This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

Home ownership is falling quickly among Australia’s young and poor, a new study has found. People are waiting longer for medical treatments in most states. Wholesale electricity prices have increased significantly over the past few years while Australia is not on target to reach its emissions commitments.

Thinktank the Grattan Institute has released a new report on the performance of Australia’s state and territory governments, providing a “scorecard” of their economies and policies from the past five years.

With elections looming in Victoria and New South Wales, State Orange Book 2018 draws on past Grattan reports to outline what it thinks the policy priorities ought to be for state and territory governments in coming years.

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“Unfortunately, the problems aren’t hard to find,” the Grattan Institute’s chief executive, John Daley, said. “Per capita income has been flat for five years as the mining boom subsided. State and territory governments continue to announce large infrastructure projects without doing enough homework beforehand. Home ownership is falling fast among the young and the poor, and homelessness is rising, [and] our schools are not keeping up with the best in the world.”

But many worthwhile reforms have been implemented over the past decade, Daley said.

“Victoria’s hospitals cost less per patient and contribute to better health outcomes than elsewhere,” he said. “Queensland’s school students learn more in years 3 to 5, and this has improved significantly in the past few years.

“The ACT has started to replace inefficient stamp duties with a much more efficient broad-based property tax. NSW has used the good times to improve its budget position. Victoria, South Australia and the ACT have all increased the transparency of political decision-making and tightened controls over money in politics.”

The Grattan Institute also believes the transparency of political lobbying and donations has improved for most state and territory governments over the past five years, despite policy inertia at the federal level.

It says New South Wales, Queensland and the Australian Capital Territory now publish ministerial diaries, so voters can see who their elected representatives are meeting with, and when. All jurisdictions except the NT have a lobbyist register, and Queensland requires lobbyists to publish details of which ministers and shadow ministers they have contacted.

Transparency of political donations is now better in most states and territories than at the federal level. NSW, Victoria, Queensland and the ACT require donations of $1,000 or more to be publicly declared. Only Tasmania has the same threshold as the commonwealth ($13,800).

“Some states also make their donations data public very quickly,” the report says. “During election campaigns, donations must be declared within seven days in Queensland, South Australia and the ACT, and within 21 days in NSW and Victoria.

“Queensland and SA have recently introduced an online disclosure system, which creates easily searchable and relatively clean datasets. Victoria will use a similar online system under the state’s new political donations laws.

“[But] some states and territories need to do more: Tasmania follows the commonwealth political donations regime, and scores poorly on transparency as a result.”

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The Grattan Institute says all state governments – particularly NSW and Victoria – face population pressures, but they should “resist political pressure to wind back planning reforms that have helped to increase housing supply”.

It says NSW and Victoria should commission work to enable the introduction of time-of-day road and public transport pricing to manage congestion in Melbourne and Sydney.

“[And] all states should stop announcing transport projects before they have been analysed rigorously, and they should evaluate completed projects properly.”

It says all states should follow the lead of the ACT and replace stamp duties with broad-based property taxes. And states should reform electricity markets to encourage reliability and reduce emissions – whether or not the commonwealth government cooperates.