WA budget: Call to ante up on remote housing

WA Premier Roger Cook has told the Albanese government it must start funding remote Aboriginal communities beyond the Northern Territory.

The Bidyadanga Aboriginal community in WA. Picture: Colin Murty

West Australian Premier Roger Cook has told the Albanese government it must start funding remote Aboriginal communities beyond the Northern Territory.

Five years after the then ­Coalition federal government told the states to pay for their own remote Aboriginal housing, the WA Labor government says Canberra must enter “a genuine partnership” to deal with the enormous demand for housing, safe water and functional sewerage systems in its more than 150 remote Aboriginal communities.

“It’s a major challenge,” WA Treasurer Rita Saffioti said on Thursday as she prepared to unveil the state budget.

WA has a $350m remote communities account, established in 2022, that has begun to replace faulty wastewater treatment systems, upgrade power and repair existing housing in remote communities.

The federal budget on Thursday will include $4bn for remote NT housing but Anthony Albanese has no intention of matching the deal for WA or Queensland, the states where the most Indi­genous people live in remote ­communities.

It is now clear that behind the scenes WA has been pushing the Albanese government to reverse the former Coalition government’s decision to no longer fund utilities or houses in remote Aboriginal communities, except in the NT.

The commonwealth allocated $5.4bn between 2008 and 2018 for remote housing then gave each state one final payment before ending its contributions in 2019.

Ms Saffioti described enormous demand in remote communities in housing, services, roads, transport and utilities.

“The Premier has raised it with the commonwealth on a number of occasions how we need a genuine partnership in our remote communities,” she said.

“The challenges are enormous, the demand is enormous.”

It is well known that overcrowding and associated health problems are rife in many of WA’s remote Aboriginal communities.

In some cases, there are enough dwellings but a significant portion of them are abandoned because they are falling down, the plumbing or electricity does not work or all three.

Half of all houses in the central western desert communities on the edge of WA’s iron ore region have been officially condemned as not commercially viable to repair.

In the Pilbara, elders who led the homelands movement in the 1980s say many of their people want to get away from alcohol in towns such as Port Hedland.

Others want to raise their children away from alcohol but they are trapped on very lengthy waiting lists for a house in one of the ­region’s remote communities.