This NSW Review of Federal Financial Relations from NSW gives the National Cabinet both barrels. And it's from July 2020! https://www.treasury.nsw.gov.au/sites/default/files/2020-06/FFR%20Review%20Draft%20Report%20.pdf

I reckon Victoria would be siding with NSW on most of the stuff in this, given how Morrison has approached things over the past few months.

"Establish the National Cabinet as an inter-governmental body of equals with an independent national Secretariat to support governance and administrative processes."
Translation: "piss off with trying to order us around you muppet"

"Strengthen monitoring and assessment of performance of Commonwealth-state commitments, enabling citizens to see the results delivered and informing government decision making."
Translation: "We are gonna hang you with your empty marketeering" see also: Aged Care.

"Review and reform all Commonwealth-state funding agreements to…"
Translation: *Everything* is on the table now. All of it. We are coming for you and we are not fucking around.

"Reduce administrative burdens and shift the basis of funding towards outcomes rather than inputs and outputs"
Translation: We're sick of paying for you to smack us over your failures.

"Reassess roles and responsibilities in areas in which they are not completely intertwined, so that citizens know where to go and who is responsible for particular services"
Translation: Yes, Aged Care is all your fucking fault. Also borders. We're gonna make sure people know.

"Ensure that programs that need long-term stable funding are not subject to short-term grants with unreliable and administratively burdensome renewal processes"
Translation: We're taking your stick away, and we will own the carrots, too.

"A broad-based land tax is more efficient and equitable than transfer duty"
OH HELL YES ahahahaha

"With the Commonwealth, the NSW Government should lead the development of a personal income tax-sharing model."
Translation: Remember when we said everything was on the table? We meant it. Everything. All the monies.

"design a nationally compatible and fair road user charging scheme for electric vehicles"
Seems to be some kind of per-km tax for cars?

"replace vehicle registration, licence fees, stamp duties on motor vehicles and motor vehicle insurance with a distance-based charging scheme that better reflects the social costs of road use, including wear-and-tear, pollution and congestion."

Looks more NSW specific. There's a bit about a congestion charge for Sydney CBD, but they want to set up the model for the rest of Australia to copy.

"federalism and decentralised government also need certain settings to work well, among them a clear delineation of government responsibilities, adequate autonomy over revenue raising, and effective intergovernmental cooperation"
Yeah NSW is tired of Morrison's bullshit.

If NSW and Vic play their cards right, they could wrestle back control of tax money and be able to pay for things without interference from Canberra every 5 seconds.

Both states have just had sharp reminders of what happens when the Commonwealth has all the money and the States have all the responsibility to deliver, and some dickhead tries to claim all the credit and take none of the blame.

I hope they can pull it off. It would be amazing.

GST and stamp duty are activity taxes as well, and there's a recession on. States gotta get money from somewhere, and land doesn't move around.

"For citizens, the centralisation of power comes at a cost. An extra layer of bureaucracy can increase the administrative effort and cloud accountability, resulting in blame shifting when things don’t go well."
Yeah, not being subtle *at all*.

"Increasingly, the Commonwealth controlled when and whether COAG met and the agenda for all meetings, undermining its cooperative value."
This has clearly been building for a while.

And this is from NSW Treasury! Of a Liberal state government! Ahahahahaha.

He may well have just blown the whole thing up with his hamfisted bloviating. Amazing.

I guess the main barrier is thinking the Feds have lots of leverage. If the States aren't sure what'll happen if they just ignore the Feds and take care of things in their state by themselves OH WAIT

"Gee, we just spent months ignoring your tantrums and got things done for our states and the people love us for it what do?"