Saturday, July 10, Mooloolaba, Qld
I lost a bet this week. I lost $100 on the State of Origin after Queensland went down 36-8 to New South Wales. I suspect if you took a state-wide ballot this weekend of Queenslanders asking if New South Wales should be abolished, you'd get a 99% approval rate.
This week also saw the other states impose a complete ban on the movement of Queensland citrus over the border due to an outbreak of citrus canker near Emerald.
Now Emerald is over 700km from Queensland's main citrus growing area in the North Burnett, and 1000 km from the citrus growers in the Atherton Tableland . But, the North Burnett and Atherton Tableland growers get wrapped up in the same quarantine area because of the artificially created Queensland border.
I suspect if you took a poll across citrus growers this week on whether Queensland should be abolished you'd get a 99% approval rate as well!!
And last month finally saw years of wrangling between the Queensland, New South Wales and Federal Governments over the route and funding of the Tugun bypass where the Pacific Highway crosses the Queensland-New South Wales border.
Given how long that dispute has dragged on, I suspect a poll of Gold Coast/Tweed residents on abolishing both New South Wales and Queensland would get a 99% approval rate as well, particularly around daylight saving time. Or maybe not quite that high!
The Australian Democrats very first constitutional reform policy back in 1978 called for the abolition of the states and the development of national, regional and local governments instead. And, we have kept that policy ever since.
Indeed, in 1988, we persuaded the Hawke Government to include the recognition of local government in the national constitution as a means of starting that process. Unfortunately, our modest proposal was voted down in that year's disastrous referendum.
Why do the Democrats support regional Government? Simply put, we believe that the States have outlived their usefulness. As colonies during the 19th century, separation was obviously an important step in development. As states during the 20th century, they were part of the evolution of Australia into a centralised state. But, during the 20th century, what is their role?
The Commonwealth collects most of the taxes – around 70% or more. The Commonwealth sets, through its Federal grants, the parameters for most major economic, social, environmental, health, education and defence portfolio areas.
The areas where the States have clear responsibility, such as land management and planning, are areas where they are often failing to provide the necessary leadership role and devolving many problems to the underfunded local government sector.
And these problems have only been getting worse.
Today, I thought I would focus on a few areas where the Democrats have been pushing the agenda to get a clearer national, state and local setting of roles. I will touch on two areas – health and the environment.
But first, I want to talk a little a little bit more about the failures of the States.
Australia, a country of 20 million, is one of the most over governed countries in the world. We have 226 Federal MPs, over 600 State and Territory MPs and 800 local government entities to govern a country with the population of Greater London.
Not surprisingly, the Governments constantly get in the way of each other.
And they cost their long suffering taxpayers a lot of money. Government overlap costs around $20 billion in bureaucratic red tape according to Mark Drummond's research.
For Queensland, the country's most decentralised State, too much power is centred on Brisbane in the south east corner. Brisbane is closer to Sydney than it is to Townsville, and closer to Melbourne than it is to Cairns.
Around 55% of Queensland's population live outside the Brisbane metropolitan area. Yet only 1/3 of Peter Beattie's cabinet lives outside Brisbane. All of the most senior Ministers – the premier, the Treasurer, the Attorney General, the Health, Education and Transport Ministers all live in Brisbane. What chance has the rest of the state got of being properly represented?
Queensland has 39 Federal MPs, 89 State MPs and 1216 local government councillors for a population of three million. That is one elected representative for every 2200 people.
The ACT, which has only two levels of Government, has 4 Federal MPs and 17 Assembly members for a population of 320,000 or one for every 14,000 people. Is Queensland any better governed than the ACT? I don't think so!
The ACT Government has all the responsibilities of State and Local government. There is no buck-passing between levels of government – every local MP is a one stop shop where the buck stops.
Imagine if Queensland did the same thing. Brisbane as one region, Gold Coast as another, Sunshine Coast as a stand alone region and so forth.
Queensland already boasts Australia's two largest local government authorities – Brisbane, with 950,000 people, and Gold Coast with 470,000 people. The size of these two entities have given them the capacity to become proactive in a wide range of areas such as the environment, economic development, social and cultural activities that smaller councils can probably only dream of.
The Sunshine Coast, by contrast, is split between five local authorities – the core built up area of Maroochy-Caloundra with 220,000 people, rising to 420,000 adding in the outer shires of Cooloola, Noosa and Caboolture.
That is a population larger than the ACT and rapidly catching up with Tasmania. The Sunshine Coast deserves its own regional development body, elected by the people of the Sunshine Coast, with full responsibility for the delivery of services on the Coast.
The regional body should have responsibility for managing local health, education, transport and police issues, as does local government in the United Kingdom and the United States. There would be no more buckpassing of responsibility between councils or between State and Local Government. The buck would clearly stop with the regional representatives.
The national priorities and most of the funding for the regional services would still come from the national government, as it does now in health and other areas. To emphasise the link with regions and improve democracy, I would suggest abolishing the single member electorates and having members of the House of Representatives elected directly from each region by proportional representation.
This model would not be dissimilar to that which exists for health now, where the Commonwealth sets the national health priorities and provides the vast bulk of the funding, while the States – substitute the regions – actually manage services on the ground.
I note that since Shed a Tier was launch four years ago, many excellent proposals on reorganising service delivery and responsibility have been presented to various conferences.
In my remaining time, I thought I would highlight some movement in three key areas.
Currently, the Commonwealth provides over two thirds of the funding for health in Australia, but doesn’t run a single public hospital. That is the responsbility of the States. However, they regularly blame Canberra for not providing sufficient funds to do the job properly. The Commonwealth says the States should put in more of their own money and so the argument goes on.
In April this year, a coalition of 22 national health groups put a formal proposal to the State Health Ministers for a single national health funding scheme. The National Healthcare reform Alliance, which developed the proposal, blames the messy Commonwealth/State divide for falling health car standards and the chronic public hospital crises.
The unified funding system would follow the patient. It has the potential to deliver significant cost savings among the 4000 Federal bureaucrats employed to monitor the states and the estimated 3000 bureaucrats employed by the States to monitor Canberra and the hospitals. As Mark Drummond's research shows, savings of up to $2 billion a year could be found in needless health administration.
As part of the Democrats response to the Government's Medicare package, we called for a public health care pact with the States to start moving towards a more rational demarcation of Federal and State responsibilities.
Cost shifting, lack of clarity about responsibility for services that are falling through the net, disputes about funding levels, lack of data and lack of coordinated, long term planning are legacies of Commonwealth/State relationship shortcomings. A pact is needed to set benchmarks and see that they are delivered. In the end it is taxpayers who pay for health services and it is of little interest to the public which level of government pays.
The national approach would set national benchmarks across public primary care services such as dental, mental, Indigenous, disability, early childhood and aged health services.
We have also proposed a health arbiter to settle any disputes that arise between different levels of government of who should be funding what and to what extent.
To promote more of a regional approach to health delivery, we proposed that the Federal funded 123 Divisions of General Practitioners be restructured as Primary Care Divisions.
The new Divisions would report annually on services and health needs, provide GP professional support and development; assess community health needs, purchase to meet those needs and measure progress against targets.
The Federal health minister has expressed some interest in these ideas. But, with Labor in power in all States and a Federal election pending, progress is, as always with rationalisation of the health funding arrangements, at a stand still.
Where do you start trying to make sense of environment policy in this country? Simply put, there is no sense to it. Environment policy is the worst case of buck-passing between all three levels of Government that exists.
Take water policy. Water policy is mostly a State responsibility. But rivers don't respect State boundaries, and the Federal Government has all the money. The result is buck passing.
The Murray Darling basin desperately needs more water back in the river. This will only come by improving irrigation efficiency and frankly getting rid of the least efficient operators.
Cubby Station is the biggest single user of water along the Darling River. Water is channelled from the river into massive ponds with a collective area of 25 square kilometres. The pond walls were set at 5m to fall just below the legal 'dam height' set by the then State Government. Very little floodwater made it past Cubby this year. Around 30-40% of the water in the shallow pounds is lost in evaporation.
The Beattie Government offered to buy Cubby. You might remember the big headlines about it. But, Mr Beattie would only buy it if the Commonwealth and New South Wales put up 95% of the money! What a big offer.
The Federal Government recently convened a water summit and got some agreement on work on the Murray. But the money agreed on – some $500 million – is only a tenth of the amount the ACF and the NFF argue needs to be spent EVERY YEAR FOR TEN YEARS if the Murray Darling basin is to be fully restored. The States and the Commonwealth just point their fingers at each other.
The worst failure of Commonwealth-State environment policy is on greenhouse gas emissions. The States run the power system and the transport system.
But, greenhouse is regarded as a Commonwealth issues, even though the Federal Government has refused to include it as a trigger in the EPBC Act or increase the Mandatory Renewable Energy Target on electricity generation.
This week, the Victorian Premier Steve Bracks announced the building of Australia's largest wind farm at Portland, a plant big enough to power 100,000 homes.
His Environment Minister criticised the Federal Government for not raising the Mandatory Renewable Energy Target. But he failed to mention that the State Government is the one that regulates electricity, and the State Government could impose tis own MRET it if wanted to.
It is far easier to blame Canberra than do the hard work. Just like Mr Beattie on Cubbie Station, environment is about buck passing not fixing the issue.
And how can we leave Mr Beattie's environmental buck-passing without mentioning land clearing. The first Beattie government announced land clearing legislation.
It even passed the laws. But then it failed to proclaim them until Canberra provided the compensation for farmers. This was a period when the Queensland Government was around $300 million a year better off because of GST payments, and another $500 million better off because of the housing stamp duties boom.
Mr Beattie held off proclaiming his land clearing legislation for three years. The result? Hundreds of thousands of hectares were cleared by land holders in panic clearing ahead of the legislation being proclaimed.
It took another State Election this year before Mr Beattie found the money and proclaimed his own act.
My final environment issue I want to raise is invasive species. Invasive species do $4 billion of damage to Australiana agriculture each year and untold damage to biodiversity. They are the responsibility of all levels of Government – and none!!
There is no co-ordination, no national strategy, no priority funding. Just a series of knee jerk reactions to crises and a few massively under funded research programs living on anural grants.
In sub tropical Queensland, with probably the biggest list of invasive species, the State Government has actually cut funding by around 10% over the last five years on invasive species, leaving responsibility of management of weeds and pests more and more to the cash strapped local government sector.
The Commonwealth did get the States to agree to a list of 20 Weeds of National Significance, but is yet to get the states to agree to at least ban them. 9 of the 20 Weeds of National Significance can still be legally bought somewhere in Australia. Similarly, the Commonwealth still approves for import into Australia through AQIS hundreds of species of weeds banned by one or more states.
The division of responsibility between Commonwealth, State and Local Government means that Australia is losing the never ending war against the spread of invasive species.
The Democrats have called for a different approach. Invasive species do not respect State borders, and they should be a national responsibility, with the Commonwealth working closely with a better funded local government sector to manage the issues on the ground. We have drafted a bill to that effect and I am currently chairing a Senate Inquiry into the mess that is our national management of invasive species.
Watch this space!!
In talking labour health and environment issues, the issue is not the Commonwealth taking over full responsibility from the States. Frequently, it is more about the Commonwealth exercising the leadership role that it is failing to exercise.
But rather, there also needs to be a recognition that power has to go up and down. Looking at the debates about the restructuring of the European Union, there has been much mention of the so called 'subsidiary' principle – that is that decision making on issues should be made at the lowest possible level closest to the delivery of services.
The States have never recognised this principle, and have over many years stripped local government and local bureaucrats of much of the powers and responsibility.
The Commonwealth should provide the leadership and set national goals and benchmarks.
But the delivery of services, and the accountability for delivery of services, should be at the lowest possible level, at a regional or local level.
Having a local MP actually responsible and accountable for the delivery of all government services in an area would be a huge benefit to our democracy. Abolishing the States and shifting the policy leadership up and the service delivery down to the regions could reinvigorate our democracy.
Too many voters don't believe that their vote makes a difference. Vote and a politicians gets elected is a catchcry for apathy, especially when politicians spend much of their time buck-passing and avoiding accountability for issues.
Improving accountability for services, as well as making it quite clear that the Commonwealth must lead on policy, would be a strong formula for establishing a new vibrant Australian democracy for the 21st century.
(2700 words)