When the Western Australian state government handed down its state budget on Thursday, it showed a balance sheet solidly in the black with a A$2.5 billion surplus. But, as it has for seven years, the state has received an outsized boost to its coffers from the federal government.
In 2018, the Morrison government – with the full support of the then Labor opposition – handed WA a special deal for the distribution of income from the goods and service tax (GST).
Under the deal, WA gets a much greater share of the centrally collected GST revenue than it would have been entitled to under the methods previously used by the Commonwealth Grants Commission.
