Yesterday we raised the basic question that if you start cutting the states out of delivering health services, what do you think they should actually exist for?  Service delivery is one the few remaining tasks for state governments given the increasingly centralised and nationally uniform economy.

Support for abolishing the states has been growing — or at least more frequently expressed — in recent years. It used to be a view confined to the Left, but the economic efficiency argument has untethered it from ideology.

What do voters think? In March, Essential Research asked voters which tasks they thought federal and state governments should mainly have responsibility for. Water supply was the only role that more people thought the states should have responsibility for than the federal government.  Even “law and order” was seen by slightly more people as belonging mainly to the Commonwealth, although a very high number thought that should belong to both. Only 12% of voters thought health should be a state responsibility, and only 38% thought it should be shared … 44% thought it should be mainly a federal responsibility.

There’s also extensive data on how eastern state voters view their state governments on individual issues. But it shows that voters’ attitude toward their state governments is much more nuanced than simple antipathy. It isn’t a blanket like or dislike, but highly variable depending on the issue.

Except, there’s one area that voters all agree on — their state governments are woeful at delivering health services.

In January and February Essential Research conducted some detailed polling on how voters in NSW, Victoria and Queensland viewed the performance of their governments across several areas.

There are some common themes across the states. In all three states, health and education are the two most influential factors in voters’ decision about whom to vote for at state level, and by about the same margins. After that, the picture becomes mixed.  Policing and public safety is the third most important issue for Victorians, then economic management and public transport. In NSW, it’s economic management, then public transport.  In Queensland, it’s economic management, then roads. Public transport is well down the priority list up north.

But how voters feel about their state governments on those issues varies considerably. No surprises for guessing who fares worst: NSW voters rate their government the worst of all across nearly every issue. There are a couple of bright spots: more NSW voters like the government’s provision of water, gas and electricity than don’t. Policing and public safety isn’t too bad — 6% more people dislike than like how the NSW government handles that.  It’s health — a gap of -44% — and public transport (-37%) that NSW voters most strongly disapprove of the performance of their government.  Notably, both issues induce strong reactions: 33% of voters think NSW’s performance on health is “very poor”, and 29% think that about public transport — in both cases, more than people who simply think they’re “poor”.

Victorians have a better opinion of their government on health — there’s a gap of only -16%, and only 16% rate the Brumby government as “very poor” on the issue. Voters actually rate Victorian Labor ahead of the Victorian Liberals on the issue — all three governments are mostly rated behind or on level terms with their oppositions across major issues. It’s public transport that drives Victorians mad: there’s a -39% gap on that issue, and 29% of Victorians rate their government as “very poor” on the issue.

For Queenslanders, health is the issue that most rankles — there’s a gap of -35%, and only 16% saying they thought the Bligh government’s handling of health was “good” or “very good” — barely above the NSW government’s level of 14%. Otherwise, the Queensland government does comparatively well — there’s a -14% gap on public transport, but only a 2% gap on policing and public safety.

And for each state, voters have a much higher regard for the way state governments administer education than health. There’s only a -9% gap for the NSW government, and 22% of NSW voters rate its handling of education as “good”.  Queensland has very similar figures. And Victoria actually has a positive gap: 9% more Victorian voters think the government’s handling of education is “good” or “very good” than those who think it is “poor” or very “poor”.

By way of context, Australia performs similarly in education to how we do on health — we spend less than the OECD average on both, but perform above the average in both — except in health we significantly outperform other developed countries by being the second long-lived people on earth.

If we’re going to chuck out the states, we should make sure we have a sound basis for doing it.