BUTLER MLA John Quigley has had a busy few months since becoming Attorney-General, introducing a dozen bills to State Parliament.
Mr Quigley said he had introduced the first 11 bills within seven months, a rate that outpaced the previous government’s 22 in four years.
He listed the ‘no body, no parole’ legislation, strengthening dangerous sex offenders rules and stricter methamphetamine laws as some of those achievements.
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READ NOW“I have got a heavy workload at the moment because the Coroner’s Court is two-and-a-half years behind,” he said.
“People are unable to resolve their grief – they carry this grief for such a long period of time.
“I’m doing a complete re-write of the Coroners Act to speed up the procedures and I’ve just completed the business case to buy a CT scanner for the mortuary.
“At the moment, the state pathology has to complete autopsy on 89 per cent of people entering the state mortuary.
“We think when we get a CT scanner we will be able to reduce that number to about 35 per cent.
“This will make a huge different to people who die at work because it will speed up their insurance claims – insurance companies don’t want to pay out without cause of death because they exempt suicide.
“It affects a lot of people; a lot of people don’t think about the Coroner’s Court until they lose a loved one.”
Mr Quigley said he was proud WA Labor was “on the way to honouring all of its promises to the electorate of Butler”.
“We have already paid the cheque over to the City of Wanneroo (of) $23 million for ‘dualling’ of Marmion Avenue,” he said.
“The City of Wanneroo said they are going to start it both at Butler and Yanchep and build towards the middle; have two crews going to halve the build time.”
Mr Quigley said the first Metronet project would be rail from Butler to Yanchep and the business case was in Canberra.
“We already have the funding and it will open in 2021,” he said.
“We have also got to buy a lot more rail stock; those orders are going in now (so) they will be running in 2021.”
While work started to widen Wanneroo Road this month, Mr Quigley said the State Government did not plan to extend the Mitchell Freeway to Romeo Road at this stage.
“Because of the economic state, we couldn’t afford to dual Wanneroo Road and Marmion Avenue and build the rail and the freeway on top of that without Federal funding,” he said.
Mr Quigley said Federal Labor’s promise to create an infrastructure fund would provide the funding needed if the party won the next election, in 2018 or 2019.
“To do it earlier than that relies upon (Pearce MHR) Christian Porter and Malcolm Turnbull announcing within the May budget that it’s fully funded,” he said.
Last month, Mr Porter criticised the State Government for not including the freeway extension in its forward estimates when it announced the 2017-18 State Budget.
Mr Quigley said the State Government had also given the City funding to re-establish stairway access to the beach at Two Rocks and provided funds for beach repair there and in Quinns Rocks.
“One of my ambitions is to see a significant refurbishment or upgrade of Two Rocks Marina,” he said.
The MP said he was working with the tourist association, land developers and Transport Minister Rita Saffioti on the upgrade.
He said work should include modifying the sea walls to stop the collection of “stinking, rotten” seaweed south of the marina and the northern sea wall to avoid further erosion problems.
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