Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2026-2027

Mr SMALL (Forrest—Opposition Whip) (16:30): Long-time listeners of the Federation Chamber won't be surprised to know that the focus of my questions today begins with Labor's offshore wind proposal for Geographe Bay. It started at 8,000 square kilometres, an area some 10 times the size of Singapore, being locked up for an offshore wind farm. That's hundreds of the most modern turbines, each taller than the biggest skyscraper in Perth, being connected across Geographe Bay, a whale migration superhighway.

My community was outraged. After a community backlash at the bungled consultation process, the zone was halved to 3,995 square kilometres, which was declared in August 2024. In January this year, the government granted the final feasibility licences to three projects across 732 square kilometres of that zone.

The question really is whether this government—which has, as I said, bungled the consultation process—failed to realise that the imposition of the vast exclusion zone threatens the activities that are the lifeblood of our community. This includes fishing, or what's left of it after the state Labor government decided to ban commercial fishing, boating and diving, as well as the important contribution that tourism makes to our local economy.

Given that these three ventures are foreign owned—Westward Wind is a joint venture with Spain's EDP Renewables and France's EDF—the question is whether these feasibility licences will be progressed by this government and whether the Geographe Bay offshore wind farms will actually lower power bills for households and businesses in WA's south-west. If the government can't categorically confirm that it will lower power prices in south-west WA, the question is why on earth are these proposals proceeding at all?

Offshore wind is being cancelled around the world. Large turbine manufacturers are making significant parts of their workforce redundant in response to turbine cancellations, which does beg the question: why is this government so intent on pushing ahead with these projects at the same time the rest of the world seems to have woken up? Until we get some straight answers on these three projects, south-west residents will remain sceptical of the approach this government takes to managing climate change and energy, not least because we'd have a hard time believing any commitment the government does make with regard to the lower power prices.

We're still waiting for the $275 power price reduction that we were promised before the 2022 election! It seems that RepuTex modelling is a phrase that we don't say in this place either! The member for Wannon referred to the Cheaper Home Batteries Program blowout from $2.3 billion to $8.5 billion.

I'd like to know whether the minister, who is not here, has done any work to understand what the distribution of those grants has been in relation to household income. Early criticism of the scheme was that this was reckless spending; it wasn't targeted in any way. The government tells us this budget is predicated on fiscal responsibility and restraint, so you'd think such a program, now running at $8.5 billion and counting, would have been carefully targeted on some sort of socioeconomic base or subject to means testing.

I'm looking forward to hearing from the government as to whether or not those concerns have been addressed through this process. As a proud Western Australian, when it comes to the energy portfolio, there is nothing more important to me than the government's proposal around the gas industry and the imposition of a nationwide reservation scheme, which in principle is the sort of thing we've been calling for for quite some time.

But the interaction with Western Australia's long established 15 per cent domestic gas reservation scheme seems to be very unclear because ministers have been out saying different things. The industry doesn't know, because it can't get a straight answer. This is deeply impactful when you consider things like the Browse Project being on the horizon.