Mr Blayney questions the Premier about rolling over unspent balances on Country Age Pension Fuel Cards due to travel restrictions. The Premier encourages cardholders to use their balances to support regional communities, highlighting the state's economic challenges and commitment to existing programs.

AnsweredQoN 366Legislative Assembly
Asked
26 May 2020
Portfolio
Premier

QuestionView source ↗

CORONAVIRUS —
COUNTRY AGE PENSION FUEL CARD
366. Mr I.C. BLAYNEY to the Premier:
I
have a supplementary question. Our pensioners have played their part by
adhering to travel restrictions and social distancing, which means that
quite a few have unspent balances on their fuel card this year, so why does the
government not reward them just a little and roll over their unspent card
balances to the next financial year?

AnswerView source ↗

We have five or six weeks to go in
this financial year. I would very much encourage everyone across regional Western
Australia to travel and use their unspent balances to support local communities
as much as they possibly can. I would like to see both regional and city people
getting around, and experiencing and enjoying everything that this great state
has to offer. People in regional WA now have a great opportunity to do that
over the coming period. There has been roughly $2 billion worth of stimulus. We
will suffer a severe contraction in some revenue sources to the state, which
will become apparent over the coming months, particularly payroll tax, stamp
duty and land tax coming into the Western Australian Treasury. We are doing
everything we can to support the state economy, but one thing that we have kept
in place is the royalties for regions scheme. We have kept in place the Country
Age Pension Fuel Card with exactly the same rules as there were before.
Mr D.C. Nalder interjected.
The SPEAKER : Member for
Bateman, I call you to order for the second time. You cannot comment on
everything.

Explore WA Government Data

Search the full archive in the free dashboard, or query programmatically via API.

Explore more