SUMMARY

The proposals presented in these Draft Specifications are radical. They aim to loosen the grip of the small band of professional politicians that run our Commonwealth and state governments, to allow broadly-based citizen control. In the past, such changes were the stuff of revolutions, but today, they provide constructive elements to revive the evolution of Australian democracy.

The minimal and stable format of our 1901 Constitution is probably a comfort to many. In essence, it a set of rules, drawn up in the 19th century, to allocate the perceived tasks of government between the states and the Commonwealth. It not only lacks inspiration and a sense of purpose, but fails even to provide a framework for effective government. A business-as-usual approach denies the underlying reality of governance in Australia: our system is excessively centralized and its executive governments are dominated by a small elite responding predominantly to corporate agendas and popular fervour. Most Australians recognize that their system is not working, but appear suspicious of change.

There is an immense volume of informed criticism in the form of books, journal articles, newspaper and magazine commentary and presentations in the audio-visual media to support the view that our system of government is inefficient, ineffective, unwieldy and expensive; that is to say, dysfunctional.  In addition, there are consistent and continuous pleas from all sectors of the society for the coordination of state laws and regulations covering nearly every aspect of public administration. It is assumed that those reading this piece are fully aware of these short-comings.

This paper puts forward two reforms that would help rescue the country’s governance from its downward spiral and arrest the decline of our democratic tradition into oligarchy. Neither will be easily achieved, because they require amendment of the Constitution.

The first would empower local government by recognizing it in the Constitution. As matters stand now, there is no alternative to centralized governments, either state or Commonwealth, fumbling over tasks and issues that can be better undertaken by local or regional agencies. Recognition of local government would provide that alternative.

The second would see the principle of subsidiarity introduced into our Constitution. It would assign the tasks of government to the lowest tier that could undertake them. Thus government decisions become the responsibility of the communities directly affected; tasks requiring national regulation would be assumed by the Commonwealth. Another explanation of subsidiarity, due to David A Bosnich is : “... that nothing should be done by a larger and more complex organization which can be done as well by a smaller and simpler organization. In other words, any activity which can be performed by a more decentralized entity should be.”

LOCAL GOVERNMENT AND SUBSIDIARITY

In the mid-19th century, the colonial governments created local government to handle the mundane affairs of servicing local landholders. Although now encompassing roles well beyond those it began with, it remains the only level of government that relates closely to communities of ordinary people. The centralized state governments try to direct them from the big end of town.

The proposition argued here is that the tasks of government should be managed by the most diverse units of government that can effectively and efficiently undertake them. Tasks that require national coordination or regulation, being beyond the competency of local and regional administrations, would therefore, be the responsibility of the national government. In the real terms of every-day life, it is the normal circumstance for communities to make decisions and do things without being directed by our central governments. There are some 750,000 community organizations doing that in Australia. Only when an issue is beyond the competence of the lower level jurisdictions, are the ‘higher’ levels needed, usually by providing access to coordination, expertise, money etc. The tendency toward central government initiating or taking over local and regional matters is a retrograde development.

Therefore, it is proposed that a paragraph be introduced into the Constitution, to give effect to the principle of subsidiarity. Examples from other countries can be seen in Article 3b of the European Union Lisbon Treaty and in article 43a of the 1999 Swiss constitution.  Without constitutional recognition of local government, subsidiarity in Australia would be a hollow gesture. 

The principle of subsidiarity would certainly be a major change to our governance, not least by introducing greater rationality and simplicity into constitutional law. It is entirely in accord with typical judgements of successive federal governments, and sometimes the High Court, that the federal government should act on national issues, leaving others to the states. Another way of looking at subsidiarity is from the perspective of managing large business organizations, where taking decisions and solving problems at the lowest levels feasible has become the standard pattern. Given that background, application of the same principle to government [albeit half a century later] should not be too great a challenge. 

To achieve this essentially democratic distribution of responsibility, local government must be empowered in our Constitution to deliver a full range of public services to the Australian people as soon as may be. They are qualified to do this. There already are many examples of councils collaborating to manage issues of regional concern. There is also widespread adoption of the same principle when community organizations undertake tasks involving public responsibility that are sometimes seen as roles for government.

Therefore, the most rational first steps in reform of our system of government is to acknowledge local government and the principle of subsidiarity in the Constitution. 

RECOGNIZING LOCAL GOVERNMENT

Recognition would not cause an upheaval. Rather, it would allow the progressive development of local and regional management of appropriate functions, subject to national coordination and funding. Such an arrangement would probably see the state governments gradually contract into their capitals as de facto city governments. While the states would continue to be relevant as postal addresses, for the continuity of statistical data and state-of-origin rugby, their former “dominions”, in those remote parts beyond the outer suburbs, would enjoy greater autonomy. 

Constitutional amendments on local government must provide proper guidance on the status of municipal boundaries, which are frequently changed. Unless the continuing change of boundaries is included as an easily managed process, the map of municipalities will finish up like that of our states, an obstacle to good government.

Collaboration by local governments to form regional authorities which can deal directly with the national government on a particular sphere of responsibility should be embodied in the amendments, so that collaborating local governments can set up administrations that straddle state borders.

FUNCTIONAL REGIONS

The Commonwealth and state governments have already created regional administrations to manage many of their functions, each function having a characteristic regional structure.  Functional regions have three essential qualities: first, their geography is characterized by function, resulting in different boundaries and sizes of the regions for each function. Second, their shape and size varies over time, according to the scope of service needed, changes in population, the available infrastructure and technology. Third, their size is sufficient to maintain adequate expertise in their particular functions. Clearly, the boundaries of functional regions are not fixed; indeed, they should be flexible and imperceptible to their client communities.

As outlined above, there will be a natural disparity between the territorial coverage of the various functional regions. By contrast, the imposition of fixed regional boundaries on different functions would lead to widespread inefficiency, like the states, only worse. The functional regional structures for fire-fighting or waste re-cycling do not match each other, nor does either match the functional regions for schools or community health. Differences can be illustrated by observing the disparity in the numbers and sizes of regions created for the different administrative functions of government. But, each functional region could be adequately supervised by a panel or board drawn from the same pool of constituent local governments, giving local communities responsibility for priorities in the allocation of resources. The size of local government areas should be limited to ensure that their boundaries can be made consistent with functional regions without compromise.

Without this type of change, we are left with “cooperative federalism”  which, at best, is an apology for an archaic status quo that perpetuates the current dysfunctional centralism and reduces the effectiveness and efficiency of our democratic processes at every level.

The MYTH of COOPERATIVE FEDERALISM

By the end of the 19th century, the squabbling colonies had already cooperated to form a federation of squabbling states. At the start of the 21st century neither that federation nor the current inter-governmental arrangements provide an adequate basis for a modern system of government. The economic, social and political landscapes have changed, but our mode of governance has not been able to overcome its constitutional impediments, notwithstanding the admirable and constructive efforts of the High Court.

The desperation of the Commonwealth government to work within the status quo is indicated by its creation in 2008 of yet another government agency, ‘Regional Development Australia’, to “… ensure that all governments ...are responsive to local priorities and needs.”   and, by creating sixty-four new committees,  to “… reduce duplication and overlap”!  The the only way to reduce duplication is to reduce duplication. This unremarkable statement is not an opinion: it is a tautology. 

Duplication will be reduced by using the existing machinery of government in a more effective and productive way,  not by creating a raft of new committees. Thus we can reduce the number of layers and expense of government., a course of action that would also give the citizenry enhanced access to the machinery of government.

APPLICATIONs of SUBSIDIARITY

The subsidiarity principle can be applied to the management of water resources in the catchments of the Murray and the Darling rivers. These regional resources had been so  woefully mismanaged in the past that by 2007, the Ministerial Council for the Murray-Darling Basin, was acknowledged by the state governments involved to be a failure, if not a disaster. Consequently, the federal government, with the conditional support of the states, set up a new Commonwealth government agency, the Murray-Darling Basin Authority, responsible to a federal minister, to gradually take over from the states.

BUT, we must ask: is this progress, or retrogression? The arrangement effectively allows a government minister representing the democratic majority of twenty million, living in the coastal cities and their suburbs, to over-ride the wishes of the of the two million who actually live and work within the Murray-Darling basin. Here, we seem to have history about to repeat itself, this time on a national scale.

Under the former Commission, the basin’s resources were run according to the various priorities of the governments in the state capitals, representing the 75% of their  state populations. Now, it seems that the dictatorship by the majority will continue, with the dictating majority increased to 90%. There is a significant risk in this arrangement that influential minorities, typically ill-informed, or vested interests, should exploit our adversarial political system to hi-jack the government’s agenda, no matter how many grand plans it concocts. A recent example of the dictatorship of the majority is the imposition of wild rivers legislation on the people of Cape York,

The federal takeover of the water resources of the Murray Darling Basin is an example of centralization gone mad. It is NOT a national problem any more than is traffic congestion in Brisbane. Like traffic congestion, the management of the water resources of the Basin is a proper application for the principle of subsidiarity;  despite the immediate need for subsidiary federal money for its restitution, it remains a regional problem, which should therefore, be managed by representatives of the people of the region. Indeed, without the knowledge, support and participation of those people, the prospects for success in repairing the damage are slight, particularly in light of the plan for well-endowed coastal cities, such as Melbourne to take over 20% of its water supply from the basin. 

The sort of debacle unfolding in the Murray-Darling Basin is replicated in almost every sector of government responsibility. For example, the ‘home insulation program’ should have been undertaken by local government because it has about 100 years experience of that sort of thing, whereas the Commonwealth had none. From 2008, the Commonwealth government began imposing its ‘education revolution’ on the nation’s school communities; it involves new buildings, more computers and so on. A previous government had offered cash grants for government primary schools to erect flag-poles in their school grounds, but as part of an economic stimulus package, the current government has gone further, insisting that they shall have new buildings, whatever their preference. In education, the proper role for the national government is to provide resources beyond the scope of regional administrations, such as trained teachers, a coordinated curriculum, money, research facilities etc. The provision of buildings is better done locally, with back-up from the national government when required, not the other way round.

The health system is also being reorganized into an admirable structure with the federal government assuming national tasks and local networks proposed for providing services. Most local and regional stakeholders know what is needed and are capable of doing it. The role of the central government is to assure the coordinated provision of resources, information exchange, training, research etc.

However, the creation of regional organizations for water, education, health etc. will need strong community governance structures. The most appropriate, and the only practicable, basis for these structures is local government.