Essentials

Healthcare, education and housing are basic necessities. Everyone has the right to a safe home, accessible medical treatment and affordable education.

The response to the COVID-19 crisis has shown us that governments have always been able to enact policies to ensure that no one lives in poverty and to fully fund the services we need to live a good life, they’ve just chosen not to.

The Greens will invest in a healthcare system that is accessible for everyone through equipment upgrades, improved communications and staff training. This plan will also increase mental health funding in prevention, early intervention and community support.

Successive governments have failed to provide safe, secure and affordable housing for everyone. A major investment in new and existing social housing will guarantee secure, affordable, energy-efficient and accessible housing for all Western Australians. And accessible and affordable education will allow Western Australians to train, or re-train, and embrace new and emerging challenges and technologies without being saddled with tens of thousands in student debt.

We can ensure that everyone in Western Australia has access to education, healthcare and a safe place to sleep.

The Greens will:

As Australians, we pride ourselves on enjoying so many freedoms, yet our laws do not adequately reflect, or protect them. Australia is the only western democracy that does not protect the basic rights and freedoms
of its people in either legislation or the constitution.

Without a charter of rights, it is too easy for governments and corporations to abuse the rights and freedoms of minorities, communities, and the environment.
 

The Greens have a plan to protect the rights of all Western Australians in law by introducing a Charter of Rights that will protect a broad range of rights including personal rights and freedoms, digital rights, economic rights, the right to a clean environment, and conventional civil and legal rights.

The way we design our cities and neighbourhoods plays a critical role in the social wellbeing, environmental sustainability and economic prosperity of our communities. At their best, cities and urban neighbourhoods are places of connection, innovation, sustainability, economic prosperity and wellbeing.

In recent years Perth has continued to expand rapidly, but this growth has been largely on the urban fringe, uncoordinated and at the expense of our communities and environment

Decisions by government have meant that more than 70% of our urban bushland and 80% of our wetlands have been destroyed by suburban sprawl and developments on the fringe, with devastating impacts to our biodiversity and environmental and population health. This uncoordinated sprawl is increasing greenhouse gas emissions, accelerating the impacts of climate change, and contributing to rising inequality.

The Greens will make Perth a truly sustainable, prosperous and connected city through an integrated plan across transport, urban planning, green spaces, sustainable design and community initiatives.

A healthy, resilient environment ensures we have clean air. It provides habitats for animals and protects biodiversity, and is good for our physical and mental health. In addition, our soils, forests, oceans and wetlands are some of our most valuable assets when it comes to tackling the climate crisis. These ecosystems are all vast carbon sinks, drawing down and storing carbon from the atmosphere.

But decades of uncoordinated growth and suburban sprawl, land clearing and native forest logging, overfishing, unsustainable agricultural and pastoralism practices, and large scale mining has devastated our natural environment.

The Greens have a plan to protect, rehabilitate and reconnect our forests, bushland, wetlands and waterways across our vast state.

The regions are a crucial part of WA’s social and cultural identity and essential to our food security and economy.

Yet, successive governments have left our regions under-resourced. For too long, government spending has been concentrated on the city leaving the regions begging.

To ensure our regions are able to thrive, we must invest in rural health and mental health services; educational opportunities; and innovative industry practices in agriculture, forestry and in the renewables sector – all providing quality long-term local jobs. We must also invest in an efficient and accessible public transport system that connects across regional centres.

We can achieve all of this while also protecting our precious natural places that make regional WA unique.