Regionalism for Rural Australia

Notes for a speech delivered at ‘Beyond State Governments’, the eighth Shed a Tier Congress, Albury, 19 July 2003

by

Associate Professor Ian Gray

Centre for Rural Social Research

Charles Sturt University

Wagga Wagga

The idea of reorganising the governance of Australia came to my attention in the course of writing a book entitled ‘A Future for Regional Australia’ with my colleague Professor Geoffrey Lawrence. I would like to emphasise that my own thinking on this issue has not come from observation of the absurdities and anomalies created by state boundaries. It has come from observation of the inherent disadvantage and insecurity of life in many places outside the larger cities of Australia. My interest is in ‘the regions’, specifically those which are heavily dependent on primary production, and the long-term sustainability of their social, natural and economic environments.

My position does nevertheless accommodate the view that our present ‘three-tier’ system is inefficient, and that the few tentative steps being taken towards reform are probably misguided. This should be a significant issue for all Australians. The enthusiasm and rapidity with which our railway systems have undergone dubious reorganisation in a rush to privatisation contrasts with the painfully slow process of solving the fundamental problem of that most blatant absurdity of Australian infrastructure: the state-based railway systems on their various gauges. And it is even sadder to think that all the effort to create a national railway system over so many years may come to little due to the unwillingness of governments to support the basic infrastructure and their continued faith that privatisation can solve everything without creating any problems of its own. (Enough about railways, but I couldn’t speak at a conference on federalism at Albury without mentioning them.) Local government presents parallels. The occasional passion which state governments have to reform their local government systems by means of amalgamation is also, as Mark Drummond argues, probably misdirected. The problem is our federal system, at least in the way in which political interests are able to operate it rather than in the constitution which underpins it. But I expect those are issues which other speakers will raise more competently than I can.

The impetus for regionalism comes from more positive perspectives than a view of the present system as being inefficient. It has an essential democratic element. The history of new state movements bears this out. Gray and Lawrence take this argument a little further by associating regionalism with prospects for regional sustainability.

Dependency, reflexivity and resistance

Our book provides a perspective on futures for regional (rural) Australia developed from sociology and political economy. In doing that we give high priority to regarding the relationship between the people and the natural environment. Our fundamental propositions are:

We call these regional Australia’s ‘global misfortune’.

Dependency is the key concept. That rural communities have grown and in many ways prospered in a relationship of dependency with metropolitan Australia is not a contradiction. The basis on which that prosperity could be developed has been specified by metropolitan interests throughout Australian history. Rural people have resisted this control, most notably in their traditional expression of ‘countrymindedness’ and in the institution of the National (formerly Country) party. They have also found more subtle ways of expressing their interests.

Resistance against the power of metropolitan agencies is an important part of Australian rural tradition, alongside perseverance and self-reliance. But we argue that the context in which the reflexivity, or self-questioning, on which resistance has been based has also been determined by metropolitan interests. Such is the hegemonic nature of regional people’s ‘global misfortune’.

Which way will regional people go in their reflexivity? Will they escape the productivist treadmill? Will they find the social and cultural sustainability, based on family farming and country towns, which they seek?

There is considerable danger that in their questioning of the conditions of globalisation which they find themselves in, they step into fundamentalism. This was apparent in the successes of the One Nation Party, which while by no means exclusively rural, did obtain a lot of support in some non-metropolitan areas and was able to appeal to rural traditionalists.

Prospects for change

There are hints of devolution happening, meaning that there might be prospects to change dependency relations. But it is reasonable to ask if is it really happening. Relations between local and central government agencies, long an arena for dependency relations, seem very unlikely to be changing. Some writers have argued that changing governance might have the appearances of devolution but in fact are merely a refinement. Central governments are finding ways of making local people and agencies, in effect, control themselves in the interests of central agencies. However, noteworthy things are happening. For example, regional organisations of councils are not going away, networks of land care groups are forming and the enthusiasm which governments are showing for community level ‘capacity building’ must hold some increasing possibilities for resistance and democratisation.

These positive signs of democratisation are questionable, however, in the neo-liberal political climate because, while neo-liberalism and what are sometimes called ‘Third Way’ policies (when they are thought of as being neither socialistic nor entirely neo-liberal) rely on collective organisation, neo-liberalism denies the collectivism it relies on. In addition, the building of community capacity relies heavily on social capital, but social capital has its negatives, or ‘dark side’ as well as its positives for democratisation. Reinforcement of community social relations sounds positive but traditional community social relations sometimes fail to meet democratic ideals. Communities and their organisations can be as exclusive as they are inclusive. In the context of sustainability issues, local social capital may reinforce local traditions which are founded on the productivism which keeps rural Australian tied directly and indirectly to the productivist treadmill. Nevertheless, there are prospects for change as the inconsistencies and contradictions of neoliberalism amid productivism become more apparent. These prospects can be summarised by the concept of sustainable regional development, which places great importance on solutions being developed for regional people by regional people.

Limitations

Regional solutions have limitations and dangers. Most apparent are the risks of inequalities developing within and among regions. Regions like localities can have elements of exclusion in their social systems. The obvious examples would be where a large regional centre might further its interests at the expense of smaller towns. There is also considerable danger that inter-regional inequalities could grow, if the federal system did not involve an effective mechanism for ‘fiscal equalisation’.

There is also the problem of institutional incapacity. Currently local government is neither strong nor as close to the people as it sometimes likes to think (not surprising when it is sometimes treated as an instrument of state government). It is highly fragmented, being based on a tradition among states of divide and conquer. However, as mentioned above, local government hasn’t always been totally dominated, and the states themselves have to recognise that even with issues of economic efficiency aside, they share an interest in coordination and cooperation among councils.

Prospects for autonomy

The prospects for regionalism, or as I would put it, regional autonomy, lie in the hearts and minds of regional people. Do they want the ways they live, grow and use their environment to be determined entirely by the forces of national government global business? I don’t think so. But what basis is there for them to work towards regional determination? There is not much without institutional change and a willingness of central governments. That might seem unlikely but then again, even if moves toward regional governance are disparate and fractured, they do exist. More importantly, optimism and collectivism are embedded in Australian tradition. They have moved people to work together to maintain their rural ways of life. This was well illustrated by HC Coombs in his commentary on post-World War II development. Encouragingly, this determination was aimed at sustainability, containing as it did some suspicion of productivism.

Regionalism for regional sustainability requires the development of regional identity and consciousness which attaches value to elements of environmental security. This goes way beyond the occasional appeal we hear for city people to take note of what is happening in the bush. While urban sympathy can be aroused by natural disasters affecting the country, it is very unlikely that city people will easily be persuaded to pay a price for their food which covers the full cost of production, including the long terms costs of environmental damage. More importantly, portraying city dwellers as uninformed and unsympathetic hides the significant factor: that regional-metropolitan relations are built upon regional dependency. Regional identity should be built on appreciation of those relations.

Conclusion

Regional governance is seldom seen as a solution to problems of rural sustainability. As such, it leans heavily on the prospects for rural people reflecting on their situation, developing a collective identity at the regional level and working collectively for sustainability. There is a basis for this to happen in Australian tradition. But it will also require very significant change which can only be enabled at the central (state and federal) level. Australia’s political apparatus is well tuned to playing regional interests off against each other and using regionalism to its advantage. Reflection on those processes will be an important part of the development of an effective regional consciousness among rural Australians.