The new federation — the pandemic-spawned national cabinet — is riven by state claims and parochialism a hundred years out of date and it’s weighing down economic recovery.
Last to the old federation, always threatening secession and standing alone outside the new grouping, Western Australia is but the boldest of the states. For political and parochial reasons, different states and territories have refused to “board the bus” on various measures necessary for recovery.
They threaten a rebound from the worst recession in almost 100 years — which in turn will cost the jobs of their own people — for easy political gain under cover of dubious and contradictory health advice.
Even the face-saving compromise of seven of eight states and territories agreeing to consider a goal of easing travel and work restrictions across borders by Christmas is nebulous and required not just a changing of the goal but also a changing of the goalposts.
National decisions can now be brokered between two or more states while the majority can sit out, unaffected and uncommitted, as the formal definition of a decision has changed.
Scott Morrison faced his first full-scale defeat at Friday’s national cabinet as WA and Queensland vowed not to lift their cement-hard border restrictions and other jurisdictions took different paths on lifting bans on agricultural workers crossing borders.
The Prime Minister, not the premiers or chief ministers, has invested most in the new federation executive and stands to lose the most politically if it fails. Anthony Albanese is on the outside ready to sow division and reap the benefits.
Morrison is the one who has taken the risk of being the chairman and spokesman for a body over which he has no control, no censure and no power of compulsion.
The premiers, on the back of commonwealth largesse and community fear about coronavirus infections, are not concerned with criticism from outside their borders and can afford to play to rivalries and parochialism that existed when Australia didn’t have a standard rail gauge.
At least Morrison was able to work a compromise on easing border closures through specific infection “hotspot” closures rather than blanket border bans. But not even that included everyone and uses the commonwealth definition and plan for “hotspot” travel as a starting point, with Christmas as a nominal end point.
The incentive for collective decisions in the national interest at a time of emergency has passed and Morrison has declared he will not take services away from people in a state just because of the intransigence of a premier. So there’s plenty of room for recalcitrance between now and Christmas.
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