Ideally, Australians should not have a low opinion of their political system, or show themselves resigned to living with one they do not accept. Institutional systems are important to people’s life chances, well-being and democratic participation. The responsiveness of the political system to globalisation and uneven development, particularly with respect to the prospects for different regions, is a current theme in international and Australian debate. Federal, state and local governments alike show their own attempts at being more regionally-responsive, and have always done so in different ways, at different times, to widely varying degrees. Debate about these processes is usually restricted to temporary changes in administrative rather than political arrangements. Does Australian public opinion show an appetite for a more lasting, structural solution to pressure for a more responsive system?

The first major finding from the surveys is that citizens of Queensland and NSW are not overly depressed about the state of Australian democracy overall – but do currently hold a more critical opinion of federalism as an element of the political system, than they do of the system in general. Table 3.1 sets out how the respondents to each survey answered a general question about ‘the way democracy works in Australia’, with 78% and 63% of Queensland and NSW respondents respectively indicating themselves to be fairly or very satisfied. Notwithstanding the difference between the state results, this overall satisfaction is consistent with the results of major national surveys such as the Australian Survey of Social Attitudes, showing a stable 77.6% and 75.7% of respondents to be satisfied with the way democracy works in 2003 and 2005 respectively.

Against this broad satisfaction with democracy, how do we identify specific views about the federal system? Table 3.2 shows that this depends on the question asked. In Queensland, when asked about ‘the way the federation currently works’, an even higher number of respondents indicated they were satisfied – but this was a general way of asking the question, at the height of the 2001 Centenary of Federation. By contrast, NSW respondents were asked about their satisfaction with federalism as a ‘system of government’, defined as ‘a three-tiered system of government, with federal, state and local governments.’ For these respondents, satisfaction dropped from 63.1% (with democracy) to 50.3% (with the federal system), while dissatisfaction rose from 34.7% (with democracy) to 48.1% (with the federal system).

These results may indicate that NSW citizens have a more critical view of both democracy (and presumably also federalism) than citizens elsewhere. Regardless, the key result is the size and direction of the change in reported satisfaction among NSW respondents, when asked about the federal system as against democracy in general. These data confirm that the three-tiered system is sometimes viewed differently to the democratic system as a whole. What leads to this more critical view of the structures of federalism? While more qualitative and quantitative research is needed to answer this definitively, the present surveys go some way towards the answer by providing data both on: (1) the different relative levels of satisfaction that citizens feel in respect of each of the current tiers of government – federal, state and local; and (2) whether and how citizens would prefer the institutions of federalism to evolve.

To establish the level of satisfaction with each existing tier of government, the NSW survey asked respondents in which of the three different governments they had most faith and confidence (Table 3.3) and how they would rate the performance of each of the different levels of government (Table 3.4). If the main basis of many respondents’ dissatisfaction with current federalism was a feeling that the federal government was becoming too centralised, overpowerful or operating in areas beyond its competence, we would expect the federal government to rate poorly in response to both questions. Conversely, if the main basis of dissatisfaction was corruption, incompetence or under-capacity in Australia’s comparatively weak system of local government, then that too should be discernable. However as the data show, the least faith and confidence, and poorest assessment of performance emerged in respect of the state level. Only 12.8% of respondents were prepared to rate the performance of the state level as ‘good’ or ‘very good’ – less than half the number prepared to rate either federal or local government in this way – with many more respondents convinced that the performance of state government was positively ‘poor’ compared to the other tiers. As set out in Table 3.5, the notion that it is the place and role of state governments that represents the weakest link in the present federal system, is confirmed by the strong correlation between those expressing the least satisfaction with the system overall, and those most critical of state governments.

In some circumstances, this significantly greater disapproval of state government could simply reflect short-term unpopularity or falling legitimacy on the part of a particular elected government. However there is good reason to believe that no such simple explanation applies here. At the next NSW State Election, in March 2007, there was no change of government. More importantly, the survey asked respondents whether their views about faith and confidence in different levels of government would change ‘if there was an election and the government changed, i.e. other politicians were in power’. Of those respondents indicating they had least faith in the federal government, 62.1% said that if the government changed, they would then hold either a ‘somewhat different’ or ‘completely different’ view. By contrast, this was true of only 48.3% of those respondents indicating they had least faith in the state government. In any event, even if the expressed disaffection with state government was partly party-political – as it no doubt was – this does not mean it could not also be partly ‘constitutional’ in nature, nor that at least some root causes of the expressed disaffection might not relate to institutional or structural problems even if the government of the day was inevitably to be blamed.

For these reasons, the questions in the survey dealing with expected and preferred constitutional outlook become important. In NSW, half the respondents (50.3%) still indicated they were satisfied with the current three-tiered federal system. Accordingly, even if this confirms a high level of disaffection with current federal structures, the disaffection is clearly not total. If there are options for institutional restructuring that would improve the system, as canvassed through many of the chapters of this book, then their feasibility and acceptability will be determined as much by those who are currently reasonably satisfied with the system, not simply those who are not. Moreover, even citizens who are reasonably satisfied may also hold relevant views on these subjects, because they may also expect or desire change for the better, and may see new ways of doing business, without necessarily feeling positively disaffected with the current system.

To establish how citizens expect and would prefer the basic institutions of federalism to evolve, both surveys asked respondents to choose which of four scenarios best described how they expected the federal system to look in another 50 to 100 years. A further question then asked respondents to choose which of the same four scenarios best described their preference for how the federal system should look in another 50 to 100 years. As explained elsewhere, these scenarios were not randomly generated but calculated to reflect some of the major alternatives suggested in the ‘real world’ of Australian political debate mentioned earlier (Brown 2001; 2002a; Brown at al 2006: 286-287; see also Brown this volume). The four scenarios, in order of presentation in the interviews, were:

Table 3.6 shows the results for both questions, for Queensland (2001) and NSW (2005). There are some differences because in the NSW survey, greater effort was made to elicit and separate responses ‘other’ than the offered scenarios, in addition to recording those who indicated ‘no opinion’ or ‘don’t know’. However there are similarities in the predictions made by respondents about how the federal system will look. Despite at least half the NSW respondents being satisfied with the current system, only 23.5% predicted that it would remain the same; along with 27% of respondents in Queensland. In both States, a clear majority – 63% of Queensland respondents and 64% of NSW respondents – showed a positive expectation of structural change in the federal system by choosing one of the nominated scenarios other than ‘the same system as today’ (i.e. not including ‘others’ and ‘don’t knows’).

Table 3.6 and Figure 3.7 also show the Queensland and NSW results as to whether citizens would welcome such change. In Queensland, about the same number of respondents as expected the system to remain static, also preferred this outcome (although they were often not the same: see Brown 2002a). In NSW, the number who wished the system to remain the same fell to a lowly 12.5%. In both States, a majority – 62% in Queensland, and 74.2% in NSW – indicated they not only expect, but would prefer structural change. In each case, we can also see the total number of respondents who expect change whether or not they prefer it, or prefer it irrespective of whether they expect it to happen. In Queensland, this totalled at least 74% of all respondents; and in NSW, at least 79.9% of respondents.

The relatively low proportion of ‘don’t know’ responses is one indicator that citizens do have some grasp of the issues and hold at least some kind of view on these issues. However, research is ongoing in order to better establish how respondents interpret these scenarios, and whether they fairly represent citizens’ expectations and preferences. For example, NSW respondents were also asked whether their concept of a ‘two-tiered system’ was one based on the amalgamation of local and current state administrations into new regional governments (52.6% of respondents indicated this to be their preference), or one based on simple abolition of state governments leaving current local government as the second tier (36.3% of respondents indicated this). Extrapolating from this, a further notional breakdown of future options is possible, as suggested in Figure 3.9 later in the chapter.

Nevertheless, an important result is the fact that many among the majority of respondents who envisage or desire change in the structure of federalism, did not express themselves to be positively dissatisfied with current arrangements. Table 3.8 confirms this, showing some more about the views of the 57% of NSW respondents who preferred the more radical scenarios, which involved new ‘regional’ governments instead of (scenario C) or in addition to (scenario D) the current States. These respondents were spread across the continuum in their satisfaction with the existing system, and were only slightly more likely than the remainder to criticise the current performance of state governments. The data, therefore, suggest not only that citizens are roughly evenly divided on the adequacy of the current system, but that even many of those who regard the current system as adequate, also envisage change and improvement. Indeed, the data suggest that many of these respondents, even if utopian, are not ‘rosy eyed’ about the prospects of change – although only 12.5% of respondents believed the status quo should remain, almost twice as many predict the status quo as the inevitable outcome.