Western Australians will be looking for cost-of-living relief and measures to ease the state’s housing crisis in this year’s budget.
Premier Roger Cook and Treasurer Rita Saffioti will hand down their third state budget on Thursday and are expected to announce the state’s eighth consecutive surplus.
It is estimated Australia’s richest state will top its coffers with huge sums in the vicinity of $8bn from its share of the GST pool and $6.6bn from iron ore royalties.
But like many across Australia, Western Australians have felt the brunt of rising costs, housing shortages and affordability that is expected to worsen amid global uncertainty.
The Real Estate Institute of WA (REIWA) tipped property prices would rise another 20 per cent this year if a trend of low new listings and strong demand continued.
With less than 3000 available properties to lease at sky-high prices and the median house price nipping $1m, residents will be looking for measures to increase supply and improve affordability.
A raft of new measures have already been announced to boost housing in Perth and regional areas from the government’s seven cities plan.
A jointly funded initiative between the federal and state governments will set aside more than $2bn to build 34,000 new homes, including 11,000 exclusively for first-home buyers.
The money will be spent on new and existing housing initiatives to accelerate supply around metro train stations, new residential estates and regional areas.
The government will also direct funding into seven regional areas to support infrastructure and job-creating projects, alongside targeted investment in housing, health and essential services to strengthen each centre as a regional hub.
Nurses, police and teachers in Bunbury, Kalgoorlie, Karratha, Port Headland, Broome, Geraldton and Albany are set to benefit from a $692m investment in regional housing initiatives targeting frontline workers.
It’s part of a program to deliver 500 new homes in seven cities over the next four years.
Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute director Steven Rowley said the initiatives were a good way of stimulating development in areas where the private sector was unwilling to take the lead.
“For renters, aside from the recent announcement around the removal of no-grounds eviction, there will hopefully be more money to support vulnerable households to remain within their rental property,” he said.
“It would be good if some of these new dwellings unlocked by the housing enabling infrastructure fund were affordable, below market rental properties to address what is a chronic shortfall.
“Hopefully, there will also be an announcement of more funding to deliver social housing dwellings where the state has a significant undersupply.”
Bankwest Curtin Economics Centre director Alan Duncan said Western Australians would be looking to alleviate key pressure points being felt across energy, housing, transport costs and rent.
The economist expects to see some targeted relief for households, but it would be more in-kind support rather than a broad cash giveaway using transport concessions and energy rebates to offset costs.
“The government needs to weigh against the sort of risks of adding further fuel to the inflation fire,” he said.
Mr Duncan said there was also the added uncertainty about where the GST review would land at the end of the year and whether Western Australia would retain its current share from next year.
“We know that the public finance is healthy. Depending upon the government’s investment decisions, I’d fully expect the operating balance to be well in surplus,” Mr Duncan said.
“It’s been very healthy and positive for a long period of time, so there has been a pretty extended period of strength the government is operating under.
“We’re a wealthy state, but it feels that with housing shortages, labour shortages and challenges around providing sufficient infrastructure, I think a lot of the commitment in this budget will be more to do with addressing and offsetting some of the bottlenecks that we’re experiencing.”
Shadow Treasurer Sandra Brewer said despite the rivers of revenue from royalty income, rising tax receipts and GST, Western Australian families were doing it tough.
“Western Australian families struggle with their housing costs, which are running at record highs, struggling to keep up with rent, mortgage repayments that have now gone up through interest rates.
“No matter what is announced by the government it doesn’t make a difference to people looking for a home today.
“It’s all flashy announcements, promises of tens of thousands of houses to be built, but they never, ever truly deliver.
“There are things that we’ll be looking for in the state budget, but one thing is true, this is a government who’ve had the money, they’ve made the wrong choices and Western Australians are worse off.”
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