As it happened: WA news on Monday, October 28

And that’s where we’ll leave you for now, thank you for tuning in today.

Plenty of news late in the day from our courts, as well as a surprise move by an elite Perth private school.

And in politics news, there are changes on the way for our state’s P-plate drivers, while the Liberal Party has vowed to strike a deal to ensure reliable back-up power for the town at the heart of the Goldfields.

Scroll back to check out the rest of the day’s headlines, and we’ll see you tomorrow morning as we bring you more of the news you need to know.

To more court news now, and a Perth gym owner who faked her own death to cash in a life insurance payout worth more than $700,000 has been jailed for three years.

Karen Salkilld, 43, was sentenced in Perth District Court on Monday after pleading guilty to charges arising from the fraud.

Karen Salkilld was arrested in March after lodging an insurance claim in her partner’s name.Credit: Nine News Perth

In February, Salkilld used her ex-partner’s name while altering documents including a passport and death certificate, and creating a fake bank and email account, to support a claim she lodged with Insurance Line declaring she had died in a car crash in Broome in 2023.

However, when the bank became suspicious and froze the account, Salkilld went to Palmyra Police Station to certify several forms of ID as part of an unsuccessful attempt to unfreeze it.

When she returned to the police station in March, she was arrested and charged with gains benefit by fraud and intent to defraud knowingly using any record which is false.

In sentencing Salkilld on Monday, district court Judge Vicki Stewart said the offending could not be described as “opportunistic” and required both effort and persistence.

Read the full story here.

To the courts now, where the trial of a Floreat couple accused of starving their severely malnourished child continues today, with the jury hearing evidence about doctors who treated the teenager in the weeks before she was taken into care.

At 17, the girl weighed just 28.1 kilograms, the average weight of a nine-year-old, and stood at a similar height to an 11-year-old.

Child protection became involved when the home-schooled girl’s dance teachers raised concerns with authorities in 2020.

The Perth District Court jury today heard the girl’s father allegedly refused to accept she was ill in the lead up to authorities taking her into care and admitting her to Perth Children’s Hospital on April 2021.

PCH head of child protection, Alice Johnson, testified that the girl’s parents had been asked to get their daughter assessed by a doctor in 2020.

In response, the father sent a letter purportedly from a GP which gave the impression she had been examined, and her weight recorded as 42 kilograms.

However, the doctor said he never saw the girl and described the father, who requested he write a letter, as being “very odd” at his insistence to say the girl was “fine”.

Dr Johnson said it was extremely unlikely the girl was ever 42 kilograms.

“If she had gone from 42 to 27kg in five months, that’s a dramatic amount of weight loss, she would’ve been acutely unwell, from medical point of view it’s extremely unlikely,” she said.

During an appointment with a GP five months later, the parents allegedly told the doctor their daughter was 14, when she was actually 17.

Despite this, the doctor still advised the child be hospitalised, with the parents allegedly pleading to be given the weekend to “feed her up”.

The teen was admitted to hospital six days later, with some alleged resistance from her parents who didn’t think she needed to be there, the father allegedly telling staff, “Hospital is killing kids, there is nothing effing wrong with my kid”.

She was admitted for six weeks and during that time, gained seven kilograms and grew 3.4 centimetres.

The parents deny any wrongdoing.

The trial continues.

• with 9 News Perth

An elite Perth private school has announced that from next year, it will expect parents to delay the age at which they purchase a smartphone for their kids.

Hale School, located in Wembley Downs, has announced they will urge the parents of incoming year 7 students to not buy their children a phone or smartwatch, or allow access to social media.

The school is recommending Year 7s not have a smartphone. Credit: Facebook

The school has confirmed it will consider extending the policy to year 8 the following year.

This is an extension of Hale School’s existing policy that discourages mobile devices from being brought on campus and requires them to be kept in a locker during the school day.

Headmaster Dean Dell’Oro said this was a pragmatic approach to a wider issue affecting young people.

“In the 1980s, many schools turned a blind eye to cigarette smoking, and knowing what we do now, that is shocking,” he said.

“I feel like we are reaching a similar point with smart devices and social media. I don’t want to be turning a blind eye to the elephant in the room today.

“We know about the potential harms, and we know parents are concerned – so let’s do something about it.”

The decision to change the policy was made following a parent survey, which showed 85 per cent believed children were beginning to use social media too early.

Concerns were shared about their children’s ability to concentrate in the presence of smartphones and being exposed to narrow and potentially damaging content.

To WA election news now, and the WA Liberals have announced they will formalise an agreement with the owner of the Kalgoorlie Super Pit to use its gas-powered turbines to shore up power supply in the Goldfields town.

WAtoday revealed last month that current backup generators in Kalgoorlie were 37 megawatts short of the city’s normal energy demand, which left the town exposed when cut off from the rest of the south-west power grid.

WA Liberal leader Libby Mettam.Credit: Hamish Hastie

Northern Star Resources and electricity generator TransAlta’s 110 megawatt Parkston power plant was used to help pull Kalgoorlie out of a deep blackout in January last year after major transmission lines to the town were cut in a freak storm.

If elected next year, the Liberals will enter an agreement with Transalta and Northern Star to use Parkeston to stabilise power supply in the Goldfields while new public generating capacity is built.

Liberal leader Libby Mettam said the Cook government had ignored the energy issues that had engulfed Kalgoorlie over the past few years.

“Roger Cook ignoring the rolling blackouts in Kalgoorlie is pushing the cost of living up for voters, with lost stock for small businesses, and lost wages for their workers,” Mettam said.

“When businesses across the Goldfields keep losing hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of stock, they have no choice but to pass on the cost to consumers.”

Earlier this morning, Cook accused the Liberals of copying his government’s own policies.

“I suppose the leader of the Liberal Party has read our press release, which actually made commitment directly in relation to that some months ago,” he said.

Cook also revealed his government had recently secured a contractor to build a new 150-megawatt backup power facility in Kalgoorlie; had doubled the work crew available to respond to blackouts; and had upgraded existing backup generators.

“I guess mimicking is the most sincere form of flattery,” he said.

To politics now, and Premier Roger Cook has just held a press conference to announce a $30 million donation from Andrew and Nicola Forrest to the WA Academy of Performing Arts.

The donation, made by the Forrest’s Minderoo charity, is the largest to the performing arts in the country’s history.

Cook was also asked about the state’s new P-plater laws, which will restrict new drivers to having just one passenger in their car from December 1.

He flagged further changes were expected as WA reels from its highest road toll in years, with several recent fatal crashes involving cars full of young people.

“In addition to yesterday’s announcement, we’re undertaking a review which will allow us to look further in terms of what other measures we need to put in place to make sure we reduce as much as possible the incidents of injury and death on our roads” he said.

Cook said personal responsibility was still important when it came to road safety, but that he wanted to strike the right balance between responsible driving and tightening the laws.

A road safety independent review will likely be announced in the coming weeks, he said.

Opposition leader Shane Love has criticised the state government for not acting fast enough.

“While we’ve stood with the community in calling for urgent road safety measures, this government still has no clear plan for road safety, and after almost eight years in power, they’ve left it to the final weeks of Parliament to address road safety issues,” he said.

A taste of summer will arrive early in Perth today as warmer than average temperatures push the mercury as much as 12 degrees above average.

In the city it will start heating up this afternoon with an expected high of 32 degrees, and tomorrow we’ll swelter up to 33 degrees.

Perth is tipped to reach 32 degrees today. Credit: Getty Images

And it could be a sign of what’s to come this summer, with the Bureau of Meteorology predicting a hotter than usual December, January and February this year.

It said the same about last summer, which saw record-breaking heatwaves, including six days above 40 degrees in February alone.

To breaking news now and a man has shot himself inside a Perth hospital’s emergency department overnight.

The man, believed to be aged in his 50s, was at Joondalup Health Campus around 6.50pm when the incident occurred.

A WA Police spokeswoman said the man was a visitor at the hospital, and that no other visitors, staff or patients were threatened with the firearm.

It’s understood he was a relative of a patient.

He was admitted to intensive care with serious but non-life-threatening injuries.

Admissions to the hospital were temporarily diverted last night in response to the incident.

If you or someone you know is in need of support contact Lifeline on 13 11 14.

For the first time in more than a decade, Western Australia has claimed top spot as the country’s best-performing economy, according to the CommSec State of the States report, released today.

The report tracks eight key economic indicators; economic growth, retail spending, unemployment, population growth, equipment investment, construction work, housing finance and dwelling starts.

WA has been crowned the best-performing economy in the country.Credit: CommSec

WA led in three of the categories including retail spending, unemployment and population growth, securing its position as the top state or territory for the quarter.

“Western Australia’s robust economic fundamentals, especially its low unemployment and strong population growth has fuelled nation-leading consumer spending, pushing the state to the top of the leaderboard for the first time in a decade,” the report read.

“WA is well positioned for sustained future performance; however, the competition remains intense, particularly among the top three states with Queensland moving quickly up the rankings.”

WA also recorded the strongest economic momentum for the fourth survey in a row.

In response, Perth had the highest annual inflation rate in the June quarter 2024 at 4.6 per cent, ahead of Adelaide (4.5 per cent) and Sydney (3.8 per cent).

And despite increasing its dwelling starts by 24.3 per cent in the past year, the report listed home building as the state’s biggest weakness, as the property market continues to be underresourced.

Here’s what’s making news elsewhere this morning.

• Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has defended receiving free Qantas upgrades and obtaining a prized Chairman’s Lounge membership for his son, claiming all benefits were declared.

Albanese said he had the same relationship with former Qantas chief executive Alan Joyce as he did with the boss of rival airline virgin Australia.Credit: AAPIMAGE

• Amid electoral defeat in Queensland, federal Labor has seized upon the Greens’ disappointing result in the state election as a sign it can reclaim federal inner-city seats.
• The ACCC has repeatedly rejected requests to identify the banks whose customers have been falling victim to impersonation scams in their hundreds, instead redacting the names of the institutions from new data.
• Extremist US provocateur Candace Owens’ Australian visa has been cancelled, as the Labor government warns that her attacks on Jewish, Muslim and trans people can incite discord.