Bam wrote on Mar 9^th, 2017 at 1:47pm:


I hope you're right.

One Nation is another factor that may not be handled adequately.

All the experts, and those who fancy themselves as such, will be looking westwards on Saturday night for signposts on Pauline Hanson’s future and its likely impact on federal politics.

There will be those who will look at the Western Australia election result, assuming she does well — and One Nation is expected to gain three upper house seats with a likely vote of between 10 and 14 per cent — and say that if he isn’t already finished then Malcolm Turnbull will be unless he shifts even further to the right to stop the bleeding from his right flank because he is such a pinko. They want him to be One Nation Lite.

Apart from the fact there are significant local factors at play, namely a premier who looks and sounds exhausted running a tired government, seeking a third term while the economy remains depressed, the more cunning would see that as the road to nowhere.

Grendel wrote on Mar 9^th, 2017 at 12:31pm:


Educate yourself mate....

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/opinion/columnists/peter-van-onselen/west-has-be...

philperth2010 wrote on Mar 9^th, 2017 at 5:52pm:

Why post paywalled links?

No cobbled-together agreement to save the political hides of those in attendance at yesterday’s Council of Australian Governments meeting was ever going to be enough to fix the problem of Western Australia’s collapsing GST returns.

The framed attempts to find one, debated in the weeks leading up to yesterday’s meeting, was embarrassing to watch.

The only way for the unfairness of the Commonwealth Grants Commission process to be properly rectified is for the commonwealth to show leadership. Of course Western Australia wants to retain a greater share of its GST receipts. Equally as understandably, those states that are subsidised, such as Tasmania and South Australia, don’t want to lose out. It’s the role of the premiers to advance the interests of their state.

It’s not good enough for Tony Abbott to suggest, offensively, the premiers aren’t acting like adults because they can’t come together and achieve a lasting consensus to reform the GST allocation ­process. That’s his job, as the leader who must put the national interest first. Anyone suggesting otherwise doesn’t understand ­co-operative federalism or basic principles of leadership theory.

One thing West Australians are sick of hearing is the tired ­argument from the east coast that WA was subsidised as a state for the best part of a century so there is nothing wrong with it now giving something back. The taxpayer-funded enclave that is Canberra, populated by its hordes of bureaucrats and rent-seekers in residence, has produced many examples of this simplistic assessment of late.

Yes, it’s true that during its development years, in an era of high-cost transport, the isolated west was subsidised. But it often was marginal subsidisation at best, with the purpose of building businesses and a population that handed over company and (after World War II) income taxes to the commonwealth. Premier Colin Barnett is not ­asking to keep all of the state’s GST ­receipts. All he wants is a guaranteed floor of 50c in the dollar. Before the COAG meeting it had slipped to below 30c, and if it weren’t for the mining boom ­receding it was expected to fall to just 11c.

To put the above into context, since the GST was introduced no other state has seen its share of GST receipts fall below 81c. Is it any wonder West Australians have been crying foul when theirs drops below 30c?

Comparisons between marginal subsidisation of the west during the lifetime of the commonwealth and the deeply unreasonable plummeting GST receipts now is a false construct.

I wonder how the rest of Australia would have reacted through the years had it been expected to lose ­upwards of 70c in the dollar of taxes received to help Western Australia grow and prosper, because that’s what the state is being asked to do in terms of its GST distributions now.

Former state treasurer Christian Porter told the Prime Minister in the federal partyroom last year that he and his West Australian colleagues would put in their own submission to the tax review process. Neither Abbott nor Joe Hockey were impressed. The federal Treasurer gave Porter a serve right then and there in an ­attempt to put the new MP in his place. Fast forward six months and Hockey has been scrambling for a deal to satisfy the west, along the lines Porter outlined. I wonder if Hockey has found time to give Porter an apology while he has been so busy backtracking.

The only reason Abbott and Hockey have woken up to the unfairness of Western Australia’s GST squeeze is because of the political pressure the pair are under.

With their jobs on the line in the wake of the leadership spill in February, they are suddenly keen to appease the 18 West Australian MPs and senators who have a vote on the leadership. That collective power in the partyroom is undeniable, and the latest Newspoll looking at the west shows many seats are in trouble given the government’s woes.

The reason WA gets ripped off when it comes to GST distribution is because the grants commission looks at how much money is generated in the west via royalties.

That’s not entirely unfair, given the mantra of horizontal fiscal equalisation is alive and well. Most Australians do not want to see a US-style federalism that allows huge economic disparity between states, although the calculation we use to redistribute the GST could do a little more to recognise the national benefit from mining ­activities as well as the state cost of developing infrastructure around the resources sector.

Putting such complaints to one side, the ridiculous thing about the way GST distribution is calculated is that royalties are taken into ­account but not gambling revenues. Most states other than Western Australia return significant gambling taxes to their coffers. South Australia, Victoria and NSW, for example, fund 10 per cent to 15 per cent of their budgets with gambling taxes