COOK LABOR GOVERNMENT BLOWS THE BOOM

Today’s WA State Budget is further evidence of the Cook Labor Government squandering the largest fiscal boom in the history of the State.

Liberal Leader Libby Mettam said it was safe to say Roger Cook, WA’s union-anointed Premier, was well and truly blowing the boom.

“This is the budget of a tired, incompetent Government with its priorities all wrong,” she said.

“Rather than strategically investing in schools, hospitals, police, or public transport, Roger Cook seems determined to waste WA’s economic boom on pet projects, with benefits the average Western Australian won’t feel.”

Shadow Treasurer Neil Thomson said the Premier constantly boasted about his surpluses but had allowed ambulance ramping to balloon to 50,000 hours, surgery cancellations to blow out by 70 per cent, our teachers’ salaries to fall to the lowest in the country and our police officers to leave the force in record numbers.

“The Premier has been gifted $22 billion in surpluses since coming to power off the back of iron ore royalties and WA’s GST deal delivered by the Liberal Party federally, which makes the neglect and disinvestment in essential services by this Government all the more embarrassing,” he said.

“Roger Cook just doesn’t get what actually matters to Western Australian families.

“And yet again, METRONET has blown out.

“This Government’s incompetence has seen the project blow out by another $2 billion since the last budget.

“From the cost blow out since the last budget alone, WA could have had another new Fiona Stanley hospitals, 26,000 new teachers, 24,000 new police officers, or 29,000 new nurses.

“It is just a typical example of the Government getting its priorities all wrong.”

Ms Mettam also said this budget did little to help families struggling with the surging cost of living in WA.

“Despite rolling in money from record iron ore prices, the Cook Labor Government has opted to continue treating households as cash cows, hiking annual fees and charges by almost $1,000 per year since coming to power, and then pretending to be on the side of WA families,” she said.

“The average household can now expect to pay more than $6,500 a year, and a one-off energy supplement will do very little to relieve the cost-of-living pressures Western Australian families are facing.

“They are giving with one hand and taking with the other.

“By contrast, a WA Liberal Government would take meaningful steps and stop treating Western Australian families as cash cows by freezing fees and charges.

“We are living through the boom no one is feeling.”