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Speaker 1: Mark McGowan, Hello.

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Speaker 2: Good morning, Nice to join you.

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Speaker 1: Nice to join you too. Now, you yourself said the

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Speaker 1: everyone's talking about cost of living at the moment, and

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Speaker 1: you say the cost of living relief for w families

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Speaker 1: is the centerpiece of the budget. Would you say that

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Speaker 1: four hundred dollars electricity credit would be the centerpiece of

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Speaker 1: the centerpiece.

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Speaker 2: Well, I'm sure it'll be appreciated by many people, particularly

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Speaker 2: people who don't get much from government, you know, people

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Speaker 2: who work hard and don't ever get any sort of support.

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Speaker 2: So this will mean from July there'll be a four

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Speaker 2: hundred dollar credit PLLL on your electricity bill. So it

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Speaker 2: will go as long as as long as you can

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Speaker 2: make it last. So my household with kids who leave

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Speaker 2: lights on all day and night probably won't go that far.

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Speaker 2: Other households will make it stretch out a bit longer.

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Speaker 1: I've got a couple out of the last one. But

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Speaker 1: the thing is, though, fees are still going to rise.

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Speaker 2: Underlying that. Underlying that, yeah, a whole bunch of pees.

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Speaker 2: You know, it's public transport, the water and the like.

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Speaker 2: They go up by less than the rate of inflation.

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Speaker 2: But when you average everything out and you include their credit,

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Speaker 2: State government fees and charges across the board. Impact on

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Speaker 2: households actually goes down by three point eight.

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Speaker 1: Percent, So in other words, comes out, Okay.

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Speaker 2: Water fees and what have you. Next year, you'll spend

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Speaker 2: three point eight percent less.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, you couplise all the people all the time. Mark,

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Speaker 3: But there's been a few critics around even since yesterday afternoon,

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Speaker 3: or when even the evening before, when people knew this

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Speaker 3: was coming out. But you've got to just have a cracket,

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Speaker 3: you know, the treasure as well. How do you go

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Speaker 3: with that criticism with something like this, Ah, well, it.

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Speaker 2: Doesn't matter what you do, you're going to get criticized.

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Speaker 2: So what you what you do is you do your best.

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Speaker 2: We're put in place across the living or relief. We'll

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Speaker 2: only stay in Australia paying down there. That reduces our

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Speaker 2: interest payments. We've got the strongest investment in our health

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Speaker 2: system of any state in Australia. We'll put half a

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Speaker 2: billion dollars into climate change initiatives and a whole bunch

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Speaker 2: of other things across the budget to try and in particular,

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Speaker 2: as I said, health, to try and address the real

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Speaker 2: issues confronting the state at this point in time.

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Speaker 1: How about housing. That's been another thing that people are

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Speaker 1: talking a lot about in the last few years, especially

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Speaker 1: you know since COVID happened and we've got so many

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Speaker 1: people here, rentals has been difficult. What's in the budget for.

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Speaker 2: That, Well, we put a range of taxing sessions in

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Speaker 2: to encourage some more high identity development and identity around

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Speaker 2: train stations. We've made key start income eligibility limits, made

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Speaker 2: them permanently higher, and we're rolling out our two point

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Speaker 2: one billion dollar public housing build which is to put

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Speaker 2: in place around three thousand diitional public houses around WA.

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Speaker 2: The other thing, of course, is we had the building

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Speaker 2: bonus which we put in place a couple of years ago.

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Speaker 2: That's actually created a massive building spree of people building

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Speaker 2: their own homes all right. As people move into those,

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Speaker 2: of course people will leave rentals, so that should bring

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Speaker 2: out some rentals.

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Speaker 3: Okay, what about health mark. We spoke to Mike Duncan

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Speaker 3: Smith this week in the AMA and he's talking about

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Speaker 3: mambulance ramping and the health system. What about the health

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Speaker 3: system in this budget and what's the allocation?

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Speaker 2: Well, it was another two and a half billion. It

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Speaker 2: takes it to over eleven billion best fund at health

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Speaker 2: system in Australia bar none per capita. It basically means

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Speaker 2: that there's five hundred and thirty new beds coming on.

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Speaker 2: That's about the equivalent of a new major hospital and

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Speaker 2: we're putting them in place all over the state. But

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Speaker 2: we're dealing with COVID and lots of staff are off

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Speaker 2: because they're sick. Lots of staff are off was their

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Speaker 2: close contact. That's hard to resolve. I can't you know,

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Speaker 2: I don't want those people to come to work at

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Speaker 2: this point in time. So that puts pressure on the system,

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Speaker 2: as does all the people he wearing and all the

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Speaker 2: people turning up with understandably respiratory illnesses and so forth.

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Speaker 2: So we're trying to recruit more staff. We have recruited

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Speaker 2: more staff, but a lot of people are home unwell.

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Speaker 2: But we're putting enormous additional money into the system.

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Speaker 1: Speaking of COVID, big explosion in cases this week, and

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Speaker 1: you had said we were past the peak before restrictions

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Speaker 1: were dropped. But the explosion in cases postmasks and all that,

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Speaker 1: is this something that we were to expect.

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Speaker 2: We did expect it. The advice we had was we

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Speaker 2: work past the peak. The only thing I'd say about

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Speaker 2: it is you've got to watch the hospitalization intensive care rates.

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Speaker 2: That's the most important thing, you know. Listening now, there'll

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Speaker 2: be thousands of people who have COVID or who have

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Speaker 2: had it like maybe, and the most important group you

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Speaker 2: need to watch is those people who go to hospital,

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Speaker 2: because if you just got to make sure that we

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Speaker 2: don't overwhelm our hospital. So that's why the vaccinations have

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Speaker 2: been so important. That meant that our experience with COVID

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Speaker 2: has been so so mild compared to other states and

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Speaker 2: anywhere else around the world. And actually, you know, our

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Speaker 2: hospitalization rates are actually about a night in certainly an

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Speaker 2: intensive care of what we were predicting, So we're doing

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Speaker 2: extremely well.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, Michael was a jud lap shop yesterday and I

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Speaker 3: reckon it was almost fifty to fifty masks on still

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Speaker 3: as opposed to those not wearing them. How did it

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Speaker 3: in your daily thing? And you and your team are

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Speaker 3: your mask on, mask off? What's going on there?

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Speaker 2: Well? I sometimes wear a mask just where I am,

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Speaker 2: but I just hate COVID, so yeah, generally, you know,

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Speaker 2: I just did a rat just to check I'm not positive,

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Speaker 2: So I'm in that sort of group of people who

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Speaker 2: has a bit of community. Look the people wearing masks.

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Speaker 2: The idea if you want to wear a mask when

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Speaker 2: you're out, please do it. Particularly if you're older, you're

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Speaker 2: more vulnerable, Please wear a mask. The other thing is

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Speaker 2: get vaccinated. If you haven't been vaccinated our hospitals, about

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Speaker 2: a quarter of the people in hospitals have not had

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Speaker 2: a single dose of vaccine, even though that's less than

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Speaker 2: one percent of the population, So in other words, you're

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Speaker 2: about twenty seven times as likely to go to hospital

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Speaker 2: if you haven't had a single dose of vaccine.

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Speaker 3: Well, spent a busy time for you wearing both hats

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Speaker 3: this treasure as well. Mark. We appreciate your time this morning.

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Speaker 2: Thank you, Mark, thanksfully so