Legislative Council (10 November 2026, 7.00 pm)
10 November 2026
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Legislative Council Parliament of Western Australia
Follow its sittings00:54 - 01:08
Speaker 4
Honorable members, we are in the committee of the whole house and we are dealing with Rail Freight System (Acquisition and Reorganisation) Bill 2026, and the question is if the clause 1 stand as printed. The Honorable Steve Thomas.
01:08 - 02:55
Speaker 2
Thank you, Deputy Chair. Minister, you'll be pleased to know I'm coming to the end of my initial remarks, so the introductory, the introduction is just about finished. I'm just going to take you to your second reading speech and just trying to a bit flesh out, because I'm nearly finished clause 1, a bit flesh out where we get to. So on page 3 of 4, it says this, "While the bill establishes an enabling framework that can accommodate a range of transactions structures, the current assumed structure is that the state would acquire the rail freight business through a subsidiary of the Public Transport Authority." So I mean we've had a discussion earlier that we can't really talk about what future models will look like, which is all well and good until you understand that the second reading speech talks about what future models would look like.
So that's a little interesting in itself. But I understand that the government doesn't want to get pinned down on that. However, we are talking about that structure. It goes on to say, "The subsidiary would be governed by the Public Transport Authority Act 2003 and the Commonwealth Corporations Act 2001." Now, the Commonwealth Corporations Act 2001, members might remember, is that act which the then Prime Minister John Howard used to basically overtake all sorts of legislative roles of state governments and usurp it into the Commonwealth.
So it's not my favorite piece of legislation, but I've been stuck with dealing it quite a lot. So a couple of questions that fall out of that. "The subsidiary would be governed by the Public Transport Authority Act 2003." Does that act, Minister, specifically allow the PTA to have subsidiary entities that are effectively short share share-owner corporations?
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