Environmentalists have vowed to lie down in front of bulldozers to stop the Roe Highway extension going ahead as the federal government prepares to fund Western Australia’s most controversial road.



Conservationists have been at loggerheads with the WA government for years because of its plan to build a four-lane motorway through North and Bibra lakes, fearing it would destroy the Beeliar wetlands.

The federal and state governments are in the process of cutting a deal, before next week’s federal budget, to fund the 5km extension from Kwinana Freeway in Jandakot to Stock Road in Coolbellup, the PerthNow website reported on Sunday.

The federal government would fund the $600m to $700m project, subject to heavy vehicles paying a road toll. This would be West Australia’s first toll road.

A committee member of the campaign group Save Beeliar Wetlands, Felicity McGeorge, said it would be a “battle to stop protestors getting in the way of bulldozers”.

“I doubt it very much if we will stand by as the bulldozers go through there,” she told the Guardian. “It will destroy a wetland that is totally irreplaceable and is unable to be offset.

“The government is threatening the poor and the most vulnerable in our society with cutbacks, then it finds money for this. It is sickening.”

The WA shadow transport minister, Ken Travers, said he could not understand why the government wanted to introduce a toll on a road that would not ease traffic congestion.

“If you were a truck driver, why would you go down that road if you had to pay,” he asked. “Unless the government was planning to ban them from using other roads?”

Travers said that if a toll for trucks was introduced, it would open the floodgates for other tolls on WA roads.

“[WA premier Colin] Barnett said before the last election [that] he wouldn’t introduce a road toll for WA drivers, but if this truck toll gets brought in, there will be no stopping them introducing a toll for car drivers,” Travers said.

The newly appointed WA transport minister, Dean Nalder, said that, at this stage, only heavy vehicles would be charged. “There will be no tolls for private cars,” he said.

The Greens Western Australia MP Lynn MacLaren said the new highway would decimate the last remaining wetlands in the metropolitan area.



The road would flatten 234 hectares of land, which is home to many endangered species, including the Carnaby’s black cockatoo and the Red-tailed black cockatoo, she said.

“This is so heartbreaking,” she said. “This will destroy the last remaining wetlands in our suburbs.

“Not only is the cost so high for the environment, but also for taxpayers. The government will have a fight on its hands if this goes through.”

The WA Environmental Protection Authority has recommended conditional approval for the project, despite receiving 3200 submissions. An EPA report in 2003 said: “Any proposal for the construction of the alignment of Roe Highway stage 8 through the Beeliar Regional Park would be extremely difficult to be made environmentally acceptable.”