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MacTiernan accused of road block

Road claims: Alannah MacTiernan. Picture: Ian Munro/The West Australian

Transport Minister Dean Nalder has accused his Labor predecessor Alannah MacTiernan of deliberately sabotaging the decades-old plan to link Kewdale to Fremantle port with her decision a decade ago to delete the Fremantle Eastern Bypass road reservation.

The Federal Government's decision to allocate almost $1 billion towards what is being termed the Perth Freight Link - a motorway from the airport to Fremantle including the controversial Roe Highway stage 8 extension - has reignited one of the State's oldest and most- heated planning battles.

Ms MacTiernan, now the Federal Labor Member for Perth, declared proceeding with Roe 8 was "planning lunacy" and a waste of more than $1 billion.

The Fremantle Eastern Bypass had been enshrined in Perth's Metropolitan Region Scheme - the masterplan for the metro area - since the 1960s until Ms MacTiernan, as planning and infrastructure minister, decided to remove the road reservation and sell surplus land for housing.

The former reservation went through suburbs including Spearwood, Hamilton Hill, Beaconsfield and South Fremantle.

Ms MacTiernan said this week the proposal was 1960s thinking.

"Cutting a road through a swath of Fremantle … it would have destroyed that community," she said.

But Mr Nalder said: "Roe 8 was sabotaged - there's no other way to describe it."