A recent article by Professor Peter Van Onselen (‘Cabinet acts globally and ignores the locals’, The Weekend Australian, 19th-20th June, 2021) has advocated that representatives of Australian local government have a place on national cabinet, which is currently composed of federal and state government ministers. Whatever the intrinsic merit of this proposal, caution should be undertaken when considering this particular reform. This is because the Murdoch press could again be attempting to re-engineer the eventual abolition of Australian states!
If states are to be ultimately abolished, then the way in which this will be achieved is by recognition in the constitution being granted to local government so that states can be by-passed to ensure that they (i.e., states) will eventually wither on the vine.
Indeed, in the last days of the Gillard government in 2013 legislation was passed authorizing a future constitutional referendum to recognize local government in the constitution so that this important tier of government - local government- can receive Commonwealth funding. Should such a constitutional referendum be held and carried then a regime will be put in place where the Commonwealth can eventually by-pass the states when it comes to service delivery and other important functions and representative roles which the states currently fulfill.
Australian Labor Party (ALP) and coalition governments at a state and a territory level are to be praised for the adept way in which they have handled the covid outbreak. State and territory bureaucracies by utilizing technological innovations such as contact tracing have been able to crucially help contain the spread of this extremely dangerous pandemic.
The Morrison federal government has also ably co-operated with the states to help effectively prevent the spread of the covid virus thereby illustrating what can be achieved when there is genuine bi-partisan federal-state co-operation.
However, if local government was to receive constitutional recognition, then this tier of government (i.e., local government) will gradually transform into a new supra level of government dominated by Canberra due to its ultimate control of the purse strings.
Consequently, the diversity and flexibility which the Australian body politic has enjoyed as a result of state governments (via their bureaucracies) being able to respond to specific macro public policy crisis (such as the covid pandemic) will be irretrievably lost. This scenario will eventuate if Canberra can usurp the representative functions of states via local government being granted constitutional recognition.
The return of Barnaby Joyce to the Nationals’ federal leadership in June 2021 is further reason for wariness concerning threats to states’ rights because Mr. Joyce is an opponent of this tier of government.