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6.0 This chapter argues that, if the virtues of federalism are
to be upheld in Australia, the States must attempt to maintain and
further develop the intergovernmental bodies that have arisen out
of the New Federalism of the 1990s. Only the ongoing participation
of Heads of Government in intergovernmental negotiations will allow
the sort of changes to Australian federalism needed to restore
fiscal and policy autonomy to the States. Only if some of these
bodies become permanent intergovernmental institutions will the
States be provided with the opportunity to convince the
Commonwealth that such changes are desirable.
6.1 One measure of the effectiveness of a federal system is the
capacity of the relations between the two levels of government to
adapt to the changing balance between unity and diversity, and
between competition and co-operation.
6.2 A great deal of policy change can proceed within the purview
of individual Australian governments. Governments will not always
want to pursue co-operative approaches to policy, and competitive
federalism will continue to provide a basis for experimentation and
flexibility in policy development.
6.3 However, in the current Australian federal system, there is
a wide range of policy areas in which one level of government
cannot act effectively on its own. Changes in these areas can be
achieved only with the co-operation of all Australian governments.
Changes to the federal system as a whole, including fundamental
changes to federal financial relations, also require the
co-operation of all Australian governments.
6.4 The policy changes which have arisen out of Hawke’s New
Federalism, and which have been discussed in the previous two
chapters, have been made possible by effective intergovernmental
co-operation. This co-operation has taken place in a range of new
intergovernmental bodies, as discussed in Chapter 3. These include
Heads of Government forums (particularly the Council of Australian
Governments and the Leaders’ Forum) and joint decision-making
bodies (Ministerial Councils and their associated national
agencies). The development of these bodies is one of the most
significant outcomes of the 1990s New Federalism.
6.5 The interdependence of Australian governments, which creates
the need for intergovernmental co-operation, suggests two possible
roles for intergovernmental bodies.
6.6 A possible role would be to redraw the boundaries of
responsibility for policy, in order to clarify each
government’s role. Intergovernmental bodies would be the
forums for resolving the questions of demarcation that are the
inevitable consequence of concurrent federalism.
6.7 Another possibility would be to create intergovernmental
bodies enabling governments to jointly make policy. This second
approach might be adopted where a clear division of roles is
impossible, and where it is believed that national decisions in
that policy area are best made jointly, by both the Commonwealth
and the States.
6.8 Intergovernmental bodies in the 1990s have played both these
roles. In some cases the decision has been taken to develop joint
decision-making bodies to continue into the future. In other cases,
the decision has been taken to pursue a clearer division of
responsibilities.
6.9 The end of systematic change in 1996 raises the question of
whether the intergovernmental bodies developed in the 1990s can or
should become permanent features of the Australian federal system.
If they are to become permanent features of Australian federalism,
it is necessary to determine what roles they are to play.
6.10 Where joint decision-making has been pursued, a broad
variety of devices has been used, with liberal borrowing both from
past Australian practice and from relevant practice in other
countries, adapted in a flexible and innovative manner. Joint
Commonwealth-State decision-making requires the Commonwealth to
abandon any assumption that a uniform national solution must be a
centralised one. It also requires the States to abandon a narrow
focus on state interests, and to consider the national interest in
a systematic way.1 Changes in the operation of Ministerial
Councils, and the use both of Ministerial Councils and of new
national agencies as joint decision-making bodies, have ensured
that the States play a role in national policy making, enabling the
Australian federal system to produce national policy that is not
determined solely by the Commonwealth. In some instances, such as
mutual recognition, a State has taken the lead - a significant
innovation in the shaping of national policy.
6.11 While joint decision-making bodies provide the States with
a voice in deciding national policy, they are not always compatible
with the virtues of federalism. In a strong federal system, there
must be room for each State to determine policy autonomously,
without having to adopt a uniform solution which may not best suit
its needs, whenever there is no overriding national imperative for
uniformity. Only when there is such an overriding imperative does
joint decision-making become appropriate.
6.12 The success of strong federalism in Australia would require
a fundamental change in fiscal relations between the Commonwealth
and the States. In the short term, this might be a decrease in the
proportion of Commonwealth grants which are conditional. In the
long term it will almost certainly require some form of significant
reform to federal fiscal relations and the federal distribution of
taxation powers.
Finding 13:
The intergovernmental bodies developed in the 1990s have brought
about a wide range of important changes in the Australian
federation. While some elements of competitive federalism have been
retained, there has been a significant increase in national
approaches to common problems, and the creation of joint
decision-making bodies. The fact that it is not the Commonwealth
alone that makes national decisions shows that, in a federal
system, national decision-making need not be centralised. It also
reflects a recognition of the greater interdependence of
governments.
Finding 14:
The Committee believes that for Australia to function as an
effective federal system, the system of intergovernmental relations
must uphold the following virtues of federalism:
- Decentralised decision-making which permits diverse responses
to regional needs;
- A competitive environment for public policy solutions;
- Multiple points of access to government for citizens;
- Unity where necessary, without central domination.
6.13 Between 1990 and 1998 the Heads of Government have met
twenty times to deal with the New Federalism agenda.2 Of necessity,
this process has occupied the extensive time and attention of
senior officials and the political leadership, particularly when
the numbers of Ministerial Councils, steering committees and
working groups that the Heads of Government meetings have spawned
are taken into consideration.
6.14 As long as this activity is well managed, and produces
results, it is likely to be sustained over time. However, if it is
seen to be producing little in the way of satisfactory outcomes,
the incentive to maintain the effort will lapse. Such a reduction
in effort reduces the likelihood of satisfactory outcomes, and will
therefore tend to produce a situation of positive feedback
rendering successful reform less and less likely, until the whole
process comes to a halt. The bureaucratic effort and political
capital to be expended will no longer be considered worthwhile.
6.15 Other factors are also important if the efforts of
governments are to be sustained while a program of change is under
way. These include electoral stability, bipartisan support, a
common view of federalism at the Commonwealth and at the State
level, and the receptivity of the public to change. The
Commonwealth and the States alternating proposals for change may
also help change proceed in a way acceptable to all
governments.
6.16 If governments are to reach agreement in controversial
areas, the agenda must be broad enough to generate an incentive for
all governments to participate. Only a large agenda, that permits
comprehensive negotiations and a balancing of gains and losses,
will permit all the participants to see possible benefits in
agreement.
6.17 Comprehensive negotiations of this sort cannot succeed
without the support and political leadership of the Heads of
Government, and demand the adoption of a whole-of-government
approach tightly controlled and driven from the top. The day-to-day
interaction of governments involves dozens of Ministers and senior
officials. However, only the Prime Minister, Premier or Chief
Minister, as the head of the cabinet and of the public service, is
capable of bringing together the diverse interests within
government to pursue a co-ordinated agenda, and to exercise the
bold leadership necessary to achieve large scale change.3 The
decision of the Council of Australian Governments to exercise more
effective control over Ministerial Councils was part of this
whole-of-government approach.
6.18 Successful whole-of-government management of
intergovernmental negotiation requires Heads of Government to
effectively marshal and employ the support of senior officials in
the central agencies. Only the central agencies are able to
overrule the entrenched power bases in Government Business
Enterprises and line departments. Until 1996, a combination of
senior officials from the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet
and the Commonwealth Treasury played this role at the Commonwealth
level, as did a similar group in most of the States.
6.19 This partnership between the political leadership and their
senior officials requires careful balance. If the bureaucrats reach
agreements that extend too far beyond their leaders’
commitments, the negotiations run the risk of being stalled at
critical moments. On the other hand, without bureaucratic support,
the ability of a Head of Government to make informed judgements
during complex negotiations will be reduced.
6.20 The Honourable Wayne Goss, former Premier of Queensland,
explained to the Committee the relationship between the senior
officials and the Heads of Government:
Mr GOSS - It is inevitable that
when you have people like Prime Ministers, Premiers and Territory
leaders who are all very busy, as most politicians are, when you
decide you want to do work in a particular area that requires
detail the bureaucrats will get a measure of control. The challenge
for the leaders is to set a clear direction where they want to go.
I remember the first meeting Richard Court came to in Melbourne
over Mabo which ended up in a shemozzle. Paul had his back
up and Richard Court had only been elected half an hour. Richard
came along to one of those Heads of Government meetings, which were
fairly high-powered. He walked into the room, looked around and saw
80 people and said, “I thought this was a meeting of
leaders to sort this out at a high level. Who are all these
people?” So we said, “Everyone out” and there was
just eight of us around the table.
Ms KOSKY - They would have died outside?
Mr GOSS - At that meeting in Melbourne they
stayed out for a day and a half, and some of them were very dirty
about it, mainly Commonwealth people.
Ms SMITH - Is that standard now?
Mr GOSS - It happens regularly.
Ms SMITH - Turfing the bureaucrats out?
Mr GOSS - Yes, and we just talked without the
audience and the pressure. We said, “This is effectively what
we want to achieve and this is the challenge”. If you are in
politics, as you know, and you let the bureaucracy do it, it will
do it. If you want to do it yourself or want it done according to
your own policy, you have to give the bureaucracy a clear
direction.4
6.21 The Honourable Nick Greiner, former Premier of New South
Wales, also discussed this matter with the Committee:
The impression I get from moving around
is that the Prime Minister and Heads of Government have lost
control of it [the Council of Australian Governments], partly
because they are not all that committed or interested. That is the
issue, and it is the right of central government. Without knowing,
I suspect that is the problem. When people say bureaucrats have
taken over, they are allowed to take over.5
6.22 The impetus for change to Australia’s federal system
arose from a conjunction of political conditions. Bob Hawke, a
Labor Prime Minister, and Nick Greiner, a Liberal Premier, shared
common goals of microeconomic liberalisation and Commonwealth-State
relations reform, as well as a common managerialist perspective on
government. The fact that all the other State Premiers were Labor
reduced differences among them over the agenda for change. The
combination of a strong leader among the Premiers and a consensus
oriented Prime Minister led to the adoption of a collaborative,
consensual approach. This bipartisan, Commonwealth-State political
commitment to the creation of a truly integrated national economy,
and to the rationalisation of government roles, ensured momentum at
the early stage.
6.23 The Hawke-Greiner partnership is symbolic of an implied
comprehensive exchange. The microeconomic liberalisation that the
Commonwealth was seeking would lead to uniformity of regulation,
and a lessening of State intervention in the economy. In return for
this reduction in their power, a realignment of roles and
responsibilities, in combination with fiscal reform, would grant
the States revenue and autonomy adequate to their expenditure
responsibilities. The agenda was broader under Hawke than at any
subsequent stage, and this comprehensive exchange seemed a real
possibility.6
6.24 This potential exchange collapsed in late 1991, with Paul
Keating’s challenge to the Labor leadership. Keating sensed
that Hawke did not have the support of the Labor caucus for fiscal
and program devolution, and proceeded from late October 1991 to
challenge Hawke largely on these grounds.7
6.25 However, even though Keating narrowed the scope of the
negotiations, the States continued to participate. There were
several reasons for this. First, some States regarded microeconomic
liberalisation on its own as an important goal, and recognised that
progress in such difficult areas as National Competition Policy
would require the co-operation of all governments. Second, the idea
of change had developed substantial momentum. In many areas,
negotiations had advanced so far during the Hawke period that it
would have been difficult to turn back. Business community and
media expectations of significant results from all the
Commonwealth-State meetings generated substantial public pressure.
Third, it is likely that some State leaders felt they could
eventually lever the Commonwealth back to their agenda.
6.26 In contrast to microeconomic liberalisation, there has been
a lack of a common approach to a realignment of program roles and
responsibilities. The Commonwealth Government itself appears to
have been divided from within on the desirability of change. The
central agencies of the Department of the Prime Minister and
Cabinet and the Treasury, and Prime Minister Hawke, had appeared
enthusiastic. However, Cabinet, the strong line departments with
program responsibilities, and the members of the Commonwealth Labor
Party caucus all seemed unable to contemplate a significantly
reduced role for the Commonwealth in major social program fields,
or the fiscal devolution that would make such a reduction
feasible.
6.27 These considerations suggest that one reason for
negotiations in health policy and other expenditure areas having
stalled early on may have been weak central oversight. The lack of
a whole-of-government approach limits the scope of reform to
movement barely beyond the status-quo.8 While negotiations
are conducted only by (for example) Health Ministers and their
officials, there will not be adequate scope for exchange and
compromise to occur. The change of government in 1996 interrupted
renewed efforts at negotiating changes in the areas of health and
housing begun in 1995. Since then, the lack of a concerted
whole-of-government approach has become a general problem.
6.28 The events of 1991 and 1996 suggest that a change in Prime
Ministership, whether resulting from a change in the leadership of
the governing party or from the election of a new Commonwealth
Government, will effect the direction of change in
intergovernmental relations, and may produce a natural hiatus in a
sustained movement for change. There will be uncertainty about the
new Prime Minister’s commitment to a process and an agenda set
by his predecessor, and there will inevitably be delays as the new
leadership becomes familiar with the issues, and establishes its
own trust with the bureaucracy and with other governments. These
delays can be exacerbated by the absence of a clearly articulated
intergovernmental agenda, and a preference for dealing with issues
on an individual basis, abandoning the whole-of-government
approach. A new government may also sense a general fatigue with
change in the broader community.
6.29 Without Commonwealth support, it is very difficult for
intergovernmental negotiations to proceed effectively. Professor
Glyn Davis, of the Centre for Australian Public Sector Management
at Griffith University, and a former Director-General of the
Queensland Cabinet Office, told the Committee:
Provided the Commonwealth commits to the
area, such as having the head of the Prime Minister’s
department chairing house committees, as he did for a while, there
will be fast movement. When the Commonwealth decides it is not an
important issue, it is hard to get anywhere.9
Finding 15:
From October 1990 until the end of 1995 there were eight meetings
of Australian Heads of Government (two Special Premiers
Conferences, one Heads of Government meeting and five meetings of
the Council of Australian Governments). Since the beginning of 1996
there have been only two meetings (both of the Council of
Australian Governments). This represents a halving of the frequency
of meetings, from eight in six years to two in three years. This
decline in the frequency of Heads of Government meetings suggests
that since 1996 the Commonwealth Government has not been committed
to the pursuit of a linked and comprehensive agenda for change to
the Australian federation, to be achieved by way of
intergovernmental decision-making.
Without the ongoing commitment of Commonwealth and State Heads of
Government, intergovernmental decision-making will be unable to
bring about comprehensive change to the Australian federal
system.
The Council of Australian
Governments
6.30 The Council of Australian Governments is a forum in which
both types of intergovernmental activity discussed above - joint
decision-making and the settlement of questions of demarcation -
take place.
6.31 To the extent that governments decide (implicitly or
explicitly) to abandon joint decision-making in favour of more
competitive approaches, they may ignore the Council of Australian
Governments and the other intergovernmental bodies developed in the
1990s. However, if these mechanisms of co-operation are not
maintained, they may cease to work altogether. This would leave the
States without an effective forum in which to meet and negotiate
with the Commonwealth.
6.32 The potential consequences for the States of allowing the
Commonwealth to act unilaterally are shown by the
Commonwealth’s unilateral changes to its industrial relations
laws. These changes have increased Commonwealth power.
6.33 When questions of demarcation between the levels of
government arise, the Council of Australian Governments provides a
forum for the States to lobby the Commonwealth Government. In those
policy areas where national uniformity is necessary, it provides
State Governments with an opportunity to take part in shaping
national policy solutions. It is therefore important that the
States attempt to keep these intergovernmental bodies meeting.
6.34 Indeed, it would be to the benefit of the States if
meetings of the Council of Australian Governments were legally
mandated. This would make it impossible for the Commonwealth to
avoid pressure from the States by simply failing to convene
meetings.
6.35 Professor Davis told the Committee:
The issue of the frequency of meetings
is important. I believe a set timetable for meetings would overcome
the tendency to postpone COAG meetings. It would be better to set
COAG meetings in advance and to have protocols for when State
elections are called. At present almost every time meetings are
held one State would either be having an election or be in election
mode. I do not see why protocols cannot be put in place to avoid
the postponement of meetings. When New South Wales held its
election in 1991 the outcomes of some seats were unclear. Although
Nick Greiner was still the leader of his party it was not clear
whether he would survive as a member of the lower house. So he
brought the opposition leader along with him to COAG and they both
sat through the meeting. To my mind that was a sensible way to
proceed. I do not see why any State in election mode could not do
the same.
If the times for COAG meetings are clearly set
Premiers could then take them into account when setting election
dates because they know they are obliged to be in a certain place
on certain days. That would be an important reform. Once fixed
meeting times are set you can put tighter time lines on working
parties, which do the bulk of the work for COAG. If those working
parties are chaired by the Commonwealth and the States participate
the States can send their best advocates to the meetings so that
you have a room full of people who know what they are talking
about, people who have the knowledge and time to work through the
issues. I believe that would be effective and positive and should
be encouraged.10
6.36 The Melbourne Constitutional Convention recommended that the
Council of Australian Governments
should be constituted by co-operative
Commonwealth, State and Territory legislation which: a) states the
guiding principles and objects of the Council (including those
adopted by the Meeting of Premiers and Chief Ministers in November
1991); b) requires the Council to meet at least twice per year and
report after each meeting to the Commonwealth, State and Territory
parliaments.11
6.37 Since 1990 there have been two Special Premiers Conferences,
one Heads of Government meeting and seven Council of Australian
Governments meetings. That there have been ten meetings in eight
years suggests that mandating twice-yearly meetings would be
excessive. A requirement that the Council meet at least once per
year, as was originally agreed when the Council was formed, would
be more appropriate (the mandate should make it clear that the
Council may meet more frequently if its members so desire).
6.38 An alternative to a legislative mandate would be a
Constitutional one, inserted into the Constitution by a referendum.
This would likely be no more difficult to achieve than co-operative
legislation passed by the Commonwealth and all the States, and
would be more secure, making it impossible for any single party to
destroy the arrangement by repealing its legislation. Any concerns
that a Constitutional mandate would be too rigid and inflexible
could be allayed by granting the Commonwealth Parliament power to
legislate to vary the composition of the Council, and the frequency
of meetings, if requested to do so by the Parliaments of all the
States.
6.39 It is worth noting that neither a legislative nor a
Constitutional mandate need give the Council of Australian
Governments any legal powers. The purpose of such a mandate would
not be to alter the way in which the Council works, but merely to
ensure that meetings are held on a regular basis.
Finding 16:
The existing framework for intergovernmental relations in Australia
must be further developed, if the virtues of federalism are to be
upheld. Legally mandated meetings of the Council of Australian
Governments would be one way to enhance Australian
intergovernmental relations.
6.40 As a States-only body with a focus on intergovernmental
issues, the Leaders’ Forum is as significant to the States as
the Council of Australian Government. The importance of inter-State
communication and co-operation was emphasised to the Committee by
Mr Gary Sturgess, a former Director-General of the Cabinet Office
of New South Wales:
I do not see that kind of communication
going on at present. I do not see Premiers working together or
officials establishing personal relationships across States or with
Federal bureaucrats. If the Premiers were minded to do so, they
could collectively design strategies that would produce strong
positions from a national perspective that suited the States’
interests and put those arguments in such a way that Canberra felt
it needed to come to COAG to discuss them.12
6.41 The importance of a body such as the Leaders’ Forum was
acknowledged by the Melbourne Constitutional Convention:
There should be a Council of Premiers
and Chief Ministers which should meet regularly to initiate,
discuss and resolve matters of mutual interest and concern in the
national interest.13
6.42 In the event that the States wish to resist Commonwealth
incursions into areas of State activity, the Leaders’ Forum
provides an important opportunity for State Governments to develop
a united stand. Such a united stand increases the strength of the
States’ bargaining position when they subsequently meet with
the Commonwealth.
6.43 Also, and perhaps more significantly, the Leaders’
Forum allows the States to initiate and to participate in national
policy development where Commonwealth involvement is either not
forthcoming or not necessary. Effective operation of the
Leaders’ Forum will increase the pressure on the Commonwealth
Government to make the Council of Australian Governments an
effective intergovernmental forum, in which the Commonwealth is
able to co-operate with the States in shaping national policy.
Moreover, there are many policy areas in which national uniformity,
if it is desirable, can be achieved by the States acting together,
without the need for Commonwealth legislation. The Financial
Institutions Agreement (which underlies the national regime of
regulation of non-bank financial institutions) is an example of
State Governments developing such a States-only national policy
solution.
Finding 17:
The Leaders’ Forum provides an opportunity for concerted
action by the States in furtherance of the virtues of federalism,
and enhances the operation of the Council of Australian Governments
as a forum for co-operation between the Commonwealth and the
States. Where the national interest demands national uniformity in
a particular policy area, the Leaders’ Forum in many cases
will be able to pursue a States-based scheme of mutual recognition
or uniform legislation, which enhances national integration without
Commonwealth domination.
6.44 Professor Cheryl Saunders, Director of the Centre for
Comparative Constitutional Studies at the University of Melbourne,
argued before the Committee that the Council of Australian
Governments should be provided with a permanent secretariat:
I have wondered about this myself. If
the heads of Australian government only meet once or twice a year
for one day, for them to get the agenda and main documents two days
before the meeting seems to me the most extraordinary way to run
the country. . . I have wondered over the years whether there
shouldn’t have been some sort of COAG secretariat that had a
life of its own, whose job it was to produce supporting papers, to
draw upon the experts and so on.14
6.45 The Honourable John Bannon, former Premier of South Australia,
told the Committee:
I strongly advocate that the more those
two forums [the Council of Australian Governments and the
Leaders’ Forum] can be strengthened by research, support and
administrative continuity and other things that actually give them
an ongoing role, the better. It is very much in the States’
interests for that to happen because it is a very good interface
with the Commonwealth at the highest level but it is also good for
the Commonwealth too. It is only through those forums that we will
be able to seriously deal with this duplication issue.15
6.46 Currently, it is principally officers serving in the central
agencies of the Commonwealth and State Governments who provide
policy and administrative support to the Council of Australian
Governments and to the Leaders’ Forum. As the discussion in
the previous section indicated, this leaves the development of the
intergovernmental agenda acutely dependent on the political
commitment of the participating governments, particularly the
Commonwealth Government.16 It is of course governments, and
particularly Heads of Government, who must ultimately engage in
intergovernmental negotiations and make intergovernmental
decisions. But a permanent intergovernmental secretariat or
commission, which had as its role the ongoing provision of policy
and administrative support to intergovernmental meetings, could
nevertheless play a significant role. Particularly if
intergovernmental meetings were legally mandated, such a
secretariat or commission could facilitate the preparation of the
agendas for meetings, ensure continuity in intergovernmental
processes between meetings, and generally assist in the transition
of existing intergovernmental bodies from intermittent meetings to
ongoing institutions.
6.47 As there are two principal intergovernmental bodies - the
Council of Australian Governments and the Leaders’ Forum - the
Melbourne Constitutional Convention recommended the establishment
of two permanent intergovernmental secretariats:
[The Council of Australian Governments]
should be constituted by co-operative Commonwealth, State and
Territory legislation which . . . requires an adequately funded and
resourced secretariat.17
The work of the Council [of Premiers and Chief
Ministers] should be adequately resourced and co-ordinated by a
properly funded secretariat.18
6.48 The suggestion of a permanent secretariat serving the Council
of Australian Governments faces a difficulty that is not faced by
the suggestion of a similar body serving the Leaders’ Forum.
As the Council of Australian Governments is a forum for
intergovernmental negotiation as well as intergovernmental
co-operation, its work quite often involves political conflict and
political compromise at the highest level. In such an environment,
it is not obvious that a secretariat would be able to operate free
of partisan loyalty, either to the Commonwealth or to the States.
This difficulty would not apply to a secretariat serving the
Leaders’ Forum. Although the interests of various State
Governments may from time to time conflict, there is no systemic
conflict of the sort that exists between the Commonwealth and the
States.
6.49 However, despite this difficulty, a permanent secretariat
serving the Council of Australian Governments would be a
development potentially of considerable benefit to the States. By
contributing to the institutionalisation of these intergovernmental
bodies, it would reduce the control the Commonwealth currently has
over the agenda of Australian intergovernmental relations.
6.50 The role of a permanent secretariat serving the
Leaders’ Forum could extend further than the role so far
considered. In its Second and Final Report, the South Australian
Constitutional Advisory Council recommended that
The Premiers and Chief Ministers should
revive previous suggestions for establishing a permanent States and
Territories Secretariat in Canberra. It could aid the States and
Territories in developing a common position on many policy issues.
Such a Secretariat could also conduct joint negotiations with the
Commonwealth in much the same way as the National Governors’
Association in the USA negotiates with the government in Washington
in the long intervals between heads of government meetings.19
A permanent secretariat serving the Leaders’ Forum could
provide a focus for State negotiations with the Commonwealth, and
provide support to State Ministers and officers participating in
joint decision-making bodies with the Commonwealth. The secretariat
would be well-placed to assess the operation of these bodies, to
determine whether they are pursuing national uniformity only when
the national interest demands it, and whether the States are able
to play an effective role in reaching joint decisions.
6.51 Such a secretariat could also undertake an important
communications role. Currently the media do not have access to a
single coherent States’ voice on intergovernmental issues. A
secretariat would be able to facilitate the flow of information on
intergovernmental issues to the community, the media and to State
Parliaments.
6.52 If the role of a secretariat serving the Leaders’
Forum were to be developed in this way, it would be important that
the secretariat represent the interests of the States as a whole,
and not just the interests of particular States. One way to ensure
this, while also ensuring that the secretariat remained in touch
with the requirements of Heads of Government, would be for
responsibility for these aspects of the secretariat’s work to
rotate on a regular basis among the Premiers and Chief Ministers.
There are eight States and Territory Governments, each with a
typical duration of four years (the Australian Capital Territory
and Queensland have three year terms). A six-monthly period of
rotation would give responsibility for the secretariat’s
communication and negotiation work to each Head of Government
approximately once per term.
6.53 Effective intergovernmental relations are essential if the
Australian federation is to be strengthened and the virtues of
federalism upheld. If the intergovernmental bodies that have been
created as part of the 1990s New Federalism do not continue to be
used, and to develop their institutional character, the States will
be left without effective forums in which to pursue the national
interest while preventing Commonwealth domination of Australian
policy-making.
6.54 There are a number of ways in which intergovernmental
bodies might be given a more institutional character. Legally
mandating meetings of the Council of Australian Governments would
be one such way. So would the creation of a permanent
intergovernmental secretariat to serve the Council of Australian
Governments. A similar secretariat to serve the Leaders’ Forum
would enhance the ongoing operation of that body, and also
facilitate further co-operation and communication by the States on
intergovernmental matters.
6.55 Before making any detailed recommendations concerning these
and other possibilities for developing Australian intergovernmental
bodies, the Committee wishes to consider fully the forms taken by
intergovernmental institutions in other federal systems. The ways
in which other federations have structured their intergovernmental
arrangements is an important source of information to assist in
making recommendations for the Australian case. This will be the
subject of this Committee’s Third Report. The Committee would
also welcome any feedback on this report from those interested in
the development and enhancement of the Australian system of
intergovernmental relations.
Report adopted Tuesday October 13th 1998.
RETURN TO TOP
1Wayne Goss,
Restoring the Balance: The Future of the Australian Federation,
Federalism Research Centre, Australian National University,
Canberra, 1995.
2This includes ten
meetings of Premiers and Chief Ministers only.
3Consultant’s
interviews with senior officials; Patrick Weller,
Commonwealth-State Reform Processes, Department of Prime Minister
and Cabinet, Canberra, 1995; Martin Painter, The COAG and
Intergovernmental Cooperation, Federalism Research Centre,
Australian National University, Canberra, 1995.
4Minutes of
Evidence, FSRC, June 26th 1997, pp 506-7 (per The Hon W Goss).
5Minutes of
Evidence, FSRC, February 28th 1997, pp 287-8 (per The Hon N
Greiner).
6Christine
Fletcher and Cliff Walsh, Intergovernmental Relations in Australia:
Managerialist Reform and the Power of Federalism, Discussion Paper
No 4, Federalism Research Centre, Australian National University,
Canberra, 1991.
7Paul Keating, The
Commonwealth and the States and the November Premiers Conference,
Speech delivered to the National Press Club, Canberra, October 22nd
1991.
8Weller, above n
3.
9Minutes of
Evidence, FSRC, June 26th 1997, p 468 (per Professor G Davis).
10Minutes of
Evidence, FSRC, June 26th 1997, pp 474-5 (per Professor G
Davis).
11Melbourne
Convention, Final Communique, March 5th 1998.
12Minutes of
Evidence, FSRC, September 11th 1997, pp 858 (per Mr G
Sturgess).
13Melbourne
Convention, Final Communique, March 5th 1998.
14Minutes of
Evidence, FSRC, April 15th 1997, p 379 (per Professor C
Saunders).
15Minutes of
Evidence, FSRC, July 4th 1997, p 710 (per The Hon J Bannon).
16See above,
para 6.29, p 135.
17Ibid.
18Ibid.
19South
Australian Constitutional Advisory Council, Final Report, Adelaide,
1996, pp 78-9.
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