Australian Government Role

Critical Research Exercise

Question(s)

What role do the states play in Australian government and democracy?

What factors shape their interaction with the federal government?

Do you think they should be abolished?

Bibliography

de Jersey, P. (2012). ‘A sketch of the modern Australian Federation’ in Appleby, G., Aroney, N. and John, T (ed.), The future of Australian federalism. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Craven, G., Edwardes, C., McTaggart, D., Stockdale, A., Westacott, J. and Bannon, J. (2015). Reform of the Federation White Paper Discussion Paper. Canberra: The Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet (Federation White Paper Task Force).

Fenna, A. (2012). Centralising Dynamics in Australian Federalism. Australian

In terms of the former, increased Commonwealth responsibility for redistribution is crucial as the welfare state is framed as mutually exclusive with federalism’s ‘diversity principle’ (Fenna, 2012). In terms of the latter, the increasingly universal nature of values has made the capacity for states to craft independent social policy irrelevant, unwanted, and arbitrary.

Both these dimensions are increasingly true due to globalisation, and Galligan particularly develops this point in his chapter. He shows that, by virtue of their control over ‘external affairs’ (Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act 1900 s 51(xxix)), the Commonwealth has been able to increase its power over all kinds of matters, especially social policy, through human rights treaties, and a diverse range of economic regulations, through environmental agreements.

Ultimately Galligan’s analysis emboldens Fenna’s central thesis: that the decline of Federalism merely reflects the interests of people who, by virtue of the constitution’s design, view the Commonwealth as being better placed to secure their

As a reference text it is particularly adept at explicating the role states play in democracy, particularly as Galligan accounts for changes in their roles over time. His analysis of Commonwealth-state relations, particularly his identification of the fact that states have a ‘greater influence’ in ‘many areas’ of daily life does two things. First, it shows that, despite increasing centralisation, states still play an important role, opening up room for analysis. Second, and more importantly, it shows that states play a more direct and localised role in Australian democracy, an insight I hope to build on more concretely in my