WA news LIVE: Severe storm warning for Perth; Mercanti charges dropped

Perth bikie Troy Mercanti is no longer facing charges after a woman who accused him of “backhanding” her and sexually assaulting her at his Karrinyup home last week withdrew her accusations.

The 56-year-old’s lawyer Paul Holmes appeared on his behalf in Perth Magistrates Court today, where he was told the complainant in the matter no longer wanted to proceed with the case.

After spending a weekend in custody before being bailed on Monday, the court today awarded Mercanti $1502 in costs after the charges were discontinued.

Read more here. 

The cost of building Western Australia’s new rail system has ballooned again, with an eye-watering $700 million in additional funding allocated to the project in this year’s state budget.

Stage one of the Labor government’s flagship Metronet project climbed $2 billion in 2023 alone, taking the total cost of the network to around $11.5 billion.

WA Treasurer Rita Saffioti revealed that cost would climb again to more than $12 billion.

The state government will cover the blowout to the tune of $254 million, while the Commonwealth will contribute $453 million – a total blowout of $707 million.

Initially sourced from the reallocated $1.2 billion federal commitment to the now cancelled Perth Freight Link, the cost to Metronet has climbed each year since it was first announced in the 2017-18 federal budget.

Read more here.

In delivering her first budget, Treasurer Rita Saffioti said the state’s conservative financial management had allowed it to support those doing in tough while investing in future infrastructure without fuelling inflation.

So, how did you fare?

Read more here. 

The WA budget has been supercharged by high iron ore prices, with royalties expected to put $9.85 billion into the state’s kitty this financial year, an enormous $3.5 billion more than expected.

Royalties from the Pilbara’s steelmaking ingredient were a welcome 21 per cent of total revenue for a state soon to hit 3 million people. Its true impact is greater with an indirect effect on other revenue streams like payroll tax and stamp duty.

However, the danger to WA if its price fell dramatically is not lost on Saffioti.

The budget papers note that the board of WA’s biggest iron ore miner Rio Tinto, on which former Labor state treasurer Ben Wyatt sits, has committed $6.2 billion to its giant Simandou iron ore mine in Guinea.

Some have dubbed the project a potential “Pilbara killer”.

Read more here.

The Cook government will increase the stamp duty exemption threshold for the first time in a decade as it uses its iron ore-driven financial firepower to address the state’s cost-of-living pressures and population-driven housing crunch.

That change to the unpopular tax was a key announcement of Premier Roger Cook and Treasurer Rita Saffioti’s first budget, which Cook said had something for everybody but was particularly focused on addressing cost-of-living pressures and the state’s housing crisis.

“My goal is supplying support for families, seniors, tradies, renters, in fact … this budget delivers for every Western Australian,” Cook said.

“We are now the envy of the nation.”

Read Hamish Hastie’s full report here. 

The Australian Financial Review will be forced to stop its physical edition in Perth this month after billionaire Kerry Stokes’ Seven West Media abruptly doubled the cost of printing the newspaper for distribution in Western Australia.

Nine Entertainment, which owns the Financial Review as well as this masthead, said the decision will end seven decades of the financial journal’s distribution as a printed newspaper in the state.

The Financial Review‘s editor-in-chief Michael Stutchbury told Radio 6PR that Nine’s managing director of publishing Tory Maguire was informed last month that Seven West would be exercising its option to cancel the previous contract with 28 days’ notice.

“The sad reality is that a doubling of the price of one of the biggest costs of publishing a newspaper, the printing itself, meant that the Western Australian printing operations would become loss making. In this day, and age, you can’t really sustain loss-making operations,” he said.

The last print edition of the Financial Review will be May 22.

Read more here. 

WA Treasurer Rita Saffioti will hand down her first budget in Parliament at 2pm.

This morning we published an article on how new gas projects will gain stronger federal support in a Labor pledge to deliver affordable gas to customers for decades to come.

The federal government announced it will back the case for new gas fields to secure the supplies despite calls to phase out the use of fossil fuels, setting up a clash with the Greens and environmental groups over the new plan.

It hasn’t taken long for protesters to gather outside the WA electoral office of Federal Resources Minister Madeleine King today following the news.

Conservation Council of WA president Richard Yin said the announcement of the new gas policy had betrayed the Australian people.

“The government’s support for dirty gas, including fracking, is a disaster for local communities and for a safe climate future,” he said.

“In WA, we know that the vast majority of gas produced here is exported offshore and does nothing to keep the lights on at home.

“If WA were its own country, it would be the third-largest gas exporter in the world.”

Read more here.