Federal assistance slashed by $1 billion: WA Treasurer Christian Porter

Western Australian Treasurer Christian Porter has said total commonwealth financial assistance has been shaved by $1.1 billion in the budget.

The WA Government has said it will lose more than $1 billion in federal government funding compared with 2011/12.

Porter said this would have an acute effect on the booming mining state.

“That means significantly decreased amounts of funding in what they call special-purpose payments and national partnership payments across skills, community, health, education and housing,” Porter told reporters. “I can’t conceive of how it could have been much worse.”

WA had expected a reduction in GST revenue of about $600 million but instead will lose $656 million, he said.

Porter said the scrapping of the 1% company tax cut would be “a great disappointment” to local firms.

He said Treasurer Wayne Swan’s “sharing the benefits of the boom” line could be read as “drawing as much money as possible out of the WA community and WA business, and spreading it among a range of pet projects on the east coast”.