Local government referendum should be rejected in interests of the federation

Recently the Queensland legislature created its own bill for the succession for descendants of the British Royal family. The bill was widely mocked in the media as Queensland taking its statehood far more seriously than it should. Yet, despite the low-impact nature of the bill, Queensland reminding Canberra of its jurisdiction was a very positive development.

At the forthcoming election there will be a referendum to "recognise" local councils in the constitution. If passed, what it will actually mean is that the federal government will be able to bypass the states and fund local councils directly. This may seem like an exercise in efficiency, however, it is quite the opposite.

Along with other countries born from colonial societies like the US and Canada, Australia chose with great foresight to become a federation of states. A central government was formed to handle mutual interests, like defence, and other broad policies that would filter up from the states and a compromise would be created.

However, each region was to retain the bulk of its autonomy as the idea of federalism recognised that a central government could not obtain the unique local knowledge required to understand and govern disparate regions, with disparate needs and desires.

The shift away from this model began with the transferring of income taxation powers to Canberra in 1942. This was seen as a war-time necessity, but the power never reverted back to the states after the war (as temporary powers never do). This rearrangement of the national purse effectively made the states clients of the federal government, flipping the relationship from a bottom up to a top down model.

This referendum to recognise local councils will be a further step to entrench power in Canberra and undermine the idea and the benefits of a federal system.

However, this is not quite where the raw deal ends for the country's citizens. With very little noise coming from the states in opposition to this referendum, it has become obvious that the state branches of the two major parties are expected only to serve the political goals of their federal lords.

Far from the decentralised and power-limiting goals of our federation, we now have power concentrated within two organisations; the Labor Party, and the Liberal Party.

Across the Pacific, our political brethren in Canada, with their Federal and Westminister systems, have managed to restrain themselves from such a concentration of power.

Not only have they maintained a strong three party system at federal level (four depending on how Quebec feels on the day), but their provincial political organisations are structurally separate from their federal counterparts and not expected to do their political bidding.

Furthermore, all provinces have major "province-only" parties either currently in power or in opposition who do not have any federal affiliation (Ontario, Nova Scotia and Manitoba are the only provinces currently with governments aligned with a federal party). The Conservative Party, presently governing at federal level, has no provincial party.

What Canada has, that Australia lacks, is a proper market and competition for ideas among its political parties. This provides a safety mechanism against power grabs by any one party across jurisdictions, or any collusion between two parties, like we have in Australia.

Any attempt Ottawa makes to enhance its power is met with fierce opposition, across the ideological spectrum. The culture of provincial autonomy is extremely strong. A referendum like this would never see the light of day in Canada.

This situation in Australia is what Professor Greg Craven, Vice-Chancellor at the Australian Catholic University, calls the 'tyranny of subtlety'. In Australia, we do not have a state that speaks another language like Quebec, or a region like Newfoundland who only joined Canada in 1949 and has its own unique culture.

On the surface, our states are relatively homogenous. Yet this blinds us to geographic and more subtle cultural differences between various areas of our country. How is Canberra to create effective one-size-fits-all policies for both Fitzroy and Longreach? Local knowledge is paramount.

The Senate in Australia was initially designed to be a protector of states' rights (why each state was given equal representation regardless of population). However, with party discipline being what it is, the Senate is now nothing more than an instrument of party objectives. Only saved from being a useless and wasteful rubber stamp by the proportional representation voting system that the public wisely uses to frequently vote in balance of power players.

If this referendum passes, the idea of Canberra dictating wheelie bin policy, as has been suggested, might be hyperbole, but it is guaranteed that funding will be handed down with federal political goals in mind. With councils encompassing safe seats being short-changed.

While state governments also distribute money in political ways, a constituent's voice at state level is much stronger than at federal level (however much like lotto odds it might seem).

Yet if more states like Queensland had the nerve to protect their turf, or significant parties could form solely at state level, like in Canada, this ability to distribute money politically could be minimised.

We also wouldn't see such a blatant grab for centralised, duopolistic and disconnected power as this forthcoming referendum, and would have a more diverse array of ideas in our public debate.

Of course, all politicians claim they need power for noble causes, but real nobility comes with the relinquishement of power to a diversity of sources, not further consolidating it in two.