WA Premier Roger Cook has announced significant cost-of-living relief for the North West, showering residents with 5c and 10c coins during a brief stop in town last week.
Metaphorically of course.
The Premier, who sits on a veritable gold mine of iron ore royalties which would generate envy from the ancient Mayans in their gilded palaces, has announced new and unimaginative support for Pilbara residents seeking vital care outside the region.
Mr Cook, who last year presided over a $3.2 billion surplus (not due to anything of his own doing but because of the incredible wealth of metals buried beneath the Pilbara), announced a few extra cents per kilometre travelled for people whose basic needs aren’t being met here.
The subsidy for kilometres travelled will increase from 26c per kilomere to 40c – life-changing according to his office, a half-arsed answer to a longstanding problem according to detractors.
When pressed at his Karratha media event as to why the State Government had chosen this path instead of, for example, investing in upgrading health services across the Pilbara, the premier dismissed The Bugle and took questions from the more sympathetic Pilbara News instead.
“What’s my favourite part about Karratha? The people, of course!” he beamed in response to their line of interrogation.
When the Bugle pressed again, Mr Cook sighed and told it straight in his typically soft-spoken way.
“Residents out here in the Pilbara are doing it tough – just like all Western Australians [sic],” he read from a statement prepared for him by his staffer.
“That’s why today I’m announcing this life-changing cost of living relief that will boost patient outcomes and put Pilbara families at ease at a time when they need it most.”
Once he had finished the well-crafted but meaningless waffle drafted and re-drafted in West Perth, the premier let slip the reality of the situation.
“Let’s be real here – we could put a billion dollars into bringing the Pilbara and Kimberley into the first world or we could push the cart down the road a few years longer and get back to this when there’s an actual challenge at the ballot box,” he said.
“Besides, we need that money in other areas – marginal areas.
“Have you seen Metronet? There’s a train station at the airport now!”
After shaking hand with a few locals, Mr Cook was seen rapidly applying sanitiser to his hands before heading for his taxpayer-funded private jet back to Perth.