AAA<\/p>\n
Premiers will demand Prime Minister Anthony Albanese permanently hand over more federal taxpayers\u2019 money to them as the price for his emphatic support for WA\u2019s sweetheart GST deal, while federal Labor has softened its stance on using green energy to power data centres.<\/p>\n
Sources inside Sydney\u2019s national cabinet meeting said the GST was only briefly discussed after the prime minister recommitted to the special Morrison-government era deal which is on track to cost taxpayers $60 billion but is viewed as key to winning seats in WA.<\/p>\n
![\"WA](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/d55f4909f3953528525a30b3d64d814492f54cbf.jpeg\")
WA Premier Roger Cook, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and NSW Premier Chris Minns.Dominic Lorrimer<\/p>\n
But the same sources said frustrated premiers, including NSW\u2019s Chris Minns, Victoria\u2019s Ben Carroll and South Australia\u2019s Peter Malinauskas, have been told by Canberra that the WA deal will be subject to a proper discussion at a national cabinet meeting in February or March.<\/p>\n
The Productivity Commission\u2019s interim report published this month labelled the deal a mistake that had created perverse fiscal outcomes, almost all of which had benefited Western Australia at the expense of the rest of the federation and federal taxpayers.<\/p>\n
It warned the deal could end up costing federal taxpayers $12 billion a year.<\/p>\n
Related Article But the report, due to be finalised by the end of the year, has sparked a transcontinental war of words, WA Premier Roger Cook attacking the Productivity Commission as a bunch of \u201ceast coast clowns\u201d and opponents to the deal as \u201cwhingers\u201d.<\/p>\n Albanese, who declared in Perth this week that the deal would not change while he was prime minister, waded into the furore by describing the commission\u2019s report as the work of economic rationalists.<\/p>\n Following Wednesday\u2019s national cabinet meeting, Albanese ducked a question on whether Minns, Carroll or Malinauskas had raised the issue. Asked about NSW\u2019s complaints about the GST, Albanese talked up his relationship with Minns, who faces an election in March.<\/p>\n \u201cThis bloke here, the premier of NSW: I\u2019ll be working hard to make sure he stays the premier after March next year. And under my government, NSW will always get support,\u201d Albanese said.<\/p>\n This masthead understands key premiers plan to press Albanese to make permanent the most expensive feature of the WA deal, which is a \u201cno worse-off guarantee\u201d. These payments, worth about $6 billion a year, are made to all states bar WA to ensure no state and territory is financially penalised by the deal.<\/p>\n The guarantee has been extended by the Albanese government to the end of 2030. The states and territories not only want it permanent, but hope to have it bolstered so they receive extra federal assistance.<\/p>\n Outside the meeting, Treasurer Jim Chalmers chided Cook for his criticism of the Productivity Commission, saying some of the commentary about the institution\u2019s report was \u201cunfortunate\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t believe that is appropriate. I think you can disagree with the conclusions of the Productivity Commission without denigrating them,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cI think it is important that even when those conclusions are contested \u2013 as they often will be \u2013 that we continue to respect the people of the PC and the really important work that they do.\u201d<\/p>\n The national cabinet meeting agreed to push forward a new plan to reduce domestic violence, ban 3D-printed guns and ban foreigners from holding gun licences, a move prompted by the Bondi massacre. A proposed national gun buyback is still opposed by all administrations bar NSW and the ACT, but leaders agreed to greater intelligence-sharing on the same day as the antisemitism royal commission wrapped up its final hearings<\/a>.<\/p>\n Albanese also got an agreement on his proposed national AI framework after accommodating the position of conservative states.<\/p>\n The conservative governments of Queensland and NT had baulked at the federal government\u2019s proposal to mandate that data centres must only be powered by green energy. Opposition Leader Angus Taylor backed Queensland\u2019s position.<\/p>\n Wednesday\u2019s agreement gave ground to Queensland, which has a fleet of state-owned coal plants in competition with wind and solar farms. The NT is backing the development of a gas field in the Beetaloo Basin, which it says could fuel an industrial boom.<\/p>\n Albanese acknowledged the different situations facing Queensland and the NT given public ownership of power generation, transmission and distribution.<\/p>\n Queensland Premier David Crisafulli said his state had a \u201creally big point of difference\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cWe own distribution, transmission, generation, and that enables us to control that energy mix,\u201d he said. \u201cWe believe that we can control our data sovereignty, protect the rights of local communities, and enable that energy mix to bring those data centres on.\u201d<\/p>\n The meeting\u2019s official communique did not mention renewable energy. Instead, it talked up the \u201cgenerational opportunity\u201d offered by AI and noted environmental issues surrounding large data centres would be addressed by federal legislation early next year.<\/p>\n Cut through the noise of federal politics. Subscribers can sign up to our weekly Inside Politics newsletter<\/a>.<\/p>\n Save<\/p>\n You have reached your maximum number of saved items.<\/p>\n Remove items from your saved list<\/a> to add more.<\/p>\n![\"Prime](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/a838158c063b6d2449792c84d3ab9545c82b70059591131f700ac383443b0f01.jpeg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n![\"Paul](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/1784970457_187_119281a2607761852c4e3d0bae521b8cb3f98cb4.png\")
Paul Sakkal<\/a> is Chief Political Correspondent. He previously covered Victorian politics and won a Walkley award and the 2025 Press Gallery Journalist of the Year. Contact him securely on Signal @paulsakkal.14.Connect via X<\/a> or email<\/a>.![\"Shane](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/1765797314_589_057daa8f1b51682d1d002d4c2720328233762dc5.png\")
Shane Wright<\/a> is a senior economics correspondent for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.Connect via X<\/a> or email<\/a>.From our partners<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"August 26, 2026 \u2014 6:34pm Save You have reached your maximum number of saved items. Remove items from…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":869287,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,44],"class_list":["post-869286","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/869286","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=869286"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/869286\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/869287"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=869286"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=869286"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=869286"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}