Australia's balance of power
"Rudd's Health Revolution," proclaims the banner headline on the front page of the Sydney Morning Herald, accompanied by a cartoon of a smiling Australian prime minister dressed in surgical gowns with a stethoscope hanging, medal-like, around his neck.
After weeks of sometimes fraught negotiations with the state premiers, and a two-day pow-wow in Canberra, Kevin Rudd has managed which changes how health care is funded in Australia - a more sustainable model, according to the prime minister, which shifts the onus from the states to the federal government, and makes Canberra the dominant funder. Western Australia, which has a Liberal premier, has refused to sign up, but Kevin Rudd managed to reach a compromise with the Labor premiers, some of whom had baulked at the notion of a federal take-over.
"It is highly debatable whether this truly marks a "Health Revolution". It is surely more accurate to describe it as a "Bureaucratic Rearrangement," a phrase which admittedly does not lend itself to quite such snappy headlines.
You can get political analysis of the health deal and . But to the outside eye, one of the most intriguing aspects of these reforms is how they alter the balance of power between the central government and the states.
In many western democracies around the world, centrifugal impulses have recently been at work when it comes to the devolution of power. Decision-making has moved further away form the centre. Over the past decade, for instance, Britain has seen the creation of the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Assembly. In America, many of the really eye-catching reforms have come from the states, such as health care in Massachusetts and new environmental regulations in California.
In Australia, however, an enormous amount of power has flowed in the opposite direction, from the localities to the centre. Under the Howard government, the states lost control over industrial relations law and much of company law. There was also the nationalisation of the Murray-Darling river system, as well as the federal intervention in the Northern Territory to curb child abuse in indigenous communities.
Under the Rudd government, the states will comply with a national curriculum in education and see more federal influence over health. Canberra has encroached into areas of Australian life that have long been the domain of the states, raising fears that the states are becoming increasingly inconsequential. Indeed, one of the main complaints of state premiers, like the Victoria leader John Brumby, during the health care debate was that Mr Rudd was trying not only to engineer a cash grab, by getting his hands on 30% of the sales tax (GST) from the states, but a power grab.
Certainly, Australia has a small enough population right now to be run by a leaner, more streamlined system of governance. But geography, history and the written constitution militate against such a move.
Ever the bureaucrat, Kevin Rudd's has tried to clear away some of these governmental inefficiencies, although the compromise reached with the states falls short of what originally he proposed. In so doing, he has followed the path of successive Australian prime ministers: to amass greater power and influence in Canberra and to further marginalise the states.
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