In Pride and Prejudice, Austen asks: "for what do we live, but to make sport of our neighbours and to laugh at them in our turn?"

During the past year Australia's states have wallowed in a lot of such sport at each other's expense.

We have mocked unaccountable incompetence (in Victoria), churlish truculence (Queensland hospitals for Queenslanders), rushed lock-downs of entire cities (whether Perth and Adelaide), inexplicable silliness (the Ruby Princess unloading), and premiers choosing to lecture us as though they were school principals (all six of them at various times).

Australia is an island, the largest in the world, yet has never been able to act like an island.

We have been too dependent on allies and markets elsewhere, as well as too interdependent with our neighbours.

In fact, only three countries are so self-contained and self-referential as to behave like islands, and none of them is surrounded by water. That trio would be China, India and the United States.

By contrast, only one of Australia's states is actually an island. Some fellow Tasmanians might have relished COVID-19 as the first plausible excuse since 1803 to keep mainlanders out - lest they bid up property prices, fish out trout streams and wear out locals' patience with inane hillbilly jokes.

Who, though, expected emotive and politicised insularity from the mainland?

Parodying real or supposed differences between states used to be a harmless joke. We would refer disparagingly to Croweaters, Bananabenders or Sandgropers, all innocuous appellations rather than insults.

We might be amused at the way residents of some states talk about cozzies, others trunks, some bathers.

We might grumble that there are always too many NSW players in the Test side. One family member maintained there were no criminals in Western Australia until the road from "over east" was sealed with bitumen.

None of that banter, though, has the same sulky, sullen, selfish edge as exchanges between the states in the year of COVID.

One reason for interstate whingeing is surely the absence of any stirring, striking story about how we came to be a nation at all. By comparison, the Americans have a revolutionary war, Canadians the binding tale of the trans-Canada railroad, Indians their moment of "freedom at midnight" and Israelis the date of a legitimising UN resolution.

As for us, despite the furore over Australia Day, nobody has proposed shifting our long weekend to the date on which the Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act came into effect. Where President Joe Biden worries about "feigned amnesia" in America, our amnesia is regrettably real.

Schoolchildren learning about Australia may be taught about Henry Parkes' seminal argument for federation, delivered at Tenterfield in October 1889. Nonetheless, Parkes' was a pedestrian effort, proposing a national army (to deploy against more imaginary foes) and a standard railway gauge rather than any more visionary schemes. Parkes did outshine the other federalist who declared that we would be a great nation under the southern cross, and potatoes would be cheaper.

In his speech, Parkes blithely mocked an earlier Federal Council which "held discussions which never appeared to interest anyone". He said little of interest or import himself other than one promise Australians would still love to see fulfilled. "All great questions will be dealt with in a broad manner."

Tenterfield lingers on, mainly in a lugubrious song about a saddler, working for 62 years in the same job, not acquiring any new skills, not accepting any form of progress. Parkes' Australia was meant to do better than that.

A few baby steps might blunt the sharp edge of interstate tetchiness. We could start by inserting a preamble about shared national purposes into the constitution, after due recognition of First Nations.

One cross-reference could be the United States, where "we the people" commit themselves to "form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity" and more besides.

If that is too grand, we might try something like Ireland's constitution, where the people affirm their rights to do whatever they like "in accordance with (Ireland's) own genius and traditions". By contrast, as early as Article 3 our constitution sets about determining the pay packet for the governor-general.

In COVID times, both the Commonwealth and the states might remind themselves that quarantine is an enumerated Commonwealth power (at s.51 (ix)), plonked just after "lighthouses, lightships, beacons and buoys" (viii) and before weights and measures (xv).

While some powers might be shared, the process of blending and harmonising is not meant to resemble a child's game of pass-the-parcel. Divergences in mask mandates and hotel quarantine rules might seem analogous to Parkes' complaint about different railway gauges.

Some other pragmatic fiddles could follow. We might associate the term, federation, with more than a windswept square in Melbourne and a little military guard. The National Gallery of Victoria could be encouraged to delete the first word in its title.

As a redundant relic of unused states' rights, the positions of our governors might be abolished. I defy readers of the Informant to name even half the current state governors. Designated popular ambassadors (folk like Ricky Ponting for Tasmania or WA's Tim Winton) could better represent the quiddities of their states.

With luck, COVID-19 should prompt us to consider problems "in a broad manner", just as Parkes recommended.