Trevor Whittington, CEO WAFarmers

Like every parent watching their adult kids edge toward the real estate market, I look at the numbers with growing alarm. In 25 years, Perth house prices have jumped from roughly $200,000 to close to $900,000 — a three-to-fivefold increase — while wages have barely doubled from $50,000 to $100,000. That’s not a generational squeeze; it’s a structural impossibility.

The Cook Government’s demersal “reform” package is not fisheries management. It’s fishing for votes at the expense of the two and a half million West Aussies who never step onto a sports-fishing boat loaded with the latest eco sounders. And, like most of this Government’s environmental crusades, the rhetoric is heroic, the delivery is sloppy, and the consequences fall squarely on the people who don’t have a big boat parked in their driveway.

A century divides the Roaring Twenties from today’s so-called Turbulent Twenties, yet the distance feels strangely compressed. As we limp toward the midpoint of our own decade, the parallels grow sharper and harder to ignore — reminders that our present upheavals are rarely as unique as we like to believe. Historians are rightly suspicious of neat analogies, but here the similarities are too blunt to dismiss.

Western Australians love two things: arguing about politics and arguing about fishing — and not necessarily in that order ...

After a decade of Labor “modernisation,” the federal wage system now comes with a hidden tripwire buried deep in the fine print — and it’s farmers who keep stepping on it. Under the Pastoral Award 2020, a harvester driver on a base machine operators’ rate of $32.90 an hour can suddenly cost you $48.50 once the 152-hour overtime cliff kicks in. That’s not rational economics; it’s central planning with double penalty rates.

I’ve stood on the bridge of the Fisheries portfolio before, watching the charts, reading the soundings, and warning the captain that reefs lay ahead. As a former Chief of Staff to a Fisheries Minister, I recognise the signs when a government vessel starts taking on water and the crew pretend it’s just spray over the bow. WA is again steering toward the same rocks: science shouting from the crow’s nest, lobby groups whispering on the bridge, and politicians tightening the sails to catch votes instead of heeding the compass. Now Captain Jackie Jarvis has the helm. We will see whether she keeps a steady course guided by evidence or follows her predecessor into the shallows of cheap populism and political drift.

Long-suffering readers know my refrain: Western Australia can build stadiums, museums and Metronet tunnels, yet still cannot build a permanent home for its agriculture department. Call it DPIRD or the old Ag Department, or—as I prefer—the Department of People, Inclusion, Re-education and Diversity. Titles change, logos change, ministers change. The reality stays the same.

Matt Canavan’s exposé at the recent Senate Estimates, which had the Department of Agriculture’s executives sweating in their seats, deserves wide circulation ... “There’s lots of talk about the need to increase reforestation—effectively, the conversion of agricultural land to forests ..." ... If Matt Canavan is the Senate’s zealot hunter, then Western Australia’s Senator Matthew O’Sullivan is its Maremma the Sheepdog that protects its flock ... In committee, O’Sullivan’s questioning tore open the government’s $139.8 million Sheep Industry Transition Assistance Package ...

As a critic of the climate catastrophists—and someone who prefers a long-term, science-based view of climate change—I thought I’d share a basic understanding of the science and terminology behind the BoM forecasts we rely on ... Every time a farmer glances at the Bureau’s forecast, the same terms pop up: Indian Ocean Dipole, El Niño–Southern Oscillation, Southern Annular Mode, cold fronts from the Great Southern, tropical moisture feeds, and the Leeuwin Current ...

The ink is barely dry on Canberra’s new 2035 carbon targets, and the climate catastrophists are already eyeing 2050, the holy grail when net zero will finally be achieved. Out in the Wheatbelt, most farmers shrug. Another distant date, another government promise, most have tuned out with the view that what I can’t see does not hurt me — a bit like the GRDC levy that nicks 1 per cent of farm-gate revenue. But let’s be clear ...