MOBILE BLACK SPOT PROGRAM — PRIORITY
LOCATIONS
475. Hon MARTIN ALDRIDGE to the Minister for Regional
Development:
I refer to the announcement on 10
June 2018 of $25 million from the Australian government for round 4 of the
Mobile Black Spot Program.
(1) Does the
government intend to partner with the Australian government to ensure Western Australia
gets its fair share of investment in eliminating mobile black spots?
(2) If yes to
(1), how does the government intend to do this, given it has not allocated one
single new dollar in either of its state budgets for this ongoing task?
(3) What steps
has the government taken since Sunday's announcement to ensure the
state can make a competitive bid for round 4?
Hon
ALANNAH MacTIERNAN replied:
(1)–(3) I
thank the member for the question. I want to point out to the member that no
sensible government would put aside a budget allocation to co-fund a project
that did not exist. Round 4 of this project did not exist until last Sunday.
The member might recall that not only was it not in our budget because it did
not exist, but it was not in the federal budget because it did not exist. Of
course, now that it does exist, we are more than happy to look at it, and of
course we will look at it.
I will just make this point. For
rounds 1 and 2 of the Mobile Black Spot Program, which Western Australia did
actually participate in very vigorously, the prioritisation was fundamentally
made by the state. As we know, for round 3, the prioritisation was actually
determined solely by the federal government as part of its suite of election
commitments in the 2016 election. It is a bit hard to tell from the media
release, but if round 4 is something like rounds 1 and 2, absolutely we would
want to participate, and we will do the same thing that the commonwealth did,
which is try to find space in a future budget to enable us to do that.
When the member gave notice of this
question on 12 June, at that point we had not had any contact from the federal
agency, but our Department of Primary Industry and Regional Development has
contacted the commonwealth Department of Communications and Arts to request
details of the proposed round 4 guidelines.