The Prime Minister was also talking up increased resilience for WA's transport routes including by rail. He's promised to back a state Labor bid to bring the freight rail network back into public hands, if re-elected.
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00:00The Prime Minister's keen to show he supports WA.
00:05Who's your favourite Premier?
00:07Roger, obviously.
00:09Using a business breakfast to announce he's backing in one of Roger Cook's key policies,
00:14pitched in light of global uncertainty.
00:17Securing Australia's future prosperity means building new economic frameworks.
00:22And it means building and planning the infrastructure that drives growth.
00:26He wants that to include WA's freight rail network coming back into public hands.
00:31The PM promising two and a half million dollars for a feasibility study
00:35to consider what role the Federal Government could have.
00:38We're prepared to take direct control of those parts of the network that the Liberals privatised
00:44including the Eastern Goldfields Railway.
00:47That line links Fremantle Port to Kalgoorlie under track run by ARC Infrastructure.
00:52To the east of Kalgoorlie the line is run by the Federal Government owned Australian Rail Track Corporation.
00:58So as soon as you come to the western side of that bridge there's a different price that rail operators have to pay.
01:04Critics say that price is too high and the line's not well enough maintained.
01:09It is crippling our industries.
01:11I'm thinking today about our grain farmers, our magnetite miners, our juniors and our senior miners.
01:17The idea of either the State or Federal Government taking back control of the network
01:21is all about making it cheaper to move anything from freight to critical minerals to grain.
01:26The big question though is what that costs the taxpayer.
01:29The State Opposition says the Government hasn't provided enough information for it to make up its mind.
01:35We just don't know enough about it at the moment.
01:38There's no business case, there appears to be no modelling for what is being proposed.
01:42Associate Professor of Supply Chain Management Elizabeth Jackson says a buyback should be money well spent though
01:48because its benefits will ripple through the economy.
01:51It's that economic story and that economic support in terms of strategic freight thinking,
01:59freight resilience to this State that really needs to be incorporated into the financial equation.
02:05And this is where governments really step up to the plate.
02:09The current owner of the WA network, ARC Infrastructure, declined to comment.