By continuing the $400 electricity bill credit for a third year in a row for every single Synergy and Horizon Power account holder he has again crafted a budget that literally has “something for everyone”.
WA Premier Mark McGowan at the 2023-24 budget lockup.Hamish Hastie
Two years out from the 2025 polls,this budget is not quite an election pitch.
However,McGowan is betting there is no better way to win over hearts and minds in a high-inflation environment than setting fire to a quarterly power bill,and by the time the election does roll around those ordinary people won’t forget who was holding the match.
McGowan said he was proud to give ordinary West Australians a government handout.
“I walk around Rockingham City shopping centre and people come up to me and say,after the last time we did it and the time before,‘I’ve never received anything from the government before and you gave us a $400 electricity credit,I’m so grateful it helped us when we needed it’,” McGowan said.
Honestly,there is not much to hate in this budget. It puts the state’s fifth and sixth multibillion-dollar surpluses (worth $7.5 billion collectively) to good use at a time when West Australians need it.
The boosted $826 (including $326 in federal funding) electricity credit for 350,000 of Perth’s most struggling households demonstrates some thought went into targeted relief.
Questions will rightly be raised as to how impactful a $400 credit of Andrew Forrest and Kerry Stokes’ accounts will be.
It doesn’t fuel inflation much further,which is at 5.8 per cent in Perth.
There are some new big-ticket items like $3 billion to decarbonise the south-west electricity grid,as the state edges closer to the closure of its coal power stations,but these are huge technical projects that are likely years away and will probably take place in a wildly different economy.
Despite consistent “nothing to see here” rhetoric on two of the state’s biggest problems – housing and health – the government continues to fire the money cannon at them.
An extra $10 billion investment in health over the past three years is welcome,but it will take some time for that tree to bear fruit.
The social housing program is also noble,but needs to happen quicker.
Worryingly,pressure on the state’s housing market looks set to worsen even further.
There are 27,000 homes under construction right now in WA,but the state’s population is expected to grow by another 56,000 people in the financial year.
Spending on housing construction crashed 8 per cent in 2022 due to labour shortages,but that is partially expected to recover next financial year with a 6.5 per cent rise.
The same issues facing housing are also causing headaches for the state’s infrastructure program,which reached a record $39 billion in this budget mostly to cover cost pressures.
This program was amped up during COVID when the world was facing a black hole of economic activity,but global stimuli sent construction and mining sectors soaring in the other direction and now cost blowouts and time delays are the norm.
Metronet is front and centre of these labour and material pressures.
In budgets of the past,a $1.2 billion cost blowout would be a balance-destroying monster from the deep,but when you have so much money flowing into the government coffers the numbers kind of lose their meaning.
The premier didn’t mention it in his speech,but government staffers happily pointed it out to the media without us even needing to ask.
That $1.2 billion figure is nearly half of what the government’s initial fully costed pricetag was for its Metronet program in 2017,and a hidden line item in the budget reveals that the Commonwealth has not yet agreed to pick up its share of the costs.
“Noting that negotiations with the Commonwealth Government had not been finalised at the time of the budget cut-off,it has been assumed that these cost increases will be jointly funded consistent with the current funding arrangements,” the budget said.
McGowan put it on the record there were no new time delays for major infrastructure projects,but I’m sceptical of that. If you can’t build your house on time,the government can’t build train lines on time either.
There is plenty of candy in this budget to go around,but it frustratingly still lacks vision for the state beyond mining and resources.
Much of the $463 million in economic diversification money remains linked to the mining sector in some way.
Where is the funding to elevate WA’s technology and software sectors?
Let us not forget that the creators of Australia’s most successful ever startup – Canva – because WA didn’t have the foundations to support their growth.
Despite the absence of a grander vision,most West Australians will still be happy with this budget.
It has directed the state’s fortunes back into voters’ hip pockets while depriving Synergy of another raid of their bank accounts,setting up McGowan for a few more joyous conversations with Rockingham locals.
Now,pass the butter.
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