After 3 years of austerity budgets from conservative Coalition State Governments in QLD, NSW, W.A., and Victoria an $80billion shortfall being now forced onto States by federal budget cuts will have a cascading effect across all our state delivered services.  Just two weeks ago the Premiers met with the Prime Minister at COAG to discuss what Mr Abbott refers to as ‘new federalism’.  COAG discussed budgets and taxation, funding for various program including health and education.  COAG even put out a Communique outlining  the matters they agreed to work on over the next few years including developing terms of reference for white papers on ‘Reform of Federation’ and on ‘Taxation Reform’ and agreed to discuss school funding at its next meeting.  The federal budget indicates now that Canberra has chosen competitive over cooperative federalism and is re-writing the financial relationship with the States to justify a GST increase.