Undermining the watchdog is against WA’s nature. We must defend our thin green line

It’s our nature as West Australians to stand up for the places we love. We love the ocean, getting out on the water, bushwalking in the South West’s beautiful forests, spotting dolphins, eagles and cockatoos, camping out under the stars. We know WA’s nature is unique and extraordinary. We also know WA has special natural resources – resources that have helped make our economy strong and helped to deliver the lifestyles we enjoy.

But what makes us strong also needs protecting. WA’s nature relies on the Environmental Protection Authority. Like the thin blue line responsible for safety in our society, the EPA is the thin green line that helps preserve our natural law and order to ensure we don’t destroy our ultimate life support system.

In recent weeks, even while forests are collapsing after our longest, driest summer on record, the rhetoric about slashing “green tape” to make it easier for industry to fast-track project assessments has been heating up. While turtles and penguins die in devastating numbers, both major parties have been competing to brag about their plans to gut the EPA and sell out WA’s nature to big business.

WA’s EPA has been buffeted over the years but has survived mostly intact through successive governments. But now it is facing a major – and deeply worrying – overhaul.

We know what these reforms really are. They are directly from big businesses wanting to exploit WA’s resources for their own short-term profits.

The changes that have been proposed would remove or seriously diminish the public’s right to appeal bad decisions; weaken the independence of the EPA by allowing governments to issue it with “statements of expectations” and explicitly put industry representatives onto its board; and seriously compromise the integrity of the environmental assessment process.

What’s just as strange is the apparent lack of understanding from senior politicians about the legal system they are proposing to change. The Liberals’ policy announcement last week included the wholesale removal of appeals against EPA reports, saying this will “stop projects being tied up in litigation”.

Liberal leader Libby Mettam should know that those appeals are not litigation – in fact, appeals under the Environmental Protection Act are decided by the environment minister of the day. You might expect that a government would trust its own ministers to sort out these appeals, which no review has ever recommended removing entirely.

Premier Roger Cook should know better than caving in to gas industry pressure to weaken our existing laws.

He has accused the Liberal party of copying Labor’s policy; well, imitation is unflattering when your work was informed by corporate rather than the public interest, like when an industry report alleging project delays seems to have kick-started this whole saga.

Even if there were numerous projects stuck in the approvals system, the environmental assessment process is vital. When done properly, good projects can go ahead, bad projects can be amended or stopped, and WA’s precious natural environment can be protected.

“If there is a need for assessments to be conducted more quickly, then the EPA should be better resourced, not undermined.”

But in fact, the EPA chair revealed last week there are only 23 projects that have been with the EPA for longer than four years. Seventeen of them are delayed at the proponent’s end and one is being finalised this month, leaving just five which are continuing to be fully assessed because of their multiple potential impacts on WA’s environment. If there is a need for assessments to be conducted more quickly, then the EPA should be better resourced, not undermined.

And if there are projects collectively worth billions of dollars waiting for their environmental assessments, West Australians should be asking – worth billions to whom? Certainly not the average West Australian – 90 per cent of the gas produced here is shipped offshore and research shows the state’s gas industry pays less in royalties than WA drivers pay in rego.

Ms Mettam said last week that we need policy that is sustainable and pragmatic, not driven by ideology. I completely agree.

But that is exactly why these reforms cannot be waved through. Our nature laws are there to protect the places we love: our native forests, Ningaloo, the Beeliar Wetlands, the Martuwarra/Fitzroy River. To West Australians, protecting these incredible places has become part of our cultural identity.

It is shocking that this unfounded attack on the EPA is happening even while our forests are collapsing and native animal populations are being devastated by heatwaves and drought.

Clearly our thin green line should be stronger than ever, to protect the rights of current and future West Australians to a healthy environment.

We call on the government and the opposition to remember that it is in our nature as West Australians to protect the places we love.

It is critical that we protect WA’s environment from rampant fossil fuel expansion and stand together as West Australians to defend our thin green line.

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