GLENN STERLE
LABOR SENATOR FOR WESTERN AUSTRALIA
CHAIR - RURAL & REGIONAL AFFAIRS & TRANSPORT SENATE COMMITTEE
BARNETT GOVERNMENT LOOKING AFTER MATES AND LEAVING REGIONAL AVIATION BEHIND
The likely announcement of Regional Aviation Services (REX) as the successful tender for regional commercial flights to Esperance and Albany shows the Liberal and National parties are more interested in looking after their big donors than protecting WA jobs.
Despite viable tenders from local Western Australian companies, the Liberal-National Government seems desperate to give preference to big party donors REX, who in the 2012/13 Financial Year provided more than $240,000 in free flights to Coalition MPs across the country.
Skippers Aviation, one of the WA companies who also tendered for the Esperance and Albany routes, have been informed that they are viewed by the State Government as a company that is only suited to servicing the mining industry. This is despite the fact that they have been successfully servicing the Carnarvon and Monkey Mia routes for years, destinations you would hardly describe as mining towns.
It is clear now that the tender process has become a farce.
The WA Government should be doing everything in its power to help WA businesses that generate local jobs, but Transport Minister Dean Nalder is more interested in keeping party donors happy.
I will continue to push for local WA businesses to get preference for government regulated contracts where they present tenders as equal in merit as any eastern state or international tender.
The Liberal-National Government’s priorities are all wrong when it comes to protecting local jobs. Instead of helping WA companies who invest locally, spend locally and most importantly employ locally, they are engaged in a corporate sell out to eastern state contractors.
Without a local connection that comes from being based in WA and employing locals, we cannot expect foreign contractors to act in the best interests of Western Australia.
It’s time Minister Nalder and his government stopped looking after their big Eastern States party donors and started looking after the local companies who invest and employ in WA.
