WA budget to deliver cost of living relief

Good evening, there’s some help for your household finances tonight. A state budget headlined by cost of living relief but hiding in the detail hikes to your power and water bills. This the Treasurer and Premiers first budget is more people than ever before pouring to WI our state on track to hit 3 million people by next year. Today’s big ticket announcement A $400.00 energy credit, the same as last year to lower your electricity bill. A payment for every synergy account. Renters and small business owners also included. First time buyers will get stamp duty relief exemption on properties up to $450,000 and concessions on homes value between 450,000 to 600,000. Treasurer Rita Saffioli announcing a $3.2 billion operation surplus, saying our economic growth in this state is far from over, but you’re set to see a 2.5% increase to your water and electricity bills and a 5% increase to the Emergency Services levy. As for Metronet, that jewel in the Labour government crown, it’s now blown out to $12.6 billion. State politics reporter Michael Genovese begins our coverage in the premier’s electorate of Kwinana, Brad Horton. He’s selling his golf clubs just to make ends meet. Hopefully yours. Thanks, brother. Thanks, mate. Appreciate it. That’s it. A husband and father. He’s welcoming the help with his power bills. Can’t complain, ’cause it’s 400 bucks. But you know, other stuff like helping towards rental stuff would be better. Brad is waiting to find out whether or not he has cancer, hoping today’s record health spend will cut down waiting times in the public system. It’s quite worrying, ’cause I don’t know what’s happening inside my body because. And yeah, I wish the public health system was a little bit better and the wait list weren’t as long. In her first budget as treasurer, Rita Safiotti largely stuck to the script, delivering another $400.00 power bill. Credit Brads is one of a million households and businesses eligible. It works like this, $200 cut from your power bills around July and August. You’ll get it again around December and January, something that we did last year and that we would do again and that it would be a an amount that would be welcomed by the WA community. What we encourage the government to do and the opposition as we head into an election climate is to turn their focus to longer term goals and strategies. The budget shows the average cost of power and water will rise 92 dollars. Public transport becomes $257 cheaper on average. The cost of running a car will rise by $25. The Emergency Services levy goes up $15. Factoring in the credit, our analysis shows household bills reducing by 124 dollars. My government is providing support for families, for seniors, tradies for renters. In fact, this budget delivers for every Western Australian. We’ve seen a lot of great things in this budget. One of the things that we’ll be working with government on is a more targeted approach for those most in need, like the Rent Relief program, a health system which is on life support. We we have 10,000 children waiting to see a pediatrician. 2 years it takes to see a pediatrician. Another $700 million blowout for Metronet. The new numbers on the project are scary. From 9 individual projects it’s expanded to 18 while the cost has gone from $2.9 billion to 12 billion. I commend the budget to the house. Saffiotti surplus $3.2 billion again thanks to iron ore revenue, the government today increasing its long term price forecast from the normal 66 U.S. dollars a tonne to 71 U.S. dollars a tonne, still well below the current spot price of iron ore, 115 U.S. dollars a tonne another big surplus for the big state with deep pockets. But there’s still stress in the suburbs. Everything’s gone up, man. We’re not really the lucky country anymore. For Rita Saffiotti, there was no need to rewrite this book. Sugar hits taste nice. While actual reform can be hard to swallow this far out from a state election. Once again, big business wanted payroll relief and once again they were denied, while for a few first home buyers, they’ll see this budget as a major win. But what the book really does is pull back the blinds on the biggest issue that WA faces right now. It’s the challenge of population growth. By this time next year, we will have 3 million people in WA. It’s no wonder that the growth of our expenses is outrageously high, around 9% and is expected to stay high. It gives a small but hungry opposition a line of attack during the next election campaign. Michael Michael Genovese from Parliament House. Thank you. We’ve heard a major part of this budget is focused on addressing the state’s housing crisis. Conor McGovern took to our city streets to find out what first time buyers think of today’s stamp duty overhaul. Georgie Cameron has just left the bank, securing a loan for her first home. The 27 year old nurse is one of many W Australians working two jobs to crack Perth’s rampant property market. It just seemed the houses were just getting smaller and smaller and more expensive and more expensive. But tonight a tiny win for first time buyers now in line for stamp duty relief. They’ll pay no transfer tax when spending $450,000, up from 430 grand this move potentially saving first time buyers an extra $3800 if the home is valued up to 600,000. You will pay stamp duty, but at a cheaper rate, I think as you’re doing a lot more. I mean over the past two years house prices have almost doubled. This is the first time in 10 years stamp duty has been tinkered with. In that time, Perth’s Medium property price has rocketed to a record $721,000 and rising. And according to realestate.com, there are less than 100 houses on the market under the Stamp Duty Free threshold. Solving the housing challenges that exist in today’s market is not a A1 budget solution. Adding further pressure, our population increased by 94,000 in the last 12 months. By next year, 3 million people will call WA home. 9 News understands the government did not consider moving away from stamp duty like other states have simply because it raises so much revenue, instead opting for this reform, an $82 million hit to the budget. Bottom line, this is a government which is out of ideas of how to tackle the stickiest problems. Connor McGovern, 9 News Let’s go to the WA Treasurer now. Rita Saffiani, Treasurer Thanks so much for your time. You’ve given us a power rebate, but then hiked our electricity and water costs. Why? We’ve had a range of cost of living support. We’re introducing another electricity rebate. Plus we’ve got other subsidies like the Student Assistance Payment. Over 170,000 families have already applied and received the new rebate. So there’s a whole range of cost of living measures. And of course we’re out there supporting cost of living for families. First time buyers will no doubt welcome stamp duty relief, but with a dire shortage of homes in WA, will this help them? Well, first, the first home buyer concessions will very much help first home buyers and we’re pumping another $1.1 billion into housing supply. We’re supporting new houses plus we’re training more Western Australians to become tradies. And we’ve got other initiatives to try and attract vacant homes back onto the market and to convert short term rentals into long term rentals. We’re trying to tackle it from every angle to try and increase the amount of housing supply in WA. Treasurer, will you guarantee this is the final price tag of metronet? 12 billion plus $12 billion delivers 18 projects. It is the cheapest and most affordable rail lines being delivered in Australia. We’re pretty much now in the last quarter. We’re seeing the Yanchuk rail line finish this year as well as Ellenbrook. We don’t expect to see any significant price movements. Treasurer Rita Saffiotti, we appreciate your time tonight. Thank you.