This bulletin covers the our first meeting, together with a review of some of the discussion on the list.
Jon Tourle, lives around Sutherland, someone who I contacted in the wake of the Abolish State Government party, in the election before last.
Phillipa Thorburn, lives in Cronulla, biology teacher.
Mark Drummond, lives in Canberra, doing a doctorate on optimum systems of Government for Australia, another person I met the same as Jon.
Klaas Woldring, a retired academic from the Southern Cross University, presently teaching at WEA.
David Bofinger, does operations research at the Defence Sciences and Technology Organisation, someone I met through a Sydney science fiction group, the Sydney Futurians.
Andrew Gunter, an ex-staffer of Ted Mack and works as a solicitor, but is without email.
Elaine Thompson, Associate Professor at UNSW.
Myself, John August. I've had the idea of abolishing the states for as long as I can remember, identifying myself as an Australian first and a New South Welshman second. I contacted the Abolish State Government party in the wake of the second before last state election, and made contact with others who had done the same.
Kay Young, lives in Newtown, friend of Jon, I'm not aware of Kay's email.
Lev Lafayette, a student at university of Melbourne, who has an interest in Abolishing the States, who I hope to catch up with soon when I visit Melbourne for a Cave Clan gathering.
Frank Stillwell, Associate Professor, Economics, Sydney Uni. Frank may be on holidays and out of Sydney at the time of our next gathering, but will make it to our next dinner if he can.
Arthur Chesterfield-Evans, Democrats politician, I understand he's keen to know what's happening and may join us at the next dinner.
David Cusack, who has an interest in the topic but cannot undertake much in-person involvement for health reasons.
Stephen Mc Mahon, who has had an interest in Abolishing the States, and may join us at a dinner.
Peter Woods, President of the Local Government Association, may join us. I've left a message but no response yet.
At our first meeting, we had a lot of discussion, which I will not try to outline.
Klass suggested that we take on an advocacy role, and while I'm happy to go in this direction, divergent opinions are becoming more apparent than coincident ones, and I think we have a lot of discussion to do before we can hope to develop a consensus view.
In fact, I suspect that that rather than having a single view, our position may be one of a few core principles and several possibilities. Rather than seeming to lack unity, we should promote this as evidence that we are not stifling diversity.
http://geocities.datacellar.net/davidbofinger/asc.htm
(accessible from his homepage, at http://geocities.datacellar.net/davidbofinger/index.htm)
Mark has suggested various links to this page, providing an idea of the range of ideas when it comes to abolishing the states.
Speaking of the website, we need to define what material will be on the web site, and give David feedback in setting it up. With APANA membership, we should be able to set up a formal "majordomo" style mailing list.
To further promote the web site, we could ask David Moss to link our site into his index. Announcing it on aus.politics would also be a good idea.
The next step would be to write media releases about our group and our web site, and see if we can get coverage in newspaper and radio.
1. A way of getting some ideas on how the states could be abolished, in varying degrees of detail, but well indexed so that visitors could find the "level" which interests them.
2. Something about our group : who we are, and what we're about.
3. Something about what people can do to promote State Abolishion, whether it be privately or joining our group.
Importantly, I think we need to (at least at this stage) emphasise our collective nature, with the fact that we are not charging membership and want this information freely transmitted.
Now, I'll outline two items of discussion. The first concerns some disagreement over the appropriate number of regions, and the relative standing of regional governments vs. the national government.
I think we need to develop, reform and strengthen Local Government as it exists, especially in country areas, with city governments placed in a special category which may be shaped along the lines of the Greater Brisbane City Council although ACT may also provide a model.
We should attempt to spell out the future powers of Local Government, incl. funding etc. There is very much a place for regions but indirectly elected by Local Government clusters in such a region. The voluntary regions, which already exist and have a coordinating function based on common interests of such clusters, should also be strengthened and, of course, given a place in the unitary constitution. This would be a natural development from an existing situation.
The regional governments in the proposed changes by Hall/Drummond are quite a departure from the existing situation and in many cases will be fairly remote from the people they are supposed to serve. I have no problem with the number suggested (30) but if it is 30, as envisaged by Hall/Drummond the concept of Local Government would have been changed quite dramatically. In some cases it would no longer exist probably.
Just wanted to lend my very strong support to your idea here and its inclusion as a point of discussion on 20 April. The idea of regions as confederations of localities, as you are suggesting Klaas, seems to me to have immense merit. I think the first of my three articles which are on our group website (the one titled 'Towards a best-possible new system of government' at http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/2001/Jan01/Drummond.htm) makes clear my support for your kind of thinking here Klaas. If regions were formed I believe we'd need at least 45 or so, and probably closer to 50 or more, and I think your suggestions are extremely sound.
The 30 region idea was useful in helping estimate cost savings (and the estimate is likely to remain valid for the kind of system you Klaas and I too among others are inclined to support), but was only a suggested number. In recent times I've tried hard, and with some success I'm glad to say, to open peter Consandine up to the view that 30 regions is simply too few to accommodate the locational diversity we find in our huge country. The model Chris Hurford in Adelaide is working on is up to 51 regions (up from 44 regions about a year ago) and the number appears likely to go a little higher again before he goes to publish his work (hopefully by the year's end or early next year).
I have a preference for 30 regions, but agree we need to define the powers of those governments, be they regional or whatever.
Klass' scheme of having regions as local government clusters defeats the idea of removing a tier from the Australian government. We still have three tiers - national, regions (being clusters of local governments) and local governments.
Admittedly, such regions may have a much smaller overhead than the multiple state governments, and we may still have a more sensible allocation of powers between the new three tiers compared to the old three tiers, but it still seems to me an unnecessary complication.
A "two tier" objective seems reasonable. The national government does national things, the regional government does regional things. We don't have a "middleman" as we do with the current state governments.
Having 30 (or perhaps up to 60) regions makes more sense to me. I feel that most of the "regional feeling" is promoted by local governments but not the people inside that local government. Certainly, the regions' boundaries should be based on the feeling of residents, rather than merely being imposed from without consultation, but I'm confident such regional feeling would expand beyond the present local government boundaries.
This is my feeling, I need to develop the argument and I'm happy to listen to others.
Larger regions would mean there was more chance of greater media and community interest in their actions, which I feel would be a good reason for promoting larger regions - there is more scrutiny.
I understand David feels that even these regions should not have sovereignty by default - they should claim it as the result of a positive vote at each regional election. I have some sympathy with this view.
Its been since resolved, but I'll outline some of the discussion over the word "defederalise" between Mark, David and myself. It is to some extent a disagreement about how to name things, but it also provides a worthwhile illumination of our different viewpoints.
Dear David,
You've done a great job but can we change the link name to something other than "defederalise"? How about "abstatecol" or "abstates"?? The term "defederalise" opens us up to attacks from potential allies (the group who believe the states should be abolished but believe an improved system should host at least some federal characteristics).
For example, perhaps the most staunch defenders/apologists of the status quo are the Samuel Griffith society. An open mind on the matter of federalism can neutralise their attacks on us. A closed view that federalism is definitely and totally out and that only a unitary system will do could significantly harm our chances of obtaining support from large numbers of people who we will rely upon for support.
Regards Mark
"The term "defederalise" opens us up to attacks from potential allies (the group who believe the states should be abolished but believe an improved system should host at least some federal characteristics)."
I suppose I can see that any system of government that gives sovereign rights and responsibilities to local governments is federal in some sense. It's not an option I personally prefer, but since it's the preferred option of several of my dinner companions I can see why you want to avoid ruling it out. On the other hand even your proposal strikes me as partial defederalisation, since a lot of responsibilities and powers would be transferred to the national level that are presently held at lower (i.e. state) level.
"How about "abstatecol" or "abstates"?? "
And I thought "defederalise" was a dubious neologism! I don't think I can even parse "abstatecol", what does it mean? I'm afraid these terms strike me as gimmicky and tacky, though that's just personal taste.
It's a pity someone else got "One Nation". :-)
"A closed view that federalism is definitely and totally out and that only a unitary system will do could significantly harm our chances of obtaining support from large numbers of people who we will rely upon for support."
As far as offence is concerned, "abolish the states" strikes me as more in-your-face and potentially incendiary -- and also more dramatic, which is one of our positive criteria I guess -- than a polysyllabic horror like "defederalise" ever could be. Should we even be ruling out the retention of rump states, with reduced responsibilities and powers? I realise if we try to keep every option in we end up saying nothing.
Perhaps the real moral of all this is that a web page for external use ought to follow debate within the group, rather than precede it. Whatever is there at this moment is intended (by me, anyway) principally for internal use until our own ideas have solidified a bit. Assuming, that is, that we have enough in common that joint action is appropriate.
Its all to do with what you mean by federal.
One generic meaning is "having spread out sovereign centres of power".
Another is that in a federal system, powers of the federal government are defined and the remainder stay with the parent bodies, as compared to a "unitarian" (?) system where the powers of the state or other bodies are defined but the remainder of the powers stay with the national government.
Just what do we mean by "sovereign" ? Can a regional government have defined powers which go no further, but still be considered "sovereign" ? Can it be part of a "federal" system ? This depends on how rigid your definitions are.
The Brittanica notes that a Federal system has a written constitution, diffusing power amongst a number of self sustaining centres, and an areal division of power. There is no mention of "defined" and "remaining" powers, but it does seem to emphasise a _real_ diffusing of power.
David, you have a point that what we are talking about is defederalisation in the sense of transferring powers to a national level.
My position, and I suspect there is a lot of overlap with Mark's position, is that while responsibilities would be transferred to the national government, the regions would nevertheless have sovereignty, even while their powers are defined.
The thing making it "Federal" would be that the regional governments would have their powers defined in the constitution, they would have guaranteed access to funds, and they would be sovereign within that context, an improvement over the present arrangement.
The improvement, while we are talking about something "Federal", is that the powers which regional government has would be appropriate to its geographic scale, with consideration to limit duplication, rather than a mix determined by accidents of history (as we have in the present arrangement).
Yes, its "defederalisation" on the one hand, but we are also talking about increasing the sovereignty (autonomy) of regions too. It depends on what you want to emphasise in looking at things.
"As far as offence is concerned, "abolish the states" strikes me as more in-your-face and potentially incendiary -- and also more dramatic, which is one of our positive criteria I guess -- than a polysyllabic horror like "defederalise" ever could be. Should we even be ruling out the retention of rump states, with reduced responsibilities and powers? I realise if we try to keep every option in we end up saying nothing."
I think "abolish the states" is a reasonable statement, inflammatory to an appropriate degree. "remove the states" is a bit less inflammatory, but I still prefer the former.
We're talking about eliminating one tier of government, the state government, and replacing local governments with around 30 regional governments.
That is saying something. I imagine Mark is talking about saying it with care; I can see his concerns about distancing groups.
"Perhaps the real moral of all this is that a web page for external use ought to follow debate within the group, rather than precede it. Whatever is there at this moment is intended (by me, anyway) principally for internal use until our own ideas have solidified a bit. Assuming, that is, that we have enough in common that joint action is appropriate."
A fair point.
I'd prefer to have people "go for things" within reason, rather than be bogged down by some sort of approval process. So, its good you've put the page together.
But, yes, the content of the web page still has to be defined. To what extent is it representative of a group position ? Do we really want a group position ?
I guess that is something to be worked out.
My position at its most basic is that if someone asked me to explain what the word "defederalise" means, I'd find it a vast deal harder to explain than what "abolish the states" means. The word "defederalise" is not one which I have encountered much if at all in the academic literature on government systems and their reform.
We all seem to acknowledge, and it at any rate follows from the definitions and logic that:
abolishing the states in their present form NEED NOT imply the complete abolition of federalism WHEREAS IN CONTRAST the end of federalism WOULD imply no states.
A significant point here is that abolishing the states encompasses a considerably broader range of reform options than abolishing federalism outright AND HENCE can be expected to draw upon a greater number of supporters. Leaving the issue of federalism open can neutralise the shrill/dogmatic defenders/apologists of our present system, and make no mistake, there are some (the Samuel Griffith Society comes to mind) who might well latch on to a term like "defederalise". But, significantly, the Samuel Griffith Society and other staunch "states rights" and dogmatic pro-federalism advocates can be powerfully sidelined/neutralised/marginalised in this whole debate if the issue of federalism is left open rather than closed in favour of a purely unitary system. ...
So whilst I am more than happy to assert loud and clear that the best possible system of government for Australia would undoubtedly be one absent of the states in their present form, I am by no means certain that the best possible system is one that has been totally "defederalised".
[In a previous article] ... I suggest/address "the need to develop core principles to avoid harmful divisions among people with substantially same concerns and ideas on [a] "best Possible" system" and list ten points as an attempt to address this issue. I think we need to be firm on being open and inclusive! ...
Am not inclined to be in any way timid in respect of our agenda but recommend that we must be mindful of issues of due caution/prudence etc. and am just trying to help us get off to as good/safe a start as possible - one that doesn't provoke/divide in a manner that could be detrimental to our cause.
"We're talking about eliminating one tier of government, the state government, and replacing local governments with around 30 regional governments."
For reference, who is "we" in that sentence? It might be a bit specific to apply to everyone at the meeting. It might be a bit specific to apply to me. I was under the impression that the replacement system was still up for discussion more than that. (certainly, this is a fair comment - JA.)
"the term "federalism" is not one that is widely understood at all let alone deeply."
That's true, though I think the explanatory subtitle neutralises the lack of familiarity to some extent.
"The federal-unitary dichotomy masks shades of grey where most of the academic AND practical interest lies."
Fair enough. I still think, though, that "federal" can be used as a quasi- continuous adjective, with some systems being more federal than others. Do all our opinions have in common reducing the degree of federalism? Do we have anything at all in common beyond a taste for Asian food?
"In contrast, everyone knows what is meant by the term "abolish the states"."
That's certainly true, I'm just wondering if "abolish the states" has an alienation value of its own. I'm beginning to appreciate the cleverness in Peter Consandine's choice of "abolish state governments", that taps into the deep suspicion of oppressive bureaucracy. ("It's not New South Wales we want to dismantle ... great state, New South Wales ... it's just those bastards in Macquarie Street we hate.")