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In April 2008, our new Prime Minister gathered together 1000 of our country’s best and brightest to imagine the Australia we could be in 2020. As I left Canberra on that cold Sunday afternoon, I was both inspired and alarmed. Inspired by the wealth of ideas and the many new voices that had been unearthed by the process and alarmed that the most recurring theme and, without doubt, the most popular idea was the abolition of the states.
Here were some of the country’s brightest, most educated, most experienced and publicly engaged thinkers cheering rapturously at a throwaway line from Tim Fischer about getting rid of the states. It gave me real pause for thought.
A century ago, as the fathers of the federation shaped the constitution, the preservation and protection of the states were pivotal to their deliberations, and yet today there seems to be a headlong, popular rush to abandon them. I was struck by how comprehensively John Howard had demonised the states, but I was also acutely aware that this alone could not explain the phenomenon.
At the very least, the summiteers’ reaction articulated a real sense of disappointment and frustration with many key areas of social service provision. States ignore this at their peril.
So, a century on from federation, against a backdrop of an emerging cooperative federalism and fresh from a meeting of COAG, I thought it would be useful here to reflect on federalism as a form of government and contemplate the future of our own federation. In doing so, I intend to mount a spirited defence of the federation.
I will, no doubt, be accused of self-interest in this respect; I note that the wheels of constitutional change turn at a glacial pace in this country and any radical change in the federation is unlikely to happen during my political career. So, I speak as a citizen as much as a premier and I caution against the inevitable, perhaps intoxicating, rush to simple solutions.
In essence, I believe that, in a country of 21 million people, spread across 7.6 million square kilometres, providing services to people in some of the great cities of the world and some of the most remote places on Earth, a federation of states is the most effective way to govern, to manage and to provide services.