Cost of living was front of mind, but did the WA budget live up to expectations?
Rebecca Johnson regularly shops at hunger relief charity Food Bank to provide for her family, but it’s getting harder to fill a trolley these days. While I do think that there are very well-intentioned people in Parliament doing their best to hear the need on the street and meet that need, they cannot hear and understand what the individuals in the community are going through. The government says it’s listening, pointing to its power bill relief and school assistance payments to parents of school age children. Electricity will go up by $46 in the next year, water by $45 and it will cost an additional $25 for car registration. The government is forecasting that inflation will ease, but for now, places like food banks still say they’re being swamped. What we’re seeing now is it’s a representation from every part of the community, including dual income households who are just trying to balance the budget so they can keep their home. While cost of living pressures have been the main focus of this year’s budget, small businesses were hoping for more, along with social services. Unfortunately for many small and family businesses, it’s all glitter and no gold. We still fail to see meaningful payroll tax reform. We’re extremely disappointed today that there wasn’t an uplift in the indexation for community service organisations. There has been huge, the biggest spends we’ve seen in the community services, but they haven’t fixed the problem for existing services that are being cut. For now it’s back to Food Bank for Rebecca for the foreseeable future. Handouts are great and I appreciate them to be a hand up for a certain period of time. But long term it doesn’t actually help because that money disappears. What we need is a long term alternative. While this budget has been described as one of the most hopeful in recent times, there’s concern it doesn’t provide for frontline services struggling to cope with rising wages and operating costs.