State Development Bill 2025

Second reading

resumed from 16 October

Hon Dr Steve Thomas (4:10 pm): I have been waiting enthusiastically for some period to address the house on the State Development Bill 2025. It is with great enthusiasm that, given the timing, I start my second reading contribution.

My issue with the bill is not, as it is for many others, that it will empower the government to fast-track development. Rather, my issue with the bill is that it will likely attempt to empower the government and, like many previous attempts, fail to fast-track anything. If there is a fault with this bill, it is that it is one more attempt by the government to deliver a better approvals process when all those that came before have failed. In a while, I will go into a bit more detail about the various applications that have not been successful to date and why we need to be a little sceptical about this latest iteration, but I will start with the bare basics of the approvals process and why we are talking about this at all.

Why are we in this house talking for the sixth or seventh time about the need to improve the approvals system to make it more streamlined and create more certainty into the process? To some degree, I think we have become very complacent, but as a society we have also become used to the idea of blocking development—that development is a negative, not a positive. If anything has been successful in that component, it is the massive public campaigns against almost any development that we see these days. It is too much to say that it is just NIMBY; nobody likes development near them, and I understand that.

I live 25 kilometres from what is probably the best lithium mine in the world, down in the South West. The people who live next door do not like it. Nobody likes to have a mine immediately next door. The people in the town get dust from it. I absolutely understand that. But Western Australia's development and wealth and the wealth of its people are directly related to the ability to get projects operating across the state that provide the income that people need. We have, across multiple governments and Parliaments, become very good at getting in the way. I applaud the government for this latest attempt to try to make it better. The reality is that I am not convinced that this bill will deliver anything, but at least it is an attempt. We get in the way of development all the time. These days it is too easy to prevent a development from going forward. A public campaign is mounted for every development; pretty much every significant development has a public campaign now. That is great, because we have to have social licence, and social licence is now applied across the board. If people want to export live sheep, build a mine or start an industry, they have to have social licence, which effectively means that the people who buy their cappuccinos in Fremantle have a say on whether or not a project is delivered.

I am immensely frustrated with the process of having to have social licence to provide the income that people need through resources and development. It is interesting how many people, even those in my patch down in the South West—I like to think that we are a bit more pragmatic than most—particularly in the retirement areas, say, "I've made my money now. I'm reasonably well-off. I don't want any other development in the state. I've got mine. We don't need further development in the state." I look at them and wonder how their wealth comes in. So often it comes in as shares, partly individually and partly as their superannuation. I ask them, "Have you got BHP shares?" Yes. "Have you got Rio Tinto, Woodside, oil and gas or mining shares?" The vast majority do, but they do not like the oil, mining and gas industries. The double standard is astounding. The wealth that is generated has set them up in multimillion-dollar houses. I understand that. If people want a measure of the wealth of Western Australia, they should look at the housing price that people are still paying because they can afford to—because the mining and gas sectors in particular, more than anything else, drive this massive wealth component of Western Australia. But a lot of people are now saying that that does not count—"I don't need it anymore therefore the state doesn't need it anymore." That is absolute nonsense, but that is now the battle we have and we have made it so easy.

I remember when I first got into politics 20 years ago—that seems like a long time ago because it was—and I was having battles with people who wanted to introduce third party appeals rights for projects, which has always frustrated me because it involves the ability for someone who is completely unaffected by a project to appeal against it on the basis that they philosophically do not like it. I cannot think of anything more problematic than what that system would put in place across the board. It would be a terrible outcome for any state and jurisdiction.

But that is ultimately why we have the bill before the house today. The government rolls out these processes of trying to improve the approvals process and in effect it keeps running up against the same obstacles—a bureaucracy that is large, empowered and risk-averse, be it state or federal, and a community that has been led down the path of opposition to development and sees it as an incredibly negative thing. It is interesting because theoretically this bill will put forward a curtailing of some of that—whether or not that is achieved remains to be seen—on the basis that the government thinks that the green project should be allowed to override these areas, but not necessarily other projects.

It is written in the second reading speech that the government is highly optimistic about how this will impact on green energy and green development. I get it; in theory, if the government increases the capacity of development in all things, it will increase the capacity for green energy. But it will find that the same issue applies. Indeed, I am already getting complaints about Clean Energy Link–North. The problem with Clean Energy Link–North is not that it is being developed—it is that it is underfunded and under-planned. It proposes to run a couple of sets of 300-kilobyte lines up to the north to pick up renewable energy. That is half of what will be required if the government were to ever fulfil its energy transition plan on its current timeframe. Of course, we all know it will not get there. I am already getting complaints, which I think is hilarious. Unfortunately, we are so trained to oppose everything that gets anywhere near us at the moment, that even if somebody's view is of net benefit to the state, a region or a community, the NIMBY approach means that it needs to be opposed and suddenly these things are dragged out.

The third paragraph of the minister's second reading speech is great. It reads:

To leverage our state's unique position and ensure that Western Australia remains competitive in a rapidly changing global economy, this government has committed to investing in new infrastructure and streamlining Western Australia's regulatory and approval systems.

I think the government believes in a streamlined system, but it has been completely incapable of delivering it. I will give the government its due. After it was elected in 2017, one of its first acts as a government was to institute the machinery-of-government changes, some of which were supposed to make the process of approvals, development and infrastructure better. It was supposed to help. I asked for years about the output of the machinery-of-government changes. Eventually the government stopped answering my questions because it could not point to any major significant improvements, really.

To be honest, it is probably a little unfair to blame this government for that specifically because pretty much every government's machinery-of-government changes have had the same result. It shuffles around the deckchairs. Departments are called by different names, a few are merged and a few are demerged, and the end result is that the same bureaucrats do the same job they were doing with a different letterhead. Nothing else changes. The machinery-of-government changes in 2017, which was the current Labor government's first attempt at them, did not alter much.

Having recognised that despite the best intentions in the world the government had not really achieved much with those machinery-of-government changes, it embarked upon this thing called Streamline WA. If anything sounds like it is going to deliver a more streamlined approvals process, surely it is Streamline WA. If it went really fast, it could have been called jet stream WA. The problem with that is it would be looking backwards at that point. Streamline WA is, effectively, a computer portal that allows people to fast-track their proposals through a computer system. How well did that work? It worked about as well as the firearms portal system worked recently. That is about the level of its productivity gain. That could not be called a success story in any way, shape or form. It beggars belief that the government would consider that it achieved anything.

Streamline WA put out a progress report. A press release of March 2023—I like the subtitle—says that it is "Making it easier to do business". I quite like that as an agenda item. On page 4 is Streamline WA's achievement snapshot. What were its achievements? Bear in mind that Streamline WA was brought in on December 2018. What had it achieved by 2023? It had recruited 186.5 FTE officers, so it had another 186.5 bureaucrats. From its innovative recruitment campaign, the Department of Water and Environmental Regulation and the Department of Mines, Industry Regulation and Safety attracted 164 environmental officers. The achievements are divided into four areas. That one was resources. Another is the legislation and regulations. Two acts were amended in Parliament—the Mining Amendment Act 2022 and the Mining Amendment Act (No. 2) 2022. Streamline WA had completed some small business friendly approval program workshops, under people and culture. It had apparently strengthened case management around the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder. Under systems and processing, it introduced a new risk assessment tool, which in theory reduced processing time by 50% for more than 400 low-risk proposals to either take or disturb threatened species. Effectively, if there was no risk, Streamline WA managed to halve the time in which the little or no risk could be assessed. The interesting thing about the report after five years is that the achievements in the snapshot have nothing to do with the timeframe of the proposals, so what did Streamline WA achieve? Streamline WA was so successful that since then we have had multiple attempts to streamline the approvals process in Western Australia. I struggle to see how that could be given a pass mark. Once again, the government tried.

After 2018 a number of things were going on. Members might remember in particular that at the end of 2019 and into 2020 we had this thing called COVID. Just before COVID, the government, through the Planning and Development Amendment Bill 2020, introduced what it called significant development pathways. What are they? They are pathways to streamline approvals for significant developments. Obviously, the machinery-of-government changes failed and Streamline WA failed so the government tried its next version, which were the significant development pathways.

In the meantime, of course, COVID came along. For those members who were not here at the time, during COVID the government said that the country and the state were in crisis economically. I am not sure whether it actually was, but anyway. There were health issues and other things, which is fine, and the government did a reasonable job at keeping the mining sector ticking over. There is a compliment, minister. He might want to pull that up in Hansard.

Hon Stephen Dawson: Who said that? What did you say?

Hon Dr Steve Thomas: I said that the government did a reasonable job at keeping the business ticking over during COVID. Do not say that I never say anything nice about you. That should get me through the next 12 months.

The Planning and Development Amendment Bill 2020 was meant to streamline planning because when COVID came around we could not have developments held up and the approvals process had to be faster. The first efforts did not work so the government tried a faster approvals process. We supported those improvements in opposition. I said in Hansard on 17 June 2020:

I suspect that if we get to the end of this process and discover that we can cast through projects under an accelerated or streamlined system, the question will have to be asked of government, Parliament and everybody: why would we go back? If this is about streamlining the processes, why would we return to an un-streamlined process?

There was a bit of unruly interjection in the middle. Then I said:

If the government’s agenda is to streamline the process, why would we return? I can see us back here in 18 months’ time, hopefully—perhaps not all of us …

There was an election in the middle:

but most of us—and potentially debating why these particular measures should not be held for a long time.

We had to improve the approvals process through the planning system. Members will be pleased to know that on 19 May 2022, after passing the Planning and Development Amendment Bill 2020, we dealt with the Planning and Development Amendment Bill 2022. Guess what that did? It made permanent the approvals processes that were put in place during COVID under the Planning and Development Amendment Bill 2020. Funnily enough—I will not read the whole thing again—on 19 May 2022 I said:

We debated the Planning and Development Amendment Bill 2020 on 17 June 2020 to which I made a contribution that I think is relevant.

I will not read it out a second time. I also said:

As I said, it is a good thing to say what you believe and believe what you say. That was nearly two years ago, so 18 months was not exactly accurate. One of the questions we need to address is whether we are defending a planning system that is particularly successful or is this just another incarnation of a government’s attempt to make it better? Members commented on how they think the current planning system works. It might surprise members to know that I am something of a sceptic—

That has not changed:

and I think there are issues that should be dealt with around the planning system.

The 2020 bill was supposed to make it better, and the 2022 bill was supposed to make permanent the 2020 bill that made it better. That is only logical at that point because members would think we would want to make those changes. Was that the end of the story? Was that the end of the improvements to the planning and approvals process put forward by the government because the government had been successful? Could it rest on its laurels, pull out the stogie cigar and pour a nice whisky while government members sat back with their feet up because the government had done the job on the approvals? Not quite. What came next? Obviously, there was still an issue with the approvals of mining projects, so the government announced the fast-tracking of mining approvals. How effective has that been? Is that working particularly well? Has that delivered the goods that we fast-tracked? There are a few miners out there who are struggling to get their approvals in place, I can tell members.

Not long after that we had another debate around strategic industrial areas because they were going to deliver the industry development that was needed. That was another fast-tracking of the approvals process. Despite the fact that we had an infrastructure coordinator within the Department of Planning, Lands and Heritage, we had to go one step further and introduce Infrastructure WA. What is the role of Infrastructure WA? Infrastructure WA is there to work out what infrastructure is needed to fast-track industry and development.

The President: Order, members.

Hon Dr Steve Thomas: I was just getting warmed up!

The President: I could tell, honourable member. It is my perfect delight to interrupt the debate for question time.

Debate interrupted, pursuant to standing orders.