Media Release
PERTH, WA – The Federal leader of the Palmer United Party Clive Palmer today said the major political parties had failed Western Australia for the past 80 years by not reinvesting wealth back into the State.
Mr Palmer said Western Australia had not received the benefits of its enterprise since the 1930s.
“Successive Australian federal governments have failed to distribute wealth in WA,’’ Mr Palmer said.
“The State generates enormous wealth yet so little flows back to its people as a result of the major political parties from the eastern states controlling the purse strings.
“I am a person who understands that hard work needs to be rewarded.
“I have invested and worked in Western Australia since the mid 1980s.
“In the Pilbara I have built an $8 billion iron ore project creating thousands of jobs and approximately $3 billion of revenue per annum,’’ he said.
Mr Palmer said Western Australia desperately needed the government’s support in developing downstream processes to keep more of the State’s mineral wealth at home.
“For too long WA has been treated like a quarry where its resources have been taken for granted and shipped off to places like Japan,’’ he said.
“Despite Japan’s high wages, high energy costs and tyranny of distance it has become the third largest economy in the world, largely on the back of Australian resources, while people in and around Perth are doing it tough,’’ he said.
He said overseas countries were buying Australian nickel ore for approximately $50 a tonne and on-selling it for approximately $15,000 a tonne once they refined it.
“Local residents need to know that they can send a strong message to the Federal Government that this state won’t be taken for granted.”
“The Palmer United Party will stand up for Western Australia with the best representation in parliament to ensure stronger economic growth and fairer distribution of wealth,’’ he said.
ENDS