Opinion Articles

Train Lights, Train Wrecks, and the State That Never Learns

Only in Western Australia could we reach the year 2026 and suddenly “discover” that trains need lights. Not because someone had a brainstorm in Perth, but because enough people have been killed at level crossings over the years that regulators have finally decided visibility might matter. So now we have a draft standard — AS 7531 — and the public is invited to make submissions, as if the laws of physics are up for consultation.

WA Farmers February 26, 2026

Opinion Articles

The rural reality check the medical lobby needed

One Nation has floated a proposal to tackle Australia’s chronic rural GP shortage by requiring doctors to spend time in the regions before enjoying full Medicare billing privileges in the cities. From the reaction in some quarters, you would think someone had proposed cancelling anaesthetics. Apparently, asking newly minted doctors to spend a stint in the bush now qualifies as conscription, economic coercion and constitutional catastrophe. Let’s inject a little oxygen into the room. Medicine

Trevor Whittington February 25, 2026

Opinion Articles

Transitions without the capacity

“The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design” Friedrich Hayek 25 Feb 2025: the State Minister for Agriculture announced a $3.3m to Beaufort Rivier Abattoir as part of the live export transition. 25 Feb 2025: Beaufort River puts out a press release announcing it was shutting its doors “due to ongoing livestock shortages. The decision follows continued supply constraints that have

Trevor Whittington February 25, 2026

Opinion Articles

What does the rail lease actually require?

This is yet another instalment in my running theme: the State rail debacle. A saga of privatisation, monopoly infrastructure, and governments that appear to have misplaced both the keys and the contract. Twenty-five years after Western Australia leased out its freight rail network, one basic question still has no straight answer: what does the Brookfield/Arc lease actually require? Who is responsible for maintaining and upgrading WA’s freight rail network, and how on earth do we force the

Trevor Whittington February 19, 2026

Opinion Articles

How close is “too close” for a 300-metre tall wind turbine?

There are moments in public policy when you read a document, glance at the date, and briefly wonder whether someone has accidentally fed the printer a filing from another era. The Western Australian Planning Commission’s draft Renewable Energy Planning Code is one such moment. Released for public comment at the end of 2025, it poses a question of pressing contemporary relevance: how close to your house should a 300-metre-tall wind turbine be built? This would

Trevor Whittington February 17, 2026

Opinion Articles

State’s long rail tale of woe

WA has a long and bipartisan talent for pretending it is in charge when it plainly is not. Nowhere is that more obvious than on the 5500km of the old Westrail network — an asset sold at the turn of the century and then quietly abandoned by every government since. This is not a story about ideology. It is not even a story about privatisation. It is a story about a State that sold a

Trevor Whittington February 13, 2026

Opinion Articles

We can’t have a debate on rail without understanding the cost–benefit

Western Australia’s grain freight debate has become oddly unhinged. We talk endlessly about road damage, truck numbers, safety, emissions and who should pay. Rail tragics insist that reopening Tier 3 lines will solve all our problems. Road realists respond that we should simply widen and upgrade roads to allow triples. Yet the one thing farmers and road users actually need to have a rational debate about is largely absent: a clear, public, apples-to-apples understanding of what it

Trevor Whittington February 12, 2026

Opinion Articles

All Aboard the Transition

THERE is one thing Australian governments have become genuinely world-class at: shutting industries down. When it comes to building what comes next, however, the record is far less impressive. The live sheep export ban is shaping up to be the latest – and perhaps clearest – example of this pattern. The Commonwealth has proven highly competent at ending a trade. What it has shown near-total incompetence at, is replacing that trade with anything functional, funded or operational

Trevor Whittington February 5, 2026

Opinion Articles

The Minister for Agriculture and Fisheries has a budget credibility problem

JACKIE Jarvis was appointed Minister for Agriculture and Food in December 2022. She picked up responsibility for Fisheries in March 2025, giving her three budgets and one election to get her head around the DPIRD budget papers. Now, long-suffering readers – along with the minister’s office and the diversity crew scattered across DPIRD’s multiple Perth HQs – will know exactly where this is going. Once again, I’ve gone back to the State budget to point

Trevor Whittington January 29, 2026

Opinion Articles

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