The Week in the West: Wreck or be 'rekt'
Plus: WA government allows onshore gas exports after MinRes and Woodside donations to Labor.
The WA government loves to surprise – often you’ll be preparing for one craven cave-in and they’ll bait and switch to delivering another item entirely off the industry wish list. This Thursday, for example, it was expected that they’d be reintroducing nature laws legislation to gut the EPA and roll out the red carpet for fast-tracked industrial destruction. Instead, they dropped a domestic gas update on the front page of Thursday’s paper where it rubbed shoulders easily with a full-page photo of Chris Ellison laying down the law to the “meddling” federal government. By contrast, the WA government knows that the only acceptable interference is on behalf of the gas industry, so they were quick to override the only substantive finding of their own year-long parliamentary inquiry to approve overseas export of WA’s onshore gas. Ellison’s company Mineral Resources led the lobbying to ensure the exemption previously only available to Kerry Stokes’ Waitsia gas project now applies across the board. It can’t hurt that amongst their advisors is the architect of that initial dom-gas exemption and the current Premier’s previous boss, Mark McGowan. Current Premier Roger Cook quickly denied meeting with McGowan on the topic after it emerged that MinRes and Woodside both made decent donations to WA Labor as the policy change was being finalised in recent weeks.
WA’s former strongman leader also offered some comic relief to end a week that began with a second assassination attempt on Donald Trump. McGowan was splashed on the front of Friday’s paper being heckled by university students lashing him over his handling of WA’s youth justice crisis. Meanwhile, his potential successor Basil Zempilas used a third of his weekly column in the paper to extend a thorny olive branch to a local MP he’d exchanged harsh words with last week. The sentiment behind an R U OK text might be slightly undermined by immediately sharing it in the newspaper (is it a leak if you’re both the source and the reporter?), but it is certainly the work of a world-class bully. He might act like the class clown, but Baz is an A-grade political assassin – and potentially one of the few who wields the knife and wears the crown.
Meanwhile, WA families continue to bear the brunt of the housing and homelessness crises. The Last Place on Earth spent Tuesday in the Supreme Court, where lawyers challenged the no-grounds evictions of two social housing tenants. It was hard to remember while sitting through the court's slow and detailed deliberations over admin law, but the hearing was precipitated by vulnerable families having their lives thrown into tumult by being evicted without breach of contract. Read our full report here.
Gerard Mazza
The Last Place on Earth has also launched a new podcast offering, The West Weekly, to keep track of Seven West's influence over both state and federal politics. New episodes land on Mondays. You can subscribe to The Last Place on Earth podcast via RSS, Spotify, Apple, Audible, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you're subscribed to our 'All the latest...' newsletter as well as this weekly updates, you'll get notified when each episode drops. (You can always update your email preferences here.)
Jesse Noakes
