Categorising the Australian Referendums

I have broken the referendums down into the categories of centralisation, democracy, illiberalism and other in order to determine what the voters have been rejecting over the last century. It turns out that voters have been rejecting centralisation, overwhelmingly, with only three referendum being passed in the category, and twenty-four failing.

The referendum's have been categorised as centralisation, democracy, illiberalism and other. The centralisation category is where the federal government has sought to increase its responsibilities via referendum. This isn't to say they are all bad, for instance the referendum on civil aviation makes federalist sense, however many of the referendum for further centralisation did not.

The democracy category is taken as referendums that seeks to increase democratic franchise, democratic practices and ensure individual rights. For instance the referendums asking whether the territories should be counted toward the national majority in a referendum.

The illiberalism category is instances that remove rights or liberty under the liberal democratic system. An immediate candidate for that is the referendum to ban the communist party. The other category is anything that doesn't fit into the others.

I have put the Republic/Preamble in the other category as they didn't actually attempt to change any democratic practices. They were largely aesthetic change to the constitution. Several of the ones I have placed in the democracy category could just have easily gone into the centralisation one.

The results are;

Or expressed graphically;

The most obvious conclusion that can be drawn is that Australia has rejected centralisation through referendums; yet somehow we have had ongoing centralisation in the Commonwealth government. That suggests Canberra found ways other than referendums to centralise power in the federal government.

The Democratic referendums have had higher success rates, which suggests that issues which do involve democratic issues are taken seriously and judged rationally by voters.
Felix the Cassowary: Two more things to note: The centralisation referenda were mostly in the first fifty years of the Commonwealth, and have fallen off since then. This happens to correspond roughly with the Commonwealth government securing for itself the right to tax income, and the State governments being put on a lead ...

Also, percentages are probably useful for comparison, so using your categories:

That\'s still not a huge difference between centralisation and democracy, but it does suggest that the unwanted centralisation referenda is still largely responsible for the impression that it\'s hard to get our constitution changed.
cam: The centralisation referendums: do seem to skew the impression that it is difficult to change the constitution, when it is better explained that the people were wisely rejecting the expansion in scope of the federal government.

It also appears that due to the inability of the federal government to expand via referendum, they found other means to increase centralisation. As you mentioned centralising tax was one method, the other is the High Court adopting a centralist doctrine (most high court appointees are political not specialist) and aiding the expansion of the federal government at every step. The meaning of excise being a good example and the corporations power another.

It is interesting to note that even sixty years ago Workchoices probably would have required a referendum to go ahead. In the current environment with the House, Senate and High Court predisposed to federal power, there was no thought for the need. IIRC the Senate judged it constitutional though NSW, WA and Tasmania are challenging it in the courts.

cam
Felix the Cassowary: Workchoices: I thought the states had referred IR power to the Commonwealth, and so it was constitutional? Have I missed something?
cam: I think only Victoria has: The Senate determined there were a couple of sections in the constitution which made it possible. Corporations power being one of them. IIRC it was in an APH research note that I read it.

I guess one of the committee hansards will have the information. I will go digging.

cam
Felix the Cassowary: Ah: Being Victorian, I may have conflated our own situation with that of the nation\'s, although I\'m almost certain what I read said something like \"the states (pl.) have agreed to refer IR to the Commonwealth, but are threatening to revoke it\" or some such. Still, I haven\'t read widely on the topic, so you\'re probably right.

Dear Canberra: Justify

Juan Enriquez ; "There is ever more pressure on central governments to justify their existence."

Globalising Nation-states

The late nineteenth and early twentieth century were the glory days of the nation-state. Countries were far more closed economically, bureaucratically; in migration, capital and labour.

Due to the protectionist nature of the nation-state, they grew larger to reduce the internal costs of trade and bureaucracy. The larger nation-states that bordered on empire, shed their expensive and burdensome external colonies who then formed their own nation-states.

Australia being a good example of that process.

The big ol' centralised nation-state was a product of the technology of the time. Communications were still slow, as was trade, the movement of capital and the flows of labour. But they were fast enough to support larger centralised political and bureaucratic structures than had been previously possible.

As the twentieth century progressed; so did technology. Communications started getting faster, intra-nation-state travel became easier, faster and more democratic (poorer people could afford it).

The closed and inviolate structures of the nation-state collapsed into world-wide warfare. Not once; but twice in the space of thirty years.

Where once nation-states had bi-lateral treaties with each other that conflated quickly to world war, these were sought to be replaced with supra-national structures which over-lapped the sovereignty of the nation-states.

This was a significant loss of sovereignty for the nation-states despite agreeing to many of the supra-national policies willingly.

The recent American neo-conservative and Australian conservative doctrines have tried to re-establish nation-state sovereignty through hostility to the UN, WTO and IMF and seeking to go around those structures with bi-lateral trade treaties and non-UN military deployments. It is a losing battle however.

Post WWII has seen an acceleration in globalisation as the movement of money, goods and people were drastically reduced in cost. This acceleration hit light-speed with the internet as global communication commoditised drastically.

The former responsibilities of the nation-state's big central bureaucracy were border-control, money-control, trade-management and customs.

Globalisation has sucker-punched each of these.

Border control is becoming meaningless. In the US approximately 12 million Mexicans live and work there without state recognition, control or sovereignty over them. The nation-state bureaucracy, legislation and social services are meaningless to those 12 million. They survive, thrive and live without the state.

Australia faces the similar pressures despite having oceans between it and other countries. The nation-state does not know how to handle border-protection. Australia has established camps offshore under executive decree - a state of emergency.

This has been costly. In 2002 it cost $55,400 per refugee to house them offshore. It is cheaper for the nation-state to let them into the country and put them on the dole. The US is finding similar issues, the money being spent on border protection has doubled, but the same number of border-jumpers are being caught as in the past.

Nation-states also act as major inhibitors to labour flows. Despite this people are moving around the world in increasing numbers for work. The Australian diaspora is approximately 5% of the population who are living and working outside of Australia at any one time.

Trade has been opening up, but even here the nation-state is an inhibitor to prosperity. Take Apple's iTunes for instance. It is an internet service which by existing; has global reach. Yet it is not a global service at this point in time as the nation-state's local laws and regulations.

Other than the nation-state, there is no reason why iTunes should not have been globally available to consumers when it was turned on.

Shrinking Nation-states

The increasing flows of money, trade and labour have meant that the costs for local political autonomy are decreasing. No longer does a smaller political system have to maintain currency, an internal economic market, or local subsidies to agriculture/manufacturing to ensure that the population has sufficient economic access to needs and wants.

In the late nineteenth century a large nation-state like Austro-Hungary was necessary to maintain internal prosperity. Today Austria, Hungary, Czech Republic, Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia, Montenegro, Liechtenstein, Romania, Bulgaria and Slovakia exist as nation-states.

Additionally, Austria, Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia, Slovenia are now part of the European Union, effectively outsourcing currency and central banking to the supra-national organisation.

Canberra: Justify

Australia has flown in the face of globalisation and radically centralised its structure to something approximating nineteenth century Britain. Federalism, subsidiarity, local autonomy and state sovereignty are no longer political principles or practise in Australia.

Canberra and its political parties are united in seeking glory under unitary government. The nation-state level becomes the sole location of government.

Australia is not so inviolate an entity though. The Commonwealth and NSW nearly went to civil war over payment of debt issues. Western Australia successfully voted to secede from the Commonwealth. There are separatist movements in Northern NSW and Queensland. Australia has several micro-states within its borders.

The federal government has managed to quell many of these political disturbances in the last fifty years by dominating taxation and leaving the states vassal to the Commonwealth's hand-outs; but even so, there remain highly provincial cultural and economic identities in Australia.

If Australia does undergo devolution, or untying as Enriquez calls it, then there will most likely be Western Australia and Northern Territory split off as one economic group; NSW and Victoria as another; and Queensland as the third. All three of those economic grouping have strong shared cultural/ethnic identities as well.

Australia is not inviolate and indivisible.

The Australian Nation-state

There is still a role for the nation-state. The inter-tangled international issues, treaties and sovereignties will only increase in complexity as they incrementally over-lap more and more. The nation-state is the best location for collective decision making and expertise on these issues.

While there are still nation-states defence will remain an issue and this is best handled at the national level. The same goes for disturbances in globalised order such as piracy, human trafficking, illegal fishing etc.

The nation-state will remain important, especially its political and international arm, but as a unitary and central authority domestically, it is flying in the face of the efficiencies globalisation brings to local politics, autonomy and sovereignty.

Australia needs a dose of devolution and decentralisation, otherwise the increasing centralisation may lead to political violence, provincial disturbance and maybe even untying.
Felix the Cassowary: thd: Trade has been opening up, but even here the nation-state is an inhibitor to prosperity. Take Apple\'s iTunes for instance. It is an internet service which by existing; has global reach. Yet it is not a global service at this point in time as the nation-state\'s local laws and regulations.

But this corresponds largely to the demand of the local recording industry groups.

In the late nineteenth century a large nation-state like Austro-Hungary was necessary to maintain internal prosperity.

Austria-Hungary was not a nation state; it was two empires (i.e. multinational states) with a shared Emperor/King and a partially shared government. In the late nineteenth century a large nation was necessary; but today the example of the EU shows that small states and powerful multi-national organisations can perform the same function ... but how difficulty is that really, in practice? Given a few decades the continental, western EU probably looks the same as the US...

There are separatist movements in Northern NSW and Queensland.

I\'m aware of movements in Northern NSW that want to separate from the rest of NSW (e.g. the New England statehood movement), but do you actually mean separation from the Commonwealth? And what about Queensland?
cam: RIAA/ARIA: But this corresponds largely to the demand of the local recording industry groups.

It is a bit like local protectionism which the nation-states parcticed in manufacturing and agriculture (and still do). The irony is that liberalisation is the only common denominator.

The recording groups are globalising too, the DMCA clause and extended copyright got into Australia law via the US-Au FTA.

Given a few decades the continental, western EU probably looks the same as the US...

IIRC they produce about the same GDP. It is hard not to look at the EU as a confederate form of the US.

I think a Star Trek like central government (terra-gubernatio?) is impossible and unwise, but it appears technology and modern bureacracy can handle multiple sovereignties. Not sure if the politicians and some of the political philosophies can yet though.

but do you actually mean separation from the Commonwealth?

Sorry, I meant from the state. There is a group wanting to form Capricornia in Nth Qld. Looks like the want to create a new state in southern NSW too. They have a point with Albury-Wadonga.

cam
Felix the Cassowary: New States movements, etc.: I\'ve got the impression (possibly wrong) that the New States thing is largely someone sitting at his computer trying to bring together a bunch of other new states movements together, and expanding upon it. For instance, I know of no autochthonous separatist movement in the \"River-Eden\" area, and he seems to suggest that too. (In fact, as I understand it, Wodongarites are not keen to merge with Albury, without even getting rid of the line in between them... But I am not from Wodonga, and have no particular links with the place, other than the fact that my Uni has a campus there so I\'ve had some lecturers who\'ve lectured there, and mentioned their experiences in my classes.)  

IIRC they produce about the same GDP.

I think that figure contains the contributions of the UK, Denmark and Sweden, which I wished to exclude. Though Denmark and Sweden might, in fact, be willing to have closer political relations with the continent than the UK.

The recording groups are globalising too, the DMCA clause and extended copyright got into Australia law via the US-Au FTA.

Such clauses were the whole point of the USA FTA (AFTA US? lots of ways to pun!), from America\'s perspective... (I mostly added this paragraph to be punny, rather than to contibute anything.)
Felix the Cassowary: Correction: and he seems to suggest that too.

On re-reading, \"he outright states that, too, and is pessimistic about the possibility\" would be more accurate.
cam: AFTA: lollerskates. From what I have been seeing of the US FTAs, if a nation is willing to give in on intellectual property laws and agricultural quotas, they will get a FTA.

I recall seeing a Japanese report on FTAs (couple of years ago now) where they decided having a FTA with Australia wasnt much use as our agricultural market is pretty unprotected, so there was no advantage in leveraging the FTA to open up Australian agriculture.

cam

Balancing Stability and Fluidity

In the "Great Mistakes of Australian History" Clive Moore tackles the problem of federation and its choice in 1901. Moore argues that the constitutional process in the 19thC failed to engage with the Pacific and Asia, as well as made the constitution impervious to change. His final point is that political expediency and compromise between the colonies to get them to agree to federation has meant that the colonial boundaries are for ever cast in stone as states.

The first point was probably not socially possible. The 19thC had 'scientifically' convinced itself of the superiority of the white and Briton race. The fortress mentality that led to the White Australia policy was agreed upon by all sides of Australian politics.

It is an immoral chapter in Australian governmental and administrative history but was popular enough that it could not have been stopped. It was not a result of the constitution, as another article in the book notes, Darwin was setup to be a multi-ethnic Hong Kongese style trading centre, but hardening racial opinion never enabled it to achieve that in the late 19thC and early 20thC.

The other persistent myth, which Felix challenged, and has now been empirically determined to be false, is that the Australian Constitution is hard to change. The referendum is structured in a way to satisfy both the national and federal character. For instance:

This is a federation design choice. The majority of states may seem like an extra step too many, and I think it is, however, despite Australia's small number of states, it has not affected an outcome of a referendum. If a referendum has passed the popular vote, in all cases that I can recall it has all passed the state majority as well.

The high failure rate of Australian referendums has been because of the large number of referndums put forward that were for the increase of Commonwealth power. When the referendums are divided in this manner it becomes obvious that Australian voters were rejecting centralisation.

Moore notes that Canberra has found different ways to get around this:

This has been partially overcome by the occasional (though rare) successful referenda, and the use of the High Court to extend the federal government powers in a way never contemplated by the authors of the Constitution.

The latter is a significant issue. As can be seen by the following chart, the referendums for centralisation dropped off in volume in the second half of the twentieth century as the High Court's decisions and support for centralisation in Canberra has made referendums less necessary for Canberra to achieve the power it wants.

Moore's third complaint, that the states are forever fixed in geopolitical shape by the constitution is a good one. The value of a constitution is that it provides inter-generational stability and certainty of government. It removes the disruption of coups, violence for political power, or warfare between competing political domestic powers. The downside is that it is inherently inflexible by design.

This raises questions of balancing stability and fluidity. Normally when we talk of these areas we consider the stable technology to be constitutionalism while fluidity is provided by statutory legislation.

It is hard to give a national government statutory control over the States as complete centralisation would be a quick process rather than one that has been eroded over a century. The State control over Local Government carries similar pitfalls.

Yet if we look at Local Government it has remained fairly volatile as to its borders as administrative growth demands. For instance the Brisbane City Council and Penrith City Council were both created by the coalesence of several smaller municipal councils. I don't think anyone would doubt that the growing administrative challenges of those two cities made those amalgamations wide.

They are examples of a centralisation process. Not unlike the Federal Government's encroachment into the States. One of the purposes of Federation is to have powerful decentralised political entities that can rival the national government for power. This keeps overt centralisation, and the propensity for central tyranny and inefficiency in check.

Moore writes:

I am not advocating abolishing the states, having one national government and preserving all of the several hundred (629) local government units.

However, there are clearly regions within Australia that would work well as provincial government units. To name just a few: Wimmera, the Pilbara, Western NSW, New England (a referendum on the New England statehood was narrowly defeated in 1967), Queensland's South-East corner, the Darling Downs, the Cental Queensland coal-basin and Cape York would all function much better under their own regional governments.

In this area Moore is arguing for what Russell Trood called 'regionalism' in his Senate speech. This is a devolution of the states as administrative areas while maintaining their constitutional status in the federal constitution as states.

This minor form of devolution would still leave fairly powerful state bodies. Moore notes that the Brisbane City Council [BCC] has a similar budget to Tasmania and it is implied in Moore's article that he sees the provinces in being something of the BCC's size. He concludes with:

The ideal new government system would have a national government and around 30 provinces, designed for efficient regional operation, with a constitution capable of beind amended as circumstances change.

Moore's idea is not new either. The Prime Minister, John Howard, has remarked on radio:

"If we were starting Australia all over again, I wouldn't support having the existing state structure," he said. "I would actually support having a national government, and perhaps a series of regional governments having the power of, say, the Brisbane City Council.

"But we're not starting Australia all over again, and the idea of abolishing state governments is unrealistic."

Again the BCC is popping up, but it is the exception in Australia and it coincides with the seat of Queensland power - state parliament is in Brisbane as well. The main problems between the national and state governments are fiscal. Namely the vertical fiscal imbalance. This has been used to leverage all manner of control over the states, from the tied grants to the GST, the state's have had their independent fiscal footing removed from them.

John Gorton's and Gough Whitlam's view of federation was that the federal government made policy, funded that policy and the states existed as regional administrative units for the disbursement of federal funds in support of federal policy. This removes all capability of regional or provincial policy making from the states.

So the problem goes far deeper than the geographic boundaries of the states. Whenever these issues are discussed the problem becomes centralisation and Canberra's rapacious desire to be unitary rather than federal.

Incession and secession are already possible in the Australian constitution. The Northern Territory has had a referendum on statehood, while Western Australia has already seceded once and as Moore noted New England in NSW nearly has too. These vehicles exist but have either not been acted upon or not been successful.

The BCC sized provinces are largely national dreaming for a more controllable systems of states from Canberra's point of view. One of the problems with the increasing centralisation is that even the very powerful states, such as NSW and Western Australia, are unable to stop the encroachment of federal government.

In such an environment it makes sense for the subsidiary units to be bigger in order to stand against the larger entity. If the present large states such as NSW and Western Australia were to break up into smaller provinces, the federal government would dominate them politically in short order. We would have a unitary system of government very quickly.

It may be that in our present environment of increasing national power that a couple of the states need to join in order to become stronger against the central entity - maybe NSW and Victoria need to amalgamate in order to stave off federal encroachment. Maybe Tasmania and Victoria need to create a super-state?

I can see where there needs to be incession and devolution of the present state system for administrative purposes, but in the current environment of rampant centralisation, I fail to see how it makes sense. The mechanisms to incede and secede already exist but have only been acted upon in rare cases. As it is they need to be done under the legitimacy of the popular will anyway.

I don't consider the choice of federalism as the guiding a technology an error, nor do I consider the current geo-political boundaries of the states a historical error though I do recognise the fluidity from incession and secession as important for the political and administrative challenges facing regions.

cam

Best Response to Commoditisation is Decentralisation

History has a sine-like wave between the extremes of capital intensiveness and commodification. One of the best examples of this is warfare which was capital intensive with the Knights in shining armour before quickly becoming commoditised by gunpowder - which any riff raff could load and aim. The nation-state as an organisational technology proved well suited to the capital and state intensive period of the late 19th and early 20thC. However, now we are in a commoditisation swing and need to re-seek out decentralisation structures.

A great organisational technology is federalism. It strikes an excellent political balance between centralisation and decentralisation. Another benefit is that it places the central authority in permanent tension with the out-lying arms, and hopefully, through a well written constitution, that tension is maintained such that neither centralisation or decentralisation dominate absolutely.

Sadly that didn't happen in Australia and between Canberra, the federal political parties and the High Court - nationalism is now dominating the states such that decentralised autonomy is in sad shape. Other than the benefits of federalism offering an internal free-trade system, which was important to NSW who had tariffs leveraged against them by the protectionist states such as Victoria, South Australia, Western Australia and Queensland (also Tasmania - in fact NSW was the only free trade state), the national dominance did not bring the capital intensive benefits either.

During the late 19thC and mid 20thC warfare and the state got capital heavy. Blue water projection was first dominated by the Dreadnoughts and then super-carriers. All massive capital works to create and maintain. Only nation-states with their large wealthy populations and efficient (by history standards) tax collecting bureaucracies can afford that kind of thing.

Then we got the welfare state after the depression where governments decided that capital intensive methodology to provide public services. But in Australia most of this was done by the states. For instance education, health etc are the domain of the states. So basically the federal government in Australia centralised the power over policy and money collection but not the actual services.

This is exactly how John Gorton and Gough Whitlam visualised the federalist structure with the policy and receipts dominated by the feds and the administration and disbursement of receipts dominated by the states.

Unfortunately we are in a commoditisation cycle. Mainly because Deming's statistical process control [SPC] made the geographical location of a factory irrelevant, allowing companies to take advantage of decreasing wages without a loss of product quality, and the productivity gains from digitisation. Communications, production, bureaucracy, etc, etc have all been transformed by the microchip.

I was recently at the Udvar-Hazy Center looking at the Enola Gay from a raised platform when I said to myself, "It is so analog!". This is the aircraft which dropped the atomic bomb, yet its cockpit was populated by dial after dial. Not a HUD, CRT or LCD in sight (my car has a HUD). I would not have considered an analog engineering solution like that unusual fifteen years ago - today - I am shocked that people existed with backward technology like that!

I was interested to read Rod Beckstrom's take on federalism :

Q: You say that when our founding fathers sculpted our [USA] Constitution, they put the government in the "sweet spot," between centralized and decentralized. Are we still there?

RB: We've [USA] drifted strongly back toward centralization over time as a country, and of course we wobble back and forth a little bit. One of the biggest examples was after 9/11, when we took all the different police forces and intelligence forces and put them all under Homeland Security. That was a major centralization move, and typical: When a fairly centralized player gets attacked by a decentralized force, like al-Qaeda, the first reaction is to centralize further, and that's usually a strategic mistake.

When asked with what the prescription to the increasing centralisation is, Beckstrom replies:

Q: So how do we get back into the sweet spot?

RB: One way is to push responsibility back to the state governments. In some areas you can decentralize by outsourcing services further. One of the ultimate moves in terms of combating terrorism is to have the government use more Special Operations forces, which tend to be more decentralized, working in small teams that in general are given a high level of autonomy. . . . I gave a presentation at Stanford in 2004 to 50 CEOs from around the world. One CEO took it back to a head of state in a Middle Eastern country to the top levels of government. Based on it they decided to start their own local special operations in a selected city, and found it to be much more effective than their traditional, centralized counter-terrorism operation - at a very small fraction of the cost.

The people living in any community have the best sense of what is really going on in that community. They have local intelligence. The best information is at the edge of a network . . . where people are bringing what they want into the network and taking out what they want, without any centralized control.

It is interesting to see Beckstrom mentioning out-sourcing as a decentralised response though he later adds a caveat that checks and balances and monitoring are essential for that kind of decentralisation.

Our current period of commodification has meant that formerly capital intensive weapon systems are now within the reach of wealthy individuals and groups. For instance a satellite goes for under $20 million these days. Cheap enough for many people and organisations on the planet to afford.

A recent development has been super-yachts that have anti-submarine defence systems and air-to-air armaments. Yet recently a pirate ship fired on a Luxury Liner with an RPG (rocket propelled grenade) which caused consternation with media attention. Another commodity weapon system is the UAV. Rather than $100 million USD on a JSF, an Australian groups of aerospace engineers flew a cheap home-made UAV across the Atlantic, through rain squalls, and landed it on its target for less than a few kilograms in fuel. This is a very cheap, efficient and accurate warhead delivery system.

The final problem with centralisation and capital intensive endeavour is the structures that are required to support them. These becomes points of weakness or failure which can be attacked. John Robb calls this system disruption . A good example of a capital intensive system, operating under political regulation, that is vulnerable in this way is energy delivery .

Australia has under-gone a century of transformation such that modern federalism is not much like the federalism of Samuel Griffiths. There is an argument that the Griffith view of federalism was too restrictive on national autonomy, but over the last century the centralisation has been too great - such that it is a structural weakness in the modern commoditised environment. The states need to decentralise federalism by asserting their own autonomy and diversity.

Canberra likes to talk about the 'national interest'. We are at the point in the commodification cycle that the national interest includes a devolution to state autonomy for the purpose of political strength.

cam

Fluidity Vectors

Australian government does not have any vectors for decentralisation that avoids the abolition of the states.

Outside of the arguments of political parties, ideologies, policies etc; government is predominantly an administrative structure. We would expect government to be relatively fluid as it changes in size, shape, boundaries and structures in order to remain at maximum administrative efficiency. However, government has a monopoly in many areas and civil order doesn't always respond positively to a government darwining itself. So we use technologies such as constitutionalism, representation and liberal democracy to provide fluency and stability.

The two fluid levels of government in Australia have been federal and local government. The federal government has over-taken many of the responsibilities states as well as establish itself as the dominant taxing entity. The federal government does nearly 80% of all taxation and the state governments tend to be reliant upon the federal government for 50% of their expenditures.

Local government has their structures dictated by State legislation or constitutions, however, they have scaled through amalgamations. Brisbane City Council is the example most people trot out though it was created in 1925 through collapsing twenty different councils into one. A more recent example is Penrith City Council which amalgamated five councils in 1949.

Fluidity in Australia has been one way - effectively a vector for centralisation.

Administrative organisation must be fluid in order to respond to external and internal pressures. For a nation-state these pressures are numerous. They can be diplomatic, political, economic, martial etc. These pressures aren't static either. No-one would argue that Billy Hughes in 1919 faced the same pressures, internal and external, that John Howard does in 2006. Technology, society, economy, basically everything moves fast and government has organise itself to take advantage of those changes lest it darwin itself.

The best recent example of a government darwining itself was the Soviet Union. They bet on the wrong horse big time. They chose an inefficient political organisation, an inefficient economic organisation and to top it off - they took an aggressive international stance.

These types of decisions are only possibly with massive amounts of external inputs to prop up the inefficiencies. The Soviet Union ended up collapsing because it ran out of money to maintain its inefficient structures. Iran is currently taking an internationally aggressive stance but they can get away with it due to the demand for their high-priced oil. Same with an increasingly despotic Russia. Without its dominance of European gas supply, Russia would have to compete economically which would mean a different governmental organisation in order to maximise its economic efficiency.

There is a lesson here for Australia. We have already had the "Sheep's back" economy where we got blasé about efficient economic organisation, preferring instead to live off over-priced agricultural commodities. Currently Australia is under-going a resources boom. China, India, Japan and South Korea have an insatiable desire for the dirt we dig up. This boom will likely continue as other nations 'do a China' - such as Indonesia.

This puts Australia in the same position as Saudi Arabia, Iran and Russia. We can get away with inefficient organisational structures simply because we subsidise those inefficiencies with disproportionate revenues from a single source. Despite the current fashion for a 'three cheers' history of Australia, we are not immune to bad decisions - especially not from government, who have made destructively bad choices in the past.

Globalisation is the current dominant pressure on government - both internally and externally. The sheer speed, scope, reach and democratised nature of modern communications is something new. The governments that adapt to maximise the advantage from globalisation will set their constituents up for continuing achievement.

Globalisation is normally described as having the properties:

We are already seeing that the main form of competition between nation-states is becoming economic rather than military. This is not because of US military hegemony but due to the destructive economic nature of warfare. When India and Pakistan were on the brink of war several years ago Indian business leaders went to the Indian government and told them to stop it. The sabre rattling was costing them revenue. American companies that contracted services with them were getting nervous over the stability of India and were taking their business to more stable environs.

Another aspect is the transnational nature of positive and negative political movements. This appears to be the greatest pressure on internal government organisation. Especially heavily centralised ones - which Australia is.

The government supplies a lot of services to keep a modern society and economy humming. Roads, transport, energy, health, education, police, etc etc. Basically all the capital intensive stuff where the government has a constitutional monopoly or market solutions are less than optimal. With munitions being a commodity and the existence of cheap delivery systems, such as strapping a bomb to the chest of a terrorist, the authority of government to provide those services can be challenged easily.

Islamic groups find distinct advantage in an environment where the government has been delegitimised as their organisation is greater than religious unity. It also carries social and judicial services. Where a government leaves a vacuum of authority, well organised Islamic groups can quickly step in to provide security, services and judicial certainty. This is one of the problems the Lebanese government faces, Hezbollah is the second largest employer in the country .

A heavily centralised structure is easy to delegitimise as it carries singular points of weakness. Unfortunately when a government, or large powerful bureaucratic organisation, is faced with decentralised pressures its first instinct is to centralise more. Which is the wrong strategic response.

Australia has issues as it is already heavily centralised and any fluidity the system does contain flow toward centralisation. For instance the national government and High Court have aided the dominance of Canberra over the states, while the states have denied Local Government the chance to write their own charters.

Centralisation does have advantages, it makes for unitary bureaucratic and regulatory regimes. It is also useful in a capital intensive environment - or when faced with a heavy centralised competitor. If we look at the current capital intensive services Australia government provides we can split them up by their national, state and local character:

By that measure we would expect the States to raise about 60% of all taxation revenues but they don't. Rod Beckstrom described the technology of federalism as a "sweet spot" between centralisation and decentralisation. Bob Carr commented in July last year that Australia is now the most centralised of any federal system . The States are not above criticism, they have restricted local government, while dumping responsibilities on the federal government for political and fiscal reasons.

Yet there are few mechanisms for decentralisation. There has been a successful secessionist referendum in Western Australia, which ended up going nowhere, and an unsuccessful one in NSW to establish the State of New England. There are small secessionist movements around Australia such as in North Queensland. Most plans for the re-ordering of sub-national government and administrative boundaries involve the abolition of the States and the establishment of large regional bodies. A cursory glance at services provided by the levels of government suggests that the federal government should get slashed down to bare metal rather than the States.

Another means to provide local response and shared interest is by recognizing citizen organisations. Australia has a great history in this area with groups such as the Bush Fire Brigade, State Emergency Services and even militia. Those groups draw on the services and knowledge of the citizenry in times of emergency and crisis. Citizens become active, involved and capable of accurately judging and responding immediately to local issues. The government would provide subsidies to the capital intensive components such as training and equipment.

What would a decentralised Australian federal system look like?

It would have a minimal national government, limited to international issues rather the intra-state ones. The main advantage of the national government being that it enforces a mini free-trade zone between the states. The national government's taxation abilities would be limited to financing itself.

The States would become the main form of government in Australia - faced with perpetual competition between each other politically and economically. Local Government would remain the authority on Wheelie Bins which is an under-rated responsibility. There would also be increasing autonomy and recognition of citizen organisations which would probably have to come from the national and state levels of government. These citizen organisations would go a long way to replacing many state based institutions.

Australia has no fluid vector for decentralisation. The methods to achieve decentralisation are generally catastrophic or disruptive which goes against a doctrine of fluent and stable government. This is a weakness in our system.

x-posted at clubtroppo

avocadia: Currency: I would add the establishment of a common currency to the Federal responsibilities.
cam: Good point: Added it to the article.

cam

Types of Organisation

Organisation is a technology choice. Whether it is political, social or economic organisation. Normally the most efficient form of organisation is chosen to serve a particular purpose. Capital intensive industries tend to adopt heavily centralised structures to support their operations. Commoditised industries can support decentralised structures.

The Navy is a good example of a capital intensive industry. A ship takes a lot of money to design, build, man and maintain. Consequently the Navy needs a massive operation to raise the revenues, to fund the process, and over look the process. Navies largely remain the monopoly of nation-states as they have the infrastructure to raise the money through tax to build and support the bureaucracy a Navy needs.

Publishing has become a commoditised industry. There are numerous competitors supplying both paper and digital publishing services and products. An example of this is SSR which is hosted in a basement but has the same web-presence as the New York Times (but not the same audience).

An organisation that wants to compete in the publishing industry has to have a decentralised structure in order to avoid the high overhead of a centralised bureaucratic structure. Centralisation in a commoditised industry makes the organisational form inefficient.

Government is an organisational form which has to respond to pressures in order to maximise its efficiency. The early 20thC was a capital intensive environment. Warfare was capital intensive and between states. Then there was the rise of the welfare state where governments adopted many of the services that private industry had (or had not) provided. This type of system makes sense to have a supporting centralised organisation.

In the last twenty years out-sourcing has become more common. Many of the technologies that led to nation-state monopolies for capital reasons have commoditised to the point that non-state actors can afford them.

A good example of this is UAVs. Once the domain of nation-states, they have become affordable for private owners in the short space of twenty years. An Australian test recently had a garage built UAV fly from Canada to England, through storms and rain, to land a 5kg payload within five metres of its target in England. That type of precision had been a capital intensive pursuit in the past - not anymore.

In a commoditised environment the government needs to adopt flatter or decentralised structures otherwise they are adding inefficiencies into the system.

cam

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