With Victorians heading to the polls in less than four weeks, it seems a pertinent time to ask: do state governments really matter? According to Frank Bongiorno, the answer is a resounding “yes”. Despite the fact that federal governments have for years treated the states as beneath their notice or contempt – a habit that stretches back to the earliest days of the federation – state government provides electoral choice, checks on federal government power, and a large array of the services that Australians think of as peculiarly the province of government.

Australia’s system of eight separate state and territory governments can be a source of strength in other ways too. When one state gets more out of its hospitals than others (as is Victoria) other states can copy what works. When others make great strides in education (as are Queensland and Western Australia), the rest can copy.

This week, in the runup to two state elections, The Conversation is running a nine part series examining the performance of the states across multiple metrics as assessed by the Grattan Institute. In today’s introduction to the series, John Daley says each state can use the others to do better, and he says they have an increasing role to play in fields the commonwealth appears to be vacating, such as climate change.

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