Three thousand nurses and midwives rallied outside the Western Australian parliament as part of a state-wide strike for better wages and conditions. Chris Jenkins reports.
The Western Australian Labor Party (WA Labor)
The Western Australian Labor government has announced it will lift the ban on hydraulic fracturing (fracking) of underground geological structures this month. A statewide moratorium on fracking has been in place since September 2017.
More than 250 people gathered on August 26 for the Frack Free People's Rally organised by Lock the Gate Alliance and Frack Free WA outside the Western Australia State Labor Conference.
The WA state Labor government announced on June 20 that it will not obstruct the construction of the four uranium mines in the state that have already received environmental approval. But it says it will block future proposals.
Toro Energy's Wiluna project, Vimy Resources' Mulga Rock project, and Cameco's Kintyre and Yeelirrie projects were all approved before Labor won the March election. Environmental approval for Yeelirrie was initially denied amid fears several species of subterranean fauna would be made extinct, but it eventually got the nod anyway.
Western Australia Premier Mark McGowan fronted the media on April 6 with the news that the state’s economy is in a turmoil not seen since the Great Depression of the 1930s.
The recently elected Labor government has warned that its first budget will be “tough and uncompromising”, though tough and uncompromising to whom is yet to be seen.