Federal Budget 2022: O’Connor candidates weigh in on the Morrison Government’s pre-election cash splash

The Federal Government’s one-off payment to relieve the rising costs of living has been slammed by Labor and Greens WA candidates for O’Connor who say more needs to be done to address chronic housing shortages and climate change. Member for O’Connor Rick Wilson said the crux of this year’s Budget was about immediately addressing the rising costs of living through cutting the fuel excise for six months and a range of one-off payments and tax offsets. The fuel excise will be halved to 22¢ a litre until September, which is tipped to save two-car families about $30 a week or more than $700 over the next six months. “I think anybody who has filled up a tank of fuel recently would certainly understand the pain that people are suffering,” Mr Wilson said. “Not only of course in regional centres do we pay extra for our fuel because of the transport costs in getting it there, but all our other food and other essential items have to be transported as well so the cost of those go up. “So any relief in fuel prices I think will be very well received by people across the Great Southern.” Low and middle-income workers will receive a one-off cost-of-living tax offset of $420, meaning individuals already receiving the exisiting offset will get up to $1500 and couples up to $3000 in their 2021-22 tax returns. A one-off cost-of-living payment of $250, will be available to more than 47,000 eligible people in O’Connor, mainly pensioners but also carers, veterans, jobseekers, eligible self-funded retirees and concession card holders. Mr Wilson said the offsets — likely to cost $8 billion — would be a “huge relief” for families doing it tough. “A lot of the inflationary issues that we are dealing with here are outside of the Australian Government’s control but we are in a position to reach out and help those people who are doing it tough at the moment,” he said. Anglicare Australia slammed the Budget as full of “short-term fixes and one-off payments” that did little to address the need to raise welfare payments over the poverty line or invest in affordable housing. The Australian Council of Social Service said the Budget provided cost-of-living assistance to “people who don’t need it” and “does nothing to lift the incomes of people with the least”. Mr Wilson disagreed with the comments and said the Homes Guarantee Scheme had been more than doubled to 50,000 places a year. He said eligible single parents could secure a home deposit for as low as 2 per cent, while first-homebuyers could get deposits as low as 5 per cent. “As many people would know, at the moment it’s actually cheaper to be paying a mortgage for many people than it is to be paying rent and certainly this gives them the opportunity to get out of the rent trap and into their own home,” he said. “It’s a very significant investment in getting people into housing and of course that is not just existing housing, many people will choose to build their own first home which will increase the housing stock and certainly make more housing stock available for those people at the moment who are perhaps struggling.” Mr Wilson said $1.19 million would be allocated to the City of Albany and $349,937 to the Shire of Denmark for roads and community infrastructure projects. A total of $6.4m would go towards the Great Southern Secondary Freight Network to upgrade key grain freight routes across the region by mid-2024. That work would include sealing road shoulders, widening traffic lanes to accommodate grain trucks and improving line markings. Greens O’Connor candidate Giz Watson said the Budget was a short-term fix designed to woo voters and did nothing to address the “chronic shortage of affordable housing”. “In terms of people with low incomes, $250 may be welcome and may fool some people but people actually need $250 extra a fortnight,” she said. “What happened during the pandemic demonstrated that there were people who have sufficient money to live on for the first time in a very long time and we can afford to have people get a living allowance that will actually see them come above the poverty line. “There is going to be a short-term sort of boost for people in their pockets but it is incredibly short term and this Government fails to understand the bigger picture and the long-term problems that we are facing.” Ms Watson said the Budget continued to subsidise the fossil fuel industry and left the transition to renewables “totally underfunded”. “We need something transformative, not just tokens if we are to turn around the climate disaster that is approaching,” she said. “We are basically, under this Government, sleepwalking towards a cliff and the funding that is needed is to build community resilience and response to the drying climate and there is totally inadequate recognition of that. “They also fail miserably in funding protection of biodiversity which we know is also threatened by a drying climate and the various recovery plans for our precious endangered species are woefully underfunded.” Labor’s O’Connor candidate Shaneane Weldon said the Budget was “all bluff and bluster” and a “distraction from the things that really matter”. She said the rising cost of living had not been addressed in a meaningful way. “While $420 I am sure won’t go amiss, wages have been going backwards in real terms for almost a decade,” she said. “The Morrison Government had an opportunity to address this by increasing the wages of aged care and early education workers, as well as public sector employees, but neglected to.” Ms Weldon said she would like to see more investment in renewables projects within the electorate. “Albany and other areas in O’Connor are fast becoming renewable hubs and if I am afforded the opportunity to represent the community, I will continue to build on our renewable reputation to help protect our beautiful but fragile environment while providing sustainable, well-paid jobs for the regions,” she said.