Jess Beckerling’s June Update

Protecting unique natural environments against predatory extractivism, querying state budget priorities and participating in many community activities

By Hon Jess Beckerling MLC

The past two months have been full and fast-moving! We've had major updates on Alcoa's Exemption Order, the 2026 State Budget was delivered, we had a jam-packed weekend of community connection in Kinjarling Albany, and celebrated a year since the four of us WA Greens MLCs were sworn into the 42nd Parliament.

Here's what we've been up to.

ALCOA UPDATES

The Cook Labor Government announced it is revoking Alcoa's Exemption Order – but intends to immediately issue a new one, ensuring no interruption to clearing. We don't yet know what triggered the review or what conditions the new Order will contain. During the 14-day public feedback period, we urged supporters to write to the Environment Minister demanding no new Exemption Order for Alcoa. 

On the investigation into the suspected breach at the Hollowbutt Jarrah: DWER concluded no breach occurred.

But when I read the investigation reports, the findings were deeply troubling. DWER's own independent consultant (using the 2025 Australian Standard) found the tree meets the significance criterion and that a breach had in fact occurred.

Rather than accepting those findings, DWER brought in a second consultant who used a farm forestry methodology, took a measurement from one side of the tree and returned a reading just 7cm under the threshold.

DWER went with that result. They chose the methodology that cleared Alcoa.

I am pursuing this, and the other breach investigation processes and will keep reporting back.

ONE YEAR IN PARLIAMENT

On 22 May, it marked one year since Brad, Sophie, Tim and I were sworn into the 42nd Parliament! 

We marked the occasion by reflecting on what we've achieved together – from securing the balance of power in the Legislative Council, to fighting the State Development Bill through the night, to passing the Assisted Reproductive Technology and Surrogacy Bill, to sparking a parliamentary inquiry into greyhound racing backed by more than 26,000 signatures.

A full highlights carousel was shared across our social media pages.

 

 

 

 

 

IN THE PARLIAMENT:

State Budget

• The Cook Government handed down WA's eighth consecutive budget surplus – approximately $3.5 billion for 2025-2025. An additional $106.3 million was committed to family and domestic violence prevention and response and sexual violence was finally recognised as an area requiring its own specific budgeting. 
• Any investment in this space is welcome. But against a $2.4 billion projected surplus for the next FY, and a crisis where thousands of women and children are turned away from refuges every month, it is nowhere near enough. We will keep fighting until the sector is fully funded and WA is urgently working towards zero murdered women and children.

Estimates

Alcoa Royalties

• At Estimates, I asked the Department of Treasury and Finance a straightforward question: how much is WA actually receiving in royalties from Alcoa and South 32 for mining the Northern Jarrah Forest? The answer: the figures are commercial in confidence.
• These are publicly owned forests and the public has every right to know what we're being paid for their permanent destruction.
• What we do know is this: WA's alumina royalty rate has sat at 1.65% since the 1960s – lower than every other mineral royalty, and unchanged while all of them have moved.
• In 2025–26, WA received approximately $100 million in aluminium royalties. Iron ore brought in nearly $9 billion in the same period.
• With the Alcoa State Agreement currently under review, I asked whether the Government would at least consider lifting the rate. They told us there are no plans to change the royalty rate.
• An irreplaceable, ancient forest system – and that's the price tag our Government has settled for.

Regional School Buses

• I raised problems with a review of school bus access in Estimates.
• Following a recent review, six special schools in the South West will lose access for some of their students.
• For regional families, the changes mean adding hours of travel and cost in areas where distances are already significant. And for small community schools already operating on tight margins, potentially losing 20–30% of their cohort threatens their long-term viability.
• The Cook Government needs to step in and correct this so families can get their kids to school.

Forensic Medical Examinations (FMEs)

• Women are waiting up to 9 hours in emergency rooms after being sexually assaulted – unable to shower, change clothes, or in some cases even use the bathroom. When they are finally seen, practitioners in some cases must phone to the Sexual Assault Resource Centre (SARC) because they haven't been trained.
• The 2026–27 Budget includes additional funding for SARC and regional sexual support services. In Estimates, I questioned the Minister for Health on access to for sexual assault survivors in regional and remote WA and whether any of the funding was specifically directed at closing the FME access gap.
• They told us that the uplift is for specialist violence counselling. Of course, this is very welcome, but when I asked directly if there's a target to ensure every WACHS site and hospital has a fully trained FME practitioner available at all times, no commitment was made. We will keep pushing until every woman in WA can access timely, dignified forensic care.

Keep Trump Out of Our Forests Petition

• 5,586 people signed the petition calling on the WA Governments to protect the Northern Jarrah Forest – and I tabled those signatures in Parliament.
• The message was clear: no deal with Trump's administration should put our forests, our drinking water, or our environmental regulators at risk. Thank you to every single person who signed.

Questions Without Notice – Alcoa PFAS Contamination

• I raised Alcoa's alarming PFAS contamination in the Legislative Council, noting that the highest PFAS level recorded at the Huntly Mine was 2.6 micrograms per litre – 325 times the Australian drinking water limit – inside a Priority 1 drinking water source area.
• I asked directly: has the Department of Health prosecuted Alcoa under the Health Miscellaneous Provisions Act 1911, which makes it an offence to pollute a water supply or its catchment area? The answer was no. I'll keep asking the questions Alcoa doesn't want answered.

Questions Without Notice – Alcoa Significant Tree Thresholds

• I questioned the Minister on the justification for the significant tree diameter thresholds in Alcoa's Exemption Order – specifically, why they are set at 1,500mm for Marri and 2,000mm for Jarrah, when the Commonwealth Referral Guidelines for WA's three threatened Black Cockatoo species reference 500mm as the threshold at which suitable nest hollows are typically found.
• The response failed to adequately address the discrepancy. The conditions of the Exemption Order remain a serious concern, and this line of questioning continues.

IN THE COMMUNITY:

Kumanjayi Little Baby Candlelight Vigil

• We supported the community candlelight vigil at Forrest Place on 7 May to mourn the loss of Kumanjayi Little Baby and stand in solidarity with her family and community in their heartbreaking grief.

FDV Month Candlelight Vigil

• On National Domestic and Family Violence Remembrance Day, I joined the Centre for Women's Safety and Wellbeing candlelight vigil at Yagan Square – a powerful moment of collective remembrance and renewed commitment to ending men's violence against women and children.

National Sorry Day

• On National Sorry Day, we honoured the strength, truth and lived experiences of Stolen Generations survivors and their families. 29 years after the 1997 Bringing Them Home Report, only 6% of its 83 recommendations have been fully implemented.
• Sorry without action is not enough. The Greens WA support calls to implement the Healing Foundation's Plan to Act on Bringing Them Home (2026–2028), and back WA Stolen Generation survivors and their families in calling for the WA Redress Scheme to be expanded so that direct kin of survivors who died before 27 May 2025 can also access redress.

Hazelmere Data Centre Application Withdrawn

• A major win for the Hazelmere community: the proposal for what would have been Australia's largest data centre has been withdrawn. The development would have used up to 1 billion litres of water per year and devastated the Mandoon Bilya, a conservation category wetland home to threatened species including snake-necked turtles and black cockatoos. 
• But the Cook Labor Government must take note: without a strategy outlining where data centres should go – or whether we want them at all – these proposals will keep coming. Huge congratulations to everyone who fought to see this off.

 Women Deliver Conference 2026

I joined over 6,000 delegates from 189 countries at Women Deliver 2026 in Naarm – a global conference held every three years to accelerate gender equality.

• What struck me most was the quality of leadership: feminist leaders and advocates from across the globe, collaborating in real time, bringing not just expertise but vulnerability – and channelling all of it into action. I'm grateful to have been part of something so galvanising, alongside my Policy Advisor Georgia Beardman, and to bring that energy back to our work here in WA.

 

 

 

 

Big Jarrah Dawn to Dusk Walk

• This winter solstice, the WA Greens Forest Team walked 20km through the Northern Jarrah Forest from dawn to dusk, raising $3,464 as a team to protect the Northern Jarrah Forest from Alcoa's bauxite mining expansion.

Yallingup Sand Mine Proposal

• We backed calls from Wardandi Custodians, community leaders, local residents and experts to reject a proposal to extract 450,000+ cubic metres of sand from a 9-hectare parcel on Caves Road, Yallingup – one of WA's most loved coastal places.
• We called on the Cook Government to properly protect this area from future development so this can never happen again. Submissions to the City of Busselton closed in June.

Kinjarling Albany – Weekend of Community Events

• We welcomed Senator Jordon Steele-John, Sophie McNeill MLC and Tim Clifford MLC to Kinjarling Albany for a packed weekend of community events, including:
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  • South Coast Greens Coffee Catch Up at Cosi's Cafe
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  • Walk through Yakamia Forest with Friends of Yakamia Forest Boodja
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  • Politics in the Pub at The Premier Hotel
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  • Palestine Coffee Catch Up at Kate's Place
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  • Sundowner at the Kinjarling Albany electorate office
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• A wonderful weekend of community connection and collective advocacy.

 

Bird Flu – Black Cockatoos

• With H5N1 bird flu now confirmed in WA, our black cockatoos may be under further threat. Carnaby's Cockatoos are at particularly high risk – they rely on rehabilitation centres that have said they will stop receiving birds once the virus is established in local populations. They congregate, use wetlands, and are coastal species – and the arrival of the virus in our state raises serious questions about what this means for already-endangered populations.
• We are engaging with experts to understand more about the risk to WA's black cockatoos and other birds and will continue to raise this as new information comes to hand.

IN THE MEDIA:

Yallingup Sand Mine – Seven Regional News

• Featured on Seven Regional News calling out the Caves Road sand mine proposal.
  • "If it wasn't so serious it would be funny. The idea that we would be putting a sand mine in one of Australia's most beautiful and culturally significant places is just absurd."

US Miner Under Further Investigation After Destroying WA Habitat – The Guardian

• The Guardian covered Alcoa's ongoing investigation into the destruction of habitat for black cockatoos, quokkas and numbats, highlighting the 59,000 EPA submissions as a sign of the community's profound discontent with continued clearing.
  • "We have a serious problem in this country with multinational corporations destroying places we love and our laws and governments being completely inadequate to rein them in."

Alcoa to keep mining as WA government overhauls regulations – WA Today

• WA Today reported on the revocation and replacement of Alcoa's Exemption Order.
• I made clear the Government should not be considering a new Exemption Order at all:
  • "This whole process has confirmed what we already knew: that the Cook Labor Government prioritises Alcoa's interests over the community's. This must change and I have no doubt that Alcoa's social licence is nearing its expiry date."

Regional School Buses – ABC Radio

• On ABC Radio this month, I discussed the Public Transport Authority's changes to the Student Transport Assistance policy and the pressure they're placing on regional families whose children attend specialist schools in WA's South West.

State Government to Alter Exemption Order for Alcoa Land Clearing After Outcry – The West Australian and Harvey-Waroona Reporter & South Western Times (Print Editions)

• The West Australian covered the Government's announcement to revoke and replace Alcoa's Exemption Order, with coverage also running in the Harvey-Waroona Reporter and South Western Times print editions.
• I was quoted making clear that revoking is not enough – there should be no new Exemption Order:
  • "Alcoa is continuing to clear ancient jarrah forests, push black cockatoos to the brink of extinction, and threaten our drinking water, all while under EPA assessment, making an absolute mockery of our nature laws."

TEAM JESS

It was a joy to host the Albany Kinjarling weekend with Jordon, Sophie and Tim – a wonderful reminder of the strength of this team and the incredible community we are lucky enough to serve alongside. As always, enormous thanks to our members, supporters and community allies for everything you do.

Header photo: Jess Beckerling MLC standing in front of the Hollowbutt Jarrah Tree on Alcoa’s Mine Site