Tampons and pads will no longer attract the 10% consumption tax, Australia’s treasurers unanimously agreeing to remove the feminine hygiene products from the GST.

While the details are still being finalised, including what will be included under the tax axe, given the number of other menstruation products now on the market, Guardian Australia understands products should start to become cheaper from January.

The move follows an almost two-decade push to remove the items from the GST, after they were controversially included in the 1999 Howard government decision to introduce a goods and service tax to Australia.

While tampons and pads were not technically considered “luxury items” under the GST tax roster, they did not attract the health goods exception, which was applied to condoms and lubricant – despite attempts to have them removed.

At the time, the then health minister, Michael Wooldridge, justified not exempting tampons because they did not “prevent illness”.

“As a bloke, I’d like shaving cream exempt but I’m not expecting it to be,” he told the ABC in 2000, adding: “condoms prevent illness. I wasn’t aware that menstruation was an illness.”

Attempts in the intervening years had been voted down by both the Coalition and Labor, with the states and territories unwilling to part with the $30m raised by the tampon tax each year.

But as women rose to more senior roles within government at all levels, Labor changed its policy this year, vowing to scrap the tax if elected to government – despite voting against another push to axe it as recently as last year.

In August the then treasurer, Scott Morrison, pledged to axe the tax at the next treasurer’s meeting.

Kelly O’Dwyer, as minister for women, said, “millions of women right across the nation will be very thankful” for the move.

On Wednesday morning all the treasurers agreed, making it the easiest decision the Josh Frydenberg-helmed meeting had to make.

Following the decision, both major parties took credit for the decision to axe the tax, with Frydenberg describing it as “a win”.

“Common sense has prevailed,” he said.

Chris Bowen described it as another example of the government following Labor’s policy.

“Of course Labor suggested in April that this tax should be abolished … we suggested an alternative funding source for the states, so it wasn’t a thing done lightly by us – Scott Morrison said it was a quote, unquote, a cynical exercise to take the GST off tampons,” he said.

“When asked, when he was treasurer whether it had been discussed at the [treasurer’s] meeting, he said ‘no, we were dealing with issues on a higher plane’ was his arrogantly way of describing it. So this is good news.”

Greens senator Janet Rice said it was a victory for people power.

“This is a huge win for all Australians who menstruate and shows the power of grassroots movements when we work together,” she said.

The states and territories were also united when it came to wanting a legislated safeguard from the government that ‘no state or territory will be worse of’ under the federal government’s proposed changes to the GST carve up, something the government has balked at.

The eastern seaboard Labor governments are concerned that their states will lose out on GST revenue in the coming years if the eight-year forecasts of GST relativities prove to be wrong.

All treasurers, including those from Liberal state governments, agreed legislation was crucial to a unified agreement.

Victoria has produced modelling that it could stand to lose $482m over eight years as the result of a “modest increase in iron ore prices” shifting GST allocation. In the worst-case scenario, Victoria could lose $940m if Western Australia experienced a strong increase in mining production while Victoria performed relatively better in property taxes.

The same modelling suggests New South Wales could lose between $722m and $1.1bn, while Queensland could lose between $182m and $651m. WA stands to gain under all these scenarios, with gains ranging from $9.5bn to $11bn.

The Victorian treasurer, Tim Pallas, said the commonwealth plan had “nothing to do with making the distribution of the GST fairer – it’s about fixing the political problem Scott Morrison has in Western Australia”.

“This overhaul could rip nearly a billion out of Victoria – funding that could be used to deliver the vital projects and services our growing state needs,” he said. “The prime minister claimed that no states will be worse off – but they’ve provided no mechanism to ensure this is the case.”

The federal government has proposed to legislate a GST “floor”, which would ensure no state received less than 70% of the GST revenue it generated from 2022-23, which would rise to 75% from 2024-25, as it works to increase the GST revenue WA receives.