Western Australian politicians claim the state is the “powerhouse” of the national economy and deserves an outsized share of GST revenue. The ABS State Accounts for 2024–25 tell a different story, revealing a decade of weak growth, falling per capita output and a system that rewards WA despite clear under-performance.

One of the mantras routinely chanted by Western Australian politicians in support of The Worst Public Policy Decision of the 21st Century Thus Far – the 2018 “deal” which gives Western Australia a bigger share of GST revenue than it needs in order to be able to provide its citizens with public services of a similar standard to the rest of Australia while levying on them a similar burden of state taxes and charges, at a cost to the Federal Budget of around $60 billion over the 11 years to 2029-30 – is that Western Australia is the “powerhouse” of the Australian economy, and that the state needs all this extra GST revenue in order to keep this powerhouse operating.

This mantra is also supported by federal politicians who want to curry favour with Western Australia (in order to retain or regain WA seats in the House of Representatives), as Federal Treasurer Jim Chalmers did most recently last week in an almost nauseatingly fawning speech to the Western Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry in Perth.

The ABS State Accounts for 2024-25 expose this piece of propaganda to be a myth.

They show that, over the ten years to 2024-25, Western Australia’s real gross state product grew at an average annual rate of 1.7 per cent – the second-slowest of any state or territory (after the Northern Territory). Less than the national average of 2.2 per cent, and less than the states which Western Australians rejoice in depicting as ‘mendicant’, ie........

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