United states blow Cyclone Barnett back west

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The natural disaster that is Colin Barnett has been blown back West by united states, from Dad’s Army:

Every state and territory — bar Western Australia — last night took the unprecedented step of signing a joint letter opposing a compromise on the distrib­ution of GST revenue, forcing the issue back on the Abbott government.

The letter to Joe Hockey, from all state and territory treasurers except Western Australia’s Mike Nahan, warns that a spec­ial deal would undermine the federation and be opposed by all Australians outside the west.

…The letter emerged as a brawl over West Australian Premier Colin Barnett’s linking of the GST carve-up row to his state’s support for Victoria and Queensland after bushfires and floods stoked interstate acrim­ony and left him isolated ahead of the leaders’ meeting.

This morning Category 5 Cyclone Barnett just can’t understand it:

“The Grants Commission served Australia well, but it was invented in the ’30s and probably belongs back there. I am not asking for any bailout or anything else, I’m just saying with iron ore prices having collapsed, Western Australia cannot continue to be paying $3.7 billion, in fact above that next year, to the other states,” he said.

“I was extremely disappointed, both that Liberal and Labor governments around Australia should gang up on one state government. I have never in my experience seen the other states and territories gang up against a single state. And we are the state that is funding them and largely funding the commonwealth budget, because of the strength of the mining industry over recent years.

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Nobody “ganged up” on you, Cyclone, you swept into town and trashed everyone in sight for your own budget errors.

Hence you have blown any positive response into flying debris.

About the author
David Llewellyn-Smith is Chief Strategist at the MB Fund and MB Super. David is the founding publisher and editor of MacroBusiness and was the founding publisher and global economy editor of The Diplomat, the Asia Pacific’s leading geo-politics and economics portal. He is also a former gold trader and economic commentator at The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, the ABC and Business Spectator. He is the co-author of The Great Crash of 2008 with Ross Garnaut and was the editor of the second Garnaut Climate Change Review.