00:01Just to give you and viewers some context, this is the roughly 1,200 pages of budget goodness
00:07that we have spent the last couple of hours digging through.
00:10You don't have to get very far though to work out that these books are in very good shape.
00:15The WA government expecting a $3.5 billion surplus this year, $2.4 billion next year,
00:22largely driven by iron ore royalties which continue to be higher than expected.
00:28They're up $1.5 billion in the coming financial year and that GST deal with the Commonwealth
00:35which is making up an increasing share of the state's revenue.
00:39Hanging over all of this, of course, though, is that increasing global uncertainty,
00:44particularly in the Middle East.
00:45Speaking in Parliament when she was handing down the budget,
00:48Treasurer Rita Saviotti described it as the shifting tectonic plates of the world's economy.
00:54The unpredictability and ever-changing nature of the conflict
00:58has created uncertainty in the WA economy and our community.
01:03Our job as a government has been to cushion Western Australian households
01:08and our domestic economy from the impact of these fast-moving plates.
01:15And the way that the WA government is planning to do that is through a couple of different measures.
01:20In the short term, they are giving every Western Australian with a driver's licence $100
01:25to address the rising cost of fuel.
01:28They're also extending student assistance payments, a third round of that,
01:32up to $250 for every student enrolled in WA schools.
01:36That is on top of lots of money to address some real pain points here in the West.
01:41There's $4.7 billion to try and increase housing supply
01:45and $9.1 billion to grow the state's health system
01:50and improve access to those health systems.
01:53And, Cian, the other states and territories are looking on jealously at WA's GSTT deal.
01:58What's the mood in WA about that?
02:01And what's the Treasurer had to say?
02:04Well, look, WA and the Treasurer in particular continue to be very parochial about that deal.
02:10The Treasurer spending quite a bit of time today still defending that arrangement,
02:14saying if that money wasn't coming into Western Australia's coffers,
02:18the government wouldn't be able to build the economic infrastructure,
02:21the roads, the ports, the things like that,
02:24which underpin not only WA's success,
02:27but the nation's success with all the taxes and royalties that accrue from those products.
02:33Here is what she had to say when she was asked how other states would react to this budget.
02:39I hope they say thank you, because we're giving them $2 billion.
02:44I don't like the Treasurer's chances of receiving that reception from her colleagues around the country,
02:51but she does say that WA is continuing to give about $2 billion to the other states in GST royalties
02:58alone,
02:59compared to if it was divvied up on a population share.
03:02And conveniently, for anyone who is looking for some more information,
03:07perhaps about the WA government's position on just how good the state is to the rest of the country,
03:12there's some figures in here which say that the state contributes about $36 billion to the Federation.
03:19It's only one of two states, the Treasury Office says,
03:22which makes a positive contribution to the country, New South Wales the other,
03:26although much further behind.
03:28So it's been a long time since this deal was struck,
03:31but it still remains a very hot-button issue, particularly here in the West.
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