It's World Environment Day, June 5, 2025, and in WA we have a Premier who continues to push for the approval of gas projects that will pollute our climate until 2070.  

A Premier who has killed off previous efforts to strengthen federal nature laws.  

A Premier who is always quick to mention having to balance the environment with industry when people raise legitimate concerns about the impacts we’re seeing on our lands and in our climate.  

Can the federal government provide the leadership Western Australians need to protect our nature and climate? Will the Premier finally start listening to the people – not the fossil fuel lobby? 

Prime Minister Albanese has visited WA twice since the 2025 election landslide. In the lead up to the election, WA was flagged as being critical to the election success, but in the end the election was called before even 5% of the WA vote was counted. An outcome that could have taken the sting out of the toxic pro-industry, anti-environment politics coming from the West. 

It is astounding that the WA Premier continues to wield unprecedented influence over Canberra. Already he has demanded the Federal Environment Minister approve the extension of Woodside’s North West Shelf, Australia’s oldest and most polluting gas plant, which Minister Watt followed through with last week.  

This move has sparked backlash from communities around the country, who expected the re-elected government to act on its mandate for climate action.   

The WA Premier is now circling to once again undermine the Albanese government’s efforts to strengthen federal nature laws, tagging them as “anti-job” but failing to actually engage publicly on any policy detail. 

Last week there were two critical announcements made by the Federal Government. The first Treasury disclosed that natural disasters in the first half of 2025 have cost our economy $2.2 billion – that’s on top of the cost to nature like coral bleaching and the impact on households from flooding.  

The cost of losing our natural world can't be measured - but we have a Premier who likes to talk about the benefits of industry without accounting for the economic impacts of the heating climate. 

Second, the federal government released new emissions data - revealing WA’s climate pollution is rising fast, not falling. Emissions jumped nearly 4 per cent last year, reaching near-record levels. We’re not cutting emissions, we're sleepwalking into climate chaos. 

Minister Watt has committed to fixing our Federal environment laws. This is a crucial piece of work that we need to get right. It should come back to the basics of the Graeme Samuel review – because our environment laws are failing.  

Let’s be honest, they have been watered down and tampered with for too long. There is an illusion of protection by going through the motions of assessment processes which claim to strike the “right balance” between industry and nature protection.  

In reality, industry is consistently prioritised - and our environment is now in crisis. Nature is vanishing—but most people don’t know just how fast.  

Australia has the second highest rate of biodiversity loss on Earth. Over the past 200 years, more than 100 species have become extinct in Australia. And in the last 10 years alone, 550 Australian species have slipped closer to extinction. More than 2,200 native plants, animals, and ecological communities are now officially under threat. Without change, many species could disappear in our lifetime.  

In WA, over the last few months alone, we have seen one of the worst coral bleaching events ever recorded. Last summer, we had huge tracts of our forests die, and fires, floods, and cyclones have had profound impacts on communities across the state.  

Nature is our best defense against the impacts of climate change. While the government continues to allow the bulldozing of some of our most critical remaining ecosystems, farmers and communities are working on nature restoration projects.  

We’re in a leaky boat, and the Premier needs to stop poking holes in the hull and instead start patching it up.  

That’s what we’ll be working towards at the Conservation Council of WA, with a host of other groups across the state and country. We urge the Premier, and Prime Minister to join in on that work and help protect and restore what we have before it’s gone. 

Find out more about the Protection Agenda for Nature.