The biggest disappointment to me during COVID-19 is that Australia is no more.
Australia now is eight countries (six states and two territories). States have always been parochial, but not like this. ScoMo is not to blame. Power hungry premiers are.
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If the prime minister is not leading, that’s why it’s going the way it is. Playing favourites, blaming everyone else, giving conflicting advice, not organising enough vaccines, poor management of the vaccine rollout, not taking responsibility for quaratine( a federal responsibility)and age care, not a race to a gold medal race, the list goes on. That’s why the premiers have mainly taken control, and from the state elections held so far, obviously popular with the electorate.
We may not be able to blame the prime minister for the current angst between the states. That problem Goes back decades ,as most retired prime ministers concede . But that doesn’t absolve him of his own pathetic federal government performance . After bis trip to Hawaii during the bushfires why should we expect anything better . Hopeless .
Neil, perhaps ask yourself honestly, if you lived anywhere but NSW, ACT and Vic right now would you want to invite open slather travel from these areas? These “power hungry” premiers and CMs have done an amazing job.
Personally I’ve always preferred the concept of power shared than power concentrated – especially with the lot we have on the government benches right now. I think our political forebears were very prescient.
Fortunately for us the leaders of the six colonies prior to 1901 foresaw the dangers of too much centralised power and wrote into the Constitution at Section 51 the so called heads of power severely limiting what the Commonwealth could or could not do.
Hence the establishment of State Rights with the Commonwealth now consisting of six sovereign states each with their own constitutions and together they form a federal system of government. Not to be confused with the United States which although a federation is a republic with almost complete power vested in the hands of a president. Who wants a Donald Trump?
The system worked wonderfully well until various commonwealth governments over many years started a grab for power by convincing the states that it and it alone could do a better job. Hence a bloated Commonwealth public service and a Commonwealth with every intention of interfering with state rights on just about everything.
This has led to a Commonwealth such as the one we see today completely forgetting its own constitutional responsibilities. These include aged care, quarantine and the vaccine rollout, the failures in which can be laid fairly and squarely at the feet of the most incompetent prime minister we have had since federation. This gentleman could not, as someone else has suggested lead a dog to a bone. Instead spins and whirls his way from crisis to crisis and when this fails blames everybody but him self.
We would be in an awful position if not for the states exercising their sovereign rights.
How I wish for the good old days when the states were left alone instead of having a commonwealth which all it can do is beat the Labor states over the head even to the extent of a compliant federal treasurer threatening to with hold funds if they do not open their borders when he wants them open.
We will see the outcome of all this argy bargy at the expense of the states, by May 2022 or sooner the better.