The fight over Australia’s GST carve-up with the states fired up when the Productivity Commission called Scomo’s 2022 deal a “costly mistake”. Monte Dwyer addresses the people of Western Australia over their “fair share”.
Dear WA,
It has been drawn to my attention by the Productivity Commission tuckshop lady, that you’re hogging your lollies again. Naturally this dismays me as I like to think of us as one big share-and-share-alike family here, so please permit me to raise a few considerations you may have overlooked.
Firstly, nobody is fooled by your insistence that the GST divvy-up is already fair;
only those who know they’re getting a good deal make such fatuous claims.
Furthermore, do tell Master Cook that we are not all “east coast clowns” over here; we also have our share of ‘orange clowns’ too, many hailing from north of the border, lately heading west.
Riding the sheep’s back
But getting to the point: long before you were an iron-red glint in the young Hancock’s eye we kept you afloat.
Back then you had nothing but high hopes and humpies. We paid for your schools, your hospitals, your public infrastructure and even serviced you with a standard gauge railway line to civilisation so you could learn how to use a knife and fork and curtsy before your eastern superiors.
Indeed, for the first hundred years of your membership you were inveterate bludgers, riding on the sheep’s back with hands upturned, crying poor.
And now you’ve lucked into a bit of a windfall you turn your back and call us “dodgy, deceitful and dumb;”
ungrateful sentiments no matter how true they may be.
“Never get between a premier and a bucket of money,” runs the understated warning from one of our most distinguished graduates and onetime school captain, P J Keating.
The West Australian viewpoint
Orange clown threat
And likewise beware the paranoid partisanship, he might very well have added. For we “east coast whingers” are only too aware of your sense of inferiority in the west, the Us v Them mentality you wear like a badge to ward off anything approaching from the desert.
Which is all sadly self-fulfilling, of course. Yet it’s the perfect medium in which to host your newest BFF Mistress Pauline, who I should remind you was dead against you receiving an unfair proportion of GST in 2018, before she BFFed the young Hancock’s only child and heir Mrs Rinehart and had her mind changed, oh what a tangled web we weave . . .
So now the threat is, if we ‘clowns’ over here dare address the GST imbalance,
the ‘orange clowns’ over your way will take over.
And if that doesn’t play out, you’ll take your ball and go home.
Secede then, we dare you
But seriously, you do yourself a disservice with this recurrent nonsense about secession. You’ve tried it on a couple of times previously to what end? Embarrassment and pitiable failure, that’s what, coming no closer to real sovereignty than did Prince Leonard I of Hutt River Province, that first and most notable of Australia’s tin hat cookers; and naturally enough, a sandgroper.
You would be better advised to consult the fine print in The Constitution you signed up to back in 1901, where you will discover clever east coast impediments such as ‘indissoluble’ and ‘majority of a majority’ to frustrate your every move.
Yes, we are a country bound by common laws and uncommon sense – please forgive my immodesty – and I offer by way of conclusion the following caution to any who would attempt to tear us apart:
Of late, we have all been watching and learning from the ‘world’s greatest dealmaker,’ and it seems the ‘pre-emptive strike’ is now de rigueur. So how about this? If we hear any more ballyhoo about your desire to leave us, we might just turn the tables and leave you first!
That’s right, we’ll dig the moat ourselves and push off into the Pacific somewhere our neighbours will be friendly and appreciative, leaving you to fend for yourself. And before you start licking your lips at the prospect, remember that means providing for your own social welfare, education, pensions, border control, defence, and so on.
And you can sort AUKUS, too, while you’re at it.
Monte Dwyer - formerly a professional fisherman, fashion model, foreign aid worker, hospitality worker, failed property developer and TV weatherman - is an author and filmmaker. His latest book, "MAGA, Guns & God – A road trip through ‘red’ America", is available from his website.