A blueprint for rule | The Australian

Abbott’s argument is that John Howard, far from intruding on state powers, should have gone much further. Abbott’s central proposition is that “the federation is broken and does need to be fixed”. This is his conclusion from his experience as a federal minister and the main idea in his new book, Battlelines, that expounds a modern conservatism for the Liberal Party and seeks a new constitution for Australia.

For Abbott, Liberal Party attitudes on federalism are obsolete, divorced from public opinion and doomed to permanent policy failure. He is convinced that Rudd’s new federalism also will fail and urges the Liberal Party to confront the crisis in Australian governance. Abbott argues the Howard government was locked into an unwinnable dilemma. It kept taking “hits for political problems that weren’t its fault but which it had no way to fix”. The public hospital dilemma, now facing the Rudd government, was the supreme example…

Abbott dramatises his argument by seeking a constitutional referendum that enables the national government to pass laws “for the peace, order and good government of the country”. This means the national government could propose laws in any area free from the constraints of Section 51 of the Constitution. As Abbott says, his idea “wouldn’t abolish the states” but would stop them from “jeopardising policy in areas where the national government was determined to intervene”.

The mechanism would be similar to the “disallowance provisions” the commonwealth parliament has in relation to territory laws. Equipped with this power, the commonwealth would be better placed to impose policy directions on the states. Once the power existed, it would need to be used only in rare instances. This is a radical solution unlikely to win internal Liberal Party support or pass at referendum…

via A blueprint for rule | The Australian – Paul Kelly

Wow! This is news! First we have Garrett politely nodding approval for a new uranium mine and now Abbott is saying that the central slogan from the monarchists’ camp during the republic referendum campaign – If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it – is plain nonsense. He reckons it is broken and he wants to try to knock it back into working order with a sledge hammer.

I actually think the problem has more to do with the incompetence and bullying style of the Howard Government rather than with Federation. When they target and purge moderates and stifle open and reasonable debate, they might think it gives them a free run to do what they like, but instead it poisons our political system. The problem is the political bullying, and the dysfunctional Commonwealth-state relations are more a symptom rather than a cause of the problem. Howard did a hell of a lot of damage and Abbott was one of his more pugnacious frontbenchers. An even more centralised and powerful executive would only make the problem worse and the logical conclusion of Abbott’s “fix” is a dictatorship that doesn’t even pretend to be benevolent.

If it wasn’t broken when Abbott entered parliament but it is broken now, then the obvious question is: who broke it?

Since the stock market has been going through a few mood swings of late, perhaps a suitable investment in this kind of political environment is a cellar filled to the rafters with bottles of rum. (Don’t take this seriously, its only an attempt at a joke about The Rum Corps).