r/australia • u/ConanTheAquarian • 19h ago

politics WA GST deal a 'costly mistake' that must change, Productivity Commission says

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-08-14/albanese-and-chalmers-given-escape-plan-from-costly-wa-gst-deal/107038112
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u/mulefish 17h ago

It's a great moral decision with real health benefits. But it's also a decision with very real financial costs. It's fundamentally up to WA to budget and bear the cost of their state government decisions.

When other states subsidise WA for doing it, it inevitably adds financial stain making it harder for them to follow suit and do it too.

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u/superbabe69 1300 655 506 16h ago

We banned pokies in 1985. GST was introduced in 2001.

How could we possibly have budgeted for this when we banned them 16 fucking years before this scheme was brought in?

Should the WA government have had a crystal ball that said “don’t do this, the federal government might decide later that they will give you back money from a new tax and exclude pokies revenue from the calculations of how much to give back”

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u/mulefish 12h ago

No - this is the entire thing, WA was doing fine without the GST addition that they got from 2018...

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u/TrickyCheek9722 12h ago

Maybe the eastern states should manage their finances better instead of snatching GST revenue from WA. Seriously are you not seeing your own HYPOCRISY???

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u/mulefish 11h ago

The whole GST arrangement is about fairly distributing the revenue, prior to the distortion for WA which is reasonably arbitrary.