They were at it again last week, as they have been for more than 100 years. The “”leaders” of the states were squabbling with the Commonwealth over money.
They need the money to buy things so they will look good in front of the voters, so they will get voted back into power. Once again, it is about that most basic instinct, survival.
The Commonwealth is not much better. We witnessed the petty ego of the Education Minister David Kemp this week demanding that the Commonwealth’s contribution be recognised when school buildings it has partially funded are opened. It means that he, or someone he appoints, must attend the opening and be invited to speak or do the opening depending on the funding level. Kemp was making his demands against Victoria and threatened to withdraw funding unless they were met. In short, Coalition politicians must be seen to look good in front of voters rather than state Labor ones. Labor is no better.
Look at any major building, bridge or institution and there you will see a plaque big-noting a politician. I even saw one on an extension to a nursing home in a tiny town in Victoria saying it was opened by a local pollie on behalf of the Minister for Aged Care. There is no pettiness to which their self-importance will not sink in the cause of self-preservation.
And so to yesterday’s Council of Australian Governments.
In theory, the annual ritual and squabbling over self-preservation and vote-buying money was to have ended last year. With the GST, the states were supposed to have access to a guaranteed growth tax so the states and territories would not have to go cap in hand to Commonwealth for money. Instead, they could talk about long-term matters of national importance. It was a pious hope. Yesterday was supposed to be about salinity and reconciliation – matters destined to stretch beyond the next election, an horizon far beyond the vision of any of our state Premiers or Chief Ministers.
(Incidentally, why don’t the states abandon the term Premier and come into line with the territories and call their heads of government Chief Minister. Premier is a term inherited from colonial days.)
So the long-term issues got less attention than they deserved because of the petty struggle over the immediate issue that is exciting public concern – the price of petrol. Only the South Australian Chief Minister, John Olsen, wanted to leave petrol off the agenda to give more time to discuss the long-term issue of salinity, but not because he is a statesman, but because in his state salinity is a major issue right now. Salt threatens Adelaide’s drinking water – though how it could become less undrinkable is hard to imagine. Salt threatens farmland now in South Australia and is seen to be more threatening than petrol prices.
Eventually, the chief ministers did get to salinity, but without the squabble over petrol taxes, they might have had time to discuss other matters of major public importance, like information technology, particularly internet access, and the jurisdictional mess caused by the High Court’s decision on not permitting federal courts to decide on minor state-law elements of major federal corporations and trade-practices cases.
The short-term obsession with money and narrow view of states’ interest has been a constant feature of Australian government.
During and after the republic debate, many people made reference to the great statesmen of the day having the vision to see the long-term benefits of a federated Australia. It is romantic drivel. I have had the enjoyable task in the past week of reading the debates of the constitutional conventions of the 1890s to write some material for a Centenary of Federation special The Canberra Times is going to publish. The statesmen were very thin on the ground. Edmund Barton was the exception not the rule, mainly because he did not hold and was not seeking ministerial office in a colonial parliament. More often than not, though, the delegates were looking to the petty advantage of their own colony over the others. When not doing that, they were doing their damnedest to hamstring the Commonwealth as if it were to be some foreign Parliament.
More than a quarter of the words of the Constitution are about the details of financial matters between the states on one hand and the Commonwealth on the other, particularly about customs and excise. The miracle of Federation was that the interests of protectionist Victoria for high tariffs briefly co-incided with that of free-trade NSW because NSW wanted significant tariffs if only to give the new Commonwealth some revenue thus relieving NSW of some of the financial burden that would otherwise fall to it as the most prosperous colony.
Hence the Commonwealth was given exclusive power to levy excise duties – that is taxes on the production and sale of goods, such as petrol. The hardline exclusivity of this was reinforced by the High Court two years ago and the Commonwealth now collects all taxes on petrol, replacing some artificially contrived state taxes.
And there were the states yesterday, postponing the big long-term issues for the quick headline grab. Precious time when the “”leaders” get together was being wasted.
The Federal Government hoped that with the GST COAG could be devoted to serious long-term matters. However, if this meeting and the history of federation is any guide, it is not going to eliminate financial squabbles. It might eliminate the worst elements of the begging-bowl ritual, but blame-shifting and credit-stealing over taxes and funding for schools and hospitals is bound to continue in a federation whatever the formula for revenue sharing.
Rather than fewer COAGs, we might need two types. One would satisfy the need for state chief ministers to blame and grandstand over money and another to discuss long-term issues from which federal-state finances are excluded as out of order.
Who knows they might get used to tackling the big issues without grandstanding and blame-shifting. They might look at an Australia-wide car-registration system, a national secondary education certificate, a sensible daylight-saving regime not based on state borders, a single date for all federal, state and local elections, a national system of professional registrations, a national land-titles registry and – after this Prime Minister leaves the scene — even the republic, a bill of rights and reconciliation.
Surely, the states would not have the good sense to see the logical conclusion of all this? No wonder they spend so much time on the small things – self-preservation demands it.