The republic of the Australian Capital Territory may well be a red island in the middle of a sea of blue monarchies on Sunday, but, for Tony Abbott and Bill Shorten, navigation is not going to get any easier.
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Australian voters well understand the federal system, differentiate politicians at different levels of government, and install parties in power in each for different reasons on different cycles. And state politicians have an annoying habit of being more loyal to their states than to their political party.
In that sense, the sea of Coalition blue does not necessarily imply a profound change. Least of all does it mean most voters in each state, and one of the territories, have adopted the broad values and philosophies of the Liberal and National parties, or any particular version of them, including that of Prime Minister Abbott. All it means is, for the moment, they prefer the Coalition to Labor. There was no sea change when all capitals had Labor governments. That did not make it easier to govern the nation, nor did it make premiers more disposed to agree with each other, or the view from Canberra.
There are advantages in having mates in power in other capitals. There are also disadvantages. The very nature of politics implies a multi-dimensional struggle for resources within and between governments, and, sometimes, the battle is easier if you do not have to pretend to be friends.
If the past 50 years have been any guide, premiers have been rather more successful in bringing down prime ministers than vice versa. Conscious or unconscious undermining has seen premiers destroying the prospects of prime ministers of their own side and the other. Robin Askin in NSW and Henry Bolte in Victoria helped bring about the end of John Gorton - because they saw him as a centrist trying to reduce the states. Joh Bjelke-Petersen stopped John Howard becoming prime minister in the late 1980s, although Bjelke-Petersen was an equal opportunity player, deserving significant credit, if that is the word, for helping to bring Gough Whitlam down, and also bringing his state Coalition partner to cipher status. Sir Charles Court told everyone he was underwhelmed with Malcolm Fraser. Many less than helpful remarks by Wayne Goss during Paul Keating's term - mostly in efforts to share the blame - helped Howard win in 1996 (even if Keating's political career was to survive Goss's by a month).
Bastardries in the election season tend to be more consciously partisan, though it is curious how much money tells in the end. Last year, warriors such as Campbell Newman in Queensland and Colin Barnett in Western Australia played conscious hardball on signing up for Gonski reforms, as much so as to make life difficult for federal Labor as because of any local concerns about principles. There has been a long history of conservative premiers ratting on their Coalition colleagues in opposition in Canberra if hospital and healthcare funding offers from Labor were on the table during a federal election season. These involve serious money, and, rightly or wrongly, Labor tends to dole it out with more gay abandon than ever a potential Liberal government would do. It would be negligent, and disloyal to the interests of the state if one did not take it with both hands - if, perhaps, at the last possible moment and with a maximum of posturing.
No Coalition premier is likely to disagree with vague words about smaller government, letting markets operate, and the need for parsimony with public money. But only one in office now, Newman, has shown any evidence of any determination to wind back state expenditure on the scale, say, that Jeff Kennett did between 1992 and 1998. Barry O'Farrell in NSW, Denis Napthine in Victoria and Barnett are determined pragmatists without much in the way of philosophy or ideology, willing at best only to hurt or to administer tough medicine to constituencies and interests from whom they have no hopes or expectations whatever. Their partisan valour tends to collapse promptly at the sight of enemy troops, media criticism or anguish from constituents.
All, including Campbell, specialise, like the Labor premiers before them, in crony capitalism, government by favours and discretions rather than rules or open markets, and by partisan use of grants to help with key constituencies. And they blame Canberra - regardless of who's there - for all deficiencies in the services they administer. Each claims special entitlements and privileges for their states, or parts of them, based on geography, demographics or economies of scale.
This is ordinary politics. It is not going to change simply because a few people in Canberra assert an end of the age of entitlement, say we are no longer in the business of giving handouts to business, or want to crack down on debt.
Abbott has been remarkably restrained in offering to spend federal dollars to prop up the campaigns of South Australian and Tasmanian Liberals, though there is an ominous feel about major investment in a South Australian drone manufactory. But that virtue, or the shared understanding of the premiers that things are tough on the federal budgetary front, does not mean that new premiers will not be immediately clamouring for federal assistance for pet pump-priming schemes, or joining the other premiers (even the virtuous Newman) in trying to wrest money for anything from Canberra. It will not stop for a second the endless wrangling about the size of the pie, and how it is sliced up.
Nor will it mean any sort of outbreak of bonhomie, shared visions or purpose when the boys pick up the port after the one woman, Katy Gallagher, retires from the room. Premiers are always at each other's throats, when they are not after the prime minister's.
The Council of Australian Governments is in fairly poor repair, and may well be worse after the commission of audit and the federal budget. Debate about how to improve it, or even whether to bother, has never had much ideological tinge, even if there has been a tendency, over the years, for successive prime ministers to want to rename, and reform, it to meet their own view of things.
Abbott has never shown interest in its mechanisms or machinery for federal-state collaboration. There is suspicion, in the Coalition in Canberra in any event, about the lack of political and administrative accountability of ministerial councils and the executive bodies which grow up in their wake.
Moreover, COAG is affected by the federal government's desire to be seen to be cracking down on unnecessary regulation, duplication of functions, and the accountability black hole that occurs when several layers of government (or agencies of the one layer) are involved.
The problems that Fiona Nash, Assistant Minister for Health, had after ordering the taking down of what she saw as a nanny-state, busybody website might be a good example, on several counts. The website's creation had been decided on by a council of state and federal ministers, and their resolution had been implemented through its secretariat, which was located in the federal Health Department. How was it, the minister and her adviser thought, that the senior bureaucrat advising the federal government on preventive health questions (now, apparently called health prevention inside the department) was simultaneously working to other bosses.
Nash needed no particular prompting, from a person in a clear conflict of interest because of his association with fast-food lobbying, for antipathy to the very purpose of the website. Assume it to be a perfect example of the nanny-statism she detests. But even if she agreed with the message, she would have asked: But is it the function of government to be doing this? Particularly when the budget is in such a hole? And if it is a function of government, should it not be state governments - which are, after all, supposed to be the ones delivering health? And don't you get into a situation, when all of this is organised at joint ministerial level, of mixed responsibilities, accountabilities and not really knowing who is in charge of what?
By this sort of argument, much federal regulation could simply be disbanded, on the general principle that, worthy or not, it is the province of the states. There might be a business argument for a single national approach - say, to occupational health and safety, truck licensing or uniform parking laws.
But, it could be said, this does not have to be achieved by eight simultaneous sets of legislation, regulation, statutory instrument and guidelines proceeding from any number of appointed officials, overseen by some invented role (and budget, staffing and agency) for the federal government as some co-ordinator of all of this.
By this sort of argument, one does not necessarily have to decide to transfer all health functions back to the states - on the ground that the federal government does not run its own hospitals or clinics - or schools, or aged care centres, or whatever. Nor need one focus merely on the supposed duplication of functions in some areas of mixed responsibilities. Federal service agencies would be rather more focused policy bodies concentrating on five or six really big things, and firmly discouraged from becoming involved in the minutiae either of detailed administration by the states, or by the various private sector bodies to which matters were contracted out.
This might have little effect on the activities of federal agencies, such as, say, Immigration, or Defence, or the Taxation Office, whose functions do not overlap with those in the states. But, on paper at least, it could provide real scope for savings. At least until federal politicians realise that every program and function has its champions, constituencies and history, and that there are dividends forgone whenever money is saved. Politicians, not accountants, are the best auditors of that part of the equation.
Meanwhile, Labor tree people have lost two more bases, sources of employment, access to free research and money trees. If the losses are not as profound as in NSW, Queensland and nationwide, they again serve as a reminder that voters will see off incumbents without a tinge of regret, sense of loss, or even a particular feeling that they were kicking Labor in the guts.
There's never much Labor, or Liberal, in the state brand - just a different set of people who run out of ideas and energy after a few terms, usually becoming very complacent, incompetent and corrupt before being reminded that the Treasury benches anywhere are on leasehold, not freehold, and cannot be taken for granted.
One day, there may again be a point to Labor, a reason or need to support it, a shared vision that calls to Australians, and a leader of moral and intellectual force and power. Not merely an alternative - and not very attractive set - of managers without a guiding principle. That the Labor political class, which has lost almost all connection with the population, doesn't see it, or get it, is as good a reason as any to leave it out in the wilderness, or if one is a crow-eater or Taswegian, to consciously consign it there.