What needs to be remembered is that none of the increase in Commonwealth power has been with the consent of the people. Time after time the people have crushed referendums that would have increased Commonwealth power, and I would certainly vote against any increase in Commonwealth power under any terms whatsoever. What many people want is for the Commonwealth to be a second-rate, second grade sovereignty with limited and strictly enumerated powers. Any High Court verdict should be with the narrowest possible interpretation of Commonwealth power, because if the people wanted them to have more power they would have approved it. Of course I am dreaming, as the Judges are appointed by the Commonwealth, so they will pick those who favour more power. ALL politicians want more power; the people want a system where laws are different between States, with people fleeing to the Queensland frontier, which they are entitled to cross, and with no extradition.

What I am interested in is how the states are to be abolished. Perhaps the High Court should be encouraged to rule that the provisions relating to the States are temporary, and that there are implied provisions providing for unitary government.

Give me a break plerdsus. None of this has been with the consent of the people - its driven by the people. The whole current "blame game" debate is about people not caring which level of government delivers just that somebody should. Increasingly people let State Governments off the hook because they have less faith in their capacity and ability and ask the Commonwealth (which is often said to have the bucket of gold)to do the job. The whole COAG and cooperative federalism push is characterised by States asking the Commonwealth to step in pay for what were their functions.

Tragically the whole debate is a bit meaningless in my view - I don't reckon the States would support a yes vote for a referendum to abolish them and the history of opposed referenda is that they are defeated. As for what Kevin Rudd would do - who knows, we still don't know what he stands for and he grapples with whether he is a socialist or a social democrat - or whatever that means. A true diplomat...

I used to be a federalist and believed the whole checks and balances thing. But that assumes the checks are based on rational policy considerations rather than political expedience and parochialism by the respective governments of the day. The fact is our nation of 2006 is so far removed from the colonial environment of 1898 that we should question whether a structure forged then is still valid. If curretn health, education and regulatory duplication is the test then the balances are questionable. People want delivery and get frustrated by resort to constitional strictures. The document our "fathers" gave us served us well for one hundred years but I am increasingly of the view that representative central government setting the policy lead, running the economy and the funding and defending the nation in conjunction with regional service delivery is probably a better model. Australians are increasingly mobile and really question different standards in different states - just that the fathers locked us into a pretty tight contract!

Hi all,

Just a few comments on your comments - for which I thank you.
Some express great fear about centralisation at the national level if the states were to be abolished. I have heard this often but let's look at what the situation is elsewhere. The federal structure of state is quite exceptional to begin with. In Europe only Germany and Switzerland are true federations. Even Weimar had a federal structure but it didn't prevent the Nazi dictatorship. Austria is a quasi-federation. Russia is perhaps a federation. All the rest are unitary states: four Scandinavian countries, the Benelux countries, the UK, Ireland, France, Spain, Portugal and Italy, the former Russian dominated states like Hungary, Rumania and the Czech countries, the Baltic states. Elsewhere add Japan, NZ, South Africa.
Many unitary states have an effective decentralised system of governance.
The problem in Australia is centralisation at the state level due to a very high concentration of people in capital cities. We need to get away from that surely to achieve effective decentralisation.
Why should anyone think of this as a dream? Sure, the major parties are not very reformist but the people are sovereign and could exercise that sovereignty in many ways. This medium, the web magazine, opens the opportunity for debate and information as never before. And as to using your vote for this kind of change use the Senate or engage the major party politicians.

Klaas Woldring

We seem to keep forgetting ............... Australia is a nation with a population and economy similar in size to that of California ! What we need in the next period of international relationship development is a nationhood that does not have to cringe in front of its constitution. States are already positioned (practically and pragmatically) as instruments of service delivery, and we are constantly confronted by the farce of the maintenance of the rights of States to have separate education and health systems, independent civil, criminal and commercial jurisdictions in the respective legal systems, when the community is screaming for commonality and uniformity ! Two tier government ??
IT'S TIME !! But I don't want to have to telephone a federal government office when my rubbish is not collected, or my street light bulb goes out .......... nor do I want Peter Beattie pretending to need to go overseas to get doctors (he actually got one, didn;t he?).

I agree with Rhian: “Australia’s states have different economic, demographic, social and environmental problems and priorities, and they need governments that reflect those differences.”

If anything, we need smaller states, so that regional differences can be better represented. The federal government should only have responsibility for things that cannot reasonably be done by the states.

In comment 11 "Ian" airs the view that we need smaller states. I have rejected this in my article as a non-solution as follows:

"In addition there are some who argue, most unconvincingly I would suggest, that the existing Constitution could be used to create more states. Apart from the fact that this has proved to be highly impractical, and for over 100 years impossible, if successful it would greatly compound and multiply the serious problems that the existing system is saddled with already."

This "solution" is the complete opposite of those who want to abolish the states. It extends the old way of thinking which is no longer appropriate for the conditions of the 21st century. Just tonight I heard on the car radio an authority on law discussing the urgent need for a uniform national criminal law code instead of continuing the current different state law codes. The list of such most undesirable cumbersome, costly differences is already long which somehow, in this context of "more smaller states" thinking, presumably would reflect desirable differences in state values. I have produced a little booklet which discusses 19 areas of federal-state conflict areas which have cropped up in the last two years. I sell them for the cost price of $3 + postage. If you wat one <woldring@zipworld.com.au>. Decentralisation yes, but not along traditional state autonomy. I thought like that 20 years ago, even wrote a conference paper about it, but I am now convinced this is not the way to go.

Klaas Woldring