WA MPs’ Christmas break delayed as Cook rushes to pass controversial bill

The lower house will be dragged back to parliament on December 16 to fulfill Premier Roger Cook’s Christmas wish of passing his controversial State Development Bill before the end of the year.

Debate on the bill in the upper house will go into next week as the Greens scrutinise the laws that will give the WA premier and state development minister extraordinary powers to push through major project approvals.

The bill will likely pass with the support of Labor and the Opposition, but it will be amended in the upper house, meaning it will need to go back to the lower house to become law.

A spokesman for Cook confirmed that once debate has wrapped up in the upper house the lower house would return from their holidays on December 16 to agree to the new amendments.

“We have reached agreement with the Liberals on some amendments, and we are in negotiations with the Greens over an additional amendment,” he said.

“On this basis we expect it to pass the Upper House next week and plan to recall the Legislative Assembly on the 16th of December to finalise this important legislation for Western Australian jobs.

“The State Development Bill is critical to the government’s priority for Western Australia to remain the strongest economy in the nation and the best place in the world to get a quality job.”

Greens leader Brad Pettitt was only made aware the government was willing to negotiate over a third amendment five minutes before Cook’s comments were provided to this masthead.

The government has offered to include a 5 year statutory review period of the new laws. The Greens sought a two-year review period, which would have probed the laws’ effectiveness ahead of the next election.

Pettitt accused Labor and the Liberals of colluding to ram through the bill while denying his party was filibustering to frustrate the process.

With surrogacy laws passed on Wednesday, the upper house has a clear runway to debate the bill into next week.

The Greens do not support the legislation but have several amendments on notice to improve transparency and lessen the power it gifts to the Premier and State Development Minister.

Pettitt said it had met with the Opposition’s lead MP on the Bill, Steve Thomas, earlier this week to discuss the amendments, but he had told them a deal had already been done to support his minor transparency amendments on the proviso the opposition did not support the Greens amendments.

“Despite the opposition highlighting some of the key concerns of this bill around concentration of power to the premier and a lack of checks and balances, it’s been deeply disappointing to see them, frankly, collude on this bill,” he said.

“No bit of legislation comes to the Parliament perfect. That’s their own words. That’s the opposition’s words. So our job is to make it better and when we have an opposition teaming up with the government not to improve legislation, not to attend to committee, not to accept amendments, then [Thomas] should say, is the parliament doing its job and is the opposition doing its job?”

The Greens are attempting to move the bill into a committee, which would see its passage delayed until later next year, but that does not have the support of either the opposition or Labor.

Both the opposition and Labor has accused the Greens of using debate around its committee motion to filibuster debate.

Petitt rubbished that claim.

“So parliament will run next week and if need be we’ll extend hours next week as well,” he said.

“This is going to take several days, and I think it’s absolutely legitimate that we do our job.

“We’re not here to filibuster. We’re not going to waste time, but we are here to ask serious questions.”

Thomas said the Greens’ posturing on the bill had been an “embarrassment to watch”.

“Their proposal to send the Bill to a committee is simply an attempt to delay it so they can mount another anti-development campaign,” he said.

“I said in Parliamentary debate yesterday that no committee report would satisfy the Greens, so sending it to a committee would be a waste of time.

“The Greens in debate agreed with my statement but have still set about to filibuster the debate as some sort of childish protest.

“Our children’s future homes, jobs and industries deserve better than this unedifying spectacle.”

The State Development Bill has emphatic backing from industry, which hopes it will improve major project approvals timeframes, but has frightened conservation groups who decried it as anti-democratic and open to abuse by fossil-fuel proponents.

Premier Roger Cook says he needs the bill passed urgently to hasten lengthy planning approvals for renewable projects, which are needed to ensure his government can exit coal-fired power generation by 2030.

At the heart of the controversy around the bill is the power for the State Development Minister of the day to seek modification orders allowing alterations to existing environmental and planning law processes that may apply to a major project approval.

This power raised the eyebrows of the Law Society of WA, which said it would allow ministers to “override conventional environmental protection safeguards and the related statutory approval processes”.

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