Western Australia’s record-breaking mining boom had a shot across its bow this week.

US President Donald Trump’s 25 per cent tariff on steel and aluminium imports into the US will reverberate through the Australian economy.

Even if the Albanese Labor Government manages to negotiate a carve-out — which is looking less and less likely — Australia, most significantly WA, will feel the effects.

The tariffs will reduce global demand for aluminium and steel and the ores used to produce them. Shares in miners including Rio Tinto and BHP have lost ground since the Trump announcement.

The tariffs are a stark warning and a salient reminder to governments like ours of their impotence in the face of greater global political forces.

Put simply, we all now know Mr Trump neither knows nor cares how his policies impact the WA mining sector, and the Cook Labor Government has neither the influence nor the help of effective allies in Canberra to do anything to lessen that impact.

How a government spends its windfall revenue from a mining boom is potentially the only true measure of its competence in times of good fortune.

With the March 8 poll looming, how effectively has the WA Labor Government spent more money than any previous WA State government?

To quantify the magnitude of Labor’s revenue windfall, the former Barnett Liberal government, in two terms received $21.7 billion in GST grants and $30.9b in iron ore royalties, for a total of $52.6b.

In two terms the WA Labor Government has received $40.3b in GST grants — courtesy of a Federal Liberal government fix — and $65b in iron ore royalties, for a total of $95.3b.

So, how have West Australians benefited from this good fortune?

Not through debt reduction. Remember State Daddy Mark McGowan’s paternal promise to pay off debt “slowly like a mortgage”.

Debt is now billions of dollars higher now than when Labor came to government in 2017 but there’s no sign of the union operatives flouncing around in furry blue debt-monster costumes we saw in the 2017 campaign.

Did unions ever really care about debt?

What has our good fortune done for our health system?

Between 2017 to 2024, the Labor Government invested just $3b in health infrastructure, little more than half of the $5.7b the former Barnett Liberal government invested over two terms of government.

The result? In a national comparison, WA has the lowest number of hospital beds per capita, seven of the nation’s worst-performing emergency departments and the lowest State Government spend per person on health.

Add in record ambulance ramping, dangerous staff shortages and plummeting morale, more than 30,000 people waiting for planned surgery, and 10,000 children waiting up to a year to see a paediatrician and there can be no doubt our health system is on its knees.

How did we go in housing? After all, providing secure housing for those who’ve fallen through the cracks of economic good fortune is bread and butter stuff for socialist Labor.

But seven years of Labor Government have been disastrous for both the public, private and government housing sectors in WA.

The latest Report on Government Services showed that WA now has fewer social housing dwellings than when Labor came to government in 2017.

And while our social housing stock has been dwindling, hundreds of thousands of once financially secure families have crashed into mortgage stress, more than 30,000 people are on a waitlist for up to four years for social housing and a record number of West Australians are homeless.

For four years in a row, the Labor Government failed to put a qualified teacher in front of every classroom at the start of the school year and our class sizes are the largest in the nation, while over the past five years, 85 per cent of WA high schools have decreased their ATAR participation.

If you are one of the 10 per cent of the population who regularly commutes on public transport you might be waving the flag for Metronet about now.

But it is impossible not to consider what else the largest budget blow-out of any project in the State’s history — $10b — could have otherwise bought.

Five new Fiona Stanley style public hospitals for instance.

It’s also relevant to look at what Metronet will continue to cost into perpetuity.

Metronet’s operating deficit — the difference between what commuters pay and what it cost to operate — is, this year, $1.3b.

Every single household in WA, even if no one in your household ever even lays eyes on a Metronet train, will contribute more than $100 this year to keep it running.

That will go up every year.

Labor has comprehensively demonstrated it does not have the experience to manage government even when it has more money than any State government has ever had.

West Australians should be very worried about a future under Labor in which global forces conspire and the rivers of iron ore run dry.