Western Australian transport minister Dean Nalder has dismissed fresh conflict of interest claims as “disgraceful” after the state opposition revealed that he owned property near the proposed Perth Freight Link route.
The $1.6 billion road, which has been described as a “waste of public money”, will run from the Roe Highway almost to the Fremantle port.
Current plans show the route cutting up through Stock Road, but last month Nalder told ABC radio he had some concerns about the proposed route and was looking at alternatives, including possibly building a tunnel under the suburbs.
Those comments followed complaints from a number of residents who received a letter suggesting their house might be compulsorily acquired to make way for the new road.
But Labor MP Simone McGurk, whose electorate of Fremantle is bordered by Stock Road, suggested Nalder had a conflict of interest in deciding on alternative routes because he owned a nearby storage unit on Sainsbury Road, just off Stock road.
Nalder, who is already facing criticism for his handling of angry business owners who confronted him at the site of a new development on Monday, said the suggestion was a disgraceful attempt to smear him.
“This property is such a distance from the route that is planned,” he said. “It will not be impacted directly by a freight link on any route that it takes.
“I think it’s a long stretch to rope in a personal property that’s been declared in all the appropriate areas to try to create some sort of innuendo that I might be trying to personally benefit from it.”
Nalder said he had declared the Sainsbury Road unit, which he used “to store household furniture and stuff for my kids”, on his ministerial register of interests but had not specifically raised it with premier Colin Barnett before beginning negotiations on the Perth Freight Link route because “there is no conflict of interest there”.
A former WAFL player, Nalder was elected in March 2013 and given the transport and finance portfolios a year later following the departure of trouble-prone former politician Troy Buswell.
He was stripped of the finance portfolio in December after admitting to “serious errors of judgment” including claims he had failed to declare a conflict of interest over his involvement with Fleet Network, which provides salary-sacrificed cars to public servants.
He also failed to disclose an investment in Metier Asia and took a business partner as a guest to a ministerial dinner with the Chinese Consulate.
A review of his disclosure of financial interests ordered by Barnett, however, found he had not sought to abuse his ministerial position for personal gain.
