2025-09-01
Using the Greens’ balance of power in the Legislative Council to reintroduce a climate bill, pass a motion on funding of homelessness and submitting the government’s “Post and Boast” legislation to committee for an inquiry. And campaigning for Palestine.
By Hon Brad Pettitt, MLC
First, I would like to apologise for my lack of contribution to the June edition of Green issue – the last four months have been a whirlwind as we transitioned from the State Election to Parliament.
We have been so busy hiring new staff, helping to onboard our three incredible new MLCs and their staff, and getting on with the important work of representing the community!
During the winter break we held our first Joint Office Meeting of the 42nd Parliament, which was a great way to bring all the members of our new state teams together to get to know each other, discuss strategy and plan for the next year in Parliament. This meeting was an overwhelming success with a presentation from the Senior Policy Advisor in the Australian Greens Leader’s office on negotiating balance of power, an incredible cultural awareness training with Jonathan Ford from Kambarang Services and a whole day of goal-setting and strategic planning facilitated by Aimee Smith.
Our new parliamentary team have also been busy in Parliament!
In May we re-introduced WA Labor’s Climate Change Bill 2023, renaming it the Climate Action This Decade Bill 2025 in a nod to WA Labor’s total lack of action on climate change in this critical decade.
We also had our first win, with Tim Clifford MLC moving a motion calling on the government to:
(a) report back on the recommendations from the eighty-eighth report of the Standing Committee on Estimates and Financial Operations, Funding of homelessness services in Western Australia, given two years have passed since the report was handed down, noting that Labor supported the majority of the recommendations; and
(b) recommit to ending homelessness with corresponding funding, starting with rough sleeping, which the government was right to include as a priority in its All Paths Lead to a Home homelessness strategy.
The opposition and the crossbench supported our motion, handing the Greens our first win using balance of power in the Legislative Council. It has been two years since the Homelessness Inquiry that I co-chaired found significant failures in the WA Labor government’s handling of homelessness in this state and we still have not had a report back on their progress towards these important recommendations.
We also had a win in referring the government’s atrocious “Post and Boast” legislation to committee for an inquiry into the unintended consequences it has for freedom of speech and protest rights in Western Australia. You can read more about why this bill is so bad and sign our petition over on the campaign page.
This inquiry is due to report back in November.
Also, the Government introduced a bill to reform surrogacy laws and expand access to Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART) into the Legislative Assembly last week. You can read about the planned reform from the government’s media statement here.
This reform is incredibly important and something that the LGBTQIA+ community in Western Australia have been campaigning for a long time as part of a broader suite of reforms to WA’s Equal Opportunity Act. In 2017, WA Labor adopted a policy supporting surrogacy reform as this state has been behind other jurisdictions in our surrogacy laws for a long time.
Despite being elected to government in March 2017 and promising these reforms since then, it has taken the government more than 8 years to put a bill before parliament. The Greens (WA) have been pushing the government to reform the Equal Opportunity Act, including updating surrogacy and access to ART for a long time.
The government expects this bill will come on for debate in October 2025 and they will likely need our support to pass it!
Finally, I want to say a HUGE thank you to all the Greens members and supporters who turned out for the absolutely MASSIVE March for Palestine on 24th August, despite the weather. Thank you for your solidarity with Gaza and with the Palestinian people. There is no them, only us.
Header photo: Sophie McNeill speaking at the Gaza rally on Sunday 24thAugust. Credit Danny Reardon