WA’s GST deal ‘un-Australian’ and ‘embarrassing’, Saul Eslake says, launching attack against West Aussies

GST whinger-in-chief Saul Eslake has claimed WA’s nation-leading financial position was achieved “not by the hard work of many Western Australians” but rather dumb luck coupled with Chinese demand for iron ore. In an escalation of commentary against the GST deal, the prominent economist told UWA professor Peter Van Onselen’s podcast “Points of View” he believed WA’s campaign for the 75c floor was motivated by “greed”. The attack comes as Western Australia prepares to celebrate all that makes the State great on Monday’s “WA Day” public holiday. Discounting the work of Western Australia’s 60,000 FIFO workers, Mr Eslake said WA’s mining success was not because of the State’s endeavours. “Somehow reaping $130 billion of mineral royalties over the last 20 years, which Western Australia has done, isn’t reward enough for basically the fortune that has been conferred on Western Australia not by the hard work of many Western Australians, but rather by the Chinese,” Mr Eslake said. “Western Australians appear to think when they defend this deal, that somehow it was that it was Sir Charles Court or Sir David Brand that put the iron ore under the Pilbara and the gas under the Northwest shelf, and that it was Mark McGowan, who drove the price of it into the stratosphere and the Chinese had nothing to do with it ... that it’s all their own hard work, they’re entitled to it. “This entitlement mentality that Western Australians seem to have developed comes to me as someone who has been a regular visitor to Western Australia since 1979 as a bit of a shock and quite a disappointment.” As part of his ongoing campaign against the deal, which he has labelled the “worst public policy decision of a decade”, Mr Eslake said he wanted to make those that defend the arrangement “embarrassed” over it. “The Morrison Government was so desperate to do this deal to appease Western Australia’s greed, they had to buy off the other states and territories by promising them that they would be no worse off than they would have been had those changes not be made,” he said. The deal, he added, had corrupted Australia’s horizontal fiscal equalisation, and given WA a higher standard of living than other States. “Ultimately, (that WA’s) citizens can have better public services and lower state taxes then the rest of the country is I think, to use a word that’s often abused in different contexts, Unaustralian,” he said. With projections showing under the old deal, WA would have received just 11 cents in the dollar, Treasurer Rita Saffioti hit back, saying she did not understand how anyone would think that was acceptable or fair. “While everyone else seems to have worked that out, a handful of east coast commentators like Saul Eslake, who are desperate to maintain relevance, want to keep prosecuting an issue that has been settled,” she said. “Mr Eslake is right about one thing – no one put the iron ore under the Pilbara and the gas under the Northwest shelf, but let me remind him, they don’t just jump out of the ground and onto a ship either. “It’s the hard work of Western Australians and our business community that makes it happen, and these types of attacks only deepen the resolve to protect our fair share.” Following post-budget concerns over the scale of payments made to WA, Treasurer Jim Chalmers repeatedly backed in the deal, saying he wasn’t swayed by the claims of Mr Eslake and others, and money spent was “worth it”. “We recognise how important WA is to the national economy. We need to see that recognised and rewarded in the GST distribution system as well and that’s why we’re committed to it,” Dr Chalmers said.