It’s has been billed as the biggest change to the GST in two decades.

The federal government has moved quickly to resolve the very low GST relativity of Western Australia after a mere half decade of payments below 50 cents in the dollar. This problem will be completely fixed, Treasurer Scott Morrison assures us, as soon as 2026-27.

The Treasurer explains his new GST system at a press conference in Canberra. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen

With all due respect to the fiscal struggles of the Western Australians — some of which are self-inflicted and unrelated to the GST distribution — their recent situation is something of an outlier. Having a relatively small but dispersed population for such a large land mass, with a volatile income base seeing a massive temporary boom, the calculation of GST shares for the other states off the WA case was always going to cause anomalies.

That said, a situation where they effectively received such a low share of the GST income raised in their own state was never sustainable. It should not have gone on as long as it has, especially given the GST in part replaced state taxes that were wholly retained within the state.