Australia’s federal system was designed for the nineteenth century. Today it produces duplication, dysfunction and state parochialism that frustrate national governance and reform.

The intention of the founding fathers of the Australian federation (there were no mothers) was to stitch together the six colonial governments into a loose confederation, with the states retaining most of their powers while specifying what were regarded as relatively inconsequential powers to be the responsibility of a subordinate Commonwealth government at its centre.

As dyed-in-the-wool provincials, the writers of the Australian constitution were blind to the political challenges that the twentieth and twenty-first centuries would bring. The transformations of the federation in the first half-century of its life show how limited the founders’ ideas were in the making of the Australian constitution. By the 1950s, the states had more or less become the subordinate partners in the federation; the Commonwealth government had emerged as seemingly the superordinate player, but it still operates under the constraints of a constitutional structure that is not fit for purpose.

There is an inbuilt tension at the centre of the Australian constitution between the sovereignty of the state governments and the sovereignty of the Commonwealth government. In truth, there is no single Australia but a series of mini-Australias within a ramshackle constitutional arrangement that leaves the federal government having to balance the provincial demands of the states against the national interest.

This is made worse by the fact that every state government in Australia is variously dysfunctional. Three stand-out examples are Tasmania, Victoria and Western Australia, while the others are often shown to be incompetent, invariably parochial, and frequently the harbingers of the worst corruption in Australian politics.

Tasmania is the basket case of the federation. In addition to the fiasco of the _Spirit of Tasmania_ ferries and the controversy surrounding the AFL stadium to be built on Macquarie Point, the state is faced with a Moody’s downgrading of its credit rating. The incompetence of the state’s politicians and the limitations of its public service are plain for all to see. Meanwhile, vital public services in health, education, and infrastructure are deteriorating, mainly because of inept planning, policy confusions on all sides of politics, and a lack of funding and expertise to resource them. If ever a state should not exist within the Australian federation it is Tasmania with its small population (just over half a million) and all the limitations this entails. It should be a federal territory like the Northern Territory and the ACT.

The parochialism of states is evident in the Victorian Labor government’s ‘Big Build’ infrastructure obsession (the Metro tunnel, the proposed Suburban Rail Loop, rail crossing removals, and never-never promises about a rail link to the airport). Bungled planning by state bureaucrats and politicians  and massive cost blow-outs have forced the state government to cut expenditures in areas that urgently need resourcing – youth crime prevention, health and hospitals, domestic violence prevention strategies, schools (Victorian teachers continue to be the most poorly paid in the entire country), and rural road works. In fact, given that Victoria’s population and economy make it the second biggest state, the ‘Big Build’ infrastructure projects are of national consequence and as such should be under the aegis of the federal government.

Saul Eslake in _Pearls and Irritations_, clarifies how baseless are Western Australia’s claim to be the nation’s “economic powerhouse.” Ill-considered politics at both state and federal levels provides WA with an unjustifiable share of the GST revenue – more than it should receive while costing other states their fair share. WA is one of the poorer (“mendicant”) states despite its lucrative mining industries whose profits remain overwhelmingly in the bank accounts of private interests, including overseas interests. The full-throated support that successive WA premiers provide for those private mining conglomerates is one of the grossest examples of state parochialism triumphing over the wellbeing of all Australians.

Australia should have established a Norway-style sovereign wealth fund long ago, financed by royalties from the country’s mining industries. However, the politics of state parochialism in WA, Queensland and NSW, for example, mean that this matter of absolute national significance is  unimaginable for most MPs, bureaucrats, business leaders, and a general public routinely fed “alternative facts” by a malevolent media monopoly.

The tension between state parochialism and the national interest will never be resolved under the provisions of the existing Australian constitution.

The fact remains that chaotic duplications of responsibilities and service provisions, the mazes of regulatory cross-purposes, and very thinly spread expertise and competence among so many layers of government is seriously undermining the viability of good governance. That there is still no independent constitutional reform commission shows just how backward constitutional thinking is in Australia today.

There are numerous issues that a commission would need to address to educate Australian citizens about necessary reforms to the constitution to benefit the entire nation. The original division of powers in the constitution which specifically listed (and limited) the powers of the federal government, leaving the rest of the unlisted powers in the hands of the states, needs urgent review. It’s time for the states to fully cede, for example, the powers of health (especially hospitals), education, welfare, and environmental policies to the federal government. Too often the states lack the political vision, the expertise, and the necessary resources to properly address these matter or their priorities are influenced by provincial interests – for instance, Tasmania’s football stadium.

A matter that a commission could immediately address is the question of the constitutional necessity and the financial drain imposed on state budgets by state upper houses of parliament (the legislative councils). Queensland has managed without an upper house for decades. Once the domain of the landed gentry, today they are mainly stacked with party hacks and MPs from a variety of interest groups, very few of which care about the needs of the Australian nation as a whole. Their thinking stops at the borders of their states.

In his ABC Boyer Lectures in 1979 Bob Hawke canvassed the idea of replacing state governments with regional entities that would incorporate local governments, reducing the present three tiers of government (local state and federal) to two tiers. He was echoing ideas previously advanced by former Minister in the Whitlam and Hawke governments, Chris Hurford. It’s time to resurrect those well-argued ideas. The reforms they envisaged would massively reduce, or even eliminate, the national debt. And they would provide Australia with a new constitution fit for purpose for the twenty-first century and well beyond.