States and territories must unite to solve COVID challenge
At the moment, Australia feels like a confederation, not a federation.
In a confederation, states come together under a national umbrella, but with their individual sovereignty largely unimpaired.
Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk, NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian, WA Premier Mark McGowan, and Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews.
In a federation, states unite in a way that cedes many of their sovereign powers to a national government. That’s, of course, how the Commonwealth of Australia was established. But you would not think that right now given the way states and territories are openly working against each other during COVID.
As the preamble to the covering clauses of the federal Constitution records, “the people of New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia, Queensland and Tasmania … have agreed to unite in one indissoluble Federal Commonwealth…â€
Notice that Western Australia hadn’t yet signed up. And let’s face it, despite joining the rest of us a short time later, they still act like they are our international neighbours.
Indeed, the rhetoric of the Western Australian government at times suggests that they see their state boundary as a national border. And as for other states and territories, the story isn’t much better.
If it’s not the NSW and Queensland governments being locked in a thoroughly dispiriting exchange, it’s Victoria versus NSW or another state â€" all of them in an unedifying effort to eke out some short-term political advantage at the expense of the longer-term benefits of interstate collaboration.
I’m not suggesting that the Commonwealth doesn’t have a principal role to play and scrutiny to meet. Of course, it does, but that’s for another column.
Many people feel like we’re living in eight different jurisdictions rather than one country.
It’s the effect of this interstate parochialism that points to the urgency of fostering greater unity between states and territories.
Premier Daniel Andrews.Credit:Justin McManus
This is a challenge premiers and chief ministers must meet, if for no other reason than to reinforce public confidence that is being eroded by disheartening spectacles that add to the already momentous challenges we face in managing the COVID pandemic.
In addition to, but separate from national cabinet, regular meetings of premiers and chief ministers without the Commonwealth would be an important additional step in the promotion of greater interstate co-operation.
Even the public demonstration of greater collaboration and goodwill between state and territory leaders will alone yield enormous benefits to a community that needs the hope and assurance such positive displays will provide.
On one view, such a solution should not be necessary: they should simply be co-operating. The problem is â€" it’s not working.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison.Credit:Getty
COVID has had a unique impact on Australia’s federation. Essentially, it has reversed the effects of vertical fiscal imbalance. The Commonwealth’s ascendancy has been based on its revenue-raising powers, since World War II if not before, leaving states and territories for the most part to the delivery of services and activity.
But with COVID, the frontline roles that the states and territories have occupied in reliance on their public health and wellbeing regimes, have not depended on fiscal supply lines from the Commonwealth or the latter’s broad national, and international, remit. Addressing this particular challenge (one of many), requires an antidote to the political dynamics that drive each state and territory to more parochial positions and posturing.
The argument against this is not unreasonable. Why would another series of meetings be any different from national cabinet which comprises the same group but for the Commonwealth? It’s a fair point.
But the problem that national cabinet does not appear to be able to solve completely is how to better align vastly divergent state and territory restrictions and lockdowns and minimise demoralising political exchanges between state and territory jurisdictions.
WA Premier Mark McGowan.Credit:Peter de Kruijff
Regular meetings of the premiers and chief ministers during the pandemic, separate from national cabinet and without the Commonwealth, would help focus the participants on improving jurisdictional co-operation and achieving greater alignment on matters of direct public health measures. It would also alleviate the many injustices anomalous approaches are producing.
These meetings certainly don’t need to occur as regularly as national cabinet. But importantly, the absence of the Commonwealth would mean that it is in everyone’s interests to demonstrate genuine progress at the end of every meeting.
While, of course, the federal government occupies the preeminent role in pandemic management and faces, as it should, its own heavy scrutiny, finding a remedy for unnecessary state and territory skirmishing would be aided by the Commonwealth’s absence as an otherwise obvious scapegoat for interstate point-scoring.
The irony of all this is not lost on me. Under what I have outlined, we’d be expecting states and territories, in an effort to extol our federal ethos, to behave in a manner befitting the comity and maturity of advanced and modern sovereign states. But I’m confident it will help, if only someone will step up.
John Pesutto is a Senior Fellow at the School of Government at Melbourne University and was Victoria’s shadow attorney-general from 2014 to 2018.
John Pesutto is a senior fellow at the School of Government at Melbourne University, a panellist on ABC Melbourne’s The Party Line and was Victoria’s shadow attorney-general from 2014 to 2018.
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