The WA government has announced plans to reclassify dingoes as no different to wild dogs - paving the way for them to be culled at will. But dingoes are unique and deserve to be recognised as such.
Treasurer Scott Morrison says the present system is out of kilter and needs reform.
Joel Carrett/AAP
To make a concession to the coal lobby would flout the technology-neutral foundation of the NEG and have much more serious implications than throwing in some money to boost the GST pool.
The new Martuwarra Fitzroy River Council aims to overcome a management problem faced by many traditional owners: the fact that major rivers flow through lands home to many different groups and languages.
The 35 m-diameter dish antenna of ESA’s deep-space tracking station at New Norcia, Western Australia.
europeanspaceagency/flickr
High-speed rail for Australia has been on the drawing boards since the mid-1980s but has come to nothing. Three states are developing medium-speed rail with federal funding, but NSW is missing out.
In the field studying the rock association in the Doolena Gap greenstone belt, 30 km north of Marble bar in the Pilbara region of Western Australia.
David Murphy
The remote Pilbara region of Western Australian formed many billions of years ago when the Earth was much hotter and the crust softer than it is today.
The Victorian mountain ash forest has been severely affected by fires and logging. To determine the actual health of the forest, we need to look at the quality, not just the quantity of what remains.
Graeme/flickr
In the aftermath of fires or logging, conservation needs to focus on recovering the health of the remaining vegetation, not just the size of the forest or woodland.
An echidna in the Western Granites at Jam Tree Gully.
John Kinsella
On his bush block in the WA wheatbelt, poet John Kinsella attempts habitat restoration and reflects on the responsibilities of the writer as a witness to species loss.
Colin Barnett has rejected calls for him to step down as an MP.
AAP
The study shows the negative effects of sex work’s criminalisation, including a reluctance of workers to go to police and clients using it as an excuse to abuse workers.
The Living Space development in Cockburn, Western Australia, has won praise as an innovative mixed-use social housing project.
Courtesy of HHA Projects
A Fremantle monument to three white explorers was revised in 1994 to acknowledge the violence committed against Indigenous owners. As Australia struggles to reconcile its racist past, perhaps this monument shows a way forward.
Solar panels are still a rarity in WA’s lower-income areas.
Orderinchaos/Wikimedia Commons
Western Australia has huge amounts of sunshine and wind, yet only 7% of its energy comes from renewables. What’s more, most households in the poorest suburbs are still locked out of the solar panel boom.
A message ploughed in the land calls on the federal government to help drought-affected farmers near the wheatbelt town of Kondinin in 2001.
Liza Kappelle/AAP
In two 30-year periods, an area in WA roughly the size of England was stripped of native vegetation for farming. It has produced some of our finest writers, from A.B. Facey to Dorothy Hewitt to Jack Davis.
Blessed with mineral royalty payments, the Western Australian Government has seen its allocation of GST revenue slashed.
Lukas Coch/AAP
The government shouldn’t cave to WA’s calls for a change to the way GST is divvied out. The current system has served Australia well.
Scott Morrison said the Productivity Commission had been asked to inquire into the impact of the current system of horizontal fiscal equalisation.
Dan Himbrechts/AAP
Despite its name, the National Electricity Market doesn’t reach WA. But those charged with guiding the eastern states’ energy transition should look west once in a while.