Western Australia State Budget 2026-27: Housing and infrastructure at the centre

Treasurer, The Hon Rita Saffioti MLA, has handed down the Western Australian State Budget 2026-27, which largely confirms the Cook Government’s existing direction on housing, infrastructure and population enabling assets.

The Budget maintains record investment in housing and infrastructure, alongside continued funding for the assets required to support population growth, including water, energy, transport and skills. 

Housing and the cost of living is front and centre

Housing is once again a clear priority, with the Budget allocating substantial new funding for social and affordable housing delivery, including new dwellings, refurbishment of existing stock and continued collaboration with the Commonwealth. 

What has been announced?

The Budget confirms a $4.7 billion housing supply package for 2026–27, taking total additional housing investment since 2021 to more than $10.8 billion. The measures focus on increasing housing supply across metropolitan and regional Western Australia, with a particular emphasis on accelerating apartment construction, expanding social and affordable housing, and making more land available for development.

Key elements include: 

• Funding to convert planned land into deliverable housing supply through enabling infrastructure 
• Measures to reduce apartment delivery and financing risk, rather than stimulate demand 
• Provision of longer‑term certainty for social and affordable housing pipelines 
• Initial actions to lift construction productivity, acknowledging ongoing labour constraints. 

The Government expects these measures to support the delivery of more than 34,000 new homes over the next four years, including a substantial number of affordable homes for first home buyers and priority cohorts. 

What is the impact of this announcement?

The housing supply package targets the structural constraints that have limited housing output in recent years, including access to finance, infrastructure sequencing, land serviceability and construction capacity. The introduction of financing tools for apartments is expected to bring forward otherwise stalled developments and improve certainty across the construction pipeline. 

For social and affordable housing, the key impact is pipeline stability. Multi‑year commitments support longer‑term planning and procurement, although delivery will remain dependent on workforce availability and effective coordination across agencies and markets. 

BDO perspective

Many of the housing initiatives were already committed to or announced prior to the Budget 2026-27 announcement. The value of this Budget lies in how it consolidates funding and clarifies delivery settings. 

The success of these measures will depend on how effectively enabling infrastructure, financing mechanisms and construction capacity are aligned. Financing reforms for apartments and investment in advanced manufacturing has the potential to materially improve delivery outcomes, but only if supported by consistent procurement frameworks, planning settings and volume certainty. 

The next phase will test whether coordination across land, infrastructure, finance and delivery can translate investment into homes delivered at the scale and pace Western Australia requires. 

Enabling infrastructure as a housing constraint

The Budget confirms a $44.3 billion infrastructure pipeline from 2026–27 to 2029–30, with $13.2 billion allocated in 2026–27, providing pipeline certainty for major projects across the State. 

Significant allocations for water, energy, transport and skills infrastructure reinforce the role these assets play in supporting housing supply and population growth. Investments in desalination, the clean energy transition, and road and freight infrastructure all underpin long‑term development outcomes. These settings are underpinned by more than $1.3 billion in land development and enabling infrastructure investment, targeting power, water and servicing in growth corridors and Metronet precincts. 

Strong integration between land release, servicing infrastructure and social infrastructure planning will be critical if these investments are to translate into positive housing outcomes rather than additional delivery bottlenecks.

Infrastructure flows to the care economy

The Budget also provides over $1 billion in direct cost‑of‑living relief, including cash payments, transport and energy subsidies, and tax concessions to ease household financial pressures. 

More broadly, the Budget’s strong focus on health, mental health and community‑based care infrastructure reflects the growing importance of the care economy to Western Australia’s social and economic resilience. 

Investment in hospital builds and upgrades, addressing maintenance backlogs, and expanding non‑hospital service models indicate a longer‑term approach to system capacity. From an infrastructure advisory perspective, the delivery challenge will centre on: 

• Managing complex projects in labour constrained and regional environments 
• Ensuring assets are fit-for-purpose across their full lifecycle 
• Aligning workforce accommodation, transport and enabling infrastructure with care infrastructure delivery. 

How BDO can help

As governments and delivery partners move into the execution phase, the focus turns on sequencing, delivery readiness and coordination across land, infrastructure, finance and workforce. 

BDO’s project and infrastructure advisory team supports clients across the housing, infrastructure and care economy value chain, from early project development and business cases, through delivery strategy, procurement and program governance, to asset optimisation and lifecycle planning.