The Week in the West: The Dores of Perception
About-face at The West as Libs go mask off on environment
It was a relief to see The West Australian back to what it does best on Thursday - two front page leads had the Libs slashing green tape while the Greens tried to gun down 100 innocent resources projects with their climate trigger. Since new editor Chris Dore took over last month our darling local paper has often read more like The Australian than The West we know and love. Sprinkled in amongst some frankly batshit editorials about Gaza and the Greens, the focus on federal vendettas about offshore detainees and overseas invasions carried strong echoes of Dore’s last post as culture-warrior-in-chief of the Oz. Not content with wiping the AFR off the WA map, our local tabloid has seemed intent on muscling out the national broadsheet with reheated content from the Oz that is as stale as yesterday’s fish and chip wrapping. So it was reassuring to see them back on familiar terrain this week, inserting unveiled interference for the resources sector into a front page dominated by looking out for the little guy’s hip pocket. No sign yet of past editor Anthony de Ceglie’s social justice cladding for Kerry Stokes’ gas industry agitprop but at least you know where you stand with multiple attempts to rip up nature laws before you even get to Page 2 editorials about “green deceits”.
As for the actual policy announcement itself, it was pretty standard fare. Libby Mettam’s Liberals want to remove the right to appeal environmental protection decisions in a bid to stop vexatious litigation (already illegal), citing a spurious report from the Chamber of Commerce. Apparently, $318 billion of delays applies to all projects, not just the resources projects spruiked by Mettam and the West - the CCI will have to invent another unsourced number with 11 zeroes to hone in on only mining. The announcement was most notable for coming in The West Australian the morning before she unveiled the policy proper at a Nine/Business News breakfast at Crown - the look on Nine News Director Gareth Parker’s face while on-stage with Mettam seemed like he would have liked to wipe the smile off hers.
Meanwhile, speaking of off your face - on the other side of the world, psychedelic therapy just took its biggest hit in 50 years with a damning interim decision by the American drug regulator to reject the first-ever application for MDMA-assisted psychotherapy for PTSD patients. It’s a major roadblock in the long strange trip back from the wilderness for psychedelics like MDMA, magic mushrooms and LSD, which over the last decade have had some of the best publicity imaginable in the form of glowing reviews from media outlets who often seem pretty buzzed themselves. I’ve written about psychedelics, having travelled the world some years ago looking for DIY relief and coming back home in time to find Australia was the first country in the world to legalise these substances last year. It came despite a sensational Four Corners expose of concerning cultural issues within the nascent industry here, which burst into full focus at the FDA hearing this week, with reports of sexual abuse in clinical trials and claims of "cultic interventions heightening risks”. Jules Evans has the most complete report I’ve read on this on his excellent Substack Ecstatic Integration - I’ll have more about this issue in weeks to come.
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