Secession WA gets a raw deal by being part of federation. It transfers $25 billion a year to needy states and gets to pay inflated prices for government services in return.
Western Australia should secede from Australia. If policies affecting WA were decided by the 2.5 million West Australians, rather than by 23.5 million Australians, those policies would better reflect the needs and aspirations of West Australians. Government is nearly always better when it is more local.
There are no efficiencies coming from policy being delivered for the entire Australian landmass. Most of the government services that West Australians value are delivered by the WA state government, for example by WA doctors, nurses, principals, teachers, social workers, police officers, judges and prison wardens. 
By contrast, it is national arrangements that will deliver West Australians submarines and frigates built in marginal electorates in South Australia at lower quality and greater cost than those on offer overseas. National arrangements deliver subsidised freight across Bass Strait for Tasmania, small-scale tariffs to support Victorian manufacturing, subsidised opera at the Sydney Opera House and bans on imported bananas to protect Queensland farmers. There is no efficiency in this for West Australians.
Secession would stop the bureaucratic duplication that results in 5000 employees in the Commonwealth government's health portfolio on top of more than 30,000 health staff employed by the WA government. With the Commonwealth not running a single hospital, it is not clear what the 5000 Commonwealth employees actually do.
Secession would also stop the conveyor belt of money from west to east.
Most of us support some degree of welfare for individuals in need, but the idea an entire state can be needy is ridiculous. WA transfers more than $25 billion a year to needy states, equivalent to about $10,000 a year from each West Australian.
About $5 billion of this goes to Tasmania. That means each Tasmanian, rich or poor, gets nearly $10,000 a year from the people of WA. No wonder successive Tasmanian governments are so reluctant to approve progress and development - Tasmania has outsourced money-making to the West.
And don't be fooled into thinking that fairness for West Australians would come simply from adjusting the distribution of GST revenues. West Australians also pay more personal, company and fuel taxes to Canberra than other Australians, and with its long history of lower unemployment, receive less back from Canberra through spending in areas such as welfare. Some argue that from the 1930s to the 1960s the flow of money went from east to west. But this ignores that, over this period, WA was held back by policies designed to protect manufacturing jobs in the east, including high tariffs, heavy wage regulation and the White Australia policy. So, overall, WA has given more than it got throughout the history of the federation.
Secession wouldn't undermine the relationship between West Australians and eastern Australians. Just as migration and travel with New Zealand is unrestricted, so it could be between west and east Australia. The Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland play together in sports when it suits them; west and east Australia couldtoo.
Suggesting that WA should secede is not a parochial thought bubble prompted by the Canning byelection. The Liberal Democrats have long maintained a policy respecting the right of people - whether in Tibet, Quebec or WA - to form their own sovereign government. (Indeed, this long-standing policy led me to accept the Taiwanese president's invitation to visit his wonderful sovereign country, from where I wrote this article.) Other politicians, by contrast, say one thing when out west, then the opposite when in Tasmania.
A key question is how WA could achieve secession. After all, a large majority of West Australians voted to secede in 1933, but the King and Canberra wouldn't allow it. Obviously it requires widespread support in the west. But political support from the east is also a necessity, lest we repeat the futility of 1933.
What we need is politicians and political parties who value the west but don't want to control it. In other words, we need a groundswell of support for the adage: if you love someone, set them free.
David Leyonhjelm is NSW Senator for the Liberal Democrats, who are contesting the Canning byelection.
@DavidLeyonhjelm www.davidleyonhjelm.com.au