Federalism

Federalism
A much more general topic than my usual property law issues this week.
There’s talk again of constitutional reform. Some want another turn at becoming a republic, some want to abolish the states. Our federation has existed now for over 100 years. This is a relatively long period for a federation to subsist. History tends to show that federations either split apart or else absorb the constituent parts in fairly quick time. So for example Norway and Denmark were a federation for much of the 19th Century, then split apart in 1905, Czechoslovakia was another federation and has split into two countries.

But will the federation survive? Canberra controls the money for two reasons First the Commonwealth has priority in collecting taxes. This happened in World War Two and was originally supposed to be a wartime emergency measure. IT just became accepted. Second the Commonwealth uses the money to make grants to states so it can call the shots even in areas where a stranger reading the Constitution might consider the Commonwealth has no place and probably where the founding fathers thought the Commonwealth had no place.
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The problem is that the original State boundaries which were mainly an historical accident- its hard to explain all the straight lines on the map by any geographical reason may have had relevance in the 19th century are no longer necessarily the best arrangement for regional administration in the 21st century. So for example it might be best that the Murray Darling basin would be run by one authority.

One solution is just to abolish the States, but regional and climatic differences mean that it is very difficult to administer the country from one national centre. And the Murray River is just one example of a special area that needs special control.

But there is another reason altogether. And that is summed up in the saying "Power corrupts absolute power corrupts absolutely"(You might be interested to know that phrase was originally used by Lord Acton an English Catholic in response to the Pope declaring himself infalliable on matters of faith and morals). IF there is one big government then it has more power, we can see how the state government controls local government – again theres an example just the other day with Huntlee. Is it better to divide power between federal and state- and perhaps give local government more power?

Local papers 16.2.09