2021-09-02
Addressing the housing and homelessness crisis, updating a Climate Bill and celebrating Class A Reserve classification for Beeliar Wetlands and two-thirds of Cape Peron
By Hon Brad Pettitt, MLC, Member for South Metropolitan
We’re now three months and a bit into the new job and doing our best to both keep this government accountable and push them to be better.
As I mentioned in the last issue, this 41st Parliament is an unprecedented one ‒ never before have we had a single-party government in WA with a majority in BOTH the Upper and Lower houses.
This is somewhat challenging for the Greens as it limits our opportunities to put forward bills, motions and other Parliamentary legislation but we are making the most of the opportunities we do have.
We are starting with a Notice of Motion in early September that asks the WA Parliament to acknowledge that Western Australia is currently facing a housing and homelessness crisis and notes that urgent action is needed to stem the increasing priority public housing waitlist.
The Motion will call on the WA State Government to make the most of its strong financial position to immediately address this crisis by prioritising investment to significantly increase public housing stock by building fully-accessible, low carbon homes; immediately spot-purchasing vacant homes; and proactively investing in and supporting innovative measures like MyHome.
The under investment in housing and homelessness in WA must end and we will be pushing hard on this. Questions I’ve asked in Parliament revealed that our state’s already enormous public housing waitlist has skyrocketed to over 30,000 people! This is totally unacceptable.
Our second opportunity will be on October 14 in which we will introduce an updated Climate Bill for WA.
We will be arguing that the WA Government needs to take seriously the latest IPCC reports and implications for the climate here in Western Australia.
WA also needs to grasp the opportunities that an ambitious transition to a low carbon economy has for Western Australia. WA is one of few Australian states to not have legislated targets for reducing carbon emissions and the only state with rising emissions.
So we will also call on the Government to:
- Urgently bring to Parliament a legislated target for reaching net zero carbon emissions and an interim target for 2030 that is consistent with the latest IPCC report and associated climate science.
- Set up a climate expert panel to advise the Government with transparent and regular reporting mechanisms to the Parliament.
We would love your support around this so please look out for opportunities to be part of this climate campaign.
In some positive news, I’m pleased to report that the Beeliar Wetlands bill passed the Lower House and the Upper House. This bill changed the classification of the Beeliar Wetlands to a Class A conservation reserve, what they should have been classified as this whole time!
As I said in Parliament, this is a huge win for our community and a testament to the power of grassroots movements. It is only because of the tireless work of thousands of community members that the Beeliar Wetlands is finally protected.
We also had a good win around Cape Peron and the listing of it as an A Class reserve ‒ well about two-thirds of it. We will continue to work with the community to get a good outcome on the rest of the Cape Peron reserve.
My team and I are still at Robin Chapple’s roomy old office in West Perth and will hopefully be moved into our permanent electorate office on High Street in Fremantle in coming months.
In the meantime please get in touch with us if we can help with anything.
Header photo: Brad speaking at a homelessness rally outside Parliament House in August