WA Budget 2025: Truth behind the words of a Budget speech that could send you to sleep
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WA Budget 2025: Truth behind the words of a Budget speech that could send you to sleep
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West Australian
4 hours ago
- West Australian
Small business not convinced there's much in Budget for them but see bigger picture
There was little in the State Budget to excite small business owners with no change in payroll tax and no energy bill credit. Scott Jones has owned Diabolik book and record store in Mount Hawthorn for more than a decade. With this Budget Mr Jones said he was not holding out for much help. 'The only thing that they can possibly help me out with is just another way of offsetting power costs,' he said. 'But in many ways, I don't see what the State Government can actually do to help business, a retail business in Australia, especially under a Federal award.' He said he was not surprised when the Budget was released. 'I can't see anything that's going to change anything, it's not gonna make things any better for us,' he said. 'But then again, I didn't know what to expect to start with anyway, it's usually the federal budget that's more important for me.' While there was little in the Budget to help him, he saw investments to improve housing, health and infrastructure as potentially beneficial to him too. Mr Jones said he could see the benefit of broader cost of living relief on his business. 'Anything that can bring down the cost of living, even if it's just for home buyers or just increasing housing supply to make rent cheaper, any anything like that, in my opinion, is a good thing in for retail anyway,' he said. Mr Jones said he hadn't seen anything in thew Budget which would specifically help him. Over the years Mr Jones said it has become more difficult to run the business. 'It's certainly more difficult to turn a profit with increases in expenses well, just across the board,' he said. 'A lot of it is to do with freight costs and obviously with wage increases, which in my opinion, were well and truly overdue anyway.' Mr Jones said he had made changes to his own work roster to keep the store running. 'It just means that my wife and I basically are working more, we do longer hours,' he said. 'We're doing longer hours probably since COVID finished, it's just necessary if you want to be open like we are for seven days, you have to put in the hours.'
West Australian
5 hours ago
- West Australian
WA Budget 2025: Truth behind the words of a Budget speech that could send you to sleep
analysis WA Budget 2025: Truth behind the words of a Budget speech that could send you to sleep
West Australian
6 hours ago
- West Australian
WA Budget 2025: GST win coming for the west as fight looms over lucrative deal
WA will see its GST share lift above the legislated 75 cent floor for the first time the Budget has predicted, as the Government prepares to argue for the 2018 deal which has proven an economic boon for the State. Ahead of a Productivity Commission-lead review next year, Treasury has made concerns clear over the Commonwealth Grants Commission's process for calculating the annual handouts to the States, including outdated references to the pandemic. Under the fair share deal, which mandates WA receives 75 cents for every dollar, from 2026-27 the State's GST will be weighted to NSW's share, putting WA's slice of the national fund at 82 cents in the dollar — the highest point in more than a decade. Without the deal, WA's share would have fallen to as low as 18 cents in the coming financial year. The Budget made the argument that the cost of maintaining WA's share above the floor — a constant gripe for other State Governments — was clearly outweighed by the value of the State's iron ore industry. 'Every State, not just Western Australia, has benefited from high iron ore prices,' the Budget states 'The other States can now expect to receive about $30 billion extra GST over 2020-21 to 2028-29, because of the higher than expected iron ore prices to date. 'The three largest iron ore miners paid $17 billion to the Commonwealth in company tax in 2023-24 on its Western Australian operations, while the cost of the no-worse-off guarantee was only $5 billion that year.' But a recent review of the calculations used by the Commission drew criticism from the State Government, for failing to consider 'For example, the CGC's decision to include COVID-19 business support and health expenses resulted in States that recorded higher expenses receiving higher GST grants,' the budget read. 'This method change does not acknowledge the different policy approaches of States when responding to COVID-19, and penalises States that took actions that prevented the spread of COVID-19 in the community.' In her Budget speech, Treasurer Rita Saffioti stood by the deal, saying the global uncertainties were a 'constant reminder' the agreement needed to be protected. 'It is again important to point out that despite the irrational and absurd commentary from many over east, WA will still only receive 75 per cent of our population share of GST this year,' she said. 'In fact Members, our Treasury officials have estimated that Western Australia's net contribution to the other States last financial year was $39 billion. That is, $13,000 that every Western Australian is contributing to the rest of the nation.'
