Prime Minister Anthony Albanese recently embarked on a whistle-stop tour of Western Australia, where he managed to strategically avoid confronting the more shameful aspects of Australian society, and governmental policy. Fiona Carberry imagines a more just itinerary.
BRIEFING NOTE FOR PM’S WEEK IN WA
1 September, 2024: Fly into Perth, Western Australia. Your COMCAR driver will be waiting at the airport in the BMW ix50 SUV from the new EV fleet.
As you drive along the Great Eastern Highway into the city, you’ll pass the office of Senator Louise Pratt. No need to call in; you’ve already heard her views about LGBTIQ+ questions in the Census. Pass Crown casino on the banks of the Swan River, then cross the Causeway, where Perth’s homeless sleep under the river bridges.
Meet Premier Roger Cook, who will tell you for the umpteenth time that, “WA is the economic engine room of the nation.” Walk from his office to Parliament House to glimpse the city skyline lit by the neon signs atop the offices of the big fossil fuel polluters – Woodside, Rio Tinto, BHP, and Chevron.
Day 2 – Perth and surrounds
2 September, 2024: A Transperth bus (one of only 4 EVs in the State’s fleet) will take the Cabinet on a quick bus tour around Perth. (Unfortunately, you’re a week too early to ride on the first electric bus made in WA). The bus will drive through the wealthy Western beach and riverside suburbs, including the top nine of 87 Perth suburbs with median house prices above $1 million. This is Liberal heartland turned Teal at the last election – Independent, Kate Chaney’s electorate of Curtin.
South of the river, 10kms from the city, stop at Karawara. Originally almost exclusively a public housing estate, one in five homes in Karawara is still public housing. Despite that, Karawara recently joined the “million-dollar real estate club” – a sign of the hyper-inflated housing market.
Heading further east to Canning Vale, the bus will stop at Banksia Hill Juvenile Detention Centre, where an Indigenous boy suicided two days before you arrived; the second in less than a year, with the first boy detained in the youth wing of the adult Casuarina prison.
Your newly appointed Minister for Indigenous Australians, Malarndirri McCarthy, will disembark at Banksia Hill. You won’t stop here – you’ve made the point that prisons are the State’s responsibility. However, as the Minister reminded you, Indigenous suicide and youth detention are important indicators for Closing the Gap. The sobering reality is that three decades after the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, Aboriginal children are still dying in custody in WA.
From the city, board the train and travel north through the mortgage belt to the new Yanchep Station, part of the $12 billion Metronet rail project, jointly funded by the Commonwealth government. Unfortunately, you missed the sausage sizzle and hula hoops to celebrate the opening of Yanchep Station. Remember to compliment the WA Minister for Transport on the railcars made in WA. Don’t be fooled into thinking her views are simpatico with your ‘Future Made in Australia’ vision; her vision will focus only on a ‘Future Made in WA’.
The COMCAR driver will be waiting in the 1,000-cars Yanchep Station parking lot for the drive 150kms north east to Northam. The new federal seat of Bullwinkel (marginally Labor, according to the ABC’s Anthony Green), encompasses Northam – home to Mia Davies, the State Member for the Central Wheatbelt and former leader of the WA National Party. She recently announced she will run for the Nats in Bullwinkel, so she can take to Canberra the farmers’ fight to “keep the sheep”. If you run into Mia in town, remind her that you’ve given farmers four years notice of the Government’s decision to end the cruel practice of live sheep exports.
Inspect the Yongah Hill Immigration Detention Centre in Northam, accompanied by the new Minister for Home Affairs and Immigration, Tony Burke, to see first-hand how desperate asylum seekers who arrive by boat are incarcerated for years alongside criminal adult men awaiting deportation. The Australian Human Rights Commission’s April 2024 report into the Centre reveals an environment of drug and alcohol use, self-harm, and violence. The AHRC’s first recommendation is that such mandatory detention be a last resort.
You’ve said before that the Government can “walk and chew gum at the same time”. A savvy journalist might ask, can the Government uphold animal rights and human rights at the same time? Stay overnight at Yongah Hill – you can choose from the Keating, Howard, Rudd, Gillard, Abbott, Turnbull, and Morrison wings; the Albanese Wing is being refurbished.
Day 3 – Road trip to the South West
3 September, 2024: As the COMCAR heads South down the ever-wider Kwinana Freeway, notice how congested it is with recreational utes and SUVs; the utes’ exemption from the Luxury Car Tax on imports and your Government’s concessions to large SUVs and utes under the new fuel efficiency standards won’t do much to discourage these popular polluters. Transport is the third largest source of Australian greenhouse gas emissions, and road transport accounts for 75 percent of WA’s transport emissions.
Drop off the Minister for the Environment and Water, Tanya Plibersek, in Rockingham at the electorate office of the Minister for Resources (identifiable by the sea lion mural on the side), Madeleine King. The ministers will visit the nearby Shoalwater Islands Marine Park. They can thrash out their differences over protection for marine life and habitats vs approving more offshore oil and gas developments, while they paddle a tandem kayak to Seal Island to see real sea lions, and to Penguin Island before the penguin colony becomes extinct.
Next, drop off the Minister for Defence, Richard Marles, at the HMAS Stirling Naval base on Garden Island, where American nuclear submarine the Hawaii is docked for maintenance work. If the AUKUS defence deal critics’ prediction is correct that the US won’t part with any of its nuclear-powered submarines that we’re buying, it could be the only one Richard sits in.
Continue South on Forrest Hwy (named in honour of ‘Twiggy’s’ ancestor, Sir John Forrest, WA’s first premier). Veer inland to the east onto Coalfields Road, and take a quick detour to Wellington National Park. Honeymoon Pool is the ideal spot for a selfie to send to the First Fiancé. Eat your packed lunch (a BLT roll) in the coal-mining town of Collie while the COMCAR’s battery is recharged.
The State Government is shutting down the nearby coal-fired power stations by 2030 so Collie is in the transition to renewables. You and the Minister for Climate Change and Energy, Chris Bowen, can chat with the workers building the batteries that will power the electricity grid to find out what they think about Peter Dutton’s “nuclear fantasy” for Collie. Someone is sure to ask you though, why you’re so pro-nuclear subs based in WA but anti-nuclear power plants.
Day 4 – Fly in, fly out of the North West (NW)
4 September, 2024: Meet the Minister for Transport and Regional Development, Catherine King, as her guest in the Rex Lounge at Perth Airport, where you can speak without fear of bumping into Senator Fatima Payman. Rex doesn’t fly to Exmouth (1,200 kms north of Perth), so board a Qantas flight. You’ve missed the season for swimming with whale sharks on Ningaloo Reef. Watch WA’s favourite author and conservationist Tim Winton’s Ningaloo Nyinggulu documentary instead on ABC i-View.
On arrival in Exmouth, meet the Minister for Defence again at the American base in North West Cape. When you’re tired of Richard’s briefing on US intelligence, board the RAAF plane and enjoy a scenic flight to the remote Aboriginal communities on the Dampier Peninsula, north of Broome. Look out for Border Force Officers on the Peninsula turning around boats of illegal fishers, and sending asylum seekers packing to Nauru.
Watch Genocide in the Wildflower State, which documents past assimilationist policies, and think about what you’ll say to the Traditional Owners of the Peninsula (formerly Catholic missions), about the Government’s commitment to truth-telling and treaty. A quick prayer at the mother-of-pearl shell altar in the Beagle Bay church might help.
Begin the return journey 2,500 kms to Perth on the RAAF plane.
Bypass the Pilbara, and its Burrup Hub super-industrial zone. You’ve been there, done that. The people of the Pilbara will only repeat the line of every WA Premier, with the variation that the Pilbara is the economic engine room of the nation and the State. Your Government just needs to say NO to Woodside’s mega-polluting masterplan to expand the Burrup. Say NO to drilling gas around Scott Reef and piping it onshore, NO to destroying marine habitat, NO to extending the life of the NW Shelf gas plant until 2070, and NO to destroying Traditional Owners’ ancient rock art.
Stopover in the Murchison outback on Wajarri Namaji country. Join a group of school children visiting the CSIRO radio astronomy observatory. The observatory is part of the international Square Kilometre Array, a 50-year project to build the world’s largest radio telescopes – a rare, far-sighted and collaborative endeavour, diversifying WA’s economic base from mining into science.
Sleep in a swag overnight, inyarrimanha ilgari bundara, “sharing sky and stars”.
Day 5 – Fly home
5 September 2024: Listen to the Pigram Brothers, Nowhere Else but Here, as you fly back to Canberra via Perth.