Montesquieu's writings on the doctrine of separation of powers heavily influenced the American founding fathers such as Madison and Hamilton. The American Presidential system has proven to be one of the most stable and clean political systems. Yet other Presidential systems have proven open to usurpation by dictators and tyrants.

The Parliamentary system in comparison was an emergent system that grew out of the need to route power away from a Monarch while still maintaining their ceremonial authority. It mixes the executive and legislative arms of government, yet has proven a fairly stable form of liberal democracy.

It is fair to say that an future evolutionary form of Australian Government, at the state and federal level will have to incorporate a parliamentary system. There are many well established conventions and the Australian people are familiar with the system. Consequently, the positives and negatives of the parliamentary system need to be understood so any evolutionary system encourages the former and inhibits the latter.

Checks and Balances

Montesquieu divided the political sphere into sovereign and administrative. The monarch occupied the sovereign component and the administrative was dominated by the executive, legislative and judicial arms. This is the separation of powers. They are defined by;

• The executive executes laws.
• The legislative makes laws.
• The judicial interprets laws.

For example in a libertarian civic society. The Executive runs the police force. The Legislative makes the laws that the police force enforces and the Judicial interprets those laws to determine any punitive measures against offenders. That is government at its most simplest. Nothing about health, education, roads, child-care, tax-breaks, etc etc etc.

Oneness

An aspect of Montesquieu's political philosophy is that the separation of powers is at its most strongest when no individual can occupy a position in more than one branch of government at the one time. In Madison's implementation of this philosophy in the American republic, separation of powers is the means by which liberty is preserved and government's predilection to tyranny inhibited.

From the Federalist Paper No.47;

One of the principal objections inculcated by the more respectable adversaries to the Constitution, is its supposed violation of the political maxim, that the legislative, executive, and judiciary departments ought to be separate and distinct. In the structure of the federal government, no regard, it is said, seems to have been paid to this essential precaution in favour of liberty. The several departments of power are distributed and blended in such a manner as at once to destroy all symmetry and beauty of form, and to expose some of the essential parts of the edifice to the danger of being crushed by the disproportionate weight of other parts. No political truth is certainly of greater intrinsic value, or is stamped with the authority of more enlightened patrons of liberty, than that on which the objection is founded.

The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.

Madison saw that having those department's wholly separate from each other an operating in isolation was just as dangerous to liberty as having their powers collapsed into one person. Madison sought to tap the natural negative passions of humanity in the American implementation of Montesquieu's separation of powers, so that the three arms of government were balanced against each other in a kind of natural harmony. Where each arm would be maintaining a watchdog on each other. Protecting their own arm's influence and power while ensuring that the other arms do not gain more influence and power - especially at their own expense.

The magistrate in whom the whole executive power resides cannot of himself make a law, though he can put a negative on every law; nor administer justice in person, though he has the appointment of those who do administer it. The judges can exercise no executive prerogative, though they are shoots from the executive stock; nor any legislative function, though they may be advised with by the legislative councils. The entire legislature can perform no judiciary act, though by the joint act of two of its branches the judges may be removed from their offices, and though one of its branches is possessed of the judicial power in the last resort. The entire legislature, again, can exercise no executive prerogative, though one of its branches constitutes the supreme executive magistracy, and another, on the impeachment of a third, can try and condemn all the subordinate officers in the executive department.

In the United States we see this balancing act in the appointment of Judges to the Supreme Court. The Executive nominates judges. The Legislative has to confirm those appointments.

Governor-General and Prime Minister

In the Australian Parliamentary systems, the Executive is the Governor or Governor-General. The Legislative is the upper and lower houses. In the case of the States it is the Legislative Assemblies and Legislative Councils. For the Commonwealth Government it is the Senate and House of Representatives.

Parliamentary systems have an Executive Council that is composed of the chair and the Executive Cabinet. The Governor or Governor-General is the head of the Executive Council. The Prime Minister or Premier heads the Executive Cabinet who advises the Governor-General or Governor respectively. The cabinet is composed of senior ministers in the majority government such as the Treasurer and Foreign Minister.

A formal reading of the Australian Constitution would have the reader believe all Executive Authority is contained in the Governor-General as the Queen's representative. There is no mention of the position of Prime Minister. Section's 60 through 62 contain the mention of the Executive Council;

61. The executive power of the Commonwealth is vested in the Queen and is exercisable by the Governor-General as the Queen's representative, and extends to the execution and maintenance of this Constitution, and of the laws of the Commonwealth.

62. There shall be a Federal Executive Council to advise the Governor-General in the government of the Commonwealth, and the members of the Council shall be chosen and summoned by the Governor-General and sworn as Executive Councillors, and shall hold office during his pleasure.

63. The provisions of this Constitution referring to the Governor-General in Council shall be construed as referring to the Governor-General acting with the advice of the Federal Executive Council.

The Governor-General is largely a ceremonial position whose Executive powers don't extend far beyond commissioning governments, dissolving parliament and writs for elections. There is also the gnarly reserve powers. The implied power of the Governor-General to dissolve an elected government. This occurred when John Kerr removed the Gough Whitlam Government in 1975, and in NSW when Phillip Game removed the government of Jack Lang during 1932.

The informal power of the Executive arm of government is completely tied up in the Prime Minister and Executive Cabinet. Australia practices one of the most absolute forms of party discipline, consequently most of the Executive power is tied into the Prime Minister. Backbenchers are nothing more than numbers for the policies of the Prime Minister when bills come to parliamentary vote. This is true for the House of Representatives and Senate.

A Foot On Each Bank of the Murrumbidgee

The Australian Prime Minister and State Premiers have a foot in two arms of government; the Executive and Legislative. The Prime Minister and Premiers have control over what laws are enacted, how those laws are funded and how they are implemented. Courtesy of party discipline, the will of the Prime Minister is rarely, if ever crossed.

This congruence of the Executive and Legislative powers is the weakness in the Parliamentary system and where liberty requires the maximum protection. A Prime Minister can write a tyrannous law. Through party discipline can have it passed in the House of Representatives and Senate. Through convention the ceremonial Governor-General passes it. The Prime Minister, through the offices of the Executive; such as the Australian Federal Police, Australian Defence Force, Immigration Department etc; can then execute that law in an arbitrary manner.

We might scoff thinking we are a reasonable people, with a reasonable government, and that this it will never happen in Australia. But Australians are human too, and suffer from the negative passions as much as anyone else from other nations. Australian government history is littered with instances of tyranny against minorities and individuals.

Violence of Faction

Party discipline is very strong in Australia. Conscience voting in the House of Representatives and Assemblies is almost unheard of. Another issue with parties or factions is their potential violence. Once they reach the majority in government, they can use the monopoly on violence and coercion of the government to punish their opponents. Violence can be open, and include baton wielding police and military; it can also be insidious. Other examples of the violence of faction include;

• Abolition of the secret ballot
• Electoral Fraud
• Malapportionment

In the parliamentary system faction can also play a positive as well as negative role. As scrymarch noted, factions can be used to tack upstream against the political opinion of the majority. The change from protectionist policies to economic rationalism, and the volatility those policies entailed, is a good example of this.

Ironically it is likely that the factional structure of the majority government is what keeps the Prime Minister position from becoming a permanent dictator. Westminster systems suffer from a slow oscillation in the change of government, but this preferable to a usurper illegally claiming the Executive position.

The negative passions of humans include the desire for more power, and the desire to rule others in an absolute manner. In a liberal democracy the closest thing to this is the Prime Minister or Premier position. For every Prime Minister there is a Parliament full of Representatives who desire that position. A Prime Minister that reaches too far will be challenged by others wanting the throne.

The Prime Minister is not an elected position, those that occupy it do so at the pleasure and patience of the majority party. A President is a singular elected position and more open to being usurped for it. This does not mean that Parliamentary government is superior to a Presidential system. Both have their advantages and disadvantages.

Protecting Liberty

The straddling of the Prime Minister and Executive Cabinet across two arms of government is a cause for concern. It makes the enacting and execution of tyrannous laws particularly easy. In the case of minorities and individuals who have no representation in Parliament, it places them at undue risk to be subject to such laws.

The Australian Republic must first protect liberty. The operation of government is a secondary concern. For the purposes of equity, the Governor-General position must be popularly elected and have the confidence and legitimacy that stems from it. By the same token the Governor-General and Prime Minister must not be squabbling over who has the real Executive authority in the Westminster government.

Taking the protection of liberty and a popularly elected Governor-General as starting points this suggests the role of the Governor-General should be the enforcement of a Bill of Rights. Stopping repugnant and tyrannous legislation that comes from the Parliament. The Bill of Rights will serve to codify the legislation that the Governor-General can veto. If the Governor-General steps outside of that authority, it is impeachment time.

This role for the Governor-General protects the rights of the individual, but does not take in the potential for that role to be polluted by party discipline. Another arm of government is needed, a Fourth Estate in addition to the Executive, Legislative and Judicial. These are the Ratifiers. This is group of individuals, approximately one percent of the population at any time, that are chosen by sortition to give their vote to a particular bill.

The Ratifiers cannot vote yes for a bill, they can only vote no or abstain. An opt-out form of bill voting. They also do not contribute to the debate on a bill as Ratifiers. they can contribute as citizens, but not as Ratifiers. Being a Ratifier on a bill infers no title or authority. They are an anonymous group. A secret ballot for a legislative bill.

The Ratifiers are there as a statistical weight against party politics to stop truly repugnant legislation from ever getting to the Governor-General.

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A race condition in software is a bug where two concurrent systems act independently but also interdependently to provide unexpected outcomes. The Australian Constitution contains a potential race-condition between the Governor-General and Prime Minister.

The Australian Constitution requires that the Governor-General in Council must follow the advice of the Executive Council. This is the Executive Cabinet which is headed by the Prime Minister. Yet Section 61 lays all formal executive power in the Governor-General;

The executive power of the Commonwealth is vested in the Queen and is exercisable by the Governor-General as the Queen's representative, and extends to the execution and maintenance of this Constitution, and of the laws of the Commonwealth.

In Section 5 the Governor-General has the authority to dissolve parliament, and then not let any parliament to site for twelve months. The Governor-General could also appoint, and refuse to appoint ministers;

The Governor-General may appoint officers to administer such departments of State of the Commonwealth as the Governor-General in Council may establish.

Such officers shall hold office during the pleasure of the Governor-General. They shall be members of the Federal Executive Council, and shall be the Queen's Ministers of State for the Commonwealth.

So the Governor-General can appoint ministers in departments the Executive Council have advised the Governor-General in Council to exist. Section 64 was the clause used by John Kerr to remove the Whitlam government.

The two faced Governor-General

There are two constitutional faces to the Governor-General. The Governor-General and the Governor-General in Council . The former has the entire formal executive power in their office, including command of the military. The latter must take the advice of the Executive Cabinet and can be removed from their position by the Executive Cabinet. Yet the same position can sack a government, remove the ministers and call an election.

This is the race condition.

There have been two dismissals in Australian political history. The Whitlam dismissal at the federal level, and the dismissal of Jack Lang in NSW by Governor Phillip Game in 1932. There is no guarantee that the next Prime Minister faced with the possible dissolution of their government try to sack the Governor-general first.

If Australia does fall into dictatorship, it will be done constitutionally by a Governor-General with flat-out appeals to the constitutionality of the process of usurpation. This would also be impossible without the military's backing.

The whole reason the Australian system doesn't fall over is through the principle of responsible government. But the past has shown that governments do not follow that principle when it is not on their interests. Some of the events that led to the Whitlam dismissal were because responsible government was not adhered to.

Constitutional rejuvenation, either as a republic, or just constitutional care-taking must force the Governor-General or President to only have one constitutional face - one without any ambiguity at all.

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Bryan Palmer has an article on ozpolitics that what is deemed constitutional is ultimately in the hands of the Judicial and not legislative fiat. The High Court under the doctrine of separation of powers is the highest authority to interpret the Australian constitution. But our Westminster style of constitutional law makes government complex and unknowable from the citizen's point of view. It is a fair expectation, in my opinion, that a constitutional system can be read explicitly by a citizen to understand the limits of their government.

Overreach

I recently made a quick comment on Polemica about the report from the Department of Education on establishing an Australian Certificate of Education. In that comment I pointed out that Part V of the Australian Constitution contains no explicit language on education.

While I think an Australian Certificate of Education is a good example of rampant anti-federalism; demanding compliance from the states, without explicit authority, and most likely without funding; there is warning in there for the constitution to move so far from its concrete bounds that it isn't easily understandable.

The constitution acts as the citizens contract with government. It places distinct limits on the actions of the executive, legislative, judicial and government. If the weight of legislation that has been judged by the high court is sufficiently outside of an explicit reading of the constitution it becomes not readily knowable to the citizenry.

Government evolves into an arcane area of complexity and specialisation beyond the general understanding of the citizenry. Since government is drawn from the people, this is a barrier to civic participation and understanding.

In analogy to the principle of make enough laws and everyone is a criminal; a poorly written constitution that is not explicit, will ultimately result in nearly everything being constitutional.

If a citizen is trying to understand whether education is a valid area of federal authority, then they will look to the constitution for that word. I think it is fair that they would expect to find it.

Judicial Doctrines

It does not help that differing doctrines have been followed by the Australian High Court since its inception. From Samuel Griffiths' highly states' rights denial of the constitution he helped write, to Lionel Murphy's doctrine of the constitution being a living and breathing document that the judicature can breath life into - if the referendum process cannot.

We give the Judicial branch tenure with the goal of making them non-political positions, presumably populated by specialists. Yet most of the appointments are highly political and judges are more likely to be drawn from the political ranks than the heights of legal achievement.

This structure provides an entropy of growth that is incapable of contracting. The only possible outcomes are the stasis or expansion of constitutional law- not contraction.

Conclusion

Australia does have a Westminster tradition where constitutional law can be embodied across many acts and court decisions. This is an ineffective way to reign in expansive central government; a particular problem in federal systems where the central government will vie for tax and policy authority with the states.

Possible solutions;

• A tight and inflexible constitution at the federal level
• An energetic executive arm that can force bills to be tested by the judicial for constitutionality before they are signed into law (Think workchoices, if it is over-turned it will cause problems for employers having to return to the state systems. If there was doubt, it should have been tested before becoming law)
• A bicameral judicature with a lower jury chosen from the citizenry to actively review executive actions and legislative bills. (I know of one CFC entry being written with a highly innovative approach to the judicature!)
• Periodically rejuvenate the constitution to collapse it to a single bill/document (Canada and Queensland recently did this)

With globalisation moving activity from small arcane groups of the elite to the wider citizenry, the tight industrial structures are starting to collapse and fray under the pressure.

Westminster government is an industrial structure. It will have to introduce ratification, sortitionist and spontaneous citizen involvement in government itself. This is necessary just to remain relevant, let alone strengthening the civic, social, cultural and economic health of Australia.

One of the best examples of group wisdom is the economy. It is a highly decentralised structure. Mutual funds, index funds and spyders are examples of trader simplifying the system for citizens. Like any good market, the mountain came to Muhammad, and not the opposite.

Australian constitutional government will have to do the same, and come to its citizens.

James McConvill has an article on online opinion titled, Australia's constitution is constrained by people power . Pretty tough headline, however the Online Opinion editors will often modify or create a new headline that they believe will fit the article best. It may not be McConvill's title but matches his argument which is that alteration to the Australian Constitution should not be via popular referendum but instead by parliamentary a majority in a joint sitting.

McConvill writes;

Supporters of the Australian constitution will obviously dispute this, referring doubters to section 128 of the constitution, which provides that it is only the voting public who can change the constitution, by way of referendum. Thus, unlike the United States constitution which can be amended by congressional vote (and approval of two-thirds of state legislatures), Australian citizens really have power when it comes to their constitution.

But in my view, this "power to the people" approach to amending our constitution is the major problem with the document. Counter-intuitively, giving power to the voting public to change the constitution has resulted in a stale document reflecting the attitudes and values of our dead ancestors, rather than a living document representative of our community today.

There is often talk about the need for constitutional reform in Australia, but rarely, if ever, is the referendum process for changing the constitution raised as an aspect of our constitution being in need of change. It should be.

Surprisingly, McConvill is not against the three forms of majority the Australian constitution requires - a majority in both houses of Parliament, a majority of states and a majority of the popular vote - he is against the public referendum process altogether.

Australia was one of the first nations to try and formalise a Westminster system into a single constitutional document. For instance the UK still does not have a formal constitution, and Canada only recently collapsed its multitude of acts that informally made up their constitution into one document. New Zealand does not have a formal constitution, nor do Western Australia, Tasmania and South Australia.

A constitution as the highest law in the land places restriction on the governmental process and is by definition a conservative document. The formal document is also seen as a means to moderate violent minority faction, as a consequence any amendment that may entrench discrimination or violence against a minority is protected by referendums that require a majority.

This is not true in all Westminster systems, the NSW Constitution [pdf] being an example. The NSW Constitution is essentially a statutory bill rather than a constitutional one. Parts of it are entrenched and certain sections require a Parliamentary majority to be changed , but it is a statutory document and not as conservative as the Australian Constitution.

McConvill is arguing that Parliamentarians in the federal system should be perceived as statutory and constitutional specialists and experts, giving the Parliament the power to alter the constitution. I do not agree with this.

Parties are themselves a minority, even though we give them the appearance of majority backing by democratic elections, party members numbers are tiny minorities and the party-machine itself is a minority of a minority. It leaves the public dependent on a party's good liberalist manners that they won't enact discriminative and violent clauses in the constitution.

McConvill argues that the Australian referendum system is too difficult to get anything to pass;

Since federation, there have been 44 referenda in Australia in which only eight have been successful. Despite consistent commentary that proposed referenda have been rejected because the public are protective of their constitution, this is far from true. Rather, Australians are a conservative bunch who when faced with change - even positive change - that they don't fully understand, vote to maintain or restore the status -quo. No more is this true than when it comes to referenda in Australia.

I would have more empathy with the argument that the majority of states clause be dropped - something I would be in favour of - however. McConvill's argument does not survive empirical scrutiny . When the referendums are categorised, Australian voters are over-whelmingly rejecting centralisation at the federal level ;

This suggests that if the Federal Government stopped trying to expand their power through the referendums then voters may listen sufficiently to vote in favour of them.

McConvill argues that Australian voters are not likely to vote in a referendum that takes away their voting rights in referendums - something which fits entirely with the above graph - so the best way to achieve it is to have the Parliament introduce a new Constitution and replace the existing constitution in its entirety, leaving out section 128;

One way around this, however, is to just get rid of the current constitution in its entirety. Section 128 of the constitution says that a referendum is required to "alter" the constitution, but it is my contention that this process would not apply if a new constitution was enacted by the Federal Parliament to repeal the existing one. The new constitution could be brought before the Federal Parliament for debate as early as the next session. Much of the existing constitution could be retained, but there would be some important changes to be made.

First, the referendum process would be gone. Instead, a change to the constitution would require a positive vote of an absolute majority of the Federal Parliament at a joint sitting.

That is too radical, won't fly and is not politically achievable anyway. Certainly not with a Howard Government facing election next year in what is appearing at this stage to be a tight race.

The Australian Constitution does need reform, a century of operation has exposed structural inconsistencies that need updating as Australia has tried to shoe-horn republican principles of government into a Westminster system.

As much as I prefer the idea of a separate executive, it is not politically achievable with an Australian electorate who is comfortable with the incongruities of the Prime Minister position; however an immediate target for reform is the Senate, in particular making it Legislatively independent of the Executive and adding explicit constitutional language for the Senate to become an active check and balance on the Executive.

The referendum process has been so static and stagnant because so many of the referendums have been to centralise more power in Canberra. Of the areas needing constitutional reform, the referendum process does not rank highly.

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With the current political focus on the 'citizenship test' it is inevitable that Australian ignorance of civics will be focused upon as a counter argument. Citizenship through accidents of birth proves that civic knowledge is not intrinsic to hereditary citizenship. Stuart Macintyre argues that the main issue is the Australian Constitution's inability to excite civic enthusiasm.

George Williams asks four questions:

• Does Australia have a written constitution?
• What is Australia's top court?
• Does Australia have a bill of rights?
• When did Aboriginal people get the vote?

He answers himself in the newspaper article. In a survey done in 1987, 47% of respondents were unaware that Australia had a written or formal constitution. In 1994 a quarter of respondents to a survey thought the highest court in Australia was the Supreme Court which is America's highest federal court.

This year in a Morgan poll, 61% of respondents thought Australia has a bill of rights (so why don't we again? especially if a majority already thinks we do?) and finally Williams writes that most Australians think the Aboriginal People got the vote in the referendum change of 1967 rather than 1962. Though in that final claim he does not back it up with polling data.

So is it a failure of civic education? Stuart Macintyre argues that the problem is intrinsic to our constitution: it fails to excite enthusiasm, consequently we "resent the exercise of government and despise our civic status".

From Macintyre's essay, The New Republican Temper;

One of the striking defects of the Commonwealth as a mechanism of government and administration is that it manifestly fails to excite enthusiasm. Indeed, it scarcely impinges on the consciousness of its citizens - a survey has indicated that more young Australians know of the constitution of the United States of America than their own country. And the failure of civic awareness, the absence of binding ritual and the inability of Australians to take seriously the form of their polity is driven home by the dissatisfaction of those Western Australian informants.

Here, I believe, the deficiency of the Commonwealth constitution is acute. Australia still operates with a constitutional monarchy, with a federal compact shaped by the pre-existence of the colonies, with constitutional forms that assume the juridical status of subject than citizen and with constitutional documents that originated as British statutes and assume the bulk of British governmental status.

Our notion of popular sovereignty is, in my opinion, seriously flawed in that we have modified a system of monarchical sovereignty into one of popular sovereignty, of a particular kind that invests power in elected representatives and then relies on a set of of imperfect checks and balances to shield the subjects from the worst excesses of power.

The power is removed from the people from whom it supposedly originates, and rests in the parliaments, the courts, the government offices and company boardrooms. We have an aversion to real self-government. Consequently we resent the exercise of government and despise our civic status.

In other words we have tried to make a republican system inside the constraints of constitutional monarchy and the first thing that went is civic enthusiasm. In the early days of federation the civic enthusiasm came through imperialism and commitment to the crown. Menzies best epitomised that form of dominion nationalism within a British and Briton imperialism.

Where the US has strong constitutional language of liberty and small government to bind their collective decision making, Australia in a post-imperial world is left with nothing but the imperfect machinations of a parliamentary government churning its wooden wheels in a pre-industrial representative system.

The High Court's ratification of Workchoices as constitutional was a bad decision for many reasons. One of the issues raised by Paul Keating was that it allows central control over a minimum wage through legislation alone.

Workchoices gets its legitimacy as legislation through the appeal to employers being from constitutional corporations. From the Workplace Relations Amendment:

"Australian employer" means:

(a) an employer that is a trading corporation formed within the limits of the Commonwealth (within the meaning of paragraph 51(xx) of the Constitution); or

(b) an employer that is a financial corporation formed within the limits of the Commonwealth (within the meaning of paragraph 51(xx) of the Constitution); or ...

The relevant part of the Australian Constitution is Sect 51.xx which read narrowly is:

51.The Parliament shall, subject to this Constitution, have power to make laws for the peace, order, and good government of the Commonwealth with respect to: - ...

(xx.) Foreign corporations, and trading or financial corporations formed within the limits of the Commonwealth: ...

Which may seem cut and dried, but read broadly with other heads of power in the constitution is not, as industrial relations is mentioned explicitly as well:

(xxxv.) Conciliation and arbitration for the prevention and settlement of industrial disputes extending beyond the limits of any one State:

For this reason national control of industrial relations has gone to three referendums for constitutional amendment to xxxv - all of which have failed.

Originally the corporations power was read very narrowly with a 1909 case, but since the 1970s when the High Court doctrine changed from one of federalism, to the doctrine that the judicial branch has the capability to make the constitution a 'living and breathing document', otherwise known as judicial activism, the corporations power has been one of opening the floodgates.

Because the High Court decision ignores the inter-state requirement of xxxv, and trashes the federal character of the Australian Constitution, making it national - or unitary - then it is open to all manner of centralised industrial management with legislation alone - including minimum wage.

From the Keating interview:

Let me make this clear, the Liberals decided that they wouldn't use the conciliation and arbitration power.

Under that power of the constitution you always needed a commission who tested capacity to pay and comparative wage justice. They've now used the corporations power and the High Court for the first time as validated its use. That means a Federal Government can now legislate the wage and the conditions.

and:

The safety nets now are the National Wage Case and the National Wage Case has gone because the commission has gone. But the Government can have Mr Harper and the Fair Pay Commission, but it's got no commission power it's really the Commonwealth Government. That's the point I'm making. It's not me saying it, it's the High Court saying it.

The nation-state is devoluting into the market-state. Where the nation-state used to be this heavily capitalised intensive centralised structure which would throw money to the poor and slow regions to make them catch up to the achieving regions; the market-state follows the lines of communications and is decentrsalised with innovation happening on the edges and bubbling into the center.

Workchoices is an industrial era approach to industrial relations - and focuses on issues that globalisation have largely made irrelevant. The issue for Australia is that its heavy centralisation of industrial relations is a weakness - a political and structural weakness.