From The Australian:
In an informal address to students at the John Curtin Institute of Public Policy in Perth this month, Barnett laid out what some are beginning to see as an emerging legacy on social policy, and one that defies his own description of himself as an “economic geek”.
…With no clear sign Western Australia will win back its AAA credit rating any time soon, the Barnett government’s huge spending on the vulnerable and the disadvantaged is looking like a bright spot. Even the most strident critics of Barnett’s spending binges are beginning to frame his leadership in those terms.
…In seven years Barnett has radically increased funding on disability services (up 122 per cent), child protection (up 89 per cent) and mental health (up by 53 per cent). He struck a $1.3bn native title deal with the Noongar people of the southwest and is rewriting the book on Aboriginal incarceration, legislating some of the diversionary measures recommended by the 1991 Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody but never fully implemented.
“That’s where all those mining royalties went,” Barnett told the students at the John Curtin Institute. “They went into disability and mental health and other areas (of social need).”
Our Colin is a liberal after my own heart. It’s just sad that he didn’t manage the budget better. All of that spending was hugely pro-cyclical and has left the state at the cliff’s edge with big debts, tumbling revenues, a gigantic capex cliff, collapsing population growth and a crashing housing market that will get so bad that it will threaten the nation.
Many of his good works will be undone.
