Surprising - I thought education was in the country's top 3 of GDP??

Revenue statistics is for Victoria. 

Ok, looks I was way-off.  This must have been their source of data:
http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/Lookup/by%20Subject/1301.0~2012~Main%20Features~Value%20of%20goods%20and%20services%20produced%20by%20Australian%20Industry~240 "Industry Structure and Performance" - "VALUE OF GOODS AND SERVICES PRODUCED BY AUSTRALIAN INDUSTRY"

Is 12% too big to fail?

+James Gemmell 12% is never too big at all. But stamp duty go to State Revenue Office's coffer directly. Other tax collected, for example GST, state government has to beg Federal government mercy to allocate more back to state. Money in your pocket and money in your bank account are totally two different things I reckon :-)

Hold on... so your solution is over-population? ;)

As I think +Oleg Kiorsak has pointed out, treating housing as a financial product has partly led to the mess we're in.

+Dean Budd Only in sarcastic way. Because lack of natural resources like Queensland & WA, and slave trading is totally banned, what else state government can do except building more unoccupied houses and collecting stamp duty and council rate?

<cheap-shot>Actually deliver value to the community through projects which add services to the greatest number of people.</cheap-shot>

To which I'd ask why is it the job of government to "add services" ? You now have a problem of fairness to contend with. You could argue that "the greatest number of people" require bigger, better, faster roads rather the handful that use your bikepath.

I was actually thinking of the train system.  Plus it was a cheap shot, somewhat tongue in cheek.

Privately operated railways will struggle in newly settled regions.  Early in Melbourne's history all the railways were privately built and owned.   When they inevitably failed, in part due to the motorcar and in some places poor planning (e.g. the Deepdene line faced competition from trams too), the Governments took them over. 

Melbourne is indeed fortunate that these early pioneers build those railways, as they provide a vital backbone to the city's public transport.  It's a shame that so little investment has been made in the past 100 years to expand upon it as the population grew & expanded.  Only Governments can put in this sort of infrastructure these days, except for the miners who can still turn a profit because they make so much $$ out of the dirt they shift.