Mid West leaders welcome Budget funding for the region but say key projects missed out

The State Government has promised to invest hundreds of millions of dollars into the Mid West in coming years, but some local leaders are not convinced the region emerged a winner in the 2022-23 Budget. The Member for Geraldton Lara Dalton said the State’s $5.7 billion surplus Budget — delivered on Thursday — included “everything we had been working towards and advocating on” over the last 12 months. “It is a good Budget, but we will always be looking for more opportunities each year,” she said. City of Greater Geraldton Mayor Shane Van Styn welcomed the funding delivered to the Mid West region, but said much of the cash for projects such as the $122.7 million hospital redevelopment project had been allocated to the outer years of the Budget instead of the 2022-23 financial year. “The hospital money continues to be spent in the outer years. Whilst it is welcome, if they continue putting these numbers in the outer years the numbers will keep growing,” he said. An additional $49.4m will be spent on upgrades to the Geraldton Health Campus in the coming years, with the project unlikely to be finished by 2024 as planned. Works have already been pushed back three times, with construction industry pressures, cyclone Seroja and the COVID pandemic cited as reasons for the delays. Mr Van Styn said he was “disappointed” by the State Budget and claimed Geraldton continued to be “forgotten about”. “I want to know why the State Government hates Geraldton. We are trying to grow the economy and we are delivering on that and we get these hollow announcements focused on the outer years,” he said. “Oddly enough into an election year, we have seen 16 media releases by this government on the hospital. It is a sad reflection of the priority the government is putting on Geraldton. “All things that are positive should be welcomed, but because they are in the outer years, they are not much more than a hyperbole.” The Member for the Agricultural Region Steve Martin said many would be disappointed the State have not allocated cash to opening a radiation therapy unit for Geraldton cancer patients, a project which has only been partly funded by the Federal Government. “It is simply not appropriate that with the hundreds of millions of dollars the State Government has thrown around to fix the health crisis, we still haven’t seen that very important bit of infrastructure come to the Mid West,” he said. Mr Martin welcomed the $30.1m commitment to bring 18 additional paramedics and six more ambulances to regional WA, but said it would be difficult to allocate these when resources were stretched almost everywhere in the bush. “It seems like a large number until you work out how large WA is. If they are evenly spread that means they will be very thinly spread,” he said. “Those paramedic roles are vital if they are in places where there is also a volunteer base, they simply make it easier to attract and retain vollies because they know the trained full timers are on hand.” Member for Moore Shane Love said he was disappointed to see no funding allocated to power infrastructure upgrades in the Mid West, with locals looking at another horror summer of outages if action was not taken. But he said he was “guardedly optimistic” of works being announced when Western Power delivers its Budget estimates in the coming weeks. He said he was also concerned no money had been committed to the Northampton bypass project, which would make local roads safer as the prevalence of heavy haulage trucks through the region increased. “All I can do is raise the issue but to have this tremendous amount of traffic already and that is just going to increase. It really is going to be pretty dire around Northampton,” he said. While Mr Love welcomed cash for the expansion of Geraldton Port, he said the commitment almost certainly indicated the development of a renewable energy hub at Oakajee would be further delayed. “We will welcome any development in the Mid West but I think that probably puts Oakajee even further into the future,” he said.