WA moving from rest of Australia – premier

West Australian Premier Colin Barnett says the state will distance itself from the rest of Australia if its share of GST revenue continues to fall.

Mr Barnett told Sky News’ Australian Agenda programme yesterday that while secession was ‘‘not a serious topic of conversation in WA’’, the state was moving further away from the rest of the nation.

‘‘Western Australia, by default, is becoming far more independent financially and the GST issue is one reason for that,’’ he said.

‘‘The other reason is the West Australian economy is growing at quite a different pace.

‘‘To some extent, the strength of the WA economy is concealing the true weakness of the national economy.’’

Barnett said of the 60,000 new jobs created in Australia over the past 12 months, 50,000 were in WA, which now accounted for 70 per cent of the nation’s exports to China.

‘‘(That’s) about half of the value of all of the US’ exports to China,’’ he said. The premier said WA was becoming ‘‘far more reliant and integrated’’ into Asia as an economic necessity due to its falling GST revenue, which will drop from 72c in the dollar to 55c from July 1, and just 25c in 2015/16.

‘‘It’s not secession, but you are seeing an economic shift that is taking Western Australia more away from Canberra and closer to Beijing, Shanghai, Mumbai and so on,’’ he said.

‘‘Unless Canberra gets up to pace with the West Australian economy (WA) will simply move away from the rest of Australia and closer to Asia in every respect.

‘‘That’s not a threat, that’s a reality.’’

Barnett said if WA’S GST revenue share fell to zero – ‘‘which is possible’’ – the state’s relationship with Canberra would be ‘‘negligible’’.

‘‘There would be very little relationship and the West Australian economy would be fully integrated as part of Asia,’’ he said.