Conservation groups have reacted angrily to news the WA Roger Cook Government is planning to overhaul the state's environmental regulations, likely making it easier for fossil fuel companies to ram through polluting projects with minimal scrutiny.
Lock the Gate Alliance WA coordinator Claire McKinnon, who was in the audience during the Premier’s business breakfast where the overhaul was announced, said,
“This is sickening. All this reform will do is fast track pollution and environmental destruction, not projects. Premier Cook appears hell bent on cementing Western Australia’s trajectory into becoming little more than a petrostate while simultaneously gaslighting the people he is supposed to represent.
“This is state capture on an Orwellian scale. Dirty fossil fuel gas is green, according to the captured Cook Government, which is now trying to trash any skerrick of environmental regulation at the behest of the oil and gas industry.
“These reforms would sadly make it easier for fracking companies like Black Mountain to pollute and poison the Kimberley, where the Texan company plans to drill hundreds of gas wells for the export market.”
ENDS