Article by Tom Rabe, courtesy of Financial Review
10.07.2025
West Australian Premier Roger Cook says Australia’s gas industry should get more credit for helping high-emitting trading partners wean themselves off, coal and business and governments need to fight harder to make that case with the public.
The Labor leader on Thursday hit back at critics of Australia’s gas industry, arguing that while championing LNG exports doesn’t “look good on a bumper sticker”, it was critical to broader decarbonisation efforts.
The comments represent an escalation in the WA government’s advocacy for the LNG industry as the Albanese government considers establishing an east-coast gas reserve to ensure domestic supplies to a power grid that the market operator warns is facing shortages within a few years.
In a speech to a business function in Perth, Cook said the social licence of the state’s LNG industry, which exports more than 50 million tonnes each year, depended on the corporate sector building greater support in the broader community.
Green groups have criticised the state government for allowing companies such as Woodside and Chevron to extract and export gas. Cook suggested the significance of decarbonising WA paled when compared to reducing Asia’s coal pollution.
“Yes, we will continue to decarbonise the WA economy, but our greater responsibility lies in helping our higher emitting trading partners to decarbonise, even if it doesn’t make a good hashtag or look good on a bumper sticker,” he said.
“The social licence of the industry going forward may also depend on us building the community’s appreciation of how LNG is contributing to the decarbonisation of our major trading partners.”
Cook travelled to Japan last week to meet with key industry and government leaders to discuss WA’s willingness to supply Asia with LNG, and potentially fulfil future ammonia and hydrogen demand.
“If we’re to realise the economic and environmental benefits from helping our major trading partners to transition over the long term, we need to fight for them,” Cook said.
Cook told The Australian Financial Review on Tuesday Australia’s debate over an east-coast gas reserve was being watched closely in Tokyo, and he had assured his counterparts that WA was a long-term gas trade partner.
Cook ramp-up in LNG advocacy came as state and federal Labor government ministers worked in Paris to salvage a World Heritage bid for a rock art-rich area of WA that activists say is threatened by the industry.
The UN’s scientific and cultural body could reject listing the Murujuga Cultural Landscape due to concerns that industrial emissions – including from Woodside’s North West Shelf facility, to which the Albanese government granted an extension in May – are degrading the rock art.
Federal Environment Minister Murray Watt this week criticised green groups for using the World Heritage bid to try to undermine the Woodside project.
Watt and WA Environment Minister Matthew Swinbourn are in Paris to meet UNESCO officials and lobby for a draft decision in May rejecting the World Heritage bid to be changed.
Representatives from the local Murujuga Aboriginal Corporation are also in Paris fiercely advocating for the recognition of the rock art, insisting industry can coexist with Indigenous culture on the Burrup Peninsula.
The Albanese government’s recent extension of the Woodside facility has divided the local Aboriginal community, with some Indigenous landowners heaping pressure on UNESCO to stare down the government.
Mardathoonera woman Raelene Cooper travelled to Paris to urge UNESCO to pressure the Australian government to limit industry on the Burrup Peninsula.
“If the government gets its way, the changes would significantly reduce the protections for Murujuga’s outstanding World Heritage values,” she said on Thursday.
Meanwhile, another traditional landowner wrote to UNESCO this week, urging the body not to water-down the conditions for listing the Murujuga Cultural Landscape.
“World Heritage must not be reduced to a symbolic gesture while industrial emissions continue to damage the very values that make Murujuga so extraordinary,” Ngarluma Traditional Custodian of Murujuga Samantha Walker said, in a letter seen by the Financial Review.
A Woodside spokeswoman said industry and Aboriginal culture could co-exist on the Burrup Peninsula.
“Co-existence is not just possible; it is something we have demonstrated for many years,” she said.