by John August
I'm the convenor of the group Abolish the States Collective. Mostly we host a mailing list and a webpage, which contains summaries of the mailing list. We also have dinners together occassionally. The ASC still has a seperate existence, but that's mostly through history. Today, we're closely aligned with Beyond Federation.
In this presentation, I'll talk about getting rid of the states from a general perspective. What are their problems, what other issues are there (the republic, for example), what are the models for change, and what are the tasks ahead for advocates of state abolition.
Mark Drummond has calculated the cost of these problems. In order to do this, he identified duplication costs, and modelled the different Governments as fixed cost plus variable cost based on population. He identified the costs to business, together with costs of population movement.
Mark's '95 calculation was 30 Billion dollars. He has published a more recent paper, which goes into these costs in more detail, and looks at different possibilities for government change.
Not all this money is available to Government; some represents a business cost. The absence of these business costs would mean more economic activity available to tax; it also means that business can run more profitably or provide cheaper goods, so there is increased prosperity.
Government is always going to costs us something, but we of course want something for our money - that is, representation. We'll look at this issue in more detail later. But an important thing we're asserting is that if you change the way government operates, don't just save money, you end up with improved government as well.
The money saved could be used to eliminate payroll tax and be spent at the coalfaces of public service delivery, rather than wasted in needless duplication of government, bureaucracy and regulation.
We've heard government talk about restructuring in pursuit of economic efficiency. But the interesting thing is that while the efficiency of many industries have improved under the help of government, nobody has scrutinised the efficiency of government, or sought its improvement.
We have some interesting International Comparisons on this. I'm operating from Ken Thomas' 91 figures, but I'm sure the example still holds :
I've mentioned how we can save money by getting rid of the states. But, having states has its own costs, costs in terms of inconsistency. I'll now give a few examples, but given this conference is about cross border inconsistencies, I'm sure you'll have heard a lot :
Before I continue, lets review the powers of the different government levels.
A state might be swayed by local vested interests, but the Federal government must worry about the whole economy. State governments can lower taxes and utility charges (water, power) for firms which are settling in different parts of Australia, with no concern for Australia overall.
We have a good deal of inconsistency.
"Justice" varies from State to State, transport is a state issue, even though its an important part of the national economy, and there's no gain from different education systems - its an added burden to the cost of moving within Australia.
The responsibilities of the States show no correlation with their size.
There is the question of identity and differences over the size of a state. As an example, a farmer in Northern NSW will have more in common with a farmer in Southern Queensland than they will with anyone in Sydney.
The states are moving towards compatibility in their laws, but the more sucessful they are at this, the more they illustrate their irrelevance.
Yes, we think inconsistency is a problem. However, there's another way of looking at inconsistency, as people who defend the states do. Our unfair inconsistency is their healthy diversity.
But lets consider :
Is this "diversity" something worth having ? We feel that diversity can have its own cost, without anything to compensate, and what we have in Australia at present is much diversity which gets in the way and feathers the nest of vested interests, with a microscopic amount of variation which might actually be said to benefit us.
Its claimed that different states allows for experiment. However, along with this there are injustices through the simple fact that conditions vary.
If non-uniformity is considered worthwhile to support an "experiment", we believe the national government should provide "experimental zones" where laws vary, with approval of the local region.
This would provide for "experiments" without the cost of unfair non uniformity. Further, we believe states very rarely provide "experiments" in any real sense.
The Victorian Government has used Federal "Black Spot" money for general road maintenance rather than fixing problem roads, and their road toll declined less than other states.
The NSW Government has been said to direct Federal money, meant for the whole state, to marginal state electorates.
These events are from the past, and I'm not trying to target present governments, but they provide examples of what can and does go on. Certainly, the Commonwealth government might be said to abuse its position at times. Where it does, we hope there will be checks on its power, akin to the Senate as we have it at present.
The difference is that we can imagine structures which prevent the abuse of Commonwealth power, but the structures which we have at present encourage the States to abuse their power.
We certainly want a functional set of checks and balances in government. None of the people I know advocate giving the national government free reign to do whatever it likes.
The present flux between levels of Government means that politicians can dodge responsibility and goverment becomes opaque, rather than transparent. And this generates its own problems.
We feel that a "two tier" government can incorporate useful checks and balances, while at the same time shedding problems we have now.
There's a fundamental trade off between responsiveness of government and the checks on its power. Just assume we have something relatively benign, which we want the government to change. If the government is going to change it for the better, it needs the ability to do that. If we have excessive checks and balances on government power, the government can't do anything bad, but the downside is it can't do anything good either.
Further, splitting power provides government with convenient excuses for inaction. Government likes to get itself elected and then claim an inability to make positive changes.
If you want a responsive government, we believe there are three stages:
Obviously, if you can't understand the system, then you can't influence it, and will roll over you. It's "Disempowerment by obscurity" - the average citizen is disempowered compared to parliamentarians, bureaucrats and people with an understanding of government.
This means the people are no longer sovereign. "Sovereignty of the people" is something which has its origin in the notion of a "Republic", and this is something I'll now consider.
1. a state, especially a democratic state, in which the head of the government is an elected or nominated president, not a hereditary monarch.
2. a state in which the supreme power rests in the body of citizens entitled to vote and is exercised by representatives chosen directly or indirectly by them.
One element of republic debate is the removal of a heriditary monarch. This is an area which the republican debate overlaps with state removal.
Its not necessary for removal of the states, but some people believe removing the Queen's representative to be a moderate change and a necessary precursor to broader State removal (K. Woldring).
Some people believe that the issues are separable, and that there are benefits in a disinterested head of state quite separately from the benefits of abolishing the states.
The second republic definition prompts broader debate about the nature of government. Are the people or the parliamentarians in charge ? How should government emerge from the sovereign will of the people ?
Is leaving things to the greater voting population "dangerous" ?
There's the suggestion that parliament has inappropriate powers which are vestiges of royal perogative.
How might National-State-Local arrangements best realise individual sovereignty ?
Here I'm mostly asking questions that I'm not going to answer. I'm just outlining the overlap between the issues.
I've mentioned the issue of "residual royal perogatives", which is at the periphery of the republican debate. Some people think that our government still having royal perogatives is a bad thing. However, we prefer to think in terms of "Checks and Balances".
What should a government which emerges from the sovereign will of the people be able to do ? How should its powers be checked ? Perhaps its powers might end up with something similar to the residual royal perogatives it has now. But nobody considers what powers it might in fact need.
This should be decided on through consultation and participation of the Australian people, being aware of but not constrained by historical issues.
The Senate does not "represent the states" as originally envisaged. Senators vote along party lines.
It is a check and balance on power, but by accident, not design. Inequable representation (by population) is part of the picture.
Many suggestions for alteration of Government to result in different checks and balances. In Max Bradley's model, you have an election of one fifth of the voting electorate every year, with the possibility of recall of representatives based on a petition. In Jim Snow's model, regional governments have elected members which are both regional representives and Senators in the national Government.
As I've noted there are more differences within the states than between them. Nonuniformity appears on a much smaller geographic range than the states. So, for many of us, the local or regional government is a much more "natural" level of government than the states.
We therefore advocate moving state powers both to a national government, and also to local governments.
Some of us advocate a "mezzanine" intermediate level government, having the structures to allow a flow of representation, but without the bureacracies of present state governments. Klaas Woldring's model is an example of this sort of approach.
We're talking about 30 - 50 regional or mezzanine governments. Charles Mollison's model focuses on regional governments as being more powerful than the mezzanine governments, and has a slightly different emphasis.
A different approach is to remove the states, leave local government much as it is, but interacting with with the national Government directly, and change the representation of national Government so there are improved checks and balances on that power. Max Bradley is an example of such a model.
Before I take a brief look at a few ideas on advocacy, I'll take a closer look at the possibilities for local government, because regardless of the model, the "centre of gravity" of government power clearly shifts below the states.
Compared to Australia's rougly 850 State & Federal politicians, there are rougly 7500 local government representatives.
However, local government spends about 5% of total government spending. The "cost per representative" is much lower, and total cost of local government representation is lower than that for State or Federal Government.
There may be an argument for streamlining and amalgamating local government, but the relative expenditures of the different levels of government should be kept in mind.
We believe in the possibilities for local government. There are claims of local government corruption and it providing "jobs for the boys" from higher levels of government.
It is our view that interest and democratic participation by ratepayers would rectify such problems.
Eliminating the States would reduce the number of elections, and bring local government into prominence. This would result in an increase in interest in local government, and a renewal of local government.
You can see that ASC / Beyond Federation embrace a range of options. We are the only groups advocating this sort of change.
We do not promote a single model, but feel that is to artificially stifle a diversity of ideas.
Some people do feel a group should focus on a single model and move ahead.
Our first goal is to increase the public profile of overgovernment. Once this is achieved, we'll then worry about means for selecting the particular replacement, and look at the details of how to make that change.
I'll also point out that our discussion does consider some elements of how change might happen, and some of the legal details. However, that's more a matter for an entirely seperate talk, and it doesn't change the validity of the idea to improve the profile of overgovernment first.
http://www.asc.org.au