The WA Labor Government has been in power long enough that the heavy reliance on spin by Mark McGowan, Roger Cook and others is coming back to haunt it. Often politicians are afforded the luxury of being well removed from the scene before their BS is exposed. Not so here.
In the first case under review today, the timelines around the $6 billion-plus Westport project at Kwinana, based on fallacious assumptions about the lifespan of the Fremantle docks, have just blown up in Labor’s face. Even more seriously, the second failure is the renewables transition strategy to the extent it relies on the unproved capacities and the feasibility of green hydrogen, now rent asunder by the very bloke who sold them the pup — billionaire Andrew Forrest. Twiggy has left Labor’s hydrogen dreamers high and dry by walking away from promised 2030 production targets as he tries to placate investors about his own over-hyped business model.
Paul Murray Those left with McGowan’s mess now have to rationalise his promise to end coal-fired electricity generation in 2029 — and the yawning shortfall in energy sources he pledged would arrive to fill the void. I’ll leave the hydrogen fun for later. Westport’s BS has been a pinata just waiting for the right moment.
This newspaper’s Matt Mackenzie reported two weeks ago that documents submitted to Federal authorities for an environmental review of the Westport project showed its likely opening date was 2042. As Mackenzie rightly noted, this cal.