Strong balance sheet compared with international and domestic peers Strong management and ongoing fiscal discipline Strong system support Diversified economy Like all Australian states, a degree of structural imbalance between revenue powers and expenditure responsibilities The ratings on Victoria are supported by the state's strong balance sheet, diversified economy, ongoing fiscal discipline and strong system support. These strengths are offset, as with all Australian states, by an institutional framework that contains a degree of vertical fiscal imbalance. Australia's system support and the predictability of Commonwealth-state relations is one of the strongest in the world, and is expected to remain so (see "System Support and Predictability for Australian State Governments", published on RatingsDirect on March 16, 2006).
