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Parliamentary Questions


Question Without Notice No. 420 asked in the Legislative Assembly on 22 June 2022 by Mr R.S. Love

Parliament: 41 Session: 1

MAJOR PROJECTS — STATUS

420. Mr R.S. LOVE to the Premier:

I refer to the Auditor General's 2022 transparency report that finds the Tonkin Highway gap project blown out by $230 million and the Forrestfield–Airport Link is two years behind schedule. Given the Auditor General's finding that progress on major projects has not been adequately reported by the government and given the Premier promised to govern with gold-standard transparency, will the Premier implement the Auditor General's recommendation to regularly disclose the timing, cost and status of major projects to Parliament and the public?

Mr M. McGOWAN replied:

Firstly, on the broader issue about delays to projects and cost increases, that is not a situation unique to Western Australia, or even Australia. That situation exists around the world. There is a range of reasons for that, particularly related to the ongoing impact of COVID on supply chain delivery and the availability of relevant workforces. Governments all over the world over the course of the last two years did a lot of capital works and committed to a lot of capital works. That has meant that there are shortages of relevant tradespeople and also materials. In a lot of the countries where some of the materials we use come from, a lot of their industry closed down for lots of time and supply chain difficulties have been extraordinary. There have been cost increases; steel costs have gone up 40 per cent and timber prices by 20 per cent. This is occurring all over the place. It is occurring in the housing market. It occurs everywhere. I do not understand why the opposition does not understand that.

The government has a record infrastructure program of $34 billion, but we have had to smooth some of that because of the extraordinary demand, both public and private. Other states are going through exactly the same thing. New South Wales has massive rail projects. To build a 10-kilometre rail project there costs $10 billion. Its rail project to build one of 10 kilometres is the equivalent of more than 16 projects here, including the actual railcar construction that we undertake. That is a situation that subsists in other states.

The sorts of things we have put in place to strengthen transparency and accountability for the delivery of major projects include the establishment of Infrastructure WA, which was a recommendation of the Langoulant inquiry. We developed the state infrastructure strategy, which is currently with government, as required under the law, for comment before we finalise our position on it. We created the infrastructure delivery unit in the major projects unit in the Department of Finance. We established the major projects expenditure review subcommittee to have oversight of the cost and management of projects. We have put in place procurement reform, including the introduction of the Procurement Act 2020 and a consolidated procurement framework that reduces red tape and increases public commentary. We also allow for all the relevant parliamentary processes. We ensured the reappointment of the Corruption and Crime Commissioner, who the Liberal Party and Nationals WA blocked, members might recall, based upon the fact that he investigated the Liberal Party, so it blocked his reappointment. We had to deal with that.

Dr D.J. Honey: That is just an offensive statement.

Mr M. McGOWAN: It is a true statement.

Dr D.J. Honey: No, it is an offensive statement.

Mr M. McGOWAN: Let us go into that. I am glad the member interjected; now I can go into that.

We had Mr Chown. Remember Mr Chown? He was on the committee. What happened? He had been investigated by the CCC, which found some pretty nefarious activities on his behalf. What did he do? He then blocked the reappointment of the CCC commissioner.

Several members interjected.

Mr M. McGOWAN: That is exactly what occurred. That is actually corrupt. We had to legislate to overcome that corruption created by the Liberal Party. That is what occurred. Members might note that there are other investigations and other matters going forward, as we speak, publicly. I saw one on Channel Seven news the other night involving some members of the Liberal Party. That is an ongoing consequence of some of the actions of some Liberal Party members investigated by the CCC.

In any event, that is a range of the transparency initiatives we have put in place, but cost increases and delays have occurred all over the world.