About 1000 people have gathered in Fremantle at a rally to protest the clearing of land for the government's Roe 8 highway project, calling for a Royal Commission into its planning and execution.
"We deserve better from our state governments," former broadcaster and TV presenter Peter Holland told the crowd at Kings Square.
"We deserve more honesty and less secrecy.
"We deserve what is best in the long term for our society and environment not what is best for powerful vested interests.
"This is now recognised in the wider community – we need a new state government.
"The people committing these appalling acts ... [think] if it moves, if it grows, exploit it and destroy it. They just don't give a shit, frankly. They don't care.
"Never mind we are living in Australia's only declared biodiversity hotspot, one of just 25 around the globe. The Swan Coastal Plain is a hotspot within that. We have more species in this region than in the whole United Kingdom.
"What is wrong with these people? What in God's name is wrong with them?"
Greens Senator Scott Ludlam said the campaign against the project, most recently the calling of a Senate inquiry into alleged breaches of environmental conditions at the work site, had caused Greens, Labor and cross-benchers to set aside their differences.
"It is obscene what is happening down there and if you haven't looked away, I thank you for that," he told the crowd.
"But there is a lot of that bushland they haven't got their hands on yet and that is because of the incredible defiance that this community has shown since the middle of December, putting ourselves in the way.
"We have less than two weeks to go. We will fight this legally in Parliament ... at the site itself, on the streets.
"That place still stands. We are now less than two weeks away from winning it permanently.
"It's kind of fitting that Colin Barnett's final legacy as the leader of this exhausted, bitter, pointless, spiteful talent vacuum of a government is a strip of devastation five kilometres long, that will take three or four hundred years to fix.
"But we will begin that work on the 12th of March."
The state government has rejected allegations of breaches of environmental conditions at the clearing site.
"All pre-construction activity undertaken to date on the Roe 8 project site has been fully compliant with the conditions of the Roe 8 environmental approval and associated management plans. Compliance has been verified by the Office of the Environmental Protection Authority, which continues to monitor work at the site," said Dean Roberts, spokesman for proponent Main Roads WA, last week.
Premier Colin Barnett and Environment Minister Albert Jacob have stood firmly behind the Perth Freight Link project, saying it is the only way to relieve congestion and freight transport issues in WA and saying that clearing will not be halted before the state election.
Mr Barnett has made comments over the past few days criticising the behaviour of protesters.
"The clearing through the Beeliar wetlands is a narrow strip going through a vast bushland area with a revegetated median strip," he said after a recent site visit.
"The impact is minimal. The amount of vegetation being cleared is less than one per cent of the entire Beeliar wetland area.
"The State Government finalised agreements well over 18 months ago and was delayed by various court actions and frustrations. The project is now under way. It's good for Western Australia and the vast majority of people in WA support the project, particularly in the southern suburbs.
"Roe 8 and Roe 9 are recognised by Infrastructure Australia as being part of one of the highest transport priorities in the nation – the Federal Government has committed $1.2b to the Perth Freight Link project."
Under Commonwealth conditions, the state was required to purchase 523 hectares of black cockatoo habitat to offset the loss of 78 hectares of the total 97.8 that will be cleared for Roe 8.
The state is providing 624ha of offset land within a 1081-hectare area acquired by the state government at two sites south of Mandurah.
Those opposing the project have questioned the quality of the environment there and also the offset system, given the decline in the overall quantity of urban bushland in Perth.
Rally for Beeliar Wetlands and to stop Roe 8 in Kings Square FremantlePosted by Lynn MacLaren Greens MLC WA on Saturday, February 25, 2017
