As it happened: WA news on Wednesday, May 27

The outbreak of diphtheria in WA’s north has reached the state’s prison population, WA Health has confirmed.

“The Department of Health is aware of two previous diphtheria cases linked to correctional facilities, which were appropriately managed by the local public health units,” a spokesperson said.

“The Department of Health is liaising with the Department of Justice about vaccination of prisoners and staff.”

It is understood the cases were detected in facilities in the Kimberley, with most of the outbreak – which is also present in the Northern Territory and South Australia – affecting communities in the north, including the Pilbara and Goldfields.

Fortescue metals and operations chief executive Dino Otranto says the money the company has spent on an advertising campaign targeting the federal government’s diesel tax fuel credits is “a drop in the ocean”.

The company recently launched a major national advertising and media campaign that contrasts everyday Australians struggling with cost-of-living pressures against the billions of dollars in diesel fuel tax rebates that large mining companies receive.

“First, on the size of the campaign in terms of relative media campaigns and support for media outlets. It’s kind of a drop in the ocean, to be honest,” he said at the Australian Financial Review’s mining summit in Perth today.

“Running a few TV ads, it’s been blown up as this major propaganda campaign.

Sticking with the Australian Financial Review’s mining summit, Premier Roger Cook has flagged that the state government has plans to investigate the potential of refining the state’s canola crop in a bid to move into the biofuels industry.

The Premier said it was “nuts” that the state grew vast amounts of canola but exported the unrefined product overseas.

“So we believe there’s a huge opportunity around biofuels, low-carbon liquid fuels, and from that perspective, we’re doing a lot of work to see what the opportunities for WA are,” he said.

“In Western Australia, we’ve done two things really, really well: we’ve grown crops, and we’ve dug up rocks.

“What we’ve never been good at is refining those products, value adding, and then selling those products further on.”

Premier Roger Cook says he remains confident that any changes made to the country’s proposed domestic gas reservation scheme framework will not adversely impact Western Australia.

While the framework is still only in its draft phase, the scheme is set to be applied nationally and come into effect from July next year.

WA already has a 15 per cent domestic gas reserve policy in place, but the draft sets out that gas exporters will need to set aside 20 per cent of its gas supplies for the domestic market.

Cook said he was yet to see the full detail of the national model.

A Perth man who was arrested and charged with murder after his mum was found bludgeoned to death outside her Byford home has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity.

Harley James Jeffries, 35, was arrested in the small Wheatbelt town of Bindi Bindi about 200 kilometres north-east of Perth on June 2, 2024 after Evette Verney was found by neighbours collapsed on her driveway.

Jeffries appeared in Stirling Gardens Magistrates Court in Perth this morning via video link from prison where the court heard that he was swinging a machete towards police officers during his arrest.

He was later charged with being armed in a way that may cause fear, acts or omissions causing bodily harm and obstructing police officers.

We’re at the Australian Financial Review Mining Summit being held in Perth today, where BHP WA iron ore assets president Tim Day has reiterated the company’s commitment to meeting the industry’s net zero emission targets in the wake of damning media reports.

The mining giant has been under fire after the ABC and The Guardian published internal documents that showed the miner’s Pilbara iron ore operations were forecast to cut emissions by just 1 per cent by 2030, a rate which casts doubt over the company’s pledge to reach net zero emissions by 2050.

However, Day told the summit that BHP was already ahead of its target commitment, which was still more than three years away.

“BHP’s made commitments – as per all companies, most of them in the room, have all similar types of commitments – then in our case it’s 30 per cent by FY30, we’re already at 36 per cent, so you’re already advanced on where we said we would be now in terms of decarbonisation,” he said.