Shadow treasurer Steve Thomas slams State Budget as ‘lost opportunity’ for Albany

Shadow treasurer Steve Thomas said the WA Budget was “another reflection of a lost opportunity for Albany” as the region continues to grapple with a housing, health and worker crisis. There were not many surprises for Albany when Premier Mark McGowan handed down his first budget as treasurer on Thursday, which included a $5.6 billion surplus — the biggest in WA’s history. Mr Thomas said the Budget showed “very little vision” for what the Great Southern needed. “If there is a plus in this budget is effectively the election commitments have been funded...that is pretty much all that has been funded,” he said. Much of the cash for Albany is for pledges made as part of the Great Southern’s COVID-19 recovery plan and election sweeteners made on the Labor campaign trail. This includes $3.3 million for tourism infrastructure at The Gap, more than $10m for classroom upgrades in primary and secondary schools, $3.2m for trails on Mt Adelaide and Mt Clarence and $1.6m for Albany Surf Life Saving Club. Albany will benefit from several Statewide investments including $9.1b for regional infrastructure, $463m for regional school bus services and $2b to subsidise regional electricity and water costs to keep charges in line with Perth. More than $28m will be used to repair, rebuild and complete safety treatments on more than 320km of Great Southern roads. A $4m pledge for social and public housing at Spencer Park was the only detailed housing announcement with no detailed commitments announced to specifically tackle demands on Albany’s frontline crisis accommodation services. “All of those people should be rightly angry that for two and a half years this government has had billions of spare dollars and they are still dealing with a crisis — it beggars belief,” Mr Thomas said. Albany Health Campus’ acute psychiatric unit will share in $1.7m for upgrades. No funding was committed towards a residential drug and alcohol rehabilitation facility in the Great Southern. “The emergency department fills up with issues around drug use and alcohol abuse, domestic violence and mental health issues which emergency departments aren’t really designed to manage,” he said. “The Government had two choices: to either upgrade the emergency department to a level that could manage it or in my view, a far better outcome is a system that diverts those patients to far more appropriate treatment settings. “You are far better off if you divert them to a more appropriate setting but the government has chosen to do neither and at a time of $15 billion enormous surpluses to do neither is unforgivable.”