Rediscovering Australian federalism by resurrecting old ideas

Unfinished Business: Confirming Australia's Constitution as an Act of Political Settlement

“…It has also left little doubt that the states are perm anent ® xtures, whose existence re¯ects a distinctly federalist political culture. Among political scientists, federalism not centralism is now generally seen as the more appropriate fram ework for governing Australia (Fletcher 1991;Craven 1992). This is reinforced by argum ents that Madisonian federalism, not responsible government, is a truer embodiment of the core belief among seventeenth-century English constitutionalists that governments were properly limited by law in the sense of being m orally subordinate to some form of higher or fundamental law, whether Christian or natural (Jam es 1982; Sharm an 1990b).…”

What is the Future of the Federation?

“…Intergovernmental relations are essentially untidy, with governments and parts of governments often competing for a share of the action. And, theoretically, federalism is best understood as a policy matrix in which no government has monopoly or complete authority, and is more analogous to a communications network rather than a chain of command (Elazar 1987: 13,3340;Fletcher 1991). In sum, federalism is a system of complex and diffuse power centres with an intermingling and overlapping of jurisdictional responsibilities and policy activity.…”