Barnett was making a song and dance about the fact that WA citizens put in a good deal more in the way of GST than they get back. So, alone of the rest of Australia, does the ACT.

The sandgropers are particularly embarrassed at the moment because the state's income has been declining steeply as a result of a drastically reducing price of iron ore, of which of the state, apart from its citizens and silica, seems to be composed.

WA was high on the hog, as it were, in recent years during the mining boom, and well able to share its wealth with poorer parts of Australia.

For by far the greater part of its existence as a self-governing colony, whether of Britain or Canberra, the flow of taxpayer money over the Nullarbor has tended to be in the direction of Perth.

But the state seems to have been improvident with its management of the revenue from recent boom times, and now is loudly lamenting how much it is subsidising those awful eastern Australians.

The angst is the greater because the Commonwealth Grants Commission, which divvies up GST money, was persuaded to average out state revenues over a period of three years, rather than one.

This, I understand was a rort, instituted when WA was one of the claimant states, designed to insulate the finances of supplicants against temporary changes in fortune for the better, say because of fabulous rains, good wheat prices, or windfall income from depriving Aborigines of their rights.

It is, apparently, only when fortunes change for the worse, but the improvement in relativities is thus slower, that the mendicants complain.

Only the Commonwealth government can levy excises or turnover taxes on goods and services, even if, as a part of its fundamentally generous nature, it turns over all of the money so raised to the states and territories.

Virtually every state and territory claims that it has some feature meaning that providing similar state and local government to its citizens is more expensive than elsewhere, and, thus that it ought to get more than some other state, say NSW, to compensate.

Thus Queensland and WA point to vast distances and the costs of having and maintaining roads.

There are said to be different problems in maintaining schools, health services, or providing services to Aboriginal populations, particularly remote ones.

Some states, such as WA, are rich in mineral deposits, from which royalties can be claimed.

Others such as the ACT, have little prospect of earning mining revenue, even if they gave exploration licences over Deakin.

The ACT, generally, does not have great disadvantages, though it has some, including the lack of economies of scale in organising services, and the incapacity to tax the Commonwealth, which owns a good deal of the land.

It has long been the function of the Grants Commission to assess all of the claims for special consideration made by each of the states and territories, and to balance them with assessments of the relative advantages each also has. In the latter task, the commission's own researches are assisted by dob-ins from other states and territories, well aware that every dollar not going, say, to Victoria is a dollar that can be pocketed by someone else.

Eventually, the commissioners publish all of the calculations, ending up first with what are called relativities. In effect, the amount of money available from overall GST collections (this year expected to be $53.7 billion, next year $57.2 billion) are divvied up by the population, and then the figure is multiplied by the state's relativity figure.

Thus NSW has a figure of 0.975 and thus gets 2.5 per cent less than a pro rata distribution might suggest. Victoria's figure is 0.883, and it gets 11.7 per cent less.

Queensland's relativity is 1.079, so it gets 7.9 per cent more than its population would suggest.

South Australia gets 28.8 per cent more, Tasmania gets 63.5 per cent more, the ACT 23.6 per cent more, and the Northern Territory 46.6 per cent more.

But because WA has been raking in mining royalties, its relativity this year was put at 0.376 per cent. It is to get 62.4 per cent less than its population would suggest.

What's worse, from its point of view, is that next year its relativity is to fall to 0.30 or, so that its citizens will be getting, per head, less than a third of most other Australians.

Sandgropers are constantly complaining about folks from the east, even when we are sending them money, so it is hardly surprising that they are screaming at this highway robbery, particularly when the mining revenue is no longer there.

But there's a very good argument that they have been doubly short-changed, in a way they haven't even thought to complain about.

The Grants Commission knows perfectly well that GST revenue is not the same from every citizen. Better-off people spend, on average, more money on goods and services of a taxable kind than poorer people.

No one has ever done a close calculation, but, based on state domestic products one can posit that for every dollar of GST revenue raised from Victorians, we raise $1.10 in NSW; $1.06 in Queensland, $1.70 in Western Australia, 95c in South Australia, 72c in Tasmania, $1.56 in the ACT, 82c in Tasmania, and $1.47 in the Northern Territory.

If you then join the disadvantages, NSW gets about 3 per cent more than you would expect, based on overall averages, and Victoria about 0.6 per cent less than averages.

Queenslanders are taking out 20 per cent more than they put in, after the positive adjustment made for their disadvantages, and South Australia is about 52 per cent better off.

Tasmanians are 126 per cent better off, and Northern Territorians 334 per cent better off.

The people of Canberra put in a lot more tax than they take out. Even after a kickback based on a net disadvantage, we get 10.7 per cent less than we put on.

But the poor sandgropers are having, this year, returned to their state only one in every five GST dollars sent from Perth to Canberra. That's fairly contractionary in an anyway deteriorating economy.

Only WA and the ACT are net contributors – that is, paying back to the rest of the Australian community a good deal more than we receive back to provide ourselves with what we need.

Frankly, it's a privilege and a pleasure, knowing both of our own good fortune, and the misfortunes of others.

We are only too pleased to help, and regard it as an act of citizenship and sharing as much as a duty.

Though it sticks in the craw a bit when premiers making cheap points, including Barnett, single out the ACT as spongers living off their honest labour.

Even more so if we are being jeered at by banana benders and crow eaters.

Some readers will recall that a few week ago, I mocked Tony Abbott's remarks about the difficulties of subsidising the lifestyle choices of Aborigines, suggesting that we might clamp down on Tasmanians before we did people in remote parts of Australia.

Tasmania has a population 33.5 per cent greater than the ACT. Its gross state product is 52 per cent of the ACT's.

This year it is to get $1.914 billion from the GST carve-up, about $1.07 billion less than its citizens paid in GST taxes. The ACT, which will have paid $1.23 billion in GST, will get about $1.094 billon back.

Sadly, Tasmania's relative position continues to deteriorate, and next year it will get $2.236 billion.

The disadvantage – sorry the relative advantage – of the ACT will increase, we will get only $1.04 billion.