How do Australia's states rate?

There is a strong rivalry in Australia between the states. Everything from which football code is supreme to the price of real estate is a topic of intense debate. Lifestyle, beach quality, health systems, law and order and many other social issues are regularly raised as points of difference between residents of different states.

Although StreetAdvisor is primarily interested in life at the street level, we've built the site so that it can provide useful information at suburb, city and state levels as well. When looking at all the reviews at the state level, we calculate a StateScore based on the ratings of all the suburbs and towns within each state.

Comparing the StateScores reveals a hierarchy of states in terms of their street reviews. Here's the ranking of the states and territories from highest to lowest.

The best states

First - Western Australia - StateScore 72.24 - Perth

Second - Northern Territory - StateScore 71.46 - Darwin

Third - Victoria - StateScore 70.81 - Melbourne

Fourth - Queensland - StateScore 70.64 - Brisbane

Fifth - South Australia - StateScore 67.68 - Adelaide

Sixth - Tasmania - StateScore 65.56 - Hobart

Seventh - New South Wales - StateScore 64.97 - Sydney

Eighth - Australian Capital Territory - StateScore 62.89 - Canberra

Analysis

Some aspects of this are obvious: Sydney in NSW has the highest average house prices of any capital city, and ACT prices are artificially inflated due to the large public sector workforce transitioning through Canberra.

Perth in WA is growing rapidly with high wages and low unemployment due to the resources boom.

Other rankings were not expected. The Northern Territory is a surprise, but this may be the result of a small sample and positive sample bias. Perhaps it is a case that happiness increases along with distance from the political hub of Canberra, which also explains the relative ratings of all the states!

What do you think of these results? They will change over time as new reviews continue to be added to StreetAdvisor. You can change these results by logging into StreetAdvisor.com and writing reviews of the streets you know, love and hate. Whether you think that these ratings are right or wrong, you can influence the results next time we compare the numbers.