Isolation fuels ‘pandexit’ calls from Western Australia

Perth’s CBD on the Swan River. The pandemic and economic problems have restarted the debate about Western Australia going its own way.

Premier Mark McGowan has turned Western Australia into a fortress against infection. This has shielded his community from the worst of the pandemic but has increased its separation from the nation. In the words of the Premier, the state’s hard border closure has turned it into “an island within an island”. Not surprisingly, this has rekindled talk of Western Australia seceding from the federation. The movement is gaining momentum because of the success of its isolation, and friction with the commonwealth and other states.

Western Australia was a reluctant entrant to the federation in 1901. It was the last colony to join and did so late in the process. The colony was concerned that its economic position would be weakened by joining the nation, and that the federation would be dominated by the eastern states. The west feared it would not receive its fair share of taxation revenue.

Geography also played a role. Almost 3300km separates Perth from the east coast, an unimaginable distance for many people at the end of the 19th century. By contrast, London is 2500km from Moscow. New Zealand is much closer to Sydney, and yet it declined to join the federation.

After much disagreement and debate, Western Australia decided to unite with the other colonies at the 11th hour. It did so by a popular vote in July 1900, three weeks after Queen Victoria gave royal assent to the British law creating the new nation. This meant it was too late to include a reference to Western Australia as the nation’s sixth founding state.

The opening words to the British Act that introduce the Australian Constitution speak of “the people of New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia, Queensland, and Tasmania” agreeing “to unite in one indissoluble Federal Commonwealth”. The omission of Western Australia was symbolic of its uncertainty. This has resonated over the years with the state’s politicians and leading citizens questioning whether a mistake was made and if the time had come to leave the federation.

Economic factors and political dissatisfaction have driven cycles of debate around Western Australia seceding. Mining magnate Andrew Forrest put forward the idea when the Rudd government proposed a mining tax that many saw as plundering the state’s mineral riches. A decade ago, the West Australian mines and petroleum minister Norman Moore also said that the unequal distribution of GST revenue had led to “rumblings of secession — everywhere you go these days, people are now talking about it”. He had “no doubt that Western Australia would be one of the most successful countries in the world if it was a separate country”.

These rumblings have grown again in recent times. The Western Australian Liberal Party passed a resolution at its 2017 state conference calling on the establishment of a committee to “examine the option of Western Australia becoming a financially independent state”. A poll taken this month found 28 per cent of Western Australians want to form their own country.

Others have expressed concern that calls for separation are growing louder. The federal member for Perth, Patrick Gorman, has warned against treating secession as a joke. He has acknowledged the growing support for the idea of Westralia and drawn a comparison with Brexit. In that case, unfavourable economic conditions and unresolved community dissatisfaction enabled a fringe idea to become a reality.

It is no surprise that the pandemic and Australia’s economic problems have restarted this debate. The closest that Western Australia has come to leaving the nation was 90 years ago amid the great depression. In 1930, a state government led by Sir James Mitchell was elected on a platform for secession. In 1933, he put a referendum to the people of Western Australia asking whether the state should withdraw from the commonwealth. People overwhelmingly voted to do so by a margin of two to one.

A souvenir postcard from 1933.

The state sent a delegation to London to petition the United Kingdom parliament to allow it to become a self-governing dominion within the British Empire. The British diplomatically took their time to respond. Two years later they decided not to entertain the petition because convention dictated that it come from the commonwealth and not an individual state. The commonwealth opposed secession, and so the push ended. The political movement then faltered as economic conditions improved and the commonwealth sent more money west.

The events of almost a century ago demonstrate the difficulty of any state leaving the federation. The problem for the proponents of separation is that federation is a one-way ticket. The constitution provides no mechanism for a state to leave the nation.

In the absence of a revolution, the only path to secession is to amend the constitution to permit a state to leave. The federal parliament would first need to approve the change, followed by the people voting at a referendum. A majority would need to vote yes, plus at least four out of the six states, including Western Australia. The political difficulties of achieving this make secession possible in theory, but impossible in practice. The bottom line is that Western Australians can only leave if the rest of the nation is willing to let them go.