It used to be those devilish socialists who wanted to concentrate power in Canberra so they could impose their Nanny-State-knows-best philosophy on the rest of us.
But this week a voice from the opposite political direction was calling for more central power.
Treasurer Peter Costello called for greater Commonwealth power over all key parts of the economy – infrastructure, especially ports, and tax.
Not since Gough Whitlam ran his ill-fated referendum to get Commonwealth power over prices and incomes has a federal leader (Costello sees himself as an economic leader) sought such sweeping powers for the Commonwealth.
Indeed, it paints Costello as a radical rather than a conservative. Conservatives usually like to diffuse and separate power. They do so because they think that state power is not the answer to all of society’s problems and indeed creates problems of its own, therefore it is better weakened through separation and diffusion.
By and large, the non-Labor forces in Australian politics have not been radical. They have championed states’ rights precisely because they help diffuse power.
But not Howard and Costello. In Government, they have never been champions of states’ rights. They regard the states (whether run by Liberal or Labor administrations) as unimaginative, incompetent and sometimes corrupt, apt to spend buckets of money on the wrong things. And they are mostly right.
We have now come the full circle. In the early 1970s the Federal Government was Labor and nearly all the state governments were Liberal-National. Now it is the other way around.
A lot of baby-boomer lefties are still contemptuous of the states because they prevented the Great Gough from instituting paradise on earth in Australia. That view (diluted a bit) continued in the Hawke-Keating years
But now the states are all Labor, those same people think the states can do quite good work in delivering health, education, welfare and social reform.
Similarly, the business-tory part of the electorate in the 1970s thought the states were the last bastion of free enterprise against the experimenting socialists in Canberra. That view (diluted a bit) continued in the Hawke-Keating years.
And now the states are all Labor that business-tory part of the electorate sees them as basket cases of high-taxing, wasteful incompetence, particularly NSW.
This sounds grim, but it might be a good starting point for a look at federalism. The two ideologically extreme views can knock each other out and we can look at what works best.
If you go item by item through things now administered by the states, the efficiency of a national system (perhaps administered by local councils) would win every time: vehicle registration, drivers’ licences and road rules are obvious examples. Food standards; educational attainment standards; hospitals; waterways; transport; the registration of births, deaths and marriages; the environment; soil conservation; police; gaming and gaming taxes; even dogs and cats and building regulations are other examples.
The states make a hash of a lot of things: immunisation, land clearing, urban development, running banks, their own budgets and so on. Their small size seems to make them more susceptible to corruption. At the federal level, we have had one immigration bribery case, a few travel rorts and some perceived conflicts of interest in the 103 of federation and very little else on the corruption front. At the state level, we have had numerous instances of corruption, including the jailing of ministers and a police commissioner.
If you were going to devise a political system from scratch you would not come up with the Australian federal system. It is an accident of history. From the early 19th century it was impossible for a Governor in Sydney to control the whole continent. Governors had to be appointed for each settlement and their hinterlands. With democratisation these became the accidental units of self-governing colonies and finally states.
The only logic in federation was the creation of a national government for the whole continent.
But that said, the states and territories have been useful on occasions. They have often innovated before a national government would be ready. Votes for women, the Torrens land system, seat belts, random breath testing, the abolition of death duties, euthanasia and civil unions are examples. The last two were innovations of territory parliaments overturned by the national government, but nonetheless serve as examples of innovation that other state-level jurisdictions might follow.
The other use of the states is as a bulwark against misuse of federal power. The states and territories (especially the ACT) prevented some of the excesses of the federal anti-terror laws, for example.
The question is whether innovation and occasional prevention of misuse of power is worth the inefficiency of a federal system.
The other question for Costello and others is how to go about change.
One of the biggest defects in the Australian federal system is that the mechanism for changing the Constitution is too difficult. The requirement of a referendum approved by a majority of voters in a majority of states is not the problem. That is a perfectly reasonable requirement in a democracy.
No; the problem is who has the power to present questions to a referendum.
Under our system, in effect, the Prime Minister determines what questions will be put to the people. This is because a proposal must pass (usually) both House of Parliament and be approved by the Governor-General (who will only act on the Prime Minister’s say so.
Until that changes, significant constitutional change is unlikely. This is because no Prime Minister will put up a proposal that will dilute his own power. And any other proposal put up by a Prime Minister that increases central power will be rejected as a power grab.
That is how Peter Costello’s proposals, whatever their merit, are being seen and he is not even Prime Minister yet.
So the first step in constitutional reform is to reform the reform process itself.
Therein lies a conundrum. No Prime Minister is going to put a proposal that dilutes his own power over the process of constitutional reform.
So Costello will have to turn to other means. As history shows, the changing balance of power in the Australian federation comes not through changing the words of the Constitution but through successive federal governments and the High Court widening their interpretation and application.
If Costello wants control of the waterfront and the economy, there is no way he will get it through constitutional change. He will just have to take it using existing powers.