This so called resource boom has done nothing for the West Australian man in the street just tripled house prices in a few years to make Perth the most expensive/unaffordable City in Australia to buy or rent residential and commercial property. 5 or 6 years ago it was one of the most affordable.
Office and retail space in the CBD is now the most expensive in Aust and a lot of small operators and business's have been forced out. It's a similar story across Perth with commercial and industrial rents skyrocketing.
Many small business's have simply closed their doors.
What's the net outcome of this - prices at the bottom of the food chain increase proportionatey and sometimes disproportionately.
Most young people just can't buy a house in Perth anymore and some are taking on 40 year mortgages just to get into the market.
And places like Karratha - Forget it altogether rich investors have plucked all the rentals up and making a killing charging extortionate rents to mining companies and workers.
Add to that the significant increases in the cost of living across the board and you're average WA Joe can't see what they're getting from this "Magnificant Boom". It's just widened the gap between the very rich, the middle class and the very poor in WA.
Yet the feds take most of the goodies from it leaving WA with the scraps and to pick up the pieces, and when it finally does end there will be a lot of pieces.
Why shouldn't the average West Aussie be somewhat peeved and want a bigger slice of the pie. The reources are afterall from WA. I would feel the same way if it was the resources from any other state - the state should get a disproportionate dividend from the resources of that state. Why shouldn't they ?
