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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, Second Session (54-2)
2021-09-21 Daily Xml
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Minister for Infrastructure and Transport

The Hon. A. PICCOLO (Light) (15:42): Today, I would like to bring to the attention of the house the behaviour of a relevant minister in this chamber. I bring this to the attention of the house because I think the minister's behaviour towards people in my electorate is quite disrespectful, and I will explain why.

We have already heard today from members of the Liberal Party who feel that their areas are being neglected by the government, and certainly what I am about to say shows the disdain this particular minister has for my electorate and the people who live in my electorate.

I wrote to the Minister for Infrastructure and Transport on 22 April 2021 about a range of transport and traffic matters. The letter, of which I have a copy and which I am happy to share with anybody, was a very polite letter indicating some concerns raised by people in my electorate that I was bringing to the minister's attention. I was raised to think that if you have a problem you also suggest a solution, so not only did I bring the matter to the minister's attention but I also suggested some things that should be done.

I received a response from the minister only two or three days ago. It took five months to respond to this letter. On 6 July, we sent a reminder to the minister. After three months, we sent a reminder to the minister's office and we were told that the response was in progress. On 4 August, we sent another reminder. Then, on 14 September, we sent another reminder, and in that last reminder I said, 'Clearly I am not going to get a response. I should raise these matters in parliament.' I got a response within minutes of sending that email to the minister's office. I do not think I should have to do that to get the attention of a minister. I know members of the Liberal Party have to do that. They actually have to threaten to leave the party to get the Premier's attention.

That said, what was really annoying was that the response was dismissive and full of self-congratulatory and gratuitous comments. It was really quite rude and offensive to the people in my electorate. I must say that has not been my experience with other ministers. In fact, I would say that my experience with other ministers, bar one or two, has been quite good. Even if I do not agree with the answer, at least they had the courtesy to respond to the letter in a timely fashion and, in most cases, address the issue I raised in the letter.

In this case, the minister was able to avoid the four issues I raised in the letter. The way he normally addresses us in this chamber, the way he ignores the questions we ask and answers his own questions, he did that to the people of my electorate. It is one thing to do it in this place, but to do it to my constituents is appalling behaviour.

These are the things the minister quite clearly took offence to because of the nature of his response. First of all, I congratulated the government on introducing some express bus services to make up for the lack of train services. Then I said that people had raised with me that it was great the minister had raised new express services for peak hour but that not everybody works peak hours—people work at other times, people need to go to hospitals and people have to do a whole range of things. The response I received was just a self-congratulatory response and did not address the question at all.

Then I said to the minister that we are told that we will have a new train service starting sometime next year and that perhaps he might want to start engaging about the timetables. It would be great to use this downtime to actually engage with the community to work out what the timetables should look like so there is support for it. Again, the minister did not address that issue at all.

The third issue I raised was one raised by a person in my electorate who gets on at the Tambelin station. He is in a gopher and the problem is that the distance between where he parks to get on the train, when the trains are operating, and where the shelter is is 100 metres, so he actually has to stand in the rain or the sun to be picked up by the train. The question I asked was: will this issue be addressed during the revamp of the train station? Did I get an answer yes or no? No. He talked about all the other things he wanted to talk about, except address this specific issue raised by this constituent.

I then raised an issue on behalf of the students in my area. Due to the lack of train services for the last year or so, most of the school excursions for students in my electorate have unfortunately been curtailed. They have not been coming into the city, to Parliament House or any other place, so their education has been compromised by their inability to get to Parliament House. Did the minister address that issue? Not at all. He just told me what a fantastic government they are, what money they are spending, but he did not address this issue at all.

I know members of the Liberal Party are used to getting the political middle finger from the Premier, but I do not think that my constituents should get the political middle finger from the minister.

Time expired.

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