The reform of Australia’s federation is under review, with a White Paper process currently underway. In partnership with the Australian National University’s Tax and Transfer Policy Institute at the Crawford…
Does COAG help the Prime Minister and the Premiers collaborate - or create a platform for empty grandstanding?
Alan Porritt/AAP
The reform of Australia’s federation is under review. In this special series, we ask leading Australian academics to begin a debate on renewing federalism, from tax reform to the broader issues of democracy…
Time to move more power to the provinces.
Mark Andrew
Britain faces an economic divide between North and South and the government and opposition are at loggerheads over how to address it. George Osborne wants to build a high-speed rail link and the Labour…
The states are far better placed to make good education policy for Australians than the Commonwealth.
AAP
Could we be witnessing the dawn of a new era of education federalism? It’s rare to hear senior public servants severely and publicly criticise existing institutional and political arrangements and call…
There have been instances of successful federalism - how do we return to these?
Flickr/monkeyc.net
When our two major levels of government work in partnership, our Federation can function well. The standout period for cooperative federalism was the Hawke/Keating term of government, producing the National…
A formal, transparent and public assessment of infrastructure benefits and costs is the only way to ensure the right decision are made.
Dan Peled/AAP
One of the many challenges facing the Australian economy over the next decade or two concerns investment in transport, electricity, water, communications, health and education, and other infrastructure…
Prime Minister Tony Abbott today releases the terms of reference for his government’s federalism white paper.
AAP/David Crosling
The Abbott government’s strong preference for limiting the role of Canberra and boosting that of the states is a central thrust in the terms of reference for the white paper on reforming the federation…
An unintended consequence of competitive federalism has led states to abandon high benefit-cost ratio projects for inferior ones.
AAP/Alan Porritt
Calls to lift the GST rate to placate the states financial challenges will serve to only exacerbate an already severe vertical fiscal imbalance and prolong a deeply unsatisfactory chapter in Australia’s…
The NSW Baird government is relying on asset sales to fund infrastructure, but all state governments have a revenue problem.
AAP/Dan Himbrechts
The fiscal relationship between the Commonwealth and the states in Australia’s federal system is unsustainable in the long term. That statement has been difficult to deny ever since the 1940s, when Canberra…
Realistic reforms to federal-state financial relations are possible with the right amount of political will.
AAP/Alan Porritt
The federal budget reignited debate over federal-state relations with a decision to cut $80 billion funding for the state responsibilities of schools and hospitals over the coming years. So how can federal-state…
What’s the ideal arrangement for funding education? Would responsibility lie with the federal or state governments?
AAP
The federal budget reignited debate over federal-state relations with a decision to cut $80 billion funding for the state responsibilities of schools and hospitals over the coming years. So how can federal-state…
The chances of a single level of government taking charge of Australia’s health system are slim.
AAP/Quentin Jones
The federal budget reignited debate over federal-state relations with a decision to cut $80 billion funding for the state responsibilities of schools and hospitals over the coming years. So how can federal-state…
Since the first Commonwealth parliament, commemorated in a special 2001 sitting in the Victorian Legislative Assembly, government has grown in unanticipated ways.
AAP/Julian Smith
The federal budget reignited debate over federal-state relations with a decision to cut some $80 billion in funding for the state responsibilities of schools and hospitals over the coming years. So how…
Queensland Treasurer Tim Nicholls had little good news to deliver.
Dan Peled/AAP
As Queensland Treasurer Tim Nicholls released the state budget yesterday, one could be excused for not really noticing. Long the poor cousin of Australian Federalism, state budgets rarely get much press…
There is now a large disparity between the respective responsibilities of the Commonwealth and the states and their relative capacities to fund those responsibilities.
AAP/Alan Porritt
The federal budget reignited debate over federal-state relations with a decision to cut some $80 billion in funding for the state responsibilities of schools and hospitals over the coming years. But how…
Australia’s state premiers are avoiding a GST discussion.
Daniel Munoz/AAP
This past Tuesday was another bad day for Australian federalism: the Abbott government’s first budget announced the axing of the COAG Reform Council and the withdrawal of a promised A$80 billion from health…
Former Victorian premier John Brumby, pictured at a COAG meeting in 2008, wants an Australian federation with a better balance between roles, responsibilities and revenue.
AAP/Paul Miller
More than 100 years after Federation, the government’s White Paper on Reform of the Federation presents a historic opportunity to reconsider federal-state relations and responsibilities. How can state…
Ever thus… there is a quite a history of the federal government pulling funding from the states.
AAP/Alan Porritt
The states have some justification in being annoyed about being stripped of $80 billion worth of federal funding for health and education funding. These programs were negotiated on the basis of shared…
The federal budget shows that Tony Abbott is now committed to a strong division of responsibility between the Commonwealth and the states, rather than a more centralised model.
AAP/Alan Porritt
When treasurer Joe Hockey detailed his first budget on Tuesday, the announcement that the states and territories were to be stripped of A$80 billion in federal health and education funding agreed to with…
The High Court has given the Commonwealth two serious warnings that it needs to review its extensive spending program since 2009, but these have gone largely unheard.
AAP/Lukas Coch
This week, the High Court heard Toowoomba man Ron Williams’ second challenge to the constitutionality of the Commonwealth’s funding of the National School Chaplaincy and Student Welfare Program. While…
Honorary Enterprise Professor, School of Population and Global Health, and Department of General Practice and Primary Care, The University of Melbourne