Estimates
Estimates of revenue and expenditure
Consideration of tabled papers
Resumed from 26 June on the following motion moved by Hon Samantha Rowe (Parliamentary Secretary):
That pursuant to standing order 69(1), the Legislative Council take note of tabled papers 316A–E (2025–26 budget papers) laid upon the table of the house on Thursday 19 June 2025.
Hon Dr Steve Thomas (1:30 pm): Here we are, honourable members, back for another budget debate and another budget speech. Obviously, we are going to bring up the regular things, but I am going to concentrate on a few new areas in this budget. I know that will be disappointing for some members opposite, many of whom have already managed to scramble out of the chamber, because it is an interesting time.
Hon Jackie Jarvis: I'm listening intently!
Hon Dr Steve Thomas: Thank you, Minister for Agriculture and Food. We will try to minimise the graphs and maximise the debate as much as we can, but I have to put in one graph.
What did the 2025 budget contain? To be honest, it contained a lot more of the same. One problem with being in opposition is that when we have said the same things about a budget for a very long time, it is very hard to get people to recognise that. This government could be described as "Lucky" Phil. It is pretty easy for a "Lucky" Phil government to make it look like it knows what it is doing. I will remind members of something. I have to go back a couple of Treasurers—actually, a number—back to 2019. In February 2019, I asked the very good then Labor Treasurer, Hon Ben Wyatt, the member for Victoria Park, how his budget would alter if the price of iron ore stayed above US$90 a tonne, and his answer back in February 2019 was that we do not model that, because the assumption is highly—
Hon Dan Caddy: Tell us the new stuff!
Hon Dr Steve Thomas: We are coming to the new stuff, do not worry. There is a lot of embarrassment to go around for the government. I do not want to stint members. It will come in the fullness of time.
In 2019, the then Treasurer said that we do not model the price of iron ore staying above US$90 a tonne because that is highly unrealistic. I had look at the price today. It is nearly US$104 a tonne. It has barely fluttered below US$90 a tonne in the last six and a half years, from February 2019 to August 2025. It has been six and a half years of the biggest boom this state has ever seen. It has been six and a half years of the biggest boom of any state in the history of Western Australia, with one exception—that is a massive budget surplus in Queensland a few years ago when the price of coal went through the roof, just to compete. That is massive, massive budget luck. Well done. It is the budget and the government of "Lucky" Phil—the lucky Premiers, plural. It is very difficult, because, obviously, we say they have been lucky again. They were lucky in 2019. When we look at the budget papers back in 2019, we see that the government had exactly the same outcomes in mind as the previous government. In 2017, when the previous government said that we are going to get to a debt position of $42 billion from the $32 billion the state was in at that point, there was outrage from the then opposition, now on the government benches, but then when the McGowan government came in, its next two budgets had exactly the same outcome. We have done this before. It was not budget management that financially changed the position of the government; it was the rule of "Lucky" Phil and the iron ore boom that actually put money in the government's pockets and allowed it to spend it significantly. Again, we could spend the whole hour just talking about the luck this government has had and where its priorities lie with that money.
Hon Dan Caddy: It's a lazy line, this. It's a lazy line.
Hon Dr Steve Thomas: It is a great line! We are going to do it a bit differently this year, but I would like to seek the leave of the house to table the updated asset investment program, because members might remember that I have tabled it probably every second year for the last six years, and it shows some interesting things. This table shows the government's asset investment program, which was around $6 billion in 2014–15, 2015–16, 2016–17, 2017–18, 2018–19 and 2019–20; then, in February 2019, there was the start of the boom. In 2019–20—from 1 June 2019 into 2020—it boosted up and suddenly went over $7 billion to $8 billion, $9 billion, $9 billion, $12 billion, nearly $12 billion, and between $10.5 billion and $11 billion in the forward estimates. I seek leave to table that document.
Leave granted.
(See paper 421.)
Hon Dr Steve Thomas: I thank members for the enthusiasm. That was fantastic. Well done. I am a bit surprised Hon Dan Caddy did not jump up, just to update himself on what the budget papers actually say, but do not worry, we will get to some more interesting bits in a little bit.
Obviously, the government has a lot of money to spend, and it has chosen, as is its wont, as it has been doing now for a number of years, to pay cash for its major vanity projects like Metronet, for example. That was a $3 billion project. It is now a $13 billion to $14 billion project. It will probably finish at $15 billion. Do members know what? I am not even going to complain about it as a project. Some of that expansion has been expansions of scope, and some of it has been blowouts; it is a mixture of the two. But let us go back to the basics of economics, because I want to briefly do that before we get to the more interesting stuff.
A conservative economist would probably start with Friedman economics, which very much talked about surpluses and debts and living within one's means. At that point, we had this new kid on the block, Keynes, who had some very interesting ideas about how governments should spend more dollars when the economy is not going well, because that stimulates the economy and supports jobs, but when the economy is going well and taxation is rolling in, that is when we have to pay back that debt. People thought Keynes was very left wing. They did—they thought he was a closet communist. In fact, he is remarkably sensible. That process makes a lot of sense for someone who started out in a Friedman-like manner talking about absolutely living within one's means. But we have moved far beyond even Keynes at the moment, because this government does not follow Keynes. This government has had the biggest boom in the history of any state in Australia over time, and it has barely paid back debt. I understand why members opposite can sit there and say, "That's Liberal Party debt. As long as the current debt is a few dollars lower than the Liberal debt, we can just point the finger. That's okay; that is their problem." I understand that. It is good politics. It is bad economics, but it is good politics. Members on that side of the chamber are very good at politics; I get that. The government has not used that money to significantly pay down debt; it has used it for its major projects so that it can pay cash for Metronet. I say congratulations and good luck, and good luck is the key. Do not claim good financial management—claim good luck. The government is going to make the best political outcome out of it that it possibly can, and I understand that, too, but it does not mean that it is good economics. It is funny, is it not? We have now moved from generally what I consider Keynesian economics to the modern era. I collect economists. I go to functions, events and conferences and I collect economists, and I ask every economist the same question: Now that we have all moved beyond Keynesian economics to this thing that we will call modern monetary theory, have we all completely lost track of budget surpluses and deficits? We all now believe in modern monetary theory, which is to just spend. As much as I would like to point the finger at purely the Labor Party, with a little bit of embarrassment I say that the Liberal Party in various jurisdictions has done exactly the same thing. Just keep spending.
There is no end to this. If members want the best example of this, the United States has a fairly conservative President at the moment who is an interesting character, but the best estimate of government expenditure is that the US will not see a budget surplus in my lifetime. There might be a few younger members who might still be going in 2070 or 2080—the honourable member might get there. That is a fair way away—it is 50-odd years away—so they should stay healthy and go to the gym a bit! The Australian Treasury has done a very similar thing. The federal budget surpluses of the last couple of years have been as accidental and based on luck as the state government's surpluses have been based on the resources explosion.
Nobody is actually talking about serious economics anymore, but I do collect economists, and everywhere I go I get one of two answers. My question is: Are we all now modern monetary theorists? We used to live off the saying that governments of all ilk are too big to fail; therefore, balancing a budget does not matter anymore. I think this is really interesting because we will get one of two answers. All the left-wing economists go, "Oh, I don't want to answer that." I get that a lot. The right-wing economists, those few who are left—we are probably an endangered species—actually say, "Well, I still believe in the original economic balance and that, at some point in the future, budgets will have to be balanced." That is going to be an interesting experiment for a lot of countries, including Australia, the US and a whole pile of other ones. Some people out there still believe that that matters, particularly when I speak to the conservative group.
We find ourselves in this interesting situation in which the state government has so much money, it is going to spend a lot of it, but it cannot spend enough of it for the most part. There is only one government trading enterprise that is really making significant money, and that is the Water Corporation. The government has repeatedly taken over a billion dollars of the dividends that would normally come into the budget and hidden them away in what is called retained earnings. That bit does not go through the budget papers in the same way. Otherwise, the $6 billion surpluses that this government has been boasting about would have been $7 billion surpluses. That money has been hidden so that it does not come through the budget process. I know, for example—we can see it in the budget papers—that some of that has been set aside for the next desalination plant up in Alkimos, which is necessary. Nobody is arguing about that, but that will probably cost, at most, half of the retained earnings account, which is now at about seven billion bucks. Seven billion bucks of retained earnings are sitting in a bank account earning interest for the Water Corporation because it looks better there. It is then a bit hidden from the budget papers and not written down in the government's income. That is an example of having so much money that the government actually has to hide it away.
This is when I would talk about Scrooge McDuck and the money bin. I miss Hon Lorna Harper because that usually got her going beautifully in this Parliament, with the Scottish connection. When there is not enough room in the money bin for any more money, the government has to find somewhere else to put it, so it has taken it out of the state money bin and left it at the Water Corporation. It probably has a spare tank or two over there that it can pop mountains of cash in. The money bin is still full. The price of iron ore, which the government budgets conservatively, is at about US$104 a tonne. As we move through this financial year, the government will be billions of dollars ahead of where it expected to be. Actually, that is probably unfair; it will be billions of dollars ahead of where it told us it was going to be. I am sure that it expects to be billions of dollars ahead, but it just did not tell the wider community the truth about the financial position of the state. They are the basics of the economy. The hard bit is getting something different in there. It is a little hard when the government comes in with billions of dollars of spare money every year. At some point, that will correct. I am looking forward to the day that the government actually has a difficult budget to balance; that is going to be really interesting and a bit of fun. I think the fun part is going to be when there is a sudden $5 billion drop in iron ore royalty income and the government has to balance the budget.
There is no point in me again going through the economic details in great detail as I have done in previous budget speeches, because they are exactly the same. The government has multibillion-dollar surpluses thanks to the luck of a run on iron ore, and it is choosing its priorities and not necessarily the priorities of the people of this state. That is not new. That is not going to get a headline. Let us talk instead about one issue that I think is going to be enormously difficult. It should have been properly addressed in this budget, but it has been paid lip service. One of the great announcements of the government was about the energy transition, which the government proudly spruiked in its budget speech. It has $7 billion set aside for the energy transition and it is going to go wonderfully well, according to the government's speech, media releases and statements made in the house. The government's transition is in a mess. It is in a parlous state. This was interesting, President. I went to the Committee for Economic Development of Australia breakfast, at which the Premier, Hon Roger Cook, a man for whom I have a significant amount of respect, gave a speech on the energy transition. I do not think there were any other sitting members there. I did see a former energy minister and had a chat with him. Was Hon Sophie McNeill there?
Hon Sophie McNeill: They didn't let me in.
Hon Dr Steve Thomas: They didn't let the member in. She should stop protesting! Put the whistle down and we could have got you in there!
When the Premier was giving his speech, I was sitting amongst industry players. I spend a lot of time talking to energy industry people. The Premier said, "Look, some people say our transition plan won't work and we haven't got it in place properly and they're sceptical about it, but they're all wrong." I did not have the heart to tell him afterwards that every energy industry person whom I spoke to at that breakfast said exactly that. Energy people from one end to the other are walking into the government's offices and saying, "Your current transition plan does not work. It will not deliver what you say it's going to deliver. You will have a problem going forward, and it's coming to you at a rate of knots." I would like to explore some of the statements made by the government to demonstrate that it has a massive problem with the energy transition. There are some very nice bits in the budget papers that I will refer to going forward, because I think there is enough evidence in the budget papers alone to give members a very strong indication of this. I divide the energy system into a number of categories, and I plan to address them individually. Probably the most notable break-up of these things is into generation, transmission and storage in particular. In each case, with the possible exception of storage, although the government has issues with that as well, the government is behind where it needs to be, to the point where the stability of the grid is at risk.
We need to go back many years ago to when the previous Premier announced this transition plan and the closure of coal-fired power stations. That sort of work started in the previous Parliament. In 2020 and 2021 there were pronouncements from the government about what it was going to do, so we have known for something like five or six years that the government was on a path for a supposed transition. One would have thought that that was a huge priority. I think there are a few examples that we need to go through. Let us start with transmission. There were some interesting debates around the budget estimates last year. During the first hearing that I was in with Western Power I said, "Well, the government has announced that it requires 4,000 kilometres of additional transmission lines, so if you are putting in 130 or 500-kilovolt transmission lines, the current price for that is somewhere between $5 million and $7 million a kilometre." Let us average it out at $6 million a kilometre. Four thousand kilometres at $6 million a kilometre is $24 billion worth of transmission lines that have to be added into the system. The government does not have $24 billion worth of funding in transmission. I asked the government how it calculated 4,000 kilometres—I could not make that number work—and the geniuses advising the government said that the federal government advised that it was expecting 40,000 kilometres of additional transmission line and that Western Australia traditionally provides 10% of everything provided by the Commonwealth, so they picked the number and said 10%. They have no idea. The government announced 4,000 kilometres. It has no idea what the number means—but, by the way, it is going through the work now. This is something that we will talk about in some detail.
Five years ago, the government announced that it would transition; five years later, it is going through the work to determine how it might do so. This is unbelievable. Yes Minister could not write this stuff. How has it taken five years since the announcement for the government to still be in the "This is how we build it stage. This is the plan. This is where we're going to get to"? The plan probably should have centred around a whole-of-system plan, which the government started talking about many years ago. It was due three years ago. It was going to come out in 2022. The previous version was already out of date when it was written so the government said that it would release an updated plan in 2023. Well, guess what? We are still waiting for the 2023 plan, the whole-of-system plan that tells us where the energy is going to go and where the transmission lines are. Again, I will come back to that in more detail. We are still waiting for the 2022–23 plan in 2025—well done! That has not stopped the government from making a few announcements in the budget around this, which I will refer to in a bit. The government said that it will have a transmission plan to work out where the lines are going to go but, in the meantime, it has put half a billion dollars into Clean Energy Link–North, which will not build it, of course. It will be a billion-dollar exercise by the end of the process. The government decided it is going to spend this bit, but it does not know what the overall plan looks like. It is still working on that. Fair dinkum! It is like the government is building a house and has decided to put the footings in even though the architect is still designing the house. It will work out what it looks like down the track. That is the strategic development of the government around transmission. It has said, "We don't have a plan, but we'll start building." Brilliant! I would love to know what genius thought that was a good idea. As I said, the whole-of-system plan should have been out a long period ago.
I am very pleased that today—this is updated information, hot off the presses for the enjoyment and entertainment of members—to have received an answer to a question. I have been trying to get answers out of the government on this for months. Of course, during questions without notice in here we get non-answers and, when we follow up, we get another non-answer. Ultimately, if the government has to provide some semblance of an answer, it usually goes on notice and that is what happened with this question. I received an answer to question on notice 336 today. The government has been assuring us all that the whole-of-system plan will be delivered by the end of this year. It was a promise. It was probably as reliable a promise as the promise that the West Coast Eagles would be playing in the finals, but it was a promise. I was interested to get this answer back. The question was:
I refer to the minister's refusal to provide a transparent answer to either of my questions of 18 June 2025, and specifically the non-answers in relation to my question without notice 368 on the government's whole-of-system plan.
(1) Will the whole-of-system plan be delivered by the end of 2025?
I will not read the whole question out, but that is pretty straightforward. Having passed the answers back through the representative minister in this house, it is the answer that the Minister for Energy has refused to answer repeatedly. If the government had already started construction—if it is putting down the foundations of the house—I would have thought that it would have seriously considered finishing its whole-of-system plan first so that it knows where all the power is going to go. The answer is:
A revised delivery date will be advised following publication of the SWIS Transmission Plan for the South West Interconnected System, which is due for release in coming months.
We have to bear in mind that it is the middle of August so if it is coming in "coming months"—three months away—that is the middle of November. If it is four months away, it is the middle of December and we will not get it this year, effectively. The whole-of-system plan will be delivered—no, that is not what it says. At that point, when the transmission plan for the South West Interconnected System comes out, the whole-of-system plan delivery date will be announced—not the plan. It is not dropping the plan. What we might get is the date by which the government will drop the plan, which, honourable members, will be the third date the government has come along and said, "We'll deliver a plan by this date." If that is not a sign that the government has an issue in getting the system sorted out and put together, it is hard to understand what is. That is a lovely little update, I have to say, President. Do members need any further signs that the state government's transition of energy is floundering? If they do, there are plenty of them. I will provide another example. Bear in mind, I will have to remind members that on a number of occasions the government's plan should have started when it announced the closures and the transition six years ago. However, I thought there were very interesting parts in the budget papers—and here is a trick for young players. I refer to page 781 of budget paper No 2, volume 2—this is something we will ask about in the budget estimates in the fullness of time—and the line item "Grid Transformation", which is obviously very important. The 2024–25 estimated expenditure was $53 million. The budget for the current financial year is $148 million and the budget in the forward years is $214 million, $195 million and $236 million. If members get the opportunity, on occasions it is worth looking at the previous budget to see what the government planned to spend versus what it is actually spending. Bear in mind, it is six years since the government's transition for energy announcement—six years. If members look at the 2024–25 budget—that is, last year's budget—as just as an example, they will see that the expected expenditure in 2024–25 was $202 million and the actual expenditure on the grid transformation in 2024–25 was $53 million. The government is $150 million behind the investment in grid transformation that it set out a year ago for 2024–25. In 2025–26, the grid transformation spend was supposed to be $208 million, but it is $148 million in the budget year. Let us put them together. Instead of $410 million being spent on grid transformation, $200 million is being spent on grid transformation. Grid transformation is critical. The government has to work out where it will move the energy to and from. The government is $200 million behind schedule on a program that it announced six years ago. Six years ago the government said we would have a transition. It put some money in the budget for it a few years ago but not much initially. I would have thought that the government might have started a bit quicker. This is a good example of how not to do it. Six years ago it made the announcement. It was a nice political announcement but there was no money in the budget at that point. Eventually, it became $3 billion, almost all of which is being spent on batteries. I will come to storage in the fullness of time if I get time, because there is too much to play with and I am going to run out of time. I miss the days of longer speeches, President. I am sure Hon Dan Caddy does as well.
The government made its announcement six years ago and said, "Let's get planning for it." Six years later, the government is already $200 million behind in terms of the transmission that it decided it needed to work out where it needs to go. How did you do that? How did the government get to that point where it is $200 million behind this urgent thing? It is going to close down more coal-fired power stations in 2027. In fact, there is in theory a couple of big units it is going to close. One is the Collie A power station, and it does its absolute best to put the private station Bluewaters out of business at the same time. Two 215 megawatt units plus 320 megawatts plus 430 megawatts plus 320 megawatts—that is a lot of energy coming out of the grid at the same time. The government is hundreds of millions of dollars and years behind trying to work out how it is going to make this system manage as a part of that process. I mean, surely the alarm bells should be ringing on the Labor side. Here is a bit of free advice. The parliamentary secretary is taking extensive notes. Here is my best bit of advice that I can give the government in relation to this: stop listening to Energy Policy WA and start listening to the energy industry. I wonder whether Energy Policy WA has any idea what it is doing half the time. It is difficult to believe that they have left the government, which I actually think probably would quite like to transition in a reasonable manner, in the embarrassing situation that it has.
Okay, there is not nearly enough transmission. The government proudly announced that it had $7 billion worth of infrastructure investment in the energy system in the budget—$7 billion worth. I thought that was also worthy of consideration as well. Members should probably realise that effectively all of that additional expenditure is in Western Power for transmission, which obviously needs a massive investment. There is almost no asset investment in Synergy or Horizon beyond the 2024–25 financial year that has effectively not been the big battery. If you take out the big batteries, Synergy has almost no asset investment. It has some maintenance money for its existing energy generation fleet, including the coal fleet, which it will need, but all of the money effectively goes into Western Power. It is generally divided up in the Western Power budget. If members look at the Western Power budget for works under its asset investment and works in progress, the asset investment program for Western Power starts on page 779 of budget paper No 2, volume 2. Most of the money goes into one of two places: the government's initiatives for decarbonisation and the government's initiative for grid transformation, in which there is $542 million in the 2025–26 financial year for decarbonisation and $148 million in grid transformation. When members break it down though, they have to work out what that compares to in previous budgets because there are not works that go on generally for Western Power, Horizon Power and even Synergy when it comes to investment. The grid has to be expanded all the time anyway. How much of this is new money and how much of it is duplicity by the government in trying to take money that it already had to spend and suddenly announce as something completely different? Members can look at it on page 779 of budget paper No 2, volume 2—
Government Initiatives
5. As part of the Government’s energy transition plan in achieving decarbonisation objectives, $542 million will be invested in 2025‑26 to continue to progress the Clean Energy Link – North project …
Funnily enough, it is decarbonisation, but it is also grid expansion, so it is transmission as well. I think it has been interesting. That could have been shuffled, particularly in grid transformation if it is supposed to be a transformative project. There are a number of issues around this. In effect, if we look at how the government spends its dollars in energy, business as usual in connecting businesses and communities to the grid would have occupied $5 billion of the $7 billion announced by the government in the budget. When members read the budget speech, the whole $7 billion is being invested in the energy system. Do not believe for a minute that that $7 billion of new money that we have not seen before is going into a magnificent transition. It is $5 billion of status quo business as usual and $2 billion of additional activity, of which the first $500-odd million is going into Clean Energy Link–North. Bear in mind, the government still does not have a whole assistant plan, right? This whole Clean Energy Link–North project will probably be a $1 billion-plus project. That is probably half of the extra $2 billion that is in the system. But the government does not have a whole-of-system plan. I mean, it has some thoughts: the Clean Energy Link–North, the Clean Energy Link–East and the Clean Energy Link–South. Victoria, which is the basket case of energy planning and the worst state in Australia for managing its grid, at least had the sense to say, "We will work out where we need additional energy generation." In its case, Victoria put it into zones and said, "If you're going to come and build renewable energy projects, go and put it in one of these zones." At least it knew where it was going to have to build the lines. Do members know what happens in the government here? On the advice of Energy Policy WA, it says to proponents out there—when we talk proponents in clean energy generation, we are effectively talking about wind turbines—"Well, you tell us where you want to go and we'll work out the cost and we'll work out how much we charge you and whether that's going to work or not." You might have one in the deep south and one in the deep north; the government has no idea. Let us put offshore wind in a basket by itself. None of the current government and the opposition support offshore wind as a model, probably based simply on cost. I believe in the GenCost report like I believe in climate change. There you go: I am the Liberal who has spoken about climate change for the last eight years, much to problematic outcomes a lot of the time. We have had some great debates in the past in this house based on that. The Leader of the House was the Minister for the Environment, and I remember Hon Alannah MacTiernan would weigh in and my good friend Hon Robin Chapple from the Greens would make a great contribution and we would continue along. They were great debates. Put wind turbines offshore out of the picture because they are three times the price per electron as onshore. If the government cannot find room onshore in Western Australia, it has a problem. There are a couple of problems with simply relying on wind as the alternative generation model. In the first circumstance you have to workout how much you actually need. Here is one of the biggest problems with the government's transition plan. It currently has nearly 3,000 megawatts of gas capacity in this state. We are the biggest gas capacity generator of all the states in Australia. We currently have about 1,140 megawatts of coal. We all agree that Western Australia will get out of coal-fired power. The Leader of the House and I are arguing only timeframes when we get to this. We have a different time in mind as to when that occurs. That will happen as much about the economies and economics of coal as it is about anything else. We have talked about that in the past. We will get out of coal. I do not think we will get out of coal in the current government's timeframe, and I am about to explain why. Between coal and gas at the moment, we have nearly 4,150 megawatts—let us say 4,000 for a nice round number. What is our peak demand? Last year, we peaked out at 4,233 megawatts peak demand. That is with the government closing down a few major industries. This year, there was a significant increase, peaking out at 4,486 megawatts, nearly 4,500 megawatts of peak demand. Then, you have got to say that the government shuts down probably another 400 megawatts. Not only its own desalination plants but also a number of big industries get paid by the market operator to close down. Let us say that, really, we have under 5,000 megawatts of peak demand even if all that industry is kept going.
We have 3,000 megawatts of gas. The government's plan appears to be to make up the difference in wind turbines. All right, if that is the plan, that is the plan, but let us have a look at that. This is what I think is happening: the government is listening to Energy Policy WA, which is saying to the government, "Do not worry about any shortfalls in generation going forward. A plethora of private companies will come in and build massive wind farms. Consumers will just pick and choose which ones they buy from and under what circumstances. There will be a massive amount of energy." It is absolutely right that massive proposals are out there. I must have looked at 60 to 80 gigawatts—60,000 to 80,000 megawatts—of wind turbine proposals over the last couple of years, but bear in mind that the marketplace peak is five gigawatts and we are talking about the potential development of 60-plus gigawatts of wind turbines. There is no room for it in the marketplace. It does not exist. There is no market for it unless we go out there, build a set of wind turbines and export all that energy in some way, shape or form. I have a bridge or two I would like to sell to anybody who believes that green hydrogen is the solution for that.
There are optimists out there, but we must have a marketplace for it. What is the marketplace in Western Australia? If these major turbines were producing, let us say, 1,800 megawatts of wind on average, the conversion rate was somewhere between 40% and 50%—numbers vary but let us be generous—and we need 4,000 megawatts of additional wind generation, that will give an average of a couple of thousand megawatts year in, year out. What will we do with the rest? We would have four gigawatts of potential contracts to sign and 60 gigawatts that has no marketplace.
Here is the problem that I do not think Energy Policy WA understands. These projects cannot get up unless the government gives them an offtake agreement. Who else is going to buy the energy? The offtake agreement has to be with the government. The government has so many people kicking the tyres and treading the dust out there looking for it, and it is sort of hinting that it will give them all offtake agreements. Not only that, it is saying that it will give them offtake agreements in isolated places out in the middle of nowhere, rather than having a strategic model of where it will put all this additional generation. It does not work.
Someone needs to grab hold of the energy minister and say, "These projects cannot get up!" The government's solution to the energy crisis cannot work unless all these additional people have offtake agreements. I have said publicly that, until an energy plan is in place, I would not give anybody an offtake agreement. These new projects have to work out that the government would not give them that, and then the government has to work out how much it will charge them to connect.
I think that the government should be charging to connect, but the cost at which the government does so becomes critically important. I will give a good example. Down in the South West, there was a project to put in a set of solar panels and a battery about 1.5 kilometres from the Kemerton substation. Western Power's original quote for this process was about $23 million. Now bear in mind that I said before that you can probably build a 500-megawatt major transmission line for about $7 million a kilometre. The most recent budget estimate from Western Power to go underground for 1.5 kilometres is $53 million, which is $35 million a kilometre. It would want to be gold-plated for that.
That is also a part of the problem, because the government does not have an integrated plan. The government is relying on a fallacy that if it says it likes wind, they will all come and build it. Then it can just pick and choose the bits that it wants on a certain day. If a bit more wind is coming from the Mid West, that is great. It will just take it from there and not worry that the company is going broke for the rest of the year. It will just take that particular bit. In other areas, it will be the eastern model, over the scarp.
The plan does not work because you have to actually contract the amount of electricity you will buy; otherwise, they cannot get financial tick-off. They have to go out in the marketplace and get funding for it. Right now, the wind turbine proposals are falling over because they cannot get funding. This is not because they are difficult or complicated to construct. There are delays because it is immensely popular at the moment, but the reality is that they have nothing unless they have an offtake agreement.
The government cannot rely on the fallacy that all these wind projects will be developed, the private sector will bear all the costs, and the government will tiptoe through the daisies and pick out the bits of electricity it wants when it needs it, at any kind of cost. It is an absolute nonsense. The government cannot fix it until it has a whole-system plan in place to work out what demand will look like and how it will move it around. It is just not going to work. That is the problem.
The other component, of course, is construction times. Bear in mind, as we said earlier, that the government is six years behind its transition plan. It announced its transition, and it is still working on the plan six years later. What has that meant to its capacity to deliver?
The second half of the argument is that companies need an offtake agreement to be able to deliver the wind turbines, which is the government's only chance of getting 60% of the way towards its transition plan. Under the current proposal, it will not get there; it is just an impossibility. That is what industry is telling government, but it is refusing to listen. It is so far behind.
What is the construction period for privately owned wind turbines? I love it—privately owned wind turbines are a sign that this is the government of privatisation by stealth. I think it is great. There might be some Friedman economists in the government. The first thing the McGowan government did in 2017 was sell off and privatise a few renewable energy projects. It was great! There is a privatisation by stealth agenda in the government, and that is good, but the problem is that they have to get a financial investment decision and do their planning, because the private sector is not going to start building before the plan is written. They will not put foundations down before the architects design the house. They have to finish the planning, get a financial decision, go into the marketplace to raise the money and start construction in a fairly competitive marketplace. Around the world, the average time for construction of significant projects like that is now somewhere between 45 and 55 months, or four and a half or possibly five years.
The government has messed around for the last six years, so it is six years behind where it should be. It is now August 2025. The last of the coal fleet is supposed to be closed down in October 2029, which is four years away. If the answer is to have the private sector plonk wind turbines everywhere it likes, it will extend it out again, because then even more transmission lines have to be built. The government has already run out of time, before it even started, because it has messed about for the last six years. It does not have a transition plan in place, and it is now leaving it so late that it is impossible to deliver what it is proposing. That is a great plan. Of course, none of that is written in the budget papers.
A plan to have a plan is as good as the government is going to get on energy. It does not work. That is why I had a pretty simple plan as we went into the 2025 election. I was then the shadow energy minister; I still am. It was pretty simple.
Hon Kate Doust: Long may that continue.
Hon Dr Steve Thomas: Thank you, honourable member. You were a shadow energy minister for some period of time.
Hon Kate Doust: I was.
Hon Dr Steve Thomas: I will not talk about the other half and whether he one-upped you or not; that is a whole different argument.
Hon Kate Doust interjected.
Hon Dr Steve Thomas: He got to be the actual minister.
Hon Kate Doust: You mean my husband.
Hon Dr Steve Thomas: Yes, your other half—not mine.
Hon Kate Doust: I don't know. You always want to spend a lot of time with him.
Hon Dr Steve Thomas: We have very interesting energy discussions. I love an energy debate. We could do that. What did I say? I said that we will keep coal until we have enough capacity to generate. I think that is the case. I think the government will concede that. I know that a lot of conservationists say, "Actually, we kind of accept that that's got to happen, too." The reason they do that—
Hon Sophie McNeill interjected.
Hon Dr Steve Thomas: Yes, it probably does, but there has to be another argument.
Hon Sophie McNeill interjected.
Hon Dr Steve Thomas: We will have time to debate that at another time. The reality is that a lot of conservationists are happy to accept the extension of coal because they are terrified of additional gas generation. That is the alternative. The policy taken to the election was to keep coal until we have enough gas generation, and gas generation will continue until whatever that renewables future looks like. That future will be some time away. I think the government will absolutely be able to close down the last coal plant, but it probably will not be until 2035 or maybe 2036. If there is no more gas generation in the system, the government will probably struggle to do that even then, because it is so far behind. The renewables component—
Hon Sophie McNeill: All the people will be dead by then.
Hon Dr Steve Thomas: The renewables component will contribute significantly more, so there will be more renewables in the system. When renewables hit 80%, we will start to have significant grid stability issues and we will have to manage that. Here is a bouquet for the government: significant investment in storage is useful. Unfortunately, it is actually more useful for smoothing the grid and grid reliability than it is for getting over electricity shortages. There are two significant issues to deal with. The first is peak demand. There will not be enough energy in the system at peak demand, particularly because the government has wasted a lot of years messing about. The second is overall energy production through the year, and the same thing will apply. The government is going to fail at peak demand and it is going to fail at overall energy production. My view is that the government will have no choice. It will eventually adopt the opposition's policy because it will have no choice; that is, it will extend coal—not for long, but whilst it has to. My wording was very careful. Where it can and where it is needed, the government will extend coal to get additional gas into the system. I think we agree on that. The Liberal Party and the Labor Party are going to end up in a very similar position, and the future of the transition will develop along—
Hon Stephen Dawson: I'm not sure we agree on anything!
Hon Dr Steve Thomas: Oh, there are lots of things we agree on, Leader of the House. I just have to get the government across the line on this one; I think it is where the government is going to end up.
One of the issues—I know the Greens will not like it—is that there is going to be more gas. Not just more gas—
Hon Sophie McNeill: It's not us; it's our grandchildren who won't like it.
Hon Dr Steve Thomas: That is a good argument to use in the community, except that it is purely emotional rather than anything else. The member is right; this will be a point of difference between us, and that is fine. We should have points of difference, otherwise it would be a pretty poor democracy. My view is that keeping the lights on is more important than having the transition by a particular year or a particular day. We are going to disagree on that. I think having enough energy in the system is actually more important than closing down coal by a certain date or refusing to have more gas. I actually think the system will ultimately deliver itself. In 25 to 50 years time, the whole system will look completely different.
Hon Sophie McNeill: The whole world will look different!
Hon Dr Steve Thomas: Yes. The whole world is going to look significantly different anyway. The problem is 1.2% to 1.3% of emissions in a world that continues to increase emissions, particularly from the four or five major emitters. I get that Western Australia is supposed to feel guilty and pick up all the pieces for the big emitters: China, India, the US and Russia. It is true that China produces more renewable energy than any other country in the world, but it is also building more coal-fired power stations than any other country in the world. The guilt concept does not work on me because I do not believe in destroying the Western Australian economy to make myself or anybody else feel better. You have to step your way through that. I am a believer in climate change.
Hon Sophie McNeill interjected.
Hon Dr Steve Thomas: I am a believer in climate change and I believe in maintaining a 2050 net carbon neutral, net zero ambition; I absolutely do. It will be very difficult to achieve, and if Western Australia achieves it in isolation from the rest of the world, it is all going to be rather token and meaningless, and I am not much for tokenism, to be honest. There you go. Even the government, though, with its more modest agenda—the Premier and I agree on lots of this stuff—knows that gas is important.
Hon Sophie McNeill interjected.
Hon Dr Steve Thomas: I get that, as well. I understand that. There are lots of things we agree on, but the government's transition plan is in tatters. It is in a dire state. From a medical perspective, it is lying on the table and there is a straight-line blip where the ECG should be showing a pulse rate. Unless the government gets the paddles out fairly soon and fairly urgently, that patient is going to be dead. That is where we sit with the transition plan that the government currently has in place; the transition plan that does not work under the circumstances in which the government has proposed it. The hard part is that industry keeps coming back to the government and saying that its transition plan is a problem. Like I said, I wish I could spend some more time on this. We will probably have some more energy debates going forward, I imagine, and hopefully have some damn good fun doing it.
The last thing I want to point out in the budget was carefully stuck in budget paper No 3. It is a lovely little line, I have to say —very clever. It is on page 104 of budget paper No 3, which is usually the most fun of all the budget papers to read, if you are ever bored and want something to read. Under the heading "Other Spending" in the middle of that page is the paragraph headed "Griffin Coal — Financial Support". It states:
To support the continued operation of Griffin Coal until 30 June 2026, $49 million of additional funds has been allocated over 2024–25 and 2025–26 …
There is $260 million basically to subsidise the losses of Griffin Coal. The management of the coalfields has been an absolute disaster, and as much as I would like to blame this government, it has taken a lot of governments over a lot of years to get us to this situation, with Collie struggling in the way it is. An additional $49 million will take the government's subsidy for a foreign-owned and insolvent company to $308 million. Here's the thing, I would not necessarily complain if the government put $308 million into subsidies in order to provide stability to the grid, but the problem is that it is $308 million just to cover the operating losses, and when Griffin stops on 1 July 2026, the government will have delivered nothing but a few extra years of operation.
Why on earth did the government not take $308 million and deliver some form of economic stability, rather than just subsidising the process? The government will have the numbers on this, but why did it not buy out the bondholders at Griffin Coal, in particular, or maybe buy out the bondholders of Bluewaters Power Station? The original company that bought it, Lanco Infratech from India, does not exist anymore; it is bankrupt. There is a bunch of banks that hold a certain amount and a bunch of bondholders have bought out that amount. Surely for $308 million, the government might have been able to buy out some of that debt and deliver a company, whether it was privately run or state run. I prefer privately run; I do not think the state runs industries particularly well. Why did the government not somehow purchase a better outcome than simply tipping it down the drain? Is it simply that the government had so much money—billions of dollars in surpluses—that tipping it down the drain was easier than finding an actual solution to the problem? I understand that coal has a relatively limited life span in Western Australia, but even when the coal-fired power stations close down, as they inevitably will, the government will get some other uses for Collie coal and there will still be a coal marketplace; it will be much smaller, but it will still exist. What the government has delivered for $308 million—nearly a third of a billion dollars—is nothing but a continuation of the same disastrous state that previously existed. I think that is a good example of the absolutely problematic position the government finds itself in.
A few years ago the government brought in 103,000 cubic metres of coal from Newcastle. We brought coal to Collie—hilarious! The government still will not tell us how much it cost, but the purchase price was $300 or $400 a tonne. Collie coal gets about $60 a tonne, nearly $70—a $300 or $400 a tonne purchase price. Then it has to be shipped to the port of Newcastle, put on the ship and taken around to Bunbury, and then they do some work in Bunbury, offload it, dump it, pick it up again, put it back in the trucks, drive it up the hill and drop it at Muja power station. Holy mackerel! That is hundreds of dollars per tonne for 100,000 tonnes. At a cost of what? They still will not tell us because apparently it is commercial-in-confidence in case the government ever wants to go back and have another run at it. I cannot imagine they would spend hundreds of millions of dollars going back to have another crack, but anyway.
That is the disaster. The disaster is in the coalfields. The disaster is in the transition. The disaster is in being unable to put forward what transmission should look like. The disaster is not having adequate generation. The disaster is basically throwing out to every wind proponent out there that they will all get on the grid. And, ultimately, the disaster will be that when the lights go out, you will have had a decade of warning.
Hon Dr Brian Walker (2:30 pm): I thank my honourable colleague Hon Dr Steve Thomas for giving us a wonderful demonstration of exactly why members on both sides of the house ought to be very careful and look very closely at what is going on. Basically, we are seeing here that we are not getting value for money. It might be strange that this practising doctor is getting up to speak to issues about the economy. I will briefly touch on that as well, but I really wanted to start off by actually giving some congratulations to the government, because as far as budgets go, it is an okay budget.
When talking about the abominable idea of a racetrack in Burwood for some several hundred million dollars, I was struck that it is against the views of the people who live there, and most of the people in the state, I imagine. We were told by the Premier that the Labor Party went to the state with this as its policy and now the government is mandated to provide something that no-one really wants. Rather than actually spending the money on renovating the land and making it a beautiful place for people to walk and play, to take their animals and to take their friends when they visit, much like Kings Park, the government is going to create pollution from noise and gases and a despoliation of nature clothed in the language, "But the public wants this." I wonder if this is actually reflected in the rest of the budget as well. I think we ought to have a closer look at what is actually going on in some areas.
I will also point out, thanks to my colleague here, that we are all committed to evidence-based policy and compassionate behaviour as we serve the people of this state of ours. Let us list what the government has done well in the budget. It says "fiscal responsibility." We had a consistent operating surplus of $2.5 billion a year ago and it is $2.4 billion now. We could quibble about the amounts of debt that have been accumulated. I listened with great interest earlier to the fact that the debt now is actually more than the debt when the Liberal government lost power in 2017, I think it was.
Hon Dr Steve Thomas: It is actually lower at the moment, but it was heading higher.
Hon Dr Brian Walker: It was heading like that.
It is interesting because that means in eight years of good profits, we have actually not reduced the debt burden at all. I question why we are allowing ourselves to have our backs patted when we are not making any progress in an excellent economic environment.
We had a record infrastructure spend of $13.7 billion the year before and $12.1 billion just now. But I was also really struck by the fact that we had around about $10 billion overspent on one project. That is over four years, but that is almost one quarter of the annual budget spent on 6.8% of the population. I get why the government would want to spend an awful lot of money on a small number of people. The transport infrastructure is certainly a great idea. I do like that. Labor governments are known for that, whereas the Liberal governments would rather that people actually walked or took a horse.
Hon Dr Steve Thomas: I like horses. That should be encouraged.
Hon Dr Brian Walker: Vets would benefit. Indeed, I will do what I can to support the member.
The economic stability is there. We have strong economic growth control. We have had 3.4% growth, which brings me to wonder why we focus so much on growth when it cannot be sustained eternally. If we always grow, we will outgrow what the earth can provide. We ought to be looking at sustainability, not perhaps growth as such. But it is nice that we have growth if we are measuring that. Moderate wage growth and controlled inflation are interesting because we are now seeing the middle class turning more and more towards the need for help from Foodbank because they are no longer able to put food on the table in the face of their mortgages and other expenses. But it is nice to know that we are allegedly having moderate wage growth with controlled inflation.
I also noted the $963 million in targeted household relief measures for the cost-of-living initiatives. I will come to that in another moment. There is the energy bill relief and the expansion of the WA student assistance payments and KidSport vouchers. I wonder why for one of those there has been a reduction for those who are least able to afford a reduction.
We are told there has been significant infrastructure investment in social and affordable housing, which is really something I fail to see when I am sitting in my clinics dealing with people who have told me that they no longer have housing and are actually sleeping in their cars or when I have to manage people who have severe stress because they are barely able to afford their rent or mortgage and are cutting back on the essentials of life. But I am told we have significant investment of $1.4 billion in social and affordable housing. Compared with actual figures, that suggests we are spending less on housing for our population than Tasmania. I look at this budget and I wonder, "Okay, these are interesting figures." They are absolutely believable; I just wonder what questions have been asked to give the answers that we are getting.
Education funding has increased to $1.8 billion. Excellent. I review that with the recent information about NAPLAN scores. What is happening to our children would bring shame to any Western Australian. Then we look at community safety and justice, with additional funding of $80.4 million for police operational priorities. Compare that with what is actually happening: the recent fire bombings and shootings at a tobacco shop, the violence we are seeing on the streets, the record rates of domestic violence and the inability of the police to record within their own ranks those who are actually domestic violence committers.
I noticed another pat on the back for the environment and sustainability, with initial investment in renewable energy and decarbonisation, which I think is excellent. We ought to be doing that. But as we just heard, there are serious concerns about that. When it comes to the environment, we had debate recently in this very chamber on the Environmental Protection Amendment Bill, which was widely consulted on and passed in this chamber with an overwhelming majority at that time. However, we discovered that the consultation was indeed very widespread and wide ranging, but interestingly only with those on the industrial side. Not one single member of the environmental community was consulted on that very important piece of legislation, which resulted in further degradation of the Environmental Protection Authority's ability to actually protect the environment. It is no wonder, then, as part of the information we had at that time, that we have lost 70% of our vegetation in this state, and it seems no-one bats an eyelid.
When it comes to this budget being put to the people and how appropriate it is, I wonder how genuinely it actually speaks to the needs of the people and how much it speaks to the needs of our government. We are talking here about essential funds that we need to keep our great state going. Where are the values? Where are the important elements of this budget for actually achieving that? What do we want in our state? Do we want peace? Do we want harmony? Do we want people to live good, quality lives? Do we want to give maximum opportunities to people as they develop and our children as they grow so they can be what they can be, do what they choose and work together cooperatively to make our great state even greater? We are seeing massive domestic violence, massive ambulance ramping and societal dysfunction. So the question is: Who are we really? We here are the custodians of a great ship. A vessel called Western Australia is built by many hands, steered by many captains. It has also weathered many storms. Yet as the seas grow rougher, as the winds shift and the hull groans under the strain, the crew at the helm busy themselves with polishing the brass. They tell us all is well. I would like to hear that the course is true, and the leaks in the lower decks are indeed nothing to worry about. But you and I, we, all know control is not the same as direction. True, clear, purposeful direction is what our people are crying out for. This budget, like too many before it on both sides of this house, claims to be the chart and compass that we need, but when we look closer, we find a map drawn by vested interests, a compass that spins towards power not the people.
We are looking here at what might be failing and the shortfalls in our current budget. I have to point out that one of the main areas I see that is really of concern is the status quo thinking on both sides of the house. We saw recently from my colleague Hon Dr Steve Thomas, once again status quo thinking. We have coal power and the fossil fuel industry, immutable as it is. We cannot change that. The incremental changes need to be made as we move towards a transition to more sustainable energy forms. There are so many reasons not to do that, and to hold things back and ensure that we stay in our current iteration. Our budget continues, it is an incremental and reactive policy framework. This is because the underlying problem on both sides of the house is a sustained belief in the neoliberal policies that have been misguiding our society and throughout the world since the 1930s. Part of my job as a doctor is to look at all the symptoms. I can put a plaster on all the symptoms, but if I leave the underlying cause unaddressed, those symptoms remain. The same is true of our society. There is an underlying and underpinning force that is resulting in the ills we currently see. It seems very evident, at least to my untrained eye, that the underpinnings and the very foundational start of the problems are not being addressed. We have status quo thinking on both sides, playing one idea against the other, fighting the same old battles, looking for the same old solutions and getting the same old answers. Our compass is spinning. The ship is lost at sea and it is slowly sinking.
This underlying neoliberal assumptions that this is all we have: Work harder and you too can be rich. Work harder and you too can be a multimillionaire, be able to afford that boat and take time off to have your holidays. What do we see? People are working two jobs and still not being able to put food on the table and people whose children cannot go to the schools they prefer because they simply do not have the money to afford the uniforms and the books or to feed their children before they go to school. It is actually really quite confronting.
What about our social justice gaps? We talked about closing the gap. This is a kind of a phrase used here. We look at the Indigenous gap. What about everyone's gap? What about the gap between people living in Kwinana and people living in Nedlands? There are gaps all over the place. We have insufficient structural reform to the justice system, or, as I call it, the injustice system. We have a punitive system rather than a restorative system. We have limited measures addressing systemic inequality and poverty. We have consistently underfunded mental health, aged care and disability services. People are suffering and groaning under the strain of further attempts to fiddle with incremental changes to our status quo system that is not serving the people. Do I find disagreement here in the house? Do I find disagreement with this general situation?
I refer to educational shortcomings. Are we actually training our children to do what is needed in this ever-evolving world or are we still insisting on treating our children like future mill workers, which was the original educational system? Are we still treating our children as if they should be employed and work their fingers to the bone and die an early death? I think we are. This budget does nothing apart from fiddling around the edges of that.
One of the major questions that people asked before this budget was put out, before the election—now we all know the question—was about the cost-of-living crisis. How has this budget helped? Every Australian knows the truth. Life is getting harder. It is in the rent that swallows half the pay cheque. It is in the grocery bill that grows faster than wages can pay it. It is in the electricity bill that arrives like an unwelcome guest demanding more than we have to spare. The daily examples I see in my life as a general practitioner are horrifying. People are coming in unable basically to pay for the medication I prescribe. People's choices are such that their ill health is guaranteed because they cannot afford in time or effort or money what is needed to restore themselves to wellness. I see children with a diagnosis of ADHD or autism who are condemned to wait 18 months or two years before they can begin to see someone who can diagnose that, at a huge expense. All the while, they are refused educational assistance because they do not have the diagnosis, leaving them two or three years behind their peers. Can they catch that up in a social system that does not allow them to progress at a faster rate and to catch up with their peers? They are left hanging. What will these children, who have been neglected and ignored and left to rot on the heap of humanity, do when they hit years of puberty? When they try to make their way in the world and find that the way is blocked and they do not have the necessary educational needs, what are they going to do? We wonder about that when we see 55% or so of our prisoners suffering from ADHD with the choices they have made and we are quite happy, rather than fixing the underlying problem, to treat them with a First Fleet mentality. Let us transport them out of our society and, rather than to the other end of the world, we will transport them into the penal system. We see them boomeranging in and out of that. Do members know that the life expectancy for those whose lifestyle choices includes a spell in prison is 22 years less on average than for you and me? Are we happy with that? Apparently yes, because no changes have been made. We are apparently happy with that.
But this budget tells us there is relief. Relief, they say, that will make a real difference to struggling families. Really? Look closer. What does it actually mean for a family of four to have the $700 a year that we have given them?
For a family of four with two children in the household, that budget relief gives them the equivalent of half a cup of coffee a day. I ask members: What are we doing? We are praising ourselves for relief worth half a cup of coffee a day and saying, "We are giving people budget relief." The government calls this a feast. It is not a feast, it is not a relief; it is a reminder of how far we have sunk.
I recall the former days. My father was kicked out of Malaysia and had to find unqualified work here and make his way. My mother was also working part-time. We could afford a house and put food on the table. It was a very meagre income, but we could afford that. Now, can a couple who both work one or maybe two jobs afford a house? Members know the answer. It is not as easy as it was—why? We have gone backwards.
The backbone of our society—the people—have been driven into poverty by a status quo–thinking that congratulates itself on handing out crumbs while keeping the loaf. Let us name the cause. I will say it again: it is the neoliberal status quo politics that keep things just the way they are. We fiddle at the edges, and this budget is another good example. It is an okay budget, as far as budgets go; it did a good job. But where is this money going? What values does this budget show? We have an over-reliance on traditional sectors. We heard about the iron ore price of I think US$104, which is actually far above the price it used to be. That is great. We are trucking our iron ore to China and relying on that. People are working hard, especially on the mines, coming back and blowing it, until they realise that they have a partner and children and they have to save money, by which time their health is damaged. There is a lack of visionary investment in the transformative technologies that we need. There is a lack of investment in the future industries that we need. We have a status quo–thinking problem. More of the old is giving us more of the same. Do we as a people want that?
There are gaps in the healthcare system. Should I mention the 7,008 hours of ramping? I was speaking a few days ago with a nurse—a midwife—who is a patient of mine. I asked her, "You know what the politicians say about the ramping. What do you think the cause is? Do you think it is that we have not spent enough money on the emergency departments or there are not enough St John's ambulances?" We both agreed that the problem was nothing of the sort. It is a lack of full-time equivalents on the wards to keep within budget, so there are no nurses to supply the beds and no beds for patients to go into from ED, therefore there is a backlog down to the street and people are being ramped. The fundamentals of the health system are not being met, because—I will speak more about this later—the fundamental underpinnings of wellness are not being met. If we do not meet the fundamental underpinnings of wellness, sickness will increase and costs will increase.
What about the tax system? We heard recently that there is a question about our GST. Remind me again: Was GST not supposed to be a limited tax imposed by Canberra to help pay for the Sydney Olympic Games? It was supposed to be a temporary tax. How long have we been fighting over the scraps of GST, this temporary tax which has persisted? Now we are seeing the government decide that the petrol tax it is applying is not enough for the roads, so it wants to tax electric vehicles. How is it that we always find a way to take money out of people's pockets and give it to the government? I refer to stamp duty. Who on earth thinks that stamp duty is a good idea? We have to get the money to feed the people to feed the government. I refer to capital gains tax. The government is renowned for the fact that it is excellent at squeezing every last cent out of someone to put into a tax because it has so many obligations. I have to ask members: Has anyone ever really looked at how much of the tax money we bring in is wasted? How much money does the government waste? There are calculations that 30% to 35% of the money we give into the tax system is chucked down the drain. The government may say, "We do what we can. It has to be recycled, of course." We the people—all of us here, of course, are "we the people"—are paying our tax money as well. Are we happy that almost one-third of it is just frittered away? Is it that unimportant to us? We do not even mention it in the budget.
I saw a solution a little while back. When Bulgaria ceased being a communist country and was in financial strife, rather than reforming its very complicated tax system, it said, "Right, screw it, 10% flat rate of tax for everyone—individuals, families and companies." Companies had to pay 10% tax. I have to ask: Who here does not know that many of our large companies pay minimal tax? Are we happy with that? In Bulgaria, companies paid 10% tax, at least for a little while—it later became 15%—and its economy flourished. Who would not like a maximum tax rate of 10% in our country right now? Why are we not doing it? An acquaintance of mine, Jason Meotti, put out a tax idea that basically said if we were to cut all these taxes that we are putting on people and implement a fairly simple incremental tax rate, we could actually solve the problems. We have run it through a number of iterations. One thing we do not have in this Parliament is a parliamentary budget office so that these ideas can be examined by people who are professional treasurers. We do not have that here. It is stuck in the hands of government and the actual solutions are not being made available. Why do we not consider taking the burden of tax off the people—the ones who vote for us? Why do we not do that and allow companies to not have to pay all their expensive auditors and accountants, and everyone pay a flat rate of tax, without exception? It might even be a good idea for the resource companies to start paying tax on some of the oil and gas they send offshore. Is that out of this world? Look, for example, at what happened in Norway as against what happened in the United Kingdom. In Norway, the government taxed the North Sea resource of oil and put it into a sovereign fund. There is now over a trillion dollars in that fund, which every person in Norway can benefit from. What have we done with that in our resource-rich state? Has anyone given that any serious thought at all?
We can look at alternatives here. Let us stop stealing from the people and start creating revenue. I mentioned this in the last term of Parliament. We have the fourth budget paper, which Hon Pierre Yang mentioned. Legalising and regulating recreational cannabis would generate $1.25 billion in the four-year forward estimates. How many hospitals, aged-care homes and childcare units could we build with that? It is not a bad idea, but the government says, "We can't do that—no, no." What about the hemp industry? That is nothing at all to do with intoxication—nothing whatsoever. We could look at about $20 billion. Do members think that would balance our dependency on the iron ore trade? Would that perhaps be useful in creating sustainable fuels? Would that be helpful in making materials we could send into space with a burgeoning space industry? Would it be an idea to have an innovative viewpoint as to how we might create rather than simply deplete our population and bemoan the fact that they are homeless and leave them to waste away in the streets? Of course, one of my pet concerns is our veterans who have served our country, often at risk of their life and limb. We praise them for half a day a year on Anzac Day, and yet for the rest of the time we leave them to gently vanish into their PTSDs and chronic pains. We leave them to survive, if they can. We walk by them in the street. We might perhaps give them a McDonald's meal or chuck them a few dollars: "Thank you for your service." What are we doing?
What about a housing revolution with a major expansion of the build-to-rent scheme and a social housing fund—things that we could give people that would really make a difference? What about educating our children for a new future, with major educational reform emphasising STEM and digital literacy? What about the skill of critical thinking? We do not teach our children critical thinking in schools because, if we did, they would see what a shambles we are and would choose someone else! Current generations are being taught not to think. They are being taught to condition themselves to working in jobs that are already becoming obsolete. They are going to end up in the dustbin of history because we have not equipped them or teachers in schools to educate them for the future. This is what we are doing by not planning for that in the budget. The cost-of-living issues are not bad luck or an unavoidable global tide; they are a deliberate result of decades of neoliberal policy. Neoliberal policy is a creed that tells us that markets will save us, while those very markets strip us of our security, dignity and, indeed, our savings. I tell members this: the cost of living is not a seasonal headline; it is a slow erosion of our way of life, and it will not be solved by the same hands that caused it. I say there is another way with different politics and a different kind of party built for a different kind of future. I wonder what that party will look like.
I come now to the area in which I have particular pains because it is my area of particular interest—health and wellness, or the "sickness system" as I call it. It is a sickness system because we allow people to get sick and then find a potion or solution that will help them become less sick. We do not have a health system that is looking towards people's wellness; it is a sickness system—a machine designed to treat illness, not prevent it. It is a machine that profits from the weeds in the garden and never pulls them out by the roots. We need to look at the foundations of illness, rather than at the symptoms. It results in social justice gaps. If someone is unable to work because of chronic pain, they are not going to be helping the economy and they will be suffering. The family will try to manage things. If members tried to do anything with the National Disability Insurance Scheme, they would realise what an abhorrent system it actually is. As I said before, we have a First Fleet mentality for those who are not cutting the mustard. If they cannot manage, they will be punished. If someone breaks the law, they will go to prison. They will suffer. We will make them pay for not doing what they should do. I will come to that in a little while because I have some figures that might be interesting for members.
As I said, we have underfunded mental health, aged care and disability services relative to need. We have underfunded dentistry. We have health system gaps, as we all know. In fact, we have probably all experienced it to some degree. Who has not sat in an emergency department for over four hours? Why do people go to ED when they could see a general practitioner? I recall a story from a while back. I had broken my leg—my left leg was in plaster—and I was clomping up and down ED; I was walking by that stage. I had just finished sewing someone's hand—I remember it very well—and went clomp, clomp, clomp, clomp to the next patient. I threw back the curtain and there was a man sitting there with a sore finger. He looked at my broken leg, he looked at his finger and he realised that he should not be there. One time I had a patient who had been attacked by a Rottweiler and a chunk of her arm was just hanging loose. I have some good pictures if anyone wants to see them, by the way. I was sewing her together when a nurse came in and said, "Doctor, doctor, the patient in the waiting room is getting really, really angry and she demands to be seen now." I was not in a good mood. "Bring her in," says I. In comes this woman with a sore throat. There I was, cleaning this very bloody arm—there was a nerve and muscles exposed—and getting ready to put it together again. The woman came clomping in and threw the curtain back. When she saw this disaster in front of her, she realised, "Oh, I'm in the wrong place." "Open your mouth," said I. When I saw her red throat, I said, "Take two Panadol and go away." Why was she in ED in the first place? Why did she come to ED with a sore throat? At this very moment in ED, we will have elderly people who have fallen from their beds. The thing about this is that their beds are often put down to floor height, so they are about 10 centimetres off the floor. When they fall out of their beds, it is technically a fall from a bed. To cover their backsides from an insurance point of view, the managers of the understaffed aged-care homes insist upon sending these patients by ambulance to hospital so that they can be assessed in ED. Do members think our EDs are less troubled by that kind of patient blocking our EDs and causing problems elsewhere? A person having a quiet heart attack will be waiting for the elderly person to be sorted while their heart gently collapses.
We have a systemic problem, and we are not addressing it by chucking more money into a failing system. We literally spend billions each year reacting to crises that could have been prevented with foresight, education and genuine community care. We build more hospital beds—sometimes—but do nothing to stop the tide of people who need them. We fill prescriptions but ignore the conditions that make people sick in the first place. Do members know that preventing illness costs less than treating illness after it happens? If we were to work on preventing smoking by making it deeply unpopular—not by banning it; that has not worked—the risk of heart attacks would go down. It is a lot more complicated than that, but if we allow people to smoke, which causes them harm, we will need to provide heart transplants, undertake stenting of coronary arteries, treat cholesterol or look at how to manage when their legs are taken off. It is far cheaper to prevent illness in the first place.
When it comes to preventing illness, let us talk about mental health. Do members know that there are about nine suicides a day in Australia? That does not take into account the burden of major mental health issues that people are suffering from in our state. We are facing an epidemic of despair. Does the budget do anything to fix that? This area remains underfunded, underprioritised, deeply unsexy and underdiscussed. That is just in Perth. How about the regions? What access do people in the regions have to mental health services? In the vernacular, it is bugger all! The neglect is worse in the regions and the need is more. There are fewer services in the regions. It is as if we have decided that wellness is a luxury for those who live within one kilometre of our Parliament—not even an hour away. The people who live around here get by. Try living in Meekatharra or Southern Cross; it is a different matter altogether. The vision I offer is not complicated; it is health care that begins before sickness, and mental health being integral to everything we do—all health policy—and not merely an afterthought.
I will tell members another real story about a mental health facility that was built in the Kimberley—I will not say where. It was designed and built to Perth standards. The statistics of Perth psychiatry were used to build a facility in the Kimberley with a majority Indigenous population. Do members think that money was well spent? It was not. It was a waste of money, actually. Funding should flow first to prevention, equity and places in need. We must grow a system much like a forest is grown. It is not all one type of tree; there should be a wide variety of approaches. Each part should be deeply useful and deeply rooted in the soil of our state—the wonderful people of our state. It should be a bit like a hemp plant, really. It is not going to be a quick crop; it will take seasons of care. It cannot be based on a four-year cycle of who is going to be elected next. That does not work. That results in one side shouting at the other: "We do it better; you did it worse than we are doing." That does not work. This budget is another example of that. It is a good budget as far as budgets go, but it does not solve the problems because it is giving a status quo iterative result—small changes made to the existing inadequate system. The forest that we grow for the people will stand for generations. This is what we need. Who is going to build that system? It will be the children who are building the future. I have two boys who are now out of school; one is at university, and the other is serving. They are our future. Have they been well served by our education system? Education is, of course, the key to opportunity. I do not mean just book learning; I mean by learning and being able to manage with the resources that we have and with the ability of the brain to function at a high level to produce the results that we need. Too often, as a result of our failing education system—not due to the teachers, but to the system that they are serving—we hand our children a key that does not fit the lock. Again, I am going to point to the neoliberal idea of educating children to work in mills and create the fortunes for those who own the mills, while the children themselves just collapse and die.
I turn to the educational shortcomings we have just now. The traditional education model is completely inadequate for the needs of the future. Just look at what is happening with the iterative large language models, such as ChatGPT level 5 and Gemini AI. We are looking at these as an enemy in the schools—"No, we can't have this. Let's stop that." No, we need to learn how to use this for the future. But, no. I recall the days when we were not allowed to use calculators because we were told we needed mental arithmetic to manage. We need to move with the times. Our teachers are calling out and begging for change. I have been speaking to the State School Teachers' Union of WA and teachers who have been involved in the studies to improve education. I spoke to a headmaster just the other day who was begging for change. Why are we using the NAPLAN system? It is failing children. It simply shows that we are not doing a good enough job in schools to bring children into the future. The reading and writing capabilities of year 12 students when they go to university is abysmal. It is a complete fail. Children are going to university as young adults who are unable to write essays and use their brains to function at a higher level approaching PhD level. They are not doing that. They have not been trained. Critical thinking skills are just not encouraged. We are preparing them to be broken. We are preparing them to be mill workers, to work like busy bees and to be expendable. We are preparing them for a world that no longer exists, a world of predictable careers, stable industries and a single set of skills that will last a lifetime. That world is gone. In its place is a world of constant change in which technology advances faster than curricula and climate and geopolitical shifts reshape the very map that our young people will navigate, yet this budget does not speak to that reality. It funds buildings, but not vision. It talks of pathways, but those pathways lead to yesterday. We need an education system that embraces the future—STEM and digital literacy for every child and lifelong learning so that a worker in their 40s can study other skills and develop careers in other industries. We need an early childhood education that builds a foundation for all that follows. Education is not an expense; it is an investment in our future. It is an investment in unlocking the potential of our children and unlocking the building capacity and cultivating adaptability, especially for all the neurodiverse students that we have, because every child in WA deserves an education that is not stuck in yesterday but is ready for tomorrow.
That brings me to the environment. It is nice that there is mention of the environment in the budget. In Norse legend, there is the great ash tree, Yggdrasil. The branches and roots connect all realms of existence. It is a bridge between worlds. It is the thread of life itself. If Yggdrasil were to wither, so, too, would all that depends on it—our environment. Yggdrasil connects our health, our economy and our very survival, yet we treat it as if it were expendable—as if the branch we cut away today will not be the branch we need to stand on tomorrow. This budget gives us piecemeal measures, small nods towards renewable energy and scattered results for sustainability, but nothing that matches the scale of the crisis. We need to think again. We need to begin thinking new thoughts. We need to remove our environmental limitations. We need to look at our incremental environmental policy and change it. Our status quo thinking will not solve these problems.
There is a loss of business opportunities. Let us take for example, the hemp industry. Members know of my passion for wellness and hemp is part of that. We need new thinking. Innovative approaches could bring over $20 billion into our economy. We could be making materials based on hemp that go into space. We could make ship hulls from hemp. We could make houses for the homeless from hemp. We could allow Indigenous communities to grow hemp and house and educate themselves. We could do that. Do we? No. We need a comprehensive alternative vision for the future. Let us look at housing, for example. What about the tree canopy of housing? What about the use of different uses of water in housing? How about toilets that do not require us to poo into drinking water? Is that not a sensible thing to do? Would that be helpful? What about a sustainable environment? What about encouraging vertical ground growing in which we can grow our own vegetables and fruit?
We have to be concerned about a geopolitical realignment. The vision is clear for now; we need net zero by 2050. Actually, we need net zero by 2030. More than that, we do not need net zero; we need to realise that we need to do different things now because our world needs us. I will tell you what; it is a bit like a war. We will not change anything until we are confronted with a crisis. It is a bit like World War II, with the planes coming across France towards Britain. What did they need? They developed radar. Radar would not have been developed as quickly had the need not been expressly put because bombs were falling. We need to find a suitable solution right now, otherwise we will not be here tomorrow. Are we at the point now of being in an emergency in which we do not need to think iteratively about making minor changes to the existing status quo? We need to think radically and make radical changes. Can we create businesses that profit from this? That is what we are forbidding businesses from doing because we want to do more of the same old, same old. We need to think differently. We must think differently or we will die. We need aggressive interim targets. We need investments in renewable energy infrastructure now. We need a circular economy that ends this era of waste because we cannot live in a dying house. A government that refuses to act with urgency is not a caretaker. It is an arsonist pretending to be a firefighter.
I could speak about the gold standard of transparency. Truth is probably one of the important points that I find lacking in our society. We talk beside the point. We talk to opposite ends. We try to mitigate. We try to justify. We do not actually deal with what is really going on. There is no truth. Democracy, it must be said, has been fenced off. A good example is the Parliament of the last term when we had basic and autocratic dictatorship masquerading as democracy. We were quite happy with that. The gates are guarded not by the people who vote for us, but by those who profit from keeping the people out. We live in a society of corporate donations by legislation. What we are doing right now in this house is supporting those who profit from the status quo by making laws that fit them. I spoke earlier about the Environmental Protection Authority and the laws that were created on the advice of the industrialists, spurning the advice of the environmentalists who were concerned about how we live in this world.
I heard from my honourable colleague Hon Dr Steve Thomas that we cannot do this just because the rest of the world is doing it worse. I agree. That does not stop us from doing it, especially if we can make a business that is profitable and export the business to those countries where they can make profits too by the same business we create. We can start that. We do not have to be followers. Was it not in Australia that wi-fi was discovered? That is, until the Americans took it off us and said, "We can do it better. You're too small, too poor and too weak." We have fantastic scientists here who could find solutions. We could export that and make profits from it. We do not have to be the poor country saying, "I want to be in this world, but I'm too weak, come and help me". We are Australian. The lobbyists just now are slipping between the ministerial offices and corporate boardrooms as if the two were the same building and the public is left to wonder whether its voice counts at all. The answer is a resounding no. If someone votes for one side or the other, it is actually the same, but we are told this is just how politics works. It is not, is it? We are told this is just how politics works, and I say that is the problem. Integrity is not a slogan; it is a system built on transparency, accountability and knowledge. Power is borrowed from the people, not stolen from them. We can build that system. We must build that system and we will build that system. A Western Australian integrity commission with real teeth is needed with real-time donating and reporting accessible to every citizen, and blockchain-based transparency for procurement so that every contract is open to scrutiny. Trust once lost is very hard to regain, but it can be rebuilt. When we restore that trust, we restore the foundation of our democracy itself. We can realign and rebuild our democracy. This comes into the geopolitical reality that we are in just now: Australia first, and of all Australia, Western Australia first of all. We can lead the way. How often do we feel that the eastern states are taking us for granted? They take our money and then leave us with nothing. All the decisions are made across there. Do any members feel that way? At the moment, we have a traditional reliance on US-centric geopolitical alliances. It neglects meaningful engagement with our neighbours in Asia. We see in real time today what the consequences are for our fragile democracy with the current incumbent of that great office in the US now sending in the National Guard on the pretext of managing crime—a crime rate that has been falling, by the way. But he says, "No, crime is increasing. I'm going to send in the National Guard." This is just one more step on the path to a fascist dictatorship. I refuse to name that person or the office. I have another name for him that is not parliamentary. I cannot say that, so I use the acronym OSGUS—OSG of the US. Over a coffee, I can tell members what "OSG" means. It is only going to take just a little bit more.
I am going to make a prediction now. I predict that in a not-too-distant future, an inciting incident will cause OSGUS to call out military rule to preserve safety in his once great nation and abort or prolong the period for the next elections under the pretext of preserving democracy. I predict that now. The thing I have to point out to members is that not one single member jumped up and said, "Nonsense". Not one single member said, "This cannot be," because we all know this is a possibility. It would have been unthinkable 40 years ago—how things have changed! Our geopolitical reality has been absolutely shattered. For most of the last century, our foreign policy has been shaped by the simple assumption that our interests and the interests of the US are one and the same. There was a time when that alignment made sense. In the darkest days of World War II, our alliance was forged in shared danger and shared sacrifice—although my father did say he was shot at by Americans because they did not know where to shoot. Those days are long gone. The America of today is not the America of 1945. It is a hopelessly divided nation. Its politics are poisoned by hate and hatred, led by a man whose misogyny, narcissism and sociopathy are matched only by his skill in bending the truth to his own ends. It is a nation that sent Australians to die in Vietnam, based on a lie. It sent Australians to die in Iraq in wars built on false causes—no different from the Nazi lies used to justify their invasion into Poland when they fabricated an incident at the border. We are waiting for that initiating event to pause elections and none of us will be surprised. I can say that without disapproval. At this very minute, it is preparing for another conflict, this time with China over Taiwan, in which the chief beneficiary would not be Australia, nor peace in our region, but American strategic and corporate interests. I mentioned Nvidia chips and that is where we are. We must not be led into another war that is not our own. We must not put Australian lives at risk for someone else's financial benefit. It is time to put Australia and Western Australia first. Let us stand together as free people in a free land with a budget that reflects our needs and not the needs of Canberra. Let us remember what true patriotism means—each and every one of us standing for our country and those who live here. Let us look to our Australian values. Who are we? Where is the pride in who we really are? Let us put our country and state first as we stand with our neighbours in peace and harmony.
We just gave half a billion dollars, part of the $400 billion that we are giving away to a military industrial complex, for a putative few submarines that will be outdated by the time we get them—if we get them. I know we can have houses built and jobs in Rockingham, but why are we not giving that money to our own people for our own needs? Why do we have to give it to someone else who will pander to us with a few jobs by saying, "We'll look after you." I say, "Like hell you will. You're looking after yourself first." We get the crumbs of that. It is time to look not across the Pacific for leadership, but to our own region, our South East Asian neighbours, our trading partners, and our potential allies in building a peaceful and prosperous century. In Homer's Odyssey, Odysseus latched himself to the mast to resist the siren's song. We too must resist the siren call of foreign entanglements that serve others at the cost of our own future. Our course must be charted by the compass of peace, not the magnet of conflict. Let us not forget our history: the Weimar Republic in 1933, and the earlier Armenian Holocaust that is now almost forgotten. We must serve truth, freedom and justice. Did I mention justice? We have an "injustice" system at the moment. We need a justice system reform to fix the injustice we have. I did a calculation just now of the adult incarceration costs in Western Australia—these are estimates. The mid-range is about $108,405 per year. It could be as high as $150,000. For juveniles, it is approximately $715,000 per year. I have a quotation I want to give members. Each year, Western Australia forgoes roughly half a billion dollars in economic output because thousands of our people are warehoused instead of working. We spend up to $1 billion more to keep them there. If we cut our imprisonment rates to modern Scandinavian levels and focus on rehabilitation—I am talking Norway and Sweden—we could free up about $1 billion per year, every year, while building safer communities with far lower reoffending. By continuing to propagate the First Fleet mentality of abusing those who have stepped across the law because of social situations and many other causes, we are actually shooting ourselves in the foot to the cost of $1 billion and it is leading to societal collapse. I point to domestic violence. I think enough has been said about that.
What about strengthening our Indigenous rights and opportunities? What about that? What about enhanced funding for Indigenous health, education and employment, expanded land rights and sustainable economic opportunities for Indigenous communities? I point out that not so long ago, the government decided it was not going to send Indigenous juveniles into prison because it is not politically correct now, and quite rightly so. Bearing in mind these juveniles often have fetal alcohol spectrum disorder, other neurodevelopmental disorders, mental health issues and a whole host of behavioural issues, we are now sending them back into the community. We passed this legislation a year or two ago. Did we fund that transition? Not a single dollar was given to that—no psychiatrists and no psychologists. They have gone back into the communities to wreak havoc and now we blame them again. Where does that appear in the budget? It does not. The budget is very good for the government writing what it wants to write, but the things that are not written simply do not appear. They do not matter to the people who read the budget because it is not there and therefore I cannot see it. This is an issue. This is a problem.
I must say I really appreciated Hon Tjorn Sibma's budget reply speech and learnt from that. I am going on a very different tack here. I refer to the philosophical underpinnings of why things are not working well. Justice in its purest form should be a bridge or a path from wrongdoing to restitution, from harm to healing. But too often, our justice system becomes a wall that divides, isolates and entrenches disadvantage. I must tell members now that our lawyers are sick of it. They are sick of pandering to the ills that are happening without the root and fundamental cause being addressed. What is the root cause of domestic violence, or should we just penalise the results? We criminalise mental illness. Having worked in the corrective system as a doctor, I can tell members now that a lot of the prisoners spend time in a de facto psychiatric institution. Then the government discharges them untreated back to commit the same problems.
What is it with the age of criminal responsibility being so low that children are caught in a system designed for adults? Are we really cool with this? This is not justice; it is a cycle. It is feeding on itself. It is a generation after generation cycle of entrenched poverty, crime and the situations that cause our society to degenerate year on year. We are seeing that now. We can do better. We could raise the age of criminal responsibility. We could replace mandatory minimums with restorative justice. We could look at Norway and work out how it does that. We can invest in proper rehabilitation. As a doctor, I was actually looking at prisoners prior to release to see how they were when it came to sexual violence. "Have you been rehabilitated?" "No". "Are they a problem right now?" "No." "Okay, discharge them." This is my personal experience.
Society is not measured by how harshly it punishes but by how effectively it heals. We will come back to my leading point here that the enemy of the people is actually status quo thinking. The underlying cause for decades of failed policy is the belief that the status quo system is correct. We see this in the medical system just now. We still believe that ineffective treatments are effective, and we carry on doing it. There are costs to our community. For example, did members know that there are about 1,000 deaths every year in Western Australia due to properly prescribed medications properly administered, and we keep on doing that! It is not recorded by the way. This is just adapted here from the available statistics. In 2016, the Therapeutic Goods Administration stated that Australia-wide, there are 15 deaths due to properly prescribed medication properly administered. It is actually about 16,000 to 18,000.
We have this neoliberal assault on people in favour of the vastly rich. We know it is happening; we can see it happening. Those who have money are getting much richer. The middle classes are being edged closer and closer to poverty. It is happening in front of our very eyes. We are seeing this. It takes a crisis to demand change. I believe we are in crisis right now. We must have change. The neoliberal financiers controlling the politicians' grip is the status quo we need to fight. It is the enemy of the people. Innovation is simply not possible along with status quo thinking. We cannot do that. Across every portfolio, every crisis and every unkept promise is a common thread: the status quo. It is not a neutral caretaker; it is a parasite feeding on the lifeblood of the people. It is growing stronger every year it is left unchallenged. It tells us that innovation is risky, that change is dangerous and that stability lies in keeping things exactly as they are, while the ground crumbles beneath our feet. It is the same status quo that has let the cost of living spiral while calling token gestures relief, the health system decay while congratulating itself on opening new wards and the environment burn while commissioning reports instead of action, and that sold our sovereignty in trade for the illusion of protection. It is not confined to one party. The ALP, the Liberal Party and the Nationals all still cling to a past that cannot be resurrected. They look to the United States, wrapped in a drive into a Christo-fascist state, emulating the Taliban but without the turbans, to a never-ending bilateral hate in Israel and Gaza, to the conservative mullahs hanging gays in Iran and to Russia attacking Ukraine. See what happens when entrenched power serves itself and the voices of the people are drowned out by the drums of vested interest. It is collapse, conflict and loss of freedoms once thought unshakable. We look at the US right now. It is not a fight of left versus right or right versus left. It is the people versus those who demand the status quo.
There comes a time in our life, the life of every person, when patience becomes surrender. This budget is a surrender to a status quo. When silence becomes complicity and when the slow drip of disappointment hardens into the certainty that the system will not save us. We believe the doomsayers of mainstream media, which is of course bought by the vested interests. There comes a time when we the people must stand and speak not just at times of election. People must speak and act now. That time is not next year or next election. It is now. This budget is an example of why we must act now. We are not getting what we need as a people to flourish. For too long, we have been told that politics is the domain of the few—the well connected, well funded and well fed—and that change only comes when they permit it. I tell members that every freedom we cherish was won when the people decided to act without permission. The vested interest, the corporate giants, the political machine, the shadowy brokers of trade and influence are united in one aim. It is to keep you as the people passive and to convince the people that their role is to watch, to wait, to hope and to work harder and harder for less and less because there is no other way. I say no.
We must arise in the communities, the streets, the schools, the councils and arise in hope, in courage and in unity. We must stand together as one proud people, proud that we are Western Australians. In the old myths, the phoenix dies in flame, only to rise again from the ashes, renewed, reborn and radiant. We stand today in the fire of a failed and failing system. But from this fire, a third democratic wave can rise built not on the brittle bones of the past, but on the unbreakable will of the people. This will be a wave that carries us into a new era of transparency, equity and honour in leadership. The power is with the people. The future is ours and together we all will arise.
Hon Michelle Hofmann (3:39 pm): I rise to speak to the motion currently before the house, which is the annually observed custom of noting the budget statements.
When the budget statements were tabled in late June, the parliamentary secretary said this in relation to funding the prevention of family and domestic violence:
In this Budget we double down on our effort, including:
an additional $11 million to expand Safe at Home, a program that helps women and children experiencing domestic and family violence to stay safely in their homes. This will enable the expansion of four existing domestic violence outreach services and establish three new sites of assistance; and
an additional $1.4 million to progress planning for expansion of FDV shelters in Albany and Geraldton, as well as five additional refuges across the State that will significantly boost access to services.
This is just one part of the funding that has been allocated in this space. Of course, we wholeheartedly support the expansion of these crisis programs. It is a sad indictment on our society that these programs are sorely needed and that demand for services continues to increase, as do the rates of family and domestic violence.
Before I go further, I want to acknowledge that today I will refer to sexual violence, including rape, and to suicide. I recognise that these are deeply distressing subjects for many, and I offer this warning out of respect for any who would be affected.
I will start with a consideration of the scale of the problem. We recently saw the Western Australia Police Force crime statistics released for the 2024–25 financial year. These reveal that, sadly, family and domestic violence continues to rise. Family and domestic violence–related offences now account for 22.8% of all recorded offences. Total family and domestic violence offences are up from 39,132 in the previous year to 45,775. The number of breaches of family violence restraining orders that were investigated by police in the last financial year increased by almost 20% to 20,082. Police found that the number of breaches of family violence restraining orders increased almost 20% from 11,259 to 13,462.
What is even more troubling is that these figures are under-reported. Western Australian Commissioner of Police Col Blanch said:
I have a special advisory group who specifically inform me who are industry experts in family and domestic violence and survivors themselves who tell me … up to 70 per cent of women are still not reporting to police for various reasons.
Crime statistics are rising in other areas too. Recent sexual offences increased by over 11%, and threatening behaviour has more than doubled since 2021–22. The reality is that whatever we are doing now is not enough, that frontline supports are not enough and that prevention measures are essential in the family and domestic violence space, specifically in the area of preventing violence against women.
The budget papers include ongoing funding commitments to a program called Our Watch. The funding is $129,000, to out year 2026–27 and the other out years. The aim of that program is to embed gender equality and prevent violence where Australians live, learn, work and socialise. This program was established under the original National Plan to Reduce Violence against Women and their Children 2010–2022. We now have a new National Plan to End Violence against Women and Children 2022–2032. That plan commits to a vision of:
… a country free of gender-based violence – where all people live free from fear and violence and are safe at home, at work, at school, in the community and online. This is a human right for all people and we commit to ending violence against women and children in Australia in one generation.
The national plan, which has been agreed to and adopted by all states, succinctly outlines the distressing extent of the problem:
Violence against women and children is a problem of epidemic proportions in Australia. One in 3 women has experienced physical violence since the age of 15, and one in 5 has experienced sexual violence. On average, a woman is killed by an intimate partner every 10 days. Rates of violence are even higher for certain groups, such as Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women. A woman is also more likely to experience violence at particular life stages, such as while pregnant or while separating from a relationship. In 2021, girls aged 10 to 17 made up 42% of female sexual assault victims.
It is important that we confront the cultural machinery that drives violence, particularly against women and children. Unfortunately, a by-product of the increasing abundance of online tools that we use for so many good things is that those tools can also enable far more violence against women.
After drilling down and looking at the scale of the problem that we are facing here in WA and across our country, let us consider the impact of violence against women on individual people. Today, I want to tell you about Melinda. Over the past three weeks, Melinda has been attacked with an avalanche of abuse: rape threats, death threats and torture threats. She has been sent child sexual abuse material. She has been sent pornography. She has been accused of paedophilia and encouraged to kill herself. She has had threats to make rape porn using her photo. People have made videos up to four hours long spreading lies and misinformation about her. People have threatened to hunt her down. They have called her all number of horrible names. They have described women as sex objects and property. Her social media account and emails have been flooded with hate comments, many from accounts created specifically for abuse. Incredibly abusive memes and deep fakes have been circulated, designed to ridicule and publicly humiliate her, discredit her and more. I am sorry to say that over the past three weeks, it has not just been happening to Melinda. It has also been happening to Coralie, Caitlin, Renee, Bernie and Lyn.
Why are these specific women being targeted with such horrific abuse? Back in April, there was a small but significant change in the online gaming world. A platform named Steam removed a rape simulation game called No Mercy. This came about because thousands of people emailed the company. Over 70,000 people signed a petition calling for its removal. At the time, this group of women also discovered on that platform almost 500 other games depicting rape, incest, sexual torture and child abuse, and these games were openly accessible to anyone, including children. These women, who are part of a group called Collective Shout, contacted payment processing companies, because they derive financial benefit from facilitating the sale of these games, and asked them to cease processing payments on gaming platforms that host rape-, incest- and child sexual abuse-themed games.
I will not repeat the descriptors of these games. If members are interested in understanding what is so abhorrent about the games in specific detail or understanding some of the threats that have been received by these women, those details are on the Collective Shout website. Through their advocacy work, these brave women, and the thousands of people who stood up with them, have successfully had hundreds of these games delisted, and it did not stop there. At the end of July, thousands of games glorifying rape, torture and sexual violence against women and girls were delisted from gaming platform Itch while it carried out an audit to determine whether the games complied with the updated terms and conditions of payment processing gateways. The backlash against these actions has included massive claims and large petitions claiming that they infringe on freedom of expression. Caitlin, who works with Melinda, voiced what so many of us believe when she said:
I don't think men's 'speech' should trump the rights of women and girls … Violence and dehumanization of women should not be acceptable outcomes of free speech. We also have to consider whose voices are being heard, and whose are being silenced. Does free speech apply to women, to survivors of rape and sexual assault? Do we have a right to object to speech that promotes and normalizes violence against us?
The irony is that the retaliation that has poured out really underscores the fact that these types of games encourage such violent behaviour. Although there have been some changes in the online gaming world, a greater cultural shift is required. It is very clear that this sort of behaviour, both online and outside the online space, is unacceptable, but also very difficult to combat in a legal setting. Melinda and the women at Collective Shout are brave to put forward a vision to see a world free of sexploitation, where the objectification of women and sexualisation of girls is unthinkable. Today I am standing with Melinda. I am standing with Caitlin, Coralie, Lynn, Renee and Bernie and calling it out. I am backing UN Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women and Girls, Ms Reem Alsalem, who has called for action against this torrent of abuse, specifically saying:
I expect and hope all those that have a mandate to act be they State institutions or businesses to put an end to these threats and to the violence.
Ms Alsalem continues:
No one has an unlimited right to freedom of expression. If it incites violence, misogyny or hatred against a person or a group, including women and girls, or a group of them, it is prohibited under international law.
I pledge that I will do what I can in this place, and that includes calling for greater cultural change and calling for more funding in future budgets. Tackling family and domestic violence in particular, and violence more broadly, is completely a bipartisan goal. That means we believe that it is important, that the current situation is not good enough and that Western Australians deserve better. As a member of the opposition, it also means that this issue is so important that I have to raise valid concerns and highlight that things are not working, all as part of trying to make a change in this space and to send a message.
As well as funding for frontline support services, we should also consider where we can make changes in legal tools, such as expanding takedown powers and platform accountability to combat digital abuse, deep fake misuse and AI-enabled misogyny. I note that the government has introduced into Parliament a bill that will bring in a broader range of offences, particularly in relation to "post and boast", which will make it illegal to engage in activity that glorifies or boasts about specific criminal conduct. Some of the offences in that legislation include violent crime, dangerous driving and inciting hatred, but perhaps this is a missed opportunity to expand the legislation to deal with some of these sexual offences. We can only hope that it will be broadened in time.
I return now to the motion before the house to note the budget statements. Today I cannot help but reflect on the words of the parliamentary secretary, when delivering the ninth budget of the Labor government, in relation to health. The specific words were:
we invest like never before in our hospitals and health system, increasing capacity and delivering reforms to provide world class patient care into the future.
After the month we have had and the statistics we have seen, that feels a bit like salt in the wound, with ambulance ramping clearly out of control. Earlier today I gave notice of a motion that focuses on how, when the Labor government came into power in March 2017, it promised to improve the performance of the health system, when monthly ambulance ramping at that time had never exceeded 2,300 hours, compared with July this year, when we had over 7,000 hours. It is also clear that other elements of our health system are in crisis. This budget delivers a $1.4 billion increase in funding to the health system, but what we are dealing with now demonstrates that sometimes it clearly cannot always just be about the amount that has been spent, but about how effectively and how well it has been spent.
Just yesterday, a story came in about more than 1,000 work orders having been requested between January 2023 and June 2025 at Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital. Some of the comments in response to this have been quite dismissive, have played the issue down and have deflected around the scale of the problem and the veracity of some of the contents provided, but I think it is worth having a look at some of the comments that have been made in the work orders. One refers to "Pipe blocked leaking into corridor in sub-basement"; another refers to "Potential mould in walls and ROOF". One requests "Please investigate and resolve the water leak that has flooded the visitors room." One refers to "Urgent leak in ROOF flooding in theatre corridor and onto equipment". Another one refers to "Huge leak" and "Unable to utilise room for patient testing".
In addition to the contents of these work orders, which show a systemic problem at Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital, we also have the words of callers to the radio this morning. A nurse, Leanne, stated:
Just recently we've had an overflow of faecal matter in the ground floor … And while we've got patients waiting in the waiting room, the smell is going through the whole department.
We've also … had mould with actual mushrooms growing out of our ceiling and in the actual main corridors.
Every time there's a huge rainfall downpour in Perth, there's always buckets and towels on the floor …
…
Even our staff toilets are disgusting.
The AMA president, Dr Kyle Hoath, has highlighted concerns around unsafe working conditions in our hospitals and the hazards that this presents to staff and patients. Staff have repeatedly warned that expensive lab equipment has been at risk, and that indicates and implies a systemic inability to provide a workplace that is safe for both workers and for patients. We must consider whether these signs in just one of our hospitals really indicate a serious issue with our health system more broadly, and ask whether the funds that are being pumped into the health system are being spent effectively. I note that my colleague Hon Dr Brian Walker also made detailed comments about that earlier, and asked some questions.
Moving on to another topic in another area of the budget, the government is investing in Western Australia's water supply with a $6.3 billion program of works over the next four years. The government's plan to manage our water is of great interest to me, with my background in environment and planning law. I have done work previously as a lawyer with companies applying for water licences or amending their water licences, or considering whether their licensing arrangements are sufficient for the purposes of the projects that they are engaged in. In the area of water, it is critical to assess not only what is being funded, and by how much, but also how effective that funding is. In June this year an Office of the Auditor General report on the regulation of water and water licences was released. The Auditor General says quite clearly—I think most people would broadly agree with her—that water is a valuable and essential resource critical to our everyday life, agriculture, industry and natural environment.
Flowing on and looking at the outcome of the investigation into our water licensing system, it is a concern to me that the Auditor General has found that poor management, over-extraction and the illegal taking of water all threaten the long-term sustainability of our groundwater supplies and create an uneven playing field for operators who are doing the right thing.
Let us break down what this actually means in the context here in Western Australia and what actually indicates why it is such an important area. Our water supply in Western Australia is drawn from three main sources: surface waters such as rivers, dams and reservoirs; desalinated or recycled water; and groundwater, which comes from the aquifers beneath the earth's surface.
In Western Australia, surface water is relatively scarce. This is because of our climate and our relatively low rainfall. Desalination plants are quite expensive. I note that Labor is touting its Made in WA policy when it is talking about investing in a new desalination plant, but the reality is that most of our water in Western Australia—what we predominantly rely upon—is groundwater. In fact, 78% of the water that we use comes from groundwater aquifers. This is used for agriculture, mining and irrigation and also for drinking supplies across our towns and cities.
This is significantly higher than in other Australian states where surface water and regulated water such as the Murray–Darling Basin play a much larger role. I should note that despite a lower reliance on groundwater in other states, some of them have far better systems to regulate groundwater use. This is partly because of an investment they have made in understanding how much groundwater there is in their state. That is vastly different from where we are in Western Australia, where there is very little understanding of the extent of our water sources. But we do know that we have a relative over-reliance on groundwater, and that carries some well-documented risks that we should be aware of. These include aquifer depletion, saltwater intrusion, environmental degradation and economic costs.
Here in Perth in particular, most of our water is coming from an aquifer. The water use in Western Australia across the board is governed by our Rights in Water and Irrigation Act and regulations, and it is administered by the Department of Water and Environmental Regulation. Under the RIWI act, a licence is generally required to lawfully take water and to construct or alter wells in WA; this does not include for domestic use.
Licensing conditions are generally used when large volumes of water are being taken. They may include volume limits, time restrictions, metering and monitoring obligations. About 44% of licences require the licence holders to install and maintain meters and provide evidence of this to the department, along with reports on how much water they have drawn. The Department of Water and Environmental Regulation manages at least 12,000 active licences in WA, but the Office of the Auditor General has repeatedly found that the department lacks the capability to ensure that water use is sustainable or compliant.
Between 1 July 2021 and 30 June 2024, 16,702 potential incidents of noncompliance were identified. Of those, 63% were suspected unauthorised extractions of water and 87% of those potential incidents were never assigned to a staff member. Of the remaining incidents that were assigned, 37% did not have their evaluations completed before the statutory timeframe expired. The department's current activities provide a limited understanding of the actual compliance and do little to deter licence holders from breaching their conditions.
One of the other issues raised by the Office of the Auditor General is that staff are given little or no formal training in making compliance assessments. What makes it worse is that this is the third report conducted by the Office of the Auditor General that had found issues with the planning and monitoring of water use in the state in recent years. In 2009 and 2021, reports were also handed down. The conclusion drawn from the outcome of these investigations is that our environment is not currently adequately protected, as our regulators, including in the Department of Water and Environmental Regulation, do not have an effective understanding of how well operators follow their conditions and the ineffective conditions are not well managed.
The department's response to the 2023 report acknowledged the shortcomings and stated that through its reform road map, it was developing and moving towards different systems and planning to integrate monitoring functions and intelligence sharing across divisions. The strategic plan for the department speaks of developing and implementing new water resource legislation to provide for sustainable water management. That is the strategic plan from 2022 to 2026.
While our water resources continue to become increasingly stretched, the Auditor General has delivered scathing assessments of water regulation. The government continues to promise reform, but we have not seen it. When we look at the funding that is been allocated in the budget, we see that one of the biggest issues that has been raised in the context of these concerns is that despite a 40% increase in water licensing funding over the past decade, the Office of the Auditor General has offered no suggestion that underfunding is to blame. Instead, the report has pointed to chronic mismanagement, poor coordination, ineffective enforcement and no coherent strategy. The result is a system that costs more and delivers less and still does not protect our water resources.
There are concerns about staffing levels, but there is not much clarity. Staffing in the department has increased, but there are still the comments from the Auditor General that staff are given little or no formal training to make compliance assessments. It is not clear whether additional staff will be allocated to compliance or whether they will get the training that they need. The average cost per licence issued is increasing year on year, from $4,182 in 2023–24 to a forecasted $5,296 by 2025–26, which suggests that either licensing processing is becoming more complex or the inefficiency is increasing.
The government's proposed budget provides no clear or transparent picture of how the water licensing funds are being allocated or spent, and despite increases in funding, there is little evidence that this investment will lead to meaningful change. The Auditor General has made it quite clear that the current system does not work, and it is time that we looked at systems in other states that do. Our groundwater is too vital and too fragile to be governed by a system that is this dysfunctional. The Auditor General has sounded the alarm three times in recent years and the message is clear: the current system is not fit for purpose.
I will move on to other areas of the budget that also have environmental impacts. I refer to budget paper No 2, which includes a $217.5 million commitment to the Perth entertainment and sporting precinct. I will follow on from the comments of my colleague Hon Dr Brian Walker, who raised quite specific concerns around community consultation on this project.
I have previously said in this place that the people of WA deserve a responsible government that listens to and consults with its citizens. I am hearing from people in the community around Burswood that this is not what they have received.
In 2020, after years of genuine community consultation, the government released a long-term vision for Burswood Park—a 20-year master plan. This was built around three pillars: nature, public access and community use. That plan provided certainty to people who wanted to live in that area and people based their decisions on that information. In January this year, it was announced that a $217.5 million V8 Supercars racetrack will be built on this site. The community consultation that happened after this announcement has been criticised on many levels by locals who say that at the consultations that were provided at the drop-in centres, they were not asked whether they agreed with adding a racetrack to this beautiful area; they were simply given some information on it. Locals who attended those forums have described them as sham consultation.
Let us be clear: in addition to the locals who have objected to this, the local council has also voiced its concerns. In a council meeting in February, the elected members voted seven to one against this proposal. I quote from the minutes from the meeting held on 18 February, which outline a motion:
That Council:
1. Does not support the construction of a motorsport street circuit (motorplex) at Burswood Park because:
(a) it will have negative impacts on the natural environment, including the Swan River and wetlands, the loss of public open space, tree canopy and wildlife habitat, and carbon emissions;
(b) it will have significant negative impacts on the surrounding residential communities, including noise, odour and light pollution, traffic congestion and loss of amenity;
(c) it is not included in the Burswood Park Board’s 20 Year Vision for the future entertainment precinct at Burswood Park, prepared with community consultation;
(d) there has been no community consultation with the residents of the Town who will be impacted, or with the Town itself;
(e) there has been no disclosure of a feasibility study, environmental impact assessment, business case demonstrating a need for a motorplex in this location, or project costings;
2. Endorses the Burswood Park Board’s 20 Year Vision for the future of Burswood Park released in 2024, which does not include a motorplex;
At the same time, other councils are calling out for funding and investment in this space, such as the City of Wanneroo, which sees this as a potential investment that would align very closely with the projects and facilities in its area. Petitions have been tabled with thousands of signatures from locals objecting to this project and this choice for the investment of funds, considering that these are the wrong priorities for our state and that the money could be best served elsewhere. I refer to some comments from locals. According to my notes, Lisa said:
The consultancy was a joke. On one of the days when there was a football game on, people were told to move on by police.
People were not allowed to be there. She said that the consultations were not taken to communities that will be impacted by the noise pollution, such as Burswood, Claisebrook, Victoria Park, Belmont and Lathlain.
Dr Robyn Harvey has expressed concern around being excluded from decision-making. She said, according to my notes:
We live directly across the river, and the noise impact will be unbearable. We have repeatedly reached out to politicians but have been met with silence
The lack of transparency and unwillingness to answer questions on this project has continued through the estimates process in the other house. Very evasive answers have been provided to questions about land acquisitions. There has been insistence that no land will be purchased for the site but no clarity on whether there will be possible land swaps. This lack of transparency has raised concerns around hidden plans and the impact on local stakeholders. Great concerns have also been raised around the lack of a clear noise management plan and lack of mitigation measures being explained to residents, as well as concerns around the impacts on the environment and traffic.
Western Australian taxpayers deserve better. They deserve accountability, information and consultation—not a $217.5 million project that will benefit few and have a negative impact on many. The question is: Why is the government prioritising this pet project when that money could be far better used elsewhere, particularly if it is invested in something like our health system, whereby the funds are invested but not wasted?
Debate adjourned, on motion by Hon Lauren Cayoun.
