As it happened: WA news on Wednesday, May 8

Fremantle coach Justin Longmuir insists his pleas for umpires to better protect Jye Amiss are fair, saying the key forward’s safety is being compromised by ongoing rough treatment.

Longmuir has been left angry by the illegal treatment Amiss has been copping from defenders this year.

The issue reached a boiling point during Fremantle’s 54-point win over Richmond on Sunday when Tigers defender Ben Miller wrestled Amiss to the ground in the dying seconds and shoved his knee onto the forward’s head/neck area.

Miller was fined by the match review panel for kneeing, but he escaped suspension.

After the match, Longmuir expressed his frustrations at the rough treatment Amiss has been dealing with this season. And the fifth-year coach dived even deeper into the issue when he fronted up for his weekly press conference on Wednesday.

“I’m not after anything outrageous for Jye, just a fair run,” Longmuir said ahead of Friday night’s clash with Sydney at Optus Stadium.

“I don’t want to be that coach that whinges all the time. But I just want the safety of our players as well.

“It’s the third time we’ve spoken about it (to the AFL) this year, so the dialogue is open.

“He’s had two situations where the MRO have had to adjudicate on collisions with him, That’s a fair indication where the conversation is coming from.”

AAP

Staying with question time and Premier Roger Cook has just pointed out that Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, who is in town today, has visited WA “20 times in the past two years”.

“That is more than the last four Prime Minister’s combined,” he said.

“Nobody gets Western Australia like Anthony Albanese.”

His comments were in response to a suggestion from the opposition that the Prime Minister was unwelcome among some state Labor members on the eve of the state budget.

Labor risks losing office or sliding into minority government if it cannot hold key seats in Western Australia, where it made big gains at the last election.

An exclusive survey we published yesterday shows WA voters have cut their support for Labor from 34 to 32 per cent since the December quarter. This compares to the Labor primary vote in the state of 37 per cent at the last election.

Read more here. 

To Parliament now where question time has begun.

Treasurer Rita Saffioti has criticised the former state government’s financial management track record while also having a crack at Liberal leader Libby Mettam for attending a breakfast event headlined by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese this morning.

Saffioti said she was “awkwardly” seated on the same table as Mettam.

“I wouldn’t go and see Peter Dutton speak for example, but I’m glad you came,” she said.

Saffioti is due to hand down her first state budget tomorrow, with Premier Roger Cook saying that while the state’s economy remains strong, cost of living measures will be announced to assist those doing it tough.

Mettam asked if the budget would be “cushioning more budget blowouts in a mismanaged Metronet project” or whether housing, hospitals and community safety would be prioritised.

Cook claimed Mettam’s questions were full of falsehoods; “To the member I say, one more sleep to go”.

The widow of assassinated bike boss Nick Martin is suing the hitman who shot her husband and the state government for the trauma she suffered watching the 51-year-old die in her arms in front of hundreds of people at Perth Motorplex in December 2020.

Three years after the underworld killing that shocked the state, Amanda Martin and her daughter Stacey Smiles have filed a lawsuit in the Perth District Court for “damages by way of mental harm suffered” from witnessing Martin be shot “in cold blood” by a sniper as they sat next to him watching the drag racing in Kwinana.

The mother and daughter are relying on a section of the Fatal Accidents Act of 1959 which allows claims of liability for a death caused by a wrongful act or neglect.

The writ claims the state government is the registered proprietor of the motorplex. The licensee of the venue is also being sued.

The sniper who shot Martin, a former soldier whose name is suppressed, was jailed in 2021 for 20 years after confessing to his role in the death of the former Rebels boss.

WA Premier Roger Cook has labelled the legal action “perplexing”.

“I’m very much looking forward to getting a briefing in terms of what the statement of claims may be,” he said.

From five-star restaurant lunches to exclusive gym access at its $130 million Osborne Park headquarters, there are no shortage of perks for employees of billionaire Chris Ellison’s Mineral Resources.

But the mining magnate is now stepping up his pursuit of a competitive edge in the razor-tight labour market, offering cheap, onsite childcare as part of an ambitious plan to increase female participation and bolster its workforce by 25 per cent.

This morning, Ellison told the Macquarie Australia Conference in Sydney the $15 billion company intended to have a 10,000-strong workforce by December and was taking steps to make the company a more attractive place to work.

And that extended to further additions at its sprawling 13-storey Perth headquarters, which also boasts a café with heavily subsidised coffee, a health centre and an in-house psychologist.

“In our head office, we serve over 1000 lunches a day, five-star lunches, we’ve got a gym with about 1500 membership, and I’m building a daycare centre to accommodate about 140 kids,” he told the conference.

“So ladies, if you want to come and work for me, 20 bucks a day for your kids’ [childcare].”

The billionaire also revealed, despite allegedly not being allowed to, the diversified mining services company was establishing its own airline, allowing employees greater choice in where they spent their downtime.

And the job perks extend to Mineral Resources’ mine sites, where the size of individual accommodation has quadrupled and amenities have received major upgrades.

“I mean, it’s like coming home to a resort. We’re creating a lifestyle and we’re making ourselves the go-to place, and it’s working,” he said.

Staying with the National Press Club address and Colin Barnett – who presided over a massive expansion of gas exports from the waters off WA in his time as premier – has just blasted the federal government for allowing companies to extract gas from offshore fields for little payment to the owner of the resource, the Australian people.

While state governments charge miners a royalty based on production to extract the minerals they own, the federal government uses a complex set of calculations to determine what is paid for oil and gas in Commonwealth waters.

“The Petroleum Resource Rent Tax has been quite hopeless for getting a fair return for that gas,” Barnett said.

“It’s been inept.”

The PRRT has been widely criticised by anti-fossil fuel and civil society groups, but Barnett’s call is unusual for someone who describes himself as a “pro-development, probably to an extreme, kind of guy.”

To Canberra now, where former WA Premier Colin Barnett is one of the guest speakers at the National Press Club’s address on the “GST Debacle” this morning.

Barnett has just told journalists he wants the current system of distributing GST revenue, which guarantees WA share doesn’t fall below a floor of 75 cents in the dollar, scrapped in favour of splitting it between states on a population basis.

His view flies in the face of WA state and federal politicians who support the current system, which was introduced after WA’s floor was at risk of falling to 10 cents in the dollar due to a surge in mining royalties.

Barnett, who was Liberal premier from 2008 to 2017, proposed 90 cents in the dollar of the GST be split among the states by population with the federal government distributing the remainder on a needs basis.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has refused to comment specifically about the radicalisation of a 16-year-old Perth schoolboy this morning, but made broader comments about radicalisation – particularly in the context of Israel’s ongoing conflict in Palestine.

Since the incident both WA Police Commissioner Col Blanch and WA Premier Roger Cook have pointed to the conflict as a potential driver for radicalisation in Australia.

Albanese said he understood Australians had strong views about the conflict, but those disputes should not be brought to Australia.

I understand that, particularly people who have relatives, either in Israel, or in Gaza, or the West Bank will have strong views, and it will be it is a difficult time but overwhelmingly Australians and our multicultural society do not want disputes brought here to Australia

Albanese then turned his attention to social media.

The use of algorithms can drive people towards more and more extreme view and that’s something that we need to have a discussion on.

I know that the authorities, including our security agencies, spend substantial time being concerned about this, and it’s a focus of their work.