2024-01-06
A year of holding the WA Labor Government, behaving like a conservative government, to account on many issues. Challenging being a single Greens MLC but ramping up campaigning in 2024 to ensure a Greens Team after the next election.
By Hon Brad Pettitt, MLC, Member for South Metropolitan
It has been a massive year for the office and for WA politics.
I think we have seen the shine come off the state government in some important ways. We’ve seen the departure of Mark McGowan – right into the arms of the mining industry – and Western Australians have started to see how Labor are squandering their big majority to serve the powerful instead of the community.
We’ve been taking them to task on so many fronts and I wanted to highlight a few of the big ones from the last year.
Recently we’ve seen them a waste an opportunity to clean up politics in this State with weak donations reform. Our push for more powerful restrictions on cashed-up special interests and serious donation caps wasn’t successful, but we succeeded in putting heat on the major parties over their unwillingness to stop the flow of corporate cash into our system. We’ve also highlighted the blatant revolving door between Parliament and the big end of town.
We can see this in everything this allegedly progressive government has failed to act on and that we’ve been fighting for. We know the community is behind us in demanding a better response to the housing and homelessness crisis and a better deal for renters.
Every month we have forced them to provide key information in Parliament about the dire state of social housing – information they otherwise refuse to publicly release ‒ and we’ve exposed their inaction on helping renters time and time again.
Their response to date has been frankly pathetic ‒ but they will not make any of the deep reforms needed to secure housing for our most vulnerable community members because they are in hock to developers.
They won’t even change zoning laws to allow better quality planning because one developer (no prizes for guessing who!) didn’t like it.
I co-authored a report on homelessness earlier this year with members of both major parties in good faith, with some powerful recommendations that could see many people housed and sheltered – but the government has done nothing with it.
Just as they have done practically nothing on the human rights catastrophe of Banksia Hill and Unit 18. We’ve supported the families and advocates for the kids locked up in these atrocious facilities and kept tabs on what is a searing blot on this state’s conscience, we’ve helped expose the government’s fundamental failure to reform what is a broken and racist justice system.
Their answer remains … if there’s a problem, build a bigger jail. It’s so far from progressive values it is absurd, but it is a lethal absurdity and we won’t stop holding its perpetrators to account.
We’ve done so much more besides in 2023. We’ve supported the communities doing amazing work to realise a wildlife corridor along the former Roe 8 and 9 corridors and they have had some important wins, we’ll keep doing so.
We’ve done all we can to support the amazing campaigners fighting insane urban sprawl and road projects from the Bunbury Outer Ring Road to Satterley’s North Stoneville development.
We’ve supported petitions and campaigns against greyhound racing, we’ve helped expose the extent of Alcoa’s dangerous activities in the Perth hills.
We’ve of course supported the courageous campaigners for peace and disarmament against the prospect of AUKUS nuclear submarines (and now, horrifyingly, nuclear storage) at HMAS Stirling.
With support from local experts we released the consultation draft of our major report laying out our vision for a sustainable, equitable, low carbon city – Climate Positive Perth.
2024 is only going to be a bigger year as we head into election season.
We’ve seen this government fail on housing and youth justice and First Nations heritage protection.
We’ve seen them stall on critical reforms to the Equal Opportunity Act that would bring protections for LGBTQI+ folk in line with the rest of the country and abolish the Gender Reassignment Board.
And we’re all set to debate their infuriatingly low-ambition climate bill next year. I haven’t even started on WA Labor’s craven approach to climate change because the word count on this would triple!
I think that we all know that even more than their federal colleagues the Cook Government is falling catastrophically short of action on climate, as they are on housing, on justice, and pretty much everything we need to build and maintain just and sustainable communities. A change in Premier has made no difference.
In terms of capture by the fossil fuel industry and the big end of town, in terms of their acceptance of an unacceptable status quo, there is very little to distinguish Labor from the Liberals. In fact they have responded more viciously to peaceful climate campaigners than the previous government.
We will keep fighting for a better outcome but we need a more balanced Parliament and for that we need your support to get more Greens into Parliament.
After last election we were left with one MLC, which is per capita two per cent of the upper house. Despite this and a fraction of the resources available to the big parties we have asked 20% of all questions asked in the chamber this year. I’ve spoken in the upper house more than the entire National Party and that doesn’t count committee work on homelessness and youth justice.
This is all done out of a tiny office and a small staff, plus the passionate work of community members and campaigners who highlight these issues for us and support my staff in research and preparing questions and statements for me to bring to Parliament.
Now just imagine if there were more of us in Parliament doing this work – holding the major parties to account, improving on promising legislation, stopping the worst of it and securing better outcomes for communities, ecosystems and the climate.
Many in the community who voted Labor on the strength of their pandemic response are sick of their inaction on critical issues, and in 2025 there’s a real opportunity for the Greens to win the balance of power the next WA Parliament. The next year will be critical for maximising that opportunity.
So if you’re not a member already I’d encourage you to sign up now to maximise your impact ahead of the election. There’ll be many opportunities to volunteer, and heaps of ways do to it.
We’ve seen the difference having more Greens in the federal parliament can make holding the big parties and their sponsors to account – let’s make it happen in WA over the course of the next eighteen months.
Header photo: Brad joining a protest for climate action