“The federal government uses a definition of fair that would make Marx proud”.

Everything about the Albanese government would make Marx proud.

Victoria should not be compensated for all the money it wasted during Covid: businesses ruined. Lock downs. Police bashing people on the streets.

Andrews should be stripped of his pension, and everything he owns should be taken as some compensation for what he did.

"But surely fair is distributing the GST exactly in proportion to either the population of each state, or in proportion to where it is generated, which are close to the same thing."

Let's dispense with the notion that the ATO is in a position to know where the GST is generated. Take a few examples.
*I, in NSW, buy a product online from a Victorian site. Where is the GST generated?
*I, a NSWelshman, buy a coffee while visiting Melbourne. Which state gets the credit for that GST?
* A larger enterprise headquartered in Sydney but with outlets throughout the country pays its GST. Is it required to break that down by state or does NSW get the full credit?

This is a recipe for regulatory overload and would see states competing to HQ organisation with a national footprint just to get their GST credit.



Equally, if the GST is distributed based on population, it would perversely offer an incentive for states to take on more people at the very time when the entire nation appears to be clamouring for the opposite.

There is no easy solution to this and certainly no FAIR solution that is objectively fair to all concerned. Fair is in the eye of the beholder or more precisely in the back pocket of the various state treasurers. One of the things we have to do here is to take away the ability of the politicians and the bureaucracy to make value judgements. How is it that the ACT gets share greater than their population share would indicate if it isn't for bureaucrats putting their figure on the scales.

Given that there is no 'right' solution to this, I'd pump for the breakdown to be based on population but with the proviso that it is only adjusted each decade so as to take away the incentive to 'chase' more people to get more funds.