Save Smiths Beach

06/03/2026

The fight for Smiths Beach is ON❗️

🔻 The EPA appeal process has now formally commenced, giving the community a genuine opportunity to have the serious environmental concerns around this proposal properly examined.

🔻At the same time, the WA Parliamentary Upper House Select Committee continues its investigation into the planning pathway used at Smiths Beach and the conduct of the State Development Assessment Unit.

🔻Alongside this, legal actions are now underway to ensure transparency and hold this government accountable for how this project has been handled.

🔻All of this means one thing:

🔻Smiths Beach is not going quietly.

❗️Thanks to the incredible support from the community, the issues surrounding this development are now being examined on multiple fronts.

❗️Thank you to everyone standing up and making your voices heard!

04/03/2026

FINAL 24 HOURS

👏🏼 A huge thank you to everyone who has supported the Save Smiths Beach EPA Appeal Fund so far. The response from the community has been incredible.

✊🏼 This appeal is about making sure the serious environmental concerns around visual impact, land clearing and wastewater are properly examined.

👊🏻 The more support we receive, the stronger our position becomes — not just for this appeal, but for protecting Smiths Beach into the future.

🤜🏼 If you’ve been thinking about contributing, the next 24 hours are critical.

🤙🏼 If you believe Smiths Beach deserves proper environmental scrutiny, please consider contributing today.

❗️Donate if you can.

❗️Share if you can’t.

❗️Every bit helps.

❗️Let’s finish this together.

https://gofund.me/ee85e3fe6

27/02/2026

A Simple l, Powerful Message

One of our wonderful volunteers Kelly made this video on her regular walk along the western headland which is under threat by the developer at Smiths.

The headland and the wilderness experience of the cape to cape track is under threat from three storey hotel development on the unique exposed headland.

You can help save the headland by giving to our Save Smiths Fighting Fund at the GoFundMe link below and also in our bio.

The current EPA appeals process is the last chance to Save Smiths.

If you can, please donate.

Thanks for the amazing and ongoing community support!

https://gofund.me/120352164

26/02/2026

WHAT A COMMUNITY

In the last 48hours $8,000 has been raised to help fight to Save Smiths Beach.

Keep it up and get YOUR donation in TODAY.

We are aiming to raise at least $10,000 in 10 days.

The funds go directly to the legal cost for the appeal against the recent EPA recommendation.

https://www.gofundme.com/f/save-smiths-beach-again-fight-campaign

Cheers to everyone and to our wonderful community.

Smith’s can’t thank you all enough.

24/02/2026

Smiths Beach needs your help — right now.

We have just 10 days to raise $10,000 to fund a formal appeal against the EPA’s decision on the Smiths Beach development.

If you care about transparency, environmental protection, and accountable decision-making in WA.

Please contribute.

Link in below and in our bio.

Share this video.

https://www.gofundme.com/f/save-smiths-beach-again-fight-campaign/donate?modal=donations%2Cshare&tab=all&source=btn_donate_sticky

23/02/2026

17/02/2026

🚨 EPA Report 1802 – Why This Decision Should Be Appealed

The EPA has recommended approval of the Smiths Beach development — but there are serious issues that deserve public scrutiny.

Here’s are the base grounds for appeal to help with your submission:

🚫 Inconsistent with 2009 EPA findings

In 2009, the EPA excluded the western headland and upper slopes from development. Report 1802 now allows disturbance in those same areas — without clearly explaining what has changed.

🚫 National Park land cession removed

Previously, ~21 hectares were to be transferred into National Park to secure permanent conservation. That statutory protection has now been removed. Private ownership under community title is not the same as National Park tenure.

🚫 Vegetation retention is uncertain

The EPA relies on a performance-based bushfire plan. If standard bushfire rules apply later, more clearing may occur than assessed.

🚫 Long-term ecological integrity at risk

Vegetation inside residential lots will be fragmented, pruned and fuel-managed. Retention does not equal ecological function.

🚫 Visual impacts remain unresolved

Independent peer review found the Visual & Landscape Assessment lacked verified photomontages and did not properly assess impact significance — particularly on the western headland and beach views.

🚫 Sewage solution still unproven

The proposed wastewater system remains unresolved in this sensitive coastal setting. If it fails to meet standards, sewage may need to be trucked to Dunsborough — creating ongoing traffic, cost and environmental risks.

🚫 Key decisions deferred

Critical issues are pushed to later planning, licensing and building stages. The EPA’s role is to decide whether impacts are acceptable — not whether they can be managed later.

Appeals can be lodged here:

https://appeals-system.appealsconvenor.wa.gov.au/createappeal/

IMPORTANT Appeal Info

You must answer four basic questions

Type of appeal - Decision of Environmental Protection Authority (EPA)
Decision of EPA Appeal Type - Report and recommendations (proposal or scheme)
Report number - 1802
Proposal Description - Smiths Beach

15/02/2026

“No Reliable Visual Modelling”

The EPA’s own commissioned peer review by GHD states:

“The assessment currently provides no reliable visual modelling.”

It goes further:

“The assessment does not enable independent verification of visual impact predictions — limiting confidence in the accuracy of what’s been presented.”

Read that carefully.

🚫 NO RELIABLE VISUAL IMPACT MODELLING

🚫 NO INDEPENDENT VERIFICATION

🚫 LIMITED CONFIDENCE IN ACCURACY

For a major development on one of WA’s most sensitive coastal landscapes.

And yet — approval by the EPA

If the modelling can’t be relied upon, and the visual impacts can’t be independently verified, then what exactly was the EPA assessing?

Environmental decisions of this magnitude must be grounded in robust, testable evidence — not assumptions.

When confidence in the modelling collapses, confidence in the approval collapses with it.

Tell Matthew Swinbourn, the Environment Minister what you think - 61 8 6552 6800

14/02/2026

EPA’S BIZARRE BACKFLIPS MUST FACE SCRUTINY

The EPA has struggled — and now backflipped — its way into approving one of the most contentious developments in WA history.

This isn’t a minor mistake. It’s a pattern of inconsistency and confusion from the very body charged with protecting our environment.

Despite overwhelming community outrage and decades of safeguards meant to protect the Leeuwin-Naturaliste Ridge, the EPA has waved through a design that experts have criticised and locals fear will irreversibly damage this priceless coastal landscape.

Why is the watchdog suddenly approving what it once struggled to justify?

Why is compliance flexible when the stakes are high?

Who is steering this agency — and whose interests are being put first?

The EPA’s bizarre backflips aren’t just questionable — they demand accountability.

If the authority responsible for protecting WA’s environment can’t stand up to pressure, then who can?

And if we allow this to slide, what precedent are we setting for every future development in this State?

This must not stand.

Tell Matthew Swinbourn, the Environment Minister what you think - 61 8 6552 6800

13/02/2026

EPA Relied on Distorted Visuals - Approved Without Proof

The EPA’s own independent visual assessment peer reviewer found the developer’s key image introduces a “perceptual distortion.”

The peer review also confirmed there were that the developers “visual impact assessment currently provides no reliable visual modelling” as well as no technically verifiable photomontages — no camera data, no lens specifications, no modelling methodology.

Translation?

The visuals could not be independently verified.

For a $280 million development on one of WA’s most sensitive coastal landscapes, the EPA approved a proposal based on imagery its own expert says is unreliable.

That is not rigorous environmental assessment.

That is a breakdown in standards.

WAPC guidelines require transparency and robust modelling.

Yet distorted, unverifiable visuals were accepted - this is not incompetence, it might be far worse, and needs to be investigated.

Who inside the EPA signed off on this?

Who prepared the distorted images?

Who decided that compliance no longer mattered?

Western Australians deserve to know whether their environmental watchdog is still independent — or whether its standards shift when the project is large enough.

When the EPA ignores its own expert, it calls into question the real motivation behind the EPA.

Tell Matthew Swinbourn, the Environment Minister what you think - 61 8 6552 6800