When Canberra cherry-picks responsibilities from the states it is anti-federalism. When the states take from the local councils there is no real name for it other than centralisation. Tasmanian Councils are defending their authority and responsibility over sewerage and water. It is a familiar pattern, a crisis appears, and a central authority uses that crisis or emergency to covet new powers. It has been a dominant force in Australian politics.

The issue is the State Government of Tasmania wanting to take over the power of water and sewerage; as the water crisis demands that the local councils can't be trusted with the responsibility in a time of emergency. Which isn't true. Decentralisation is a strength; especially in politics.

One of the reasons a representative democracy is stronger than a monarchy or dictatorship is because it decentralises political power. The opposing force is the desire of the executive to collapse all power into themselves - which leads to a monarchy or dictatorship, so representative democracy is maintained at a cost.

There was an op-ed in The Canberra Times by Greg Barns recently that argued for separation of service delivery between the feds, states and councils. One of the reasons a market economy is seen as superior to public sector service delivery is that it promotes overlapping services and products. We commonly call that consumer choice.

Yet we view overlapping public sector service delivery as waste. I would argue that the road system is an example of overlapping responsibilities providing a good outcome; Australia has federal, state, local and private roads. These go through all sorts of political boundaries and their overlapping regulations and laws. Probably the only way roads could be provided is through that method.

Barns writes:

And what of local government? Why is it, that there are, for example, 144 local councils in Western Australia, 68 in South Australia and 29 in Tasmania, when the total population for these states is just over three million people?

Again; decentralisation is a sign of political strength. In a modern state innovation bubbles up from the most innovative areas; rather than the capital intensive industrialised nation-state who spends on the slow areas with capital accrued centrally in order for them to catch up to the faster areas. Australia is a good example of the capital intensive centre - the federal government does 85% of all taxation.

Greg Barns' op-ed views government and political boundaries in service delivery terms. He argues for a return to the New Federalism push of the early 90s but where government is organised along maximum service delivery efficiency - which is a social economist's view of the nation-state. But this raises issues of republicanism, democracy and politics which are not catered for. It is a state down approach to federalism rather than a citizen, or individual, up approach.

From the op-ed:

Today, we need to revive the non-ideological atmosphere of the new federalism discussions of 18 years ago. It is extraordinary that in 2007, we still have chronic duplication in areas such as health care, education and transport, or roads, where federal, state and local governments fall over themselves to cut the ribbon whenever a new strip of bitumen is laid.

This is the same argument as those that wish to abolish the states and replace it with a big Canberra government and local councils such as the Brisbane City Council [BCC]. John Howard in interviews has said that this structure would fit his view of Australia if federation was being done now.

Canberra likes this structure as it removes economic rivals to its power. NSW, Western Australia and Victoria can be peskily independent at times despite having half their budgets dependent upon GST and federal grants. NSW has a budget of approximately thirty billion a year, while the BCC has a budget of one billion. Which is a large difference of economic and political power.

Government service delivery to the levels it currently is probably reached its zenith after WWII when many aspects of economic life remained or were nationalised (for lack of a better word as many states maintained banks - but not the feds). It is really only a new thing, back when James Monroe was the Governor of Virginia it was a big deal that a new Jail was being built. Today the judicial landscape is littered with jails; public and private.

Barns continues with:

Take Tasmania and South Australia, for example. Their population is ageing and declining at an alarming rate. Providing high-quality services to the people of those states over the course of this century will become increasingly problematic as a result. Should they exist as separate states today given this bleak outlook?

Again he argues that political boundaries be based on service delivery, which means the government is organised relative to its ability to raise capital - ie tax. Canberra can tax heavily, while SA and Tasmania can't, hence by Barns' logic, those states should be abolished, and presumably become territories under Canberra's wing.

Barns' view of democracy becomes one of political economy. Republics were founded to minimise tyranny in government, of which democracy was a technology or participative method to keep representatives close to the public and easy to remove by popular will when they were under-performing or had fallen into tyranny.

Under Republicanism and Democracy as the method of political organisation, the government(s) are ordered in a way to minimize tyranny and maximise public participation. Under the service-delivery view of governments this directly impacts the capital poor (not much tax to harvest) and capital intensive areas (the opposite of poor tax harvest) of the electorate.

I am reminded of the view of the nation-state where it spends on the slow part of the country to make them catch up, while the market-state enables local regions to innovate more rapidly than central governance and service delivery can provide.

I do not think that service delivery should be the guiding philosophy behind the organisation of political boundaries and governmental forms.

Federations are defined by having a national character and a federal character. For instance the House of Representatives in Australia's parliament is organised with a national character while the Senate has a federal character. The House has equal sized electorates and single members, while the Senate has the states as its electoral boundaries and each state has an equal number of members. So the Senate represents the states, which are the federal components of the Federation, while the House represents the Australian people, which is the national character of the government.

One of the innovations of American constitutional design was to put the national and federal characters into tension so that the national government would not grow to consume the states, yet have enough national character that the states would not assert themselves over the national government. This vertical balance of powers in the federation was designed to protect liberty and cemented through constitutional limited government.

One of the blind spots in Australian politics is that federalism is ignored as a technology to ensure liberty and natural rights. Too often people assume the role of government is service delivery, not limited government, and seek to order the political structures accordingly.

The Australian constitution is weak on separation of powers between the different branches of government. This is a flaw in Westminster systems in general. The Australian constitution is also limited in how it enhances and maintains the federal character of the system. Other than the Senate it is a weak constitutionally federalist system. TO add to its woes the national character of the Judicial branch has aided and abetted the executive (who resides in the national character of the House) in expanded the centralised role of the government in Canberra.

We find ourselves in 2007 with a national government that does over 80% of all tax revenue collection and provides approximately half of all state budgets. We have a constitution which has leaked national character through the judicial to the point that the heads of power can be viewed in isolation and justify nearly any expansion into state responsibilities. We also have all the major parties at the national level; Liberal, Labor, Greens, Democrats and Nationals, who have policies to abolish the states and replace them with smaller and more easily controlled regional councils.

So why have we lost our federal character politically? Sport is often cited as the great Australian tribalism, yet the State Of Origin games are the greatest rugby league games on the planet and a massive display of federalist tribalism.

The increasing intrusion into state responsibilities by the national government has been ongoing. The Engineers case is often cited as a turning point. We saw in the 1930s NSW and the National Government face off in what was nearly a civil war over loan responsibilities. The national government (had through constitutional amendment) under-written loans for NSW. When NSW defaulted deliberately under Lang to negotiate better interest rates it became a national issue.

Another large intrusion was the adoption of income tax by the national government in world war two under emergency need. When the war was over and the emergency gone, the national government never gave that responsibility back to the states. It liked the money too much. That is one of the main origins for the vertical tax imbalance.

It is often assumed that Whitlam was where the 'crash or crash through' approach came from in terms of national/federal relationships, but the idea was bi-partisan at the national level. John Gorton believed that the natural relationship in Australian federation was for the national government to do revenue raising and policy. This would leave the states as bureacratic departments to disburse national funds in support of national policy.

This has been called many things. Co-operative Federalism for instance, but it really is the nationalisation of politics. Unless the states are independent policy making and revenue raising entities the federal character of the system is lost.

Ken Parish has written several articles on federalism recently. His second documents how a strongly national character system; ie the national government and the territory which has self-government through a statutory constitution, leads directly to the erosion of property rights. Which are a fundamental and inalieanable right in a system of limited government. Worse; the leases were conducted under arbitrary government and national whim. This is little different to the Howard government's anti-federalist foray into the Tasmanian health system.

We can deduce that a strong national character of federation is a direct threat to liberty.

Ironically Ken argues in the next article for the Gortonisation of the Australian system under a form of co-operative federalism where the national government makes all policy and the states are reduced to disbursing (their own) funds in support of that policy. This is the structure that removed Territorians property rights in the first place. Other than the vertical tax imbalance it is what we have now.

So the continued nationalisation or Gortonisation of Australian politics will place more Australians under the arbitrary whim of the national government, and even occasionally tyranny of the national government (such as the removal of property rights) with the states neutered in being able to resist national policy. I like NSW and Western Australia getting annoyed at the national government. In the recent ersatz electoral campaign we have not seen the Territory or Tasmania fight back. They have swallowed the national government's lumps despite the obvious bad policy.

The Harpurian Republican view of political structures, or social organisation as Charles Harpur calls it, is that maximum liberty and minimisation of tyranny enable greater moral expression. Morality in this instance isn't the caricature of no abortions or abstinence from sex before marriage. Morality is public good in a private and social context. As an example, economists often like to quote the economic liberty through markets as public good or social capital etc. To Dan Deniehy and Charles Harpur tyranny was the greatest inhibitor to human improvement and moral expression. This is Harpur's "for the faith that is in them."

Most modern Australian politicians, constitutional theorists and commentators see government in terms of service delivery. Greg Barns for instance recently divided the political entities up in Australia by abolishing states such that service delivery could be maximised. Ken Parish's new co-operative federalism takes a similar service delivery approach with policy making occurring at the national level.

But, Australia is a liberal democracy that practices constitutionally limited government. The first priority of such a system is the maximisation of liberty. This is where limited government is supposed to be the most efficient - in the constitutional protections of individual liberty. Republicanism is the ideal technology for this as it is the political science to liberalism's political philosophy.

This does not deny a liberal democracy from deciding that government should provide services, however, it can not become the reason for re-ordering government such that service delivery is maximised at the cost of a loss of liberty and the opening up of individuals to potentially suffer from arbitrary government, executive whim, loss of rights and even tyranny.

Harpur and Deniehy's republican philosophy must come first and in Australia this means a system of government with a strong federal character; federally independent entities that are autonomous in policy and tax revenues; and increasing constitutional restrictions on the national government such that they cannot Gortonise or Whitlamise the system.

We can learn from the 19thC Australian Republicans as liberty informed their philosophy. This is a word that has been lost in 20thC Australian politics.