Hon Rita Saffioti BBus MLA

For Hon Rita Saffioti BBus MLA

Deputy Premier, Treasurer, Minister for Transport; Sport and Recreation

Hon Rita Saffioti MLA is the Deputy Premier, Treasurer, Minister for Transport and Minister for Sport and Recreation.

Rita has served as a senior Cabinet Minister across multiple portfolios since the Labor Government was elected in 2017, including Transport, Tourism, Planning, Lands, Ports, and Treasury.

As a Minister, Rita quickly gained a reputation for being hard-working, driven, and focused on delivering outcomes for the people of Western Australia.

Some of her proudest achievements include returning railcar manufacturing to Western Australia, securing record funding from the Commonwealth to upgrade regional roads, and delivering METRONET – a once-in-a-generation infrastructure project, creating thousands of local jobs for Western Australians.

METRONET is the single largest investment in public transport in Western Australia’s history, building approximately 72 kilometres of new passenger rail and 23 new train stations across Perth.

The multi-billion-dollar project is also providing more housing options in metropolitan Perth, unlocking more than 8,000 hectares of land around train stations to create new communities.

The daughter of Italian migrants, Rita grew up on her parents’ orchard in Roleystone and spent her school holidays picking fruit. Her mother worked as a cook and her father was a labourer who cleared land for housing developments, fenced properties for pastoralists in the regions, and built train stations along the Armadale and Fremantle train lines.

From a young age, Rita’s parents taught her the values of hard work, fairness, and opportunity.

After finishing her schooling at Kelmscott Senior High School, Rita gained a Bachelor of Business at Curtin University. An economist by trade, she then moved to Canberra to work at the Department of Finance before returning to Western Australia to work at the Department of Treasury.

In 1997, Rita commenced working for then-Opposition Leader Geoff Gallop as an economic adviser, continuing this role into Government before ultimately becoming Chief of Staff to Premier Alan Carpenter.

Rita was elected as the Member for West Swan in 2008 and became a Shadow Minister in 2013.

She has three children and when not at Parliament, Rita can usually be found with her family at the footy cheering on her team, the Fremantle Dockers.