The Cook Labor Government has handed down its tenth budget. Deputy Premier and Treasurer Rita Saffioti banked Western Australia’s eighth consecutive surplus of $3.5 billion, backed by more than $10 billion in mining royalties and $9.3 billion in GST receipts. To put that in perspective, Victoria’s surplus is $700 million and South Australia is forecasting $179 million. WA is, financially at least, playing in a different league.
The government laid out its post-election priorities last year: jobs, health and housing. True to form, this budget delivers on all three, while making room for some genuinely consequential long-term investments that deserve attention.
Jobs, Health & Housing — the headliners
Jobs — 380,000 and counting
More than 380,000 jobs have been created in WA since 2017 — a 29.3% increase, the highest employment growth of any state over that period. A record 1.68 million Western Australians are now in work. The state’s domestic economy has grown 27.2% over the past five years, well above the national rate of 20.9%, and WA now accounts for almost 20% of national business investment and more than 45% of national exports. Not bad for a state that represents around 10% of the national population.
Health
$9.1 billion in health and mental health funding includes $6.5 billion for hospitals and 900 new beds. This is a politically urgent commitment, born of years of demand pressure across a fast-growing state.
Housing
$4.7 billion in housing investment. Highlights include:
- $686 million for DevelopmentWA to deliver thousands of new residential lots and activate METRONET station precincts. This is a notable strategic pivot from METRONET as a transport project to METRONET as a housing and community story.
- A $692 million investment in regional housing, including a landmark partnership with the resources sector with Rio Tinto contributing $100 million, BHP $50 million, and Hancock $20 million to deliver more than 500 homes for regional frontline workers.
Cost of living — broad relief, sharper intervention
The government is spending $1 billion on cost of living relief. The headline measures include:
- A $100 fuel cost rebate for every West Australian with a driver’s licence.
Yes, this includes those who don’t drive or own an EV. More political than policy-driven, but popular all the same.
- Continuation of student assistance payments of up to $250 per child for every primary and high school student.
- The electricity subsidy will not be revived.
Some of the more targeted measures deserve a mention:
- Foster and Grand Carer Gold Card: $14.5 million to establish a new concession card for foster parents and grand carers, including $377 in energy bill relief — recognising a cohort that quietly carries a significant share of the state’s social services load.
- Carer subsidy uplift: $23.7 million to increase foster carer subsidy rates by 10%.
- Rent relief extension: $13.5 million to extend the Rent Relief program to June 2027. Since launching in November 2023, more than $18.4 million has been paid to 4,200 households, with 90% of recipients still in the same tenancy six months later. The Rent Relief program is as a genuinely effective model, providing targeted relief for the most vulnerable in the community.
Outside the budget itself, the government has also announced plans to ban no-grounds evictions, bringing WA’s tenancy laws into line with most other states
Education — the fourth pillar
“Jobs, health and housing” doesn’t quite have room for education in the slogan, but the investment is there. The budget allocates $8.1 billion to continue delivering high-quality education, including $810 million in infrastructure and $2.1 billion for new schools and upgrades over four years.
Notably, older schools in established suburbs are finally getting investment alongside new builds. Since 2017–18, the government has opened 30 new primary and eight new secondary schools. Between now and 2030, eleven more primary schools and two new high schools will open.
Water — the quiet infrastructure crisis
For interstate readers, WA’s water challenge may not register as urgent. It should. This budget commits $2.7 billion in water infrastructure.
The South West of WA is one of the world’s hotspots for climate-induced drying. No other Australian capital faces this kind of hydrological deterioration at this scale.
As the Minister put it, water, once seen as a free resource, is now produced at significant cost through energy-intensive processes like desalination. Two desalination plants already supply around half of Perth’s drinking water, and by 2035 desalinated water production will need to double to meet demand.
Around $700 million in annual subsidies currently bridges the gap between what water costs to produce and what residents pay. That number will rise as desalination scales up. It raises a genuine policy question: will water infrastructure investment become a defining issue in future WA election campaigns, in the way energy affordability has elsewhere?
The government released the Made Possible by Water strategy in March 2026, which sets out the long-term framework behind this investment. Worth reading for anyone working in infrastructure, climate policy or public finance.
Seven Cities — building WA’s regional backbone
One of WA’s long-standing structural realities is the dominance of Perth. Around 80% of Western Australians live there. The state has no second city comparable to Geelong, Newcastle, or Townsville. Regional centres are important, but none has yet reached the critical mass needed to function as a genuine counterweight to Perth’s gravitational pull.
The Cook Government’s newly launched Seven Cities vision is a direct response to this. The seven regional cities identified — Bunbury, Kalgoorlie, Port Hedland, Karratha, Broome, Geraldton, and Albany — are being positioned as the hubs of WA’s next economic wave, particularly around renewables, critical minerals, and advanced manufacturing.
The 2026–27 budget backs the vision with concrete investment across water and energy, transport, health and TAFE.
Sitting alongside the Seven Cities vision is a serious bet on industrial decarbonisation. The 2026–27 budget establishes a $1.4 billion Clean Energy Fund to support transmission infrastructure and connect new wind and solar generation to households and industry across Perth and the South West.
The Pilbara tells a bigger and faster-moving story. The Cook Government’s Pilbara Energy Transition Plan is connecting heavy industry to renewable generation through four priority energy corridors. Industry is moving in step: Fortescue is deploying what it describes as the world’s first fully integrated green energy grid for heavy industry, while NeoSmelt has been named a state Priority Project to produce molten iron from Pilbara ore using renewable energy. These are not pilot projects. They are full-scale industrial transitions happening now.
The thread connecting water, Seven Cities, and energy decarbonisation is the same: WA is building the infrastructure, physical, regulatory, and financial, to anchor the next wave of its economy in the regions where the raw materials and renewable resources already exist.
The GST — shhhhh
GST receipts of $9.3 billion this year — and $40 billion over the next four years — remain both a cornerstone of WA’s finances and a reliable source of eastern states resentment. Critics argue WA no longer needs the 2018 floor deal.
Treasurer Saffioti isn’t budging, and her argument is simple: the deal isn’t a gift to a wealthy state — it’s how the country’s engine room gets funded, and much of the return from WA’s resources flows to Canberra anyway.
Her fellow state treasurers may beg to differ.
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In a world of tariff wars, energy shocks and shifting trade routes, there are worse places to be than sitting on $220 billion worth of minerals, a record jobs market, and eight consecutive surpluses. WA enters this period of global disruption from a position of genuine strength — and this budget is a bet that the foundations being built now will matter long after the current cycle turns.
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