As it happened: WA news on Friday, February 21​on February 20, 2025 at 11:42 pm

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Here’s what made headlines today:

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Turning to some tragic news now, and a 37-year-old has died at Melaleuca Women’s Prison in Perth’s south.

According to the Department of Justice, the woman was found unresponsive in her cell at the Canning Vale maximum security facility early on Friday morning.

It is understood prison staff provided first aid to the prisoner until paramedics arrived.

The woman was later declared deceased at the scene.

A report will be prepared for the coroner as is mandatory for deaths in custody.

It has been more than 18 months of pain for the families of West Australians in prison.

It has been just over one year since 16-year-old Aboriginal boy Cleveland Dodd died after self-harming in Unit 18, the notorious youth wing of Casuarina.

Cleveland was Western Australia’s first child death in custody, and Australia’s first since 2010.

In August, a 17-year-old became the second youth to take their own life in WA juvenile detention in less than a year, at Banksia Hill Detention Centre.

Perth’s Hakea Prison has recorded four potentially preventable deaths in the past 18 months.

Heading away from politics now and turning to some sports news: Fremantle Dockers players and officials have claimed they have never been better placed to claim their elusive first premiership title this year.

The club was full of optimism at the season launch. Hear more below.

We all save for weddings, a new car, big holidays or even house deposits.

But what about ‘adulting’, odds and sods, a catamaran, or the Super Bowl? These are the goals West Australian P&N Bank customers are gunning for, judging by their savings account names.

One in five customers have more than two savings accounts and the names reveal targets from fishing trips to lazy days, quitting smoking, and fiddle sticks (whatever that entails.

P&N Bank retail banking executive general manager Angela Newland said while the goals vary, all are using the same technique – budgeting using ‘jars’, represented by transaction accounts or high-interest savings accounts.

“It’s the old-fashioned strategy of labelled jars but with a digital upgrade, and it’s having a moment again thanks to TikTok and Instagram influencers,” she said.

“It’s realistic money management. The transparency provides motivation and security and the simplicity means it’s more likely to stick.”

Inspired? Newland says to start bucket budgeting you need to list and categorise your spending. These categories will become your jars.

Start with the non-negotiable like rent, bills and groceries, then allocate indulgences afterwards.

Set up your new bank accounts considering the interest paid, the frequency of planned withdrawals and how this will impact interest, how many accounts you need and how easily you can move funds around.

Rounding out our coverage of the Liberal party press conference now and shadow treasurer Steve Martin has batted away questions over his party’s decision to seek external help to cost their promises.

In response to questions about WAtoday’s exclusive this morning revealing opposition alliance partner the Nationals will use treasury to cost their commitments, Martin said what they did “was entirely up to them.”

The Nationals decision gave more ammunition to Labor to criticise the Liberals decision to avoid treasury.

Martin refused to say whether his country colleagues had informed him of their decision before it was revealed by this masthead this morning.

Martin did, however, call on Labor to commit to an independent Parliamentary Budget Office as it committed to in 2017.

“I think it’s time to draw an end to this silliness,” he said.

“An independent Parliamentary Budget Office can do this, and then oppositions will feel comfortable submitting their costings to that independent body and then we can get this done in an orderly and transparent process.”

Sticking with the state election campaign, we have actually had a genuine policy announcement this morning with the Liberals pledging to introduce a domestic violence disclosure scheme.

Liberal leader Libby Mettam said the $7 million scheme would allow police to disclose the criminal history of someone found guilty of domestic violence charges, or other violent assaults, to anyone at risk.

“The scheme is based on the two broad principles of the right to know and the right to ask, and is designed to provide information that might help prevent someone becoming a victim of domestic violence,” she said.

“A right-to-ask application could be made by any individual, including someone living with violence or someone who has reason to feel they, or someone they know, is at risk.”

The scheme would be based on the first DVDS scheme in the UK called Clare’s Law, which was rolled out in March 2014.

Mettam was inundated with questions over ousted candidate Darren Spackman during the press conference and was forced to repeatedly wrestle back control to tout the party’s election commitment.

She refused to be drawn on whether she felt let down by the party’s candidate vetting process or where the ethical line was given questions had been raised about the conduct of other candidates.

Mettam, who revealed she had never met Spackman in person, told the media she acted swiftly in calling time on his membership of the party over intolerable behaviour she dubbed “offensive”.

“These comments are particularly egregious and they will not be tolerated,” she said.

WA Labor has capitalised on Liberal leader Libby Mettam’s days of candidate headaches with a series of memes posted to its official Facebook page denigrating those that made headlines this week.

The post described candidates like Darren Spackman and Paul Mansfield, whose history of bad taste jokes on Facebook was dredged up this week as “Libby’s Loopy Liberals” with a Froot Loops themed backdrop.

Spare a thought for Scarborough candidate Damien Kelly who was grouped in the bunch for wearing a Basil Zempilas campaign hat.

Former Liberal candidate Darren Spackman has now spoken out after being forced to resign from the party over a controversial media interview, admitting he wasn’t politically savvy enough and trying to claim he was “set up”.

Just hours after Liberal leader Libby Mettam demanded his resignation, the Kimberley candidate said comments he made about youth crime in an interview with Seven West Media’s Broome Advertiser had made it “very difficult to continue”.

“The biggest problem is that I’m not a politician, we live in the bush and I’m not as polished as I should be,” Spackman told 6PR’s Simon Beaumont.

“My delivery probably hasn’t been right, I’m not politically correct, but at the end of the day, it doesn’t change the facts, and the fact is that we’ve got more kids in care than we’ve ever had, our jails are full and kids are not going to school.

“Not being PC [politically correct], my delivery can be wrong sometimes. If we don’t yell and scream, the Kimberley won’t get the help it needs.

“Some of the comments recently have been taken way out of context, and unfortunately, I’m just not politically savvy enough to understand that I am being set up.”

Spackman, who claimed the comments made to the media were “off the record”, admitted that in hindsight he would change how he expressed himself.

But he maintained his primary concern was getting help for the community and did not rule out continuing his candidacy as an independent.

It’s the gift that keeps on giving (or not depending on your views) – public school funding.

The Australian Education Union has today released new data showing per student funding to private schools in WA had grown at triple the rate of funding for students at public schools.

Federal president Correna Haythorpe also said no public school in WA was funded to the agreed minimum amount required to educate students, known as the Schooling Resource Standard.

“That’s nuts,” WA Premier Roger Cook said when asked about the statement.

“We’ll see an extra $1.6 billion invested in WA public schools over the next four years so the Australian Education Union is on the exact wrong path.”

Buti said the claim was “absurd” and that WA public school students would be fully funded by the end of next year, with an additional 2.5 per cent of federal government funding allocated from 2030.

He said the funding for private schools was a “long tradition” and wasn’t sure where the criticism was coming from.

The union has argued that public schools will not be fully funded until the 2030 promise kicks in, and that the funding agreement until that date has been “artificially inflated” through the inclusion of costs not directly related to the education of students in schools, such as capital depreciation, transport and regulatory costs.

Staying with the press conference with WA Premier Roger Cook this morning and Perth Hills residents are facing a long cleanup ahead, with 17 properties dealing with “significant damage” after a microburst tore through the region on Wednesday evening.

Cook said to put that number into perspective, more homes were damaged in the freak storm than were impacted by Cyclone Zelia last week.

There are still 3400 properties without power.

“Our thoughts are with those people who are trying to do a cleanup and a pickup, and we’re obviously going to connect them as quickly as possible,” Cook said.

“There’s about 100 SES personnel on the ground as part of that clean up operation, assisting those properties that have received significant damage.

“This was a freak weather event, a microburst which has done significant damage – more damage to homes than Cyclone Zelia, so you can understand it’s a particularly extreme weather event.”

Residents who witnessed the storm described it as a ‘mini tornado’.

The Bureau of Meteorology has now confirmed there was no tornado, but winds of 100 kilometres per hour ripped through the area, causing the destruction.