2020-05-04
Helping communities in the pandemic emergency, scrutinizing the Government response, but otherwise confined to the computer
By Hon. Robin Chapple, MLC for Mining and Pastoral
2020 has been quite the year so far. With the global COVID-19 outbreak I’ve been busy supporting the Mining and Pastoral communities through this unsure time. Whilst in isolation in Derby, I had to quickly help the locked-down community of Punmu replace their food stores due to broken freezers. A community in isolation at Mt Barnett, who’d been cut off from supplies by the rains also needed emergency food and medical which we managed to help with – it’s been a big few weeks!
This month has been spent liaising with the Minister for Health on developments for a regional health plan, should the need arise, and with various levels of government on ensuring the safety of our FIFO workers during this time. I’ve also been working hard to ensure there is a developed health plan in place for our remote and indigenous communities. The situation around COVID-19 has meant I have worked to try and ensure the safety and health of homeless and itinerant people across the region, as well as those people caught away from home in the regional travel bans.
From a Parliament point of view, the Greens (WA) have been carefully watching the Government during this time; ensuring self-serving Bills don’t make it through, and that all the Government’s COVID-19 legislation features defined endpoints. Our time to scrutinise these pieces of legislation has been severely truncated but the Greens (WA) have pulled out all the stops to ensure West Australians can’t be exploited during the pandemic-panic. We’ve also been working with the review of the Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act; trying to extend protection of the Australian environment and its amazing ecology. Despite the passage of the Browse Basin LNG State Agreement earlier this year, the Greens (WA) are still committed to reducing the power of big industry and holding them accountable for both international climate damage and local environmental degradation.
Over the coming weeks it will be essential that the recovery after COVID-19 is equitable and includes all Australians. It’s still important that we continue to protect our environment from industry and their friends in government. During this time, make sure to look out for each other so we can try our hardest to ensure the health of our regional towns and communities.