What do you call pork-barrelling when it involves an entire state? The Albanese government isn’t going to forget that not merely did Western Australia deliver it majority government but that West Australians were unique in 2022 in swinging hard to Labor.
So, what West Australians want, they get. That starts with the rotten GST deal that the Morrison government put in place to nullify the impacts of Western Australia’s energy and mineral wealth on its share of GST revenue. Far from reining in the special treatment afforded to the west, Anthony Albanese extended the deal off to late in the decade. The cost, calculated by Saul Eslake, who has waged a lone war against the rort, will total nearly $40 billion over 11 years in make-up payments to the rest of the states and territories, and is likely to be closer to $50 billion if the price of iron ore remains above US$60 a tonne. Persistent talk of a weak Chinese economy has so far only pushed the price to just under US$100.
While not as spectacular as the GST blow-out, the government’s refusal to make any more than cosmetic, bring-forward changes to the Petroleum Resource Rent Tax (to which the big fossil fuel companies were asked to give their permission) is costing taxpayers billions a year in foregone revenue that is going to local and multinational fossil fuel giants — revenue that will never be recovered given it is derived from a finite resource.
Labor’s enthusiasm for gas exports and for the fakery of carbon capture, which extends to taxpayers funding what is normally private sector-funded resource mapping, is more broad than WA, but neatly dovetails with the government’s desire to remain on good terms with not just resources companies but also the media they control in Perth via Kerry Stokes.
To this end, Albanese yesterday signalled he was willing to gut another Labor election commitment, to establish an independent regulator. Environment Protection Australia (EPA) would “be a tough cop on the beat. It will transform our system of environmental approvals. It will be transparent and independent. It will make environmental assessments, decide project approvals and the conditions attached to them, and it will make sure that those conditions are being followed on the ground.”
Now, the prime minister tells The West Australian that an independent EPA would have no approval role. So much for an election commitment.
To understand the reason, look no further than the way the Cook government in Western Australia backflipped on Indigenous cultural heritage laws last year.
The WA government is a rotten plaything of mining and energy interests, operating as the policy arm, and private militia, of big miners and fossil fuel companies. By dedicating itself so determinedly to satisfying every demand emanating from the state, the Albanese government offers a national version of the WA disease, at huge expense to the taxpayer.
The only issue that is not up for debate is Labor’s changes to industrial relations laws, which have, unsurprisingly, prompted extensive complaints from mining companies. But in its union donors, Labor has a far more important constituency to please than mining companies on IR. Besides, it will be aware that it’s pro forma for mining companies — whose ranks include some major wage thieves — to claim any industrial relations changes will destroy mining, end investment, collapse the economy etc.
But on other issues, Labor’s precarious electoral state serves to massively magnify the malignant political influence of the resources sector and the media it controls. A government that is happy to curb the export revenue generated by foreign students can’t even bring itself to tax properly the export revenue earnt by fossil fuel giants from West Australian offshore gas projects, let alone curb those exports to reduce Australia’s disproportionate contribution to the climate crisis.
On issues like climate, and the environment, and taxation, Labor is governing in the West Australian interest, not the national interest. And it’s giving control of policy to some of the most toxic corporate actors in the country.
Is Labor putting WA interests ahead of the rest of the nation? Let us know your thoughts by writing to letters@crikey.com.au. Please include your full name to be considered for publication. We reserve the right to edit for length and clarity
