Hon KEN TRAVERS: I am focusing on taxis, Hon Ljiljanna Ravlich, but I do not disagree. I struggle to think of an area in which the government has done things well! We regularly get things such as what we were told back on 13 June, when the Minister for Transport said that within a matter of weeks the credit and debit card surcharges would be halved. Has that happened? I do not think it has. I have not seen any announcement to that effect and I am sure that this government would have put out a big press release about it. It says it will do things within weeks, and months later we are still waiting for them. I will talk about this government’s public transport master plan in a little while—that is a good one. I hope that we can get some semblance back and I hope the government will realise the damage and correct the record, and that the minister will not be bullied by a few backbenchers who do seem to be uncaring and the Young Liberal Movement. I hope that he will try to restore an orderly debate around how we reform the taxi industry in Western Australia. If he intends to continue to proceed with the process of deregulation, I hope he sits down with the Treasurer and works out a way to compensate people for the erosion of their private property rights; otherwise, those members who sit on the other side who rail against the erosion of private property rights will have lost all credibility in this house the next time they speak. Of course, since we last met, paid parking has been introduced at train stations and there has been a series of complaints from motorbike riders and shift workers. There is a range of problems not just with the policy. We are vitally concerned about not only the impact of yet another charge by the government on the cost of living for motorists in Western Australia, but also the way in which this has been implemented. People have been told that they have a choice of paying cash or using SmartParker, but motorbike riders do not have that choice. When people get to the train station, they realise that the only way they can pay cash for a ticket is at the entrance to the car park, so they have to park their car, walk over to get their ticket and then walk back. I spent a bit of time at Whitfords train station just after the paid parking was implemented and a young woman came up to me and said, “I used to be a Young Liberal but, after this, not anymore.” At one level I thought: that is fantastic; we have another vote. But it is not worth getting votes if it causes so much damage to people and makes their lives miserable. I would prefer to get our votes in a better way than because the Liberal Party is causing people who cannot afford it to be even worse off. Hon Helen Morton: Did you know that our numbers are the highest of any political party anywhere in Australia? Hon KEN TRAVERS: What numbers? Hon Helen Morton: The membership numbers of the Liberal Party are the highest of any political party in Australia. Hon Stephen Dawson: It doesn’t mean the electorate is happy with you. Hon Helen Morton: You’re talking about people not wanting to stay as a Liberal, but actually our numbers are increasing. Hon KEN TRAVERS: I think the young woman was talking about voting. If the minister checks the more recent polls, she will see that the party’s record numbers are in fairly rapid freefall. People see through the government’s dishonesty; it did not tell them that it was going to charge them for these sorts of things. This is a poorly thought out plan of the government. Not only is the government charging people more, but also it has yet again failed to implement paid parking in an orderly and systematic way. It has made a complete mess of it. What do shift workers do? If they park there before nine o’clock, they have to buy a ticket for that day, but they cannot buy a ticket for the next day even though they might get back from their shift the next morning and so they run the risk of getting a fine. There is no provision for that. I heard the government say on the weekend that fly in, fly out workers will be able to use the airport rail line. I also saw the Public Transport Authority’s polling about FIFO workers. There is no doubt that FIFO workers think the airport rail line is a good idea, but because the government does not have an integrated and coordinated plan that will deliver 17 000 additional car parking bays across the state of Western Australia, it cannot offer a solution to FIFO workers with its plans for an airport rail line. Although I think some 70 odd per cent of the people who were polled said that they think the airport rail line is a good idea, only about one-third said that they would actively consider using it and a range of those listed the things that they would need before they could use it. One of the things that a group of these people wanted was secure parking at railway stations. The Barnett government has, as part of its paid parking system, stripped the secure parking areas from our rail stations. There is no longer any secure parking. The secure parking that people used to pay for has now gone; the government has got rid of secure parking. People will not get secure parking and they will not get long-term parking at train

[6] Extract from Hansard [COUNCIL — Tuesday, 12 August 2014] p4817b-4825a Hon Ken Travers stations because there is so much pressure for the parking area that is available. If the government had the coordinated and integrated plan that Metronet offered, options would have been provided so that an airport line would work in that regard. It could have had satellite car parking bays to provide assistance in that process, not necessarily for FIFO workers but for others. The government should have built the Butler railway station at its original location with permanent car parking rather than at a site that will have no car parking within 10 years. This government just does not understand those sorts of things. It picks up little snippets. It sees the plan Labor proposes to fix the transport issues and it grabs an element of it, but it does not understand it and it does not implement the plan in a proper sense and so it makes a mess of it. People need to be able to get to the airport quickly, particularly early in the morning. The vast majority of FIFO workers simply will not be able to get to the airport in the time required for their flights. If members opposite look at their own polling, they will see that most FIFO workers are at the airport an hour before their flight. If they come from Mandurah, it will take them at least an hour and a half by train because there is no provision, even in the long-term planning, for a connection along a southern circle route that would get them to the airport quicker than it would if they went into Perth and back out again. Hon Helen Morton: That’s not true. Hon KEN TRAVERS: It is true. The government does not have a plan for a southern circle line, or is it going to copy Metronet completely now? Is that the cat out of the bag—the long-term plan is to build Metronet? Are the Liberals now adopting Metronet? I look forward to it. Hon Helen Morton: I can sense your absolute grief at not having Metronet. Hon KEN TRAVERS: I would be very happy if this lot picked up Metronet because it is the right thing for Western Australia. As long as the government does it properly and does not make a mess of it, I would be more than happy with that. I want to see a long-term plan that fixes the problems. Before I get to the capital works, on the weekend the Premier announced the airport rail line. Of course, the big announcement on Saturday was that the cost of the government’s fully costed project had blown out by $300 million. Again, the Premier took the opportunity to talk about the GST distribution in Australia. We have had that debate and we all understand the complexities of the debate. One of the reasons the Premier wanted us to focus on the GST debate is that he knows that, thanks to the deal that he and Richard Court signed with John Howard and Peter Costello, that issue will be able to be fixed only if there is agreement from all the other states in Australia. However, there is something that the Premier did not mention. Even though he announced a major capital works project—a major airport rail line—he did not mention an area in which the commonwealth government could assist the state of Western Australia; that is, it could fund some of that essential infrastructure for Western Australia. We know that there was $500 million in the budget for public transport in Western Australia, but it was taken out by Tony Abbott and Joe Hockey not to make savings, but so that they could spend more money on road and rail projects on the east coast of Western Australia. That is where it went. It was taken out and transferred to the eastern states by a Liberal government. Was there a comment on the weekend by the Premier about that? No. That does not require the agreement of the other states; that requires a simple political decision by Tony Abbott and the federal Liberal Party. It would require the Minister for Finance, a Western Australian senator, to demand that we get back the money for our public transport. If ever there was a project that the commonwealth should invest in, it is an airport railway line. What will that airport railway line do to the value of airport land? I can get study after study that shows that railways lift the value of land. Who is the owner of Perth Airport? It is the commonwealth government. Who will be the big beneficiary of the Perth Airport railway line? The commonwealth government, when it renegotiates the lease terms at Perth Airport. So why is the commonwealth government not contributing to the Perth Airport railway line? Why has it taken that money away? And why does Mr Barnett not focus on attacking it for that? It would be a simple political decision for the commonwealth government to actually give Western Australia a better deal. The last federal Labor government spent a record amount on road and rail in Western Australia. We had previously struggled to get decent money out of the commonwealth under Abbott and Howard, but the Rudd and Gillard governments were prepared to, and did, spend money on infrastructure in Western Australia. There was the sinking of the , the construction of Great Eastern Highway, the interchange out at Midland, the widening of the freeway as it heads south, and the upgrades at Esperance, Mandurah and Bunbury—they are major road projects. The $200 million of roadworks that have just begun in Port Hedland were funded by the previous federal Labor government, as was the Dampier Highway in Karratha. There were upgrades to rail infrastructure; the money spent to upgrade tiers 1 and 2 rail lines for the grain task was provided by the federal Labor government, with very little money coming from the state government. There is a history of that happening. I know the Premier’s aim. He is saying, “Wow, look up in the public gallery, people! What’s going on up there?” He is trying to distract us from the fact that Tony Abbott has taken money off Western Australia that he could give back tomorrow by way of a simple political decision. The Premier is trying to focus us on something that

[7] Extract from Hansard [COUNCIL — Tuesday, 12 August 2014] p4817b-4825a Hon Ken Travers cannot be easily controlled, that will never be brought to resolution, and will not fix the problems for Western Australia. I think it is most outrageous. Again, if the Liberal Party were serious about trying to get a better deal for WA, it would understand that there are two ways to do that. The first is to fix the distribution of funding through the commonwealth grants process, which would be very hard. I might add that the interesting thing I got out of a press release of the Premier on the weekend was the highlighting of Eric Ripper’s superb negotiating skills. We were in decline on the distribution, and Eric Ripper got us an increase. Sadly, it continued to decline, but he actually got — Hon Ljiljanna Ravlich: He’s my hero! Hon KEN TRAVERS: Hon Ljiljanna Ravlich’s and mine too! I probably do not quite worship him in the same way Hon Ljiljanna Ravlich does! Hon Ljiljanna Ravlich: We’ll have to share him! Hon KEN TRAVERS: I do not quite worship him in the same way as Hon Ljiljanna Ravlich does, but Eric did a fantastic job of securing support from the other states to get us a better deal. Sadly, it has continued to decline, and because of that agreement in 1999, without the agreement of the other states it will be very difficult to change. But the state government can get us back the $500 million. As federal Minister for Finance, Senator Mathias Cormann could return WA’s fair share tomorrow if he wanted to. There is absolutely nothing stopping him. Even if the commonwealth government does not want to be seen to be investing in rail, the state government should tell it that it would be investing in its airport rail line and providing an uplift to the land it owns. Just ask the commonwealth government to build the section from where the airport boundary starts to where the airport boundary finishes. If it could just build and pay for that section, that is all we ask it to do on this occasion. It should be asked to give WA its fair share to help grow its economy so that good things can continue to be done for Western Australia. I will now talk again on a range of public transport plans, and start by putting things into context. Three years ago, on 14 July 2011, the then government released a public transport plan that I think had been significantly worked on by Hon Simon O’Brien. The transport plan used population projections for Perth that stated that it would get to 2.2 million people by 2031. On the day it was released everyone said, “What are you talking about? You’re way out on your population projections. You’ve missed it. Perth is growing a lot faster than that; we will be well over 2.2 million by 2031.” In fact, the prediction was that by 2026 we would have 1.99 million people. The most recent Australian Bureau of Statistics figures for Perth tell us that we already have 1.972 million people, so we are almost there in 2014. According to the government’s public transport plan, we were supposed to reach that population just before 2026! It was an extraordinary miscalculation. Members would think that that being the case, the government’s response would be to say, “Well, we probably need to do more quicker, and make sure that every dollar we spend on public transport and infrastructure is spent to derive the most benefit.” The Liberal Party went to the election with a range of promises it never intended to fulfil because it was unable to. In 2011, the government set its sights on this public transport master plan that had woefully inaccurate statistics that predicted that we would not get to the population we are at today until sometime around 2026; we have surpassed the population it predicted for 2021. The public transport master plan identified a number of priority projects. I have a beautiful map of its stage 1 priority projects that were due to be completed by 2020. The minister’s press release stated that the two transformational priority projects that the Barnett government would be getting on with would be the extension of the rail to and a light rail into the northern suburbs of Perth—into Mirrabooka—and that it would be planning bus rapid transits, and the first one it would be getting on with would be the Ellenbrook bus rapid transit system. Of course, the government started to spend an awful lot of money developing each of those projects. By 2020, the government suggested, according to this plan, that it would have a light rail system running from the University of Western Australia, through the city to Curtin University and out north to Mirrabooka. There would be a bus rapid transit service from Ellenbrook to Bassendean, and across to Morley. There would be a railway line from Butler out to Yanchep. There would be a bus from Curtin to Canning Bridge, a bus rapid transit heading south out of Fremantle and a Karnup rail station; all these good things were proposed by the Barnett government. That was because by 2020 the government thought we would be at about 1.86 million people; of course, we have well and truly surpassed that. The government did some projections on the passenger modelling that would occur as a result of that population growth. I have always tried to get out of the government its projections in a tabular format, but it said they were in its public transport draft plan, which of course is a map; I have had to interpret the map. That map shows that by 2031 it was expected that north of Butler there would be between 10 000 and 30 000 people a day travelling on that rail system, and on the north–south rail line, as it got closer into the city, there would be more than 50 000 people a day. The map shows that between 10 000 and 30 000 people were expected to travel on the northern suburbs light rail. I subsequently learned that the government’s more detailed modelling shows that by 2031, 49 000 people a day are expected to travel up and down the Metro Area Express light rail from

[8] Extract from Hansard [COUNCIL — Tuesday, 12 August 2014] p4817b-4825a Hon Ken Travers

Mirrabooka to the city. That is not the whole MAX light rail, but the northern leg to Mirrabooka. According to this modelling, the government estimated that there would be somewhere between 3 000 and 10 000 people a day on the railway line out to the airport. Of course, as a result of campaigning by Andrew Waddell, we were successful in getting up the idea that the rail needed to go beyond the consolidated terminal and out to the Forrestfield–High Wycombe area. Debate interrupted, pursuant to standing orders. [Continued on page 4835.]

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