Appreciate what you're saying, but I don't agree with each point...

Appreciate what you're saying, but I don't agree with each point you're raising, nor the sarcastic tone you've elected to take when raising them.

1) "unreliable outcomes" - we don't know when the feds will reply, but it occurring tomorrow is just as likely as it occurring 6 months from now. Yes, things have been horrifically slow-going thus far, but if anything, to my mind, that suggests something is more likely to occur from the DCEECW sooner rather than later (especially given this step is supposed to have taken 4 weeks, and we're currently at almost 6 months).

2) Appreciate that the feds are under no obligation to reply within any timeframe. But if the Premier of WA has come out as saying that the EPA needs to be restructured/reset/whatever, because projects which could have a net-'green' benefit are being held up and severely delayed by EPA red tape, then I'd imagine there would be grounds for pressure to be applied to the feds to simply "reply to comments", and that this isn't something that should feasibly be expected to take any more than 3-6 months AT MOST to occur. Even for a government department.

3) "This probably resets our queue in the EPA or Fed inbox" - I don't think this is how it works. To be fair, neither of us have any idea how the EPA's prioritisation process works, as has been indicated by the completely seemingly random order in which some applications appear to sit dormant for huge periods of time, where others appear to get updates EXACTLY following the EPA's proposed timelines (see the recent limestone quarry proposal as an example). But if a step in the process (publish proponent response to submissions) was already taking 5.78x the alleged 4-week timeline to occur, I don't imagine the EPA would be "chucking it at the bottom of the pile and waiting until it eventually came back to the top", as you're suggesting. What would the public parties who made comments during the period last year be thinking, if the proponent's response to their comments weren't even published online for them to read until 2 years after the time when they actually made the comments? The EPA would I'm sure want to avoid this from occurring, ideally, I'm sure.

4) "You're assuming that once the Response to Submissions is cleared by the EPA then they will dive straight into the report. Anecdotally that's not going to happen, the EPA isn't following their timelines."
This is objectively incorrect. As soon as the response to submissions is cleared and published online, we're automatically in Stage 4 of the 5 stage process. Whether or not one of their (apparent) 3 workers decides to actually start writing up their report immediately after this progression to Stage 4 occurs is another question, but it starts the 6 week timer for Stage 4, either way. And I dispute your "the EPA isn't following their own timelines" being applied to Stages 4 and 5 of the process - this is again, factually incorrect. If you'd properly done your research, you'd have noticed that the EPA is actually managing to stick to their timelines for Stage 4 (writing and publishing their reports) quite well, as of late. Examples include the Yogi Magnetite Project (public submissions response published Feb 8th, EPA Report published April 8th), Atlas Project (public submissions response published Jan 8th, EPA report published March 13th), the aforementioned Limestone Quarry (public submissions response published Jan 25th, EPA report published March 7th), etc etc.
As I've highlighted in the past, Stage 4 has much less scope to experience timeline blowouts, as it's simply a matter of the EPA collating all of the information they've already requested and received, and tidying it up into a nice official document. There is no more waiting for other stakeholders to provide information, or back-and-forth, etc.

5) "You're assuming that once the report is written it will receive immediate sign off. Who knows, maybe an election throws all of that into disarray?"
Really? Who knows, maybe an election...?? We're going with "what if's" now? What if Russia decides to nuke a NATO nation and starts World War 3? That will CERTAINLY put a spanner in VRX's hopes of getting Arrowsmith North up and running!
/s

6) "History says this isn't going to progress on the "standard" timeline."
See point 4 above.