The state treasurers’ demand that they forever feed on the magic pudding of a $5 billion “transitional” top-up in their annual goods and services tax revenue confirms the dreadful shape of state and federal financial relations 23 years after the GST was supposed to put a rational framework around it all.

The division of Australia’s tax-raising tasks and the sharing of tax revenues remains a dog’s breakfast of ad hoc deals, cost shifting and blurred responsibilities between increasingly indebted federal and state governments which are consuming more of national income.