The Hon Catherine King MP
6PR Mornings with Gary Adshead
GARY ADSHEAD: There’s a range of state and federal combined announcements happening in WA at the moment, mainly in and around infrastructure projects. So without further ado, let’s go and have a chat to the Federal Infrastructure Minister, Catherine King, who’s in town and joins us on the line. Thanks very much for your time, Minister.
CATHERINE KING: Really good to be with you, Gary.
GARY ADSHEAD: A busy day for you in Perth today. Shall we start with…
CATHERINE KING: [Talks over] Yeah.
GARY ADSHEAD: … Shall we start with the ECU campus? They call it the topping out sort of ceremony where the highest point of the ECU campus will be reached today. This is a game changer for the city.
CATHERINE KING: This is a huge project. It’s an $853 million project, but it’s more than just building a university campus. It’s really changing the way the CBD of Perth works and bringing more students in, more of an area that was a bit quiet and really changing the way public transport works, all of that. And so topping out ceremonies are really a traditional part of structural builds. So it’s when all the structural work is finished, they normally plant a tree somewhere on the site to recognise that it’s all done, and we’re going to get a chance to get up to the top and have a bit of a look. It’s an amazing building. If people have gone past, you can’t help but see just what a big and imposing building it is. But it’s a really beautiful piece of architecture for the Perth CBD.
GARY ADSHEAD: I have to ask, because it’s – there is an issue here in Western Australia. The Lord Mayor is not invited.
CATHERINE KING: There’s no money from the city of Perth going into this particular project, this has been totally funded…
GARY ADSHEAD: [Talks over] Yeah, but Minister, it’s the Lord Mayor…
CATHERINE KING: This has been totally funded by the state and federal and ECU, and that’s pretty normal. He wasn’t there for the sod turn. I did the sod turn with Mark McGowan. He wasn’t there for that either. So, I think that’s pretty normal. I wouldn’t –
GARY ADSHEAD: [Talks over] But normally a lord mayor of a city would be invited to something like this, wouldn’t they?
CATHERINE KING: Well, I don’t know because I’m there doing, it but not normally. Normally, the funding partners are there. He wasn’t there for the sod turn. I did the sod turn with Mark McGowan and Edith Cowan University. I’ve got a shovel up on a wall in Parliament House. Pretty normal that the funding partners would be there for that. So that’s normally what happens.
GARY ADSHEAD: It’s because he’s a Liberal candidate.
CATHERINE KING: Well, I don’t see it as those things, but certainly it’s not unusual that you only have the people putting the money into the project [indistinct]…
GARY ADSHEAD: It’s called – we call it the elephant in the room.
CATHERINE KING: [Laughs] Right, okay. You can call it that, but pretty normal that you just have the funding partners there. And as I said, he wasn’t there for the sod turning of the university because there wasn’t any money from the city of Perth coming into the project. So, that’s normally what happens.
GARY ADSHEAD: I think they put 45 million into the whole Perth City Link and the vision there. But yeah, specifically the ECU campus, you’re probably right. Hey, I had to ask you though.
The other thing, of course, is, you know, housing boost for Western Australia in terms of getting the infrastructure right to allow the developments to happen to increase our housing stock. Just tell us what you’re doing there.
CATHERINE KING: Yeah. So I’m announcing $105 million is coming in for 21 different projects. And if you think the sort of infrastructure we’re talking about are the sewerage connections, water, power connections and roads, that will unlock 28,000 homes and new developments for Perth. [Audio error] struggling in the same way. Everyone else is just – we cannot get enough supply at the moment. So this money is being delivered to the state government, and they’ll then work through the Water Authority and the power authorities to get that money out into these estates. It’s right the way across from Bunbury, Dardanup, Stirling, Innaloo, High Wickham, West Swan. Developments all the way across there, just to really get that- those developments moving so we can actually get these houses built more quickly. And that’s part of the government’s $32 billion that we’re putting into housing. But my job is to try and get some money into the infrastructure to unlock and de-risk some of these developments.
GARY ADSHEAD: Because the hope is that sort of creates the ability of 28,000 more homes across the state. Do you – with this sort of funding that you put forward, do you put a timetable on it? Because, you know, we all know the shortage is pretty critical at the moment.
CATHERINE KING: Yeah. So what we’ve done, it’s called the priority work stream. So we’ve gone to the state government and we’ve said what have you got ready now that is ready to go, but it’s just waiting because you haven’t got the funding to do the infrastructure, that the developers are sort of holding back a bit, or that the state hasn’t got the money yet to put into those projects. So basically these are ready now to go. So money will get out the door pretty quickly. These estates will be developed and ready for both private homes, but also there’ll be some social and affordable housing as part of these developments as well.
GARY ADSHEAD: Minister, have you had a sort of time to stop and think about it? I know that it’s affected, the states around the country, so I’m not just saying it’s Western Australia, but where do we go wrong with not having housing supply?
CATHERINE KING: Yeah. Look, I think it’s – like basically, a decade of not concentrating on it. I think we just all thought it would just- leave it to the private sector and it would all just happen. I think there’s been big issues with planning. So one of the things we did when we came to government is work with planning ministers to really get a better handle on how can you get this planning done more quickly? It sometimes can take councils a couple of years from when a developer puts in an application, and I just think we haven’t concentrated on it as a whole. And so that’s part of the national government sort of coming in saying, how can we sort of take some of the risks out for developers? How can we get planning approvals moving, how can we get land release? But also from my portfolios and we’re announcing some other suburban money as well, which we’ll talk about in a minute. But how can we really use land better in those existing and older suburbs? How can we make them more liveable and how can we get a bit more density? So I just don’t think we’ve concentrated on it, is really what’s been the problem for the last decade. And we’ve been pretty focused on it in the last two and a half years to try and get things moving.
GARY ADSHEAD: I think that’s the most honest answer I’ve had on that question, to be honest with you, that we just took our eye off the ball and suddenly it hit us ...
CATHERINE KING: [Talks over] Yeah.
GARY ADSHEAD: … so thanks for that. But of course, people who are listening always say to us, well we’re bringing in too many migrants and we need to catch up first.
CATHERINE KING: Well, we’re certainly trying to do something about that. So the net migration number, getting that down. Was a bit surprised the Libs have voted down our moves to try and get student caps, because one of the things we know has been happening with migration is we’ve got students coming in, they may be doing courses, some of them don’t even turn up for courses at all, and they see that as a pathway to permanent residency. So we’ve been cracking down on that, and we’re trying to put student caps in place to really make sure we’re getting good quality education, we’re focusing on skills that are needed here, and we’re helping educate people in developing countries to go back to actually help with medicine, allied health services, building all of those things, and really focusing on that. But the Libs have unfortunately blocked that in the Senate, so we’ve got to work out some other ways of doing that. But we’ve been pretty focused on trying to make sure that we’ve got the skills we need here to train more Australians through Fee Free TAFE, really turbocharge that, make sure that we’ve got people in- coming into the country with the skills we need, but make sure we’ve also got, you know, that migration cap in terms of the student numbers as well, so that they’re not being used as a pathway into the country for skills- the people that we may not necessarily be after yet.
GARY ADSHEAD: Minister, just finally, of course, you’re also announcing projects around communities and infrastructure and perhaps the upkeep of infrastructure. I suppose some people might say federal government money into that. Why are these communities not being supported by the state and by their local councils, for example?
CATHERINE KING: Yeah. So one of the things that was really noticeable – I’m sorry, the reception seems to have gone a bit bad, so hopefully you can hear me.
GARY ADSHEAD: Yeah.
CATHERINE KING: One of the things we really noticed is that we’ve had lots of really good community grants programmes for the regions, and they are still going, and they’re really important for regional development. But there hadn’t really been any focus much on our suburbs. And if you look at a lot of our suburbs, a lot of them have got ageing infrastructure, old swimming pools, old sporting facilities, haven’t really concentrated on arts or cultural precincts. So what we wanted to do is make sure there was a grants programme both for the regions but also for our suburbs. So today we’re announcing, I think, 13 different projects across the Perth CBD and outside. We’re spending about $79 million from a range of projects like sporting facilities. And the reason it’s really important, in my view, and local government’s a great partner for the Commonwealth on this, is that this is really important. These are the sort of places where our kids learn to get on with each other. It’s really important for social inclusion in communities. It makes our suburbs places that you want to be in adds to green spaces so that people can be with their families, all of those things. And that’s just really important for social cohesion in our country.
GARY ADSHEAD: Minister, thanks very much for your time and all that.
CATHERINE KING: Really lovely to talk to you this morning, Gary.
GARY ADSHEAD: Catherine King, the Federal Infrastructure Minister.