Federal election creates opportunities for the Crisafulli government

The federal election result leaves David Crisafulli as the most senior ruling Liberal Party politician in the country.

He’ll feel the onus on him to show that Liberals can successfully govern, but it also gives him a potential national platform to demonstrate how Liberal values of reward and competition can make a positive difference to the country.

Labor won without a concrete platform and with vague aspirations to improve national productivity, despite having spent the last three years implementing measures that trashed it.

This creates an opportunity.

The Queensland government faces huge challenges. It promised to honour a number of reckless spending promises from the Miles government, inherited an infrastructure program which is out of control and well-over budget, at the same time promising no new taxes and debt reduction.

It’s possible that it can achieve all of that, but not under the current federal state arrangements. This is where the opportunity lies.

While it is an arcane area, reform of state commonwealth relations can help to deliver David Crisafulli what he needs, as well as providing the federal treasurer with a productivity agenda.

On March 14 Queenslanders woke to the news that the Commonwealth Grants Commission (CGC) was going to strip the state of more than $5 billion of GST revenue because the previous government hiked coal royalties.

Under the bizarre system used to distribute the GST this was entirely predictable, and former Treasurer Cameron Dick would have been quite cynically aware of the consequences when he raised royalties.

Western Australia, Australia’s premier mining state, had a similar problem. Because of its success at mining (not its success at extorting miners) it received 30% less GST than it deserved on a per capita basis.

It did a special deal to with the Morrison government to correct the situation, in the process demonstrating the system is broken.

Australia divvies up its GST to the states in a way which punishes the best performers and rewards the losers.